Dominick Gravel/Montreal Alouettes
In hindsight, the writing is always on the wall, even if the wall has been hurriedly stripped bare.
Darian Durant was in the process of packing up his home in Regina last winter, still feeling the emotional effects of being traded to the Montreal Alouettes after an 11-year run in Riders green.
“You’re talking about 11 years that I spent here,” he told CFL.ca last March. “Some the full offseason, being here year-round in the community. It’s definitely tough to leave.
“You envision spending your whole career in one place. To go home and pack up and know that you’re probably never going to come back is tough.”
We know now what should have been obvious to us throughout Durant’s ill-fated year in Montreal and through what looked on paper to be a perfect fit for him as a backup in Winnipeg. The apartment was empty, the walls bare and the boxes ushered off to another city, but Durant’s heart stayed in Regina. It didn’t know how to leave. He never wanted it to.
“If you cut me open, I am sure that I would bleed green,” he wrote on his website Friday morning, where he abruptly announced his retirement from the game.
RELATED
> Darian Durant calls it a career
> Durant exits with no shortage of milestones his resume
> Durant retirement seemingly catches Bombers off guard
You could almost feel his pain and (temporary) vindication in the Als’ season-opening win over the Riders last June. Durant skipped, cheered, fist-pumped and yelled to the Riders sideline as his new team eked out a win over his old one. Really, 2018 was downhill from there. The Als would only win two more games all season and Durant, behind one of the worst offensive lines in the league — the Als allowed 46 sacks and 109 pressures last season — saw his completions slump and his interceptions rise. Montreal’s offence managed a league-worst 294 points last season, well behind Hamilton’s eighth-placed 407 yards. There was little doubt across the league that when the Als’ season was over that Durant’s time in Montreal was as well, despite the three-year deal he signed with the team upon his arrival there last January.
He was released by the Alouettes on January 15 this year, and signed with the Bombers five days later.
Durant said all of the right things upon joining the other side of the Riders’ heated Banjo Bowl rivalry. He wanted to be a security blanket for Matt Nichols, forming a talented and experienced QB tandem. He was happy to reunite with former Riders’ OC Paul LaPolice. In a reduced role, he’d have a shot at one more Grey Cup.
There were also life factors in Durant’s decision. He cited opportunities away from the field that could transition him into the next phase of his life and of course, he became a dad in the offseason and saw how rewarding it is to spend time every day with his daughter, Amayah Taylor, her middle name inspired by Taylor Field.
As this season has inched closer, that writing on the wall became more transparent. Durant had an excused absence from the Bombers’ mini-camp in Winnipeg at the end of April. And maybe, at 35, Durant looked at the situation realistically. His days as a starter in the league were over. He could look to a pair of quarterbacks that he worked with over his years in Regina, in Kerry Joseph and Henry Burris as bookends of what could lay ahead of him. Both played past 40, with Joseph transitioning to a backup late in his career and fading out in a 2014 playoff game. Burris went out on top, a 41-year-old Grey Cup winner in Ottawa. Most QBs pushing through their late 30s find Joseph’s ending (still a storied career, but a humbling finish). Burris’ finish is, well, Burris’ finish. Very few have done it in football, regardless of the league.
If, like Durant, your mind goes back to those 11 years, you think about doubling the Riders’ Grey Cup total in that time. You think about that 2013 win at Mosaic Stadium and ask yourself, ‘Can it get any better than that?’
Darian Durant’s energy was never the same after he left Regina. Seen here in his lone return to Saskatchewan last season with Montreal with a club that had all but moved on from him late in the season.
Durant’s career ends with him sitting at No. 14 all-time in CFL passing, with 31,740 yards. He holds the league’s No. 1 playoff passing rating, at 116.6 and is 12th all-time in rushing with 3,104 yards.
“When I look back I can just smile and say I’ve been a part of history,” Durant said last year when he was in Regina, packing up his home.
“I’ve had my banner on the side of the stadium, which is just unheard of and to be up there with the greatest of all time, Ron Lancaster, it’s amazing in itself. It goes to show how the people around here feel about me and they understand I dedicated my life to making the Riders a successful organization and I was successful at that.”
That green blood in the Blue and Gold locker room didn’t mix for him and he pulled the chute on his career Friday morning, to the surprise of the Bombers. That doesn’t sit well with a lot of people on the eastern side of the Banjo Bowl. It has, predictably, endeared him a little more to the people on the western side of it.
You could never get fully used to it, Durant in an Alouettes’ uniform. His focus was there in Montreal but you could see the frustration in his face as the 2017 season unfolded. On Friday, with the announcement out there and Twitter razing and praising it, Durant is free to re-open those sealed boxes and go back to where his heart always was.
