Johany Jutras/CFL.ca
Dear Montreal Alouettes,
I would like to apologize to you. From management to the players to all the fans. I have been using you as my go-to punchline all year. When I would discuss the Baltimore Orioles, I would describe them as the “Montreal Alouettes” of the baseball world. I don’t know how many times I referenced the Washington Generals when I would summarize your team. So there I was all last week on TSN 1050 in Toronto guaranteeing a Toronto Argonauts win. I even tried to get James Wilder Jr. to admit it was an automatic W. He didn’t bite on my B-level jokes, and now I’m the one eating my words after your 25-22 win over the Double Blue on Friday night.
So to try and make amends, I researched a bunch of the Montreal starters from that game to come up with a bunch of fun/impressive facts about each one of them. One general takeaway before I get to the list: As I went through so many bios, I was reminded just how difficult the journey has been. So many players bounced between defunct football leagues, NFL practice squads and CFL training camps. They have survived being cut multiple times only to bounce back and become full-time starters. The perseverance displayed by so many of these individuals is truly remarkable. Now (to rip off from Stephen Colbert) time for Better Know a Montreal Alouette!
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Antonio Pipkin threw for 300 passing yards in a Week 11 win over the Argos (The Canadian Press)
Everyone say thank you to Pipkin for playing so well that this will inevitably kick start our favourite football drama: The quarterback controversy. After throwing for 303 yards and finishing with the same amount of rushing yards as Wilder, Pipkin has at the very least placed doubt in the idea that Johnny Manziel is ‘the saviour’. I was shocked by how well he played (even his one interception was not his fault as it bounced off of Ernest Jackson) considering this is the same guy who was cut by the Alouettes coaching staff earlier this year.
Did you know that Pipkin was so good for the Tiffin University Dragons that he was on Mel Kiper’s radar back in 2017 when he made Kiper’s list of top 25 undrafted free agents to watch? Tiffin is a Division II school located in Tiffin, Ohio and Pipkin basically dominated the All-Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Don’t believe me? Well check out this Antonio Pipkin hype video! It really starts to kick in at around the 1:07 mark. After watching this not only am I fired up but I’m ready to stake my reputation that Pipkin has a chance to be a better version of Anthony Calvillo and Doug Flutie. Go Dragons!
B.J. Cunningham
Soon after I started looking for some cool stuff on B.J. Cunningham I ran across a great piece by Kristina Costabile, who got to know Cunningham. A real fun read.
There are so many football players who love playing basketball in the off-season. Some have legit skills and then there is Eugene Lewis. After the 2017 season, Lewis suited up to play for the expansion NEPA Stars & Stripes franchise of the ABA, a semi-professional basketball league. Lewis’ father, Junie Lewis, was drafted in the second round by the Utah Jazz in 1989, and his sister, Alexis, is the all-time leading girls scorer in the Wyoming Valley Conference and has scored over a 1,000 career points at Iona University.
Eugene Lewis has put himself on the radar in his second CFL season with the Als (The Canadian Press)
I’ve written about Jackson in the past and my favourite quirky fact is that he once scored a touchdown for the Erie Explosion in a 138-0 (yup, you read that right) win over the Fayetteville Force of the Ultimate Indoor Football League. Can someone please find tape of that touchdown and the final touchdown for the Explosion? Jackson is one of those players who would not be denied a career in football having played for both the Explosion and the Chicago Slaughter before sitting behind guys like Arland Bruce III, Geroy Simon and Nick Moore early in his CFL career with the BC Lions before becoming a star in his own right.
If any player was set up to be a kicker it was Boris. His father Alain played for the Ivory Coast national soccer team and is currently running a soccer school in Massachusetts. Bede seemed destined to follow in his father’s footsteps as he was a part of the soccer team at the University of Sherbrooke before transferring to Laval, where he became a key part of the football machine that was/is the Rouge et Or. His teams would go 43-5 during his time in Laval! One other note about Bede, that dude is big. How many kickers is out there that stand 6-foot-4 and weigh 225 pounds?
Let’s start with this fantastic quote by Bowman from a 2015 interview. He was asked what he would most want people to remember about him. Here’s his answer: “I would want people to know I work hard. I was a backup tight end at Richmond County Senior High School. During my early days at Wingate, I moved from tight end to defensive end. I came from a small town, attended a small school, played in the Arena League…finally making my way to the CFL. I have fought for and earned everything I have achieved.”
I love that quote. Last year Bowman was inducted into the South Atlantic Conference Hall of Fame. Off the football field Bowman, as part of Montreal’s Together at School program, has visited over 400 schools in the Montreal area. This is a good dude who is still racking up sacks as he did in the second quarter of their win over the Argonauts.
I read that Chris Ackie was the athlete of the year every year during his time at Preston High School in Cambridge, Ont.. Ackie is the highest draft pick ever produced by Laurier after he was taken fourth overall in the 2015 draft.
Henoc is strong in both body and soul. On the soul front, in 2017 Muamba won the Gord Barwell Award. This honour goes to the CFL player who exhibits faith, character and leadership on and off the field and has been awarded for the past 20 years. As for the body, check out this 555-pound trap bar deadlift. Muamba is absolutely clanging!
I love Ellis’ collegiate nickname! Back in his days patrolling the secondary for South Carolina State he went by “Dali Lama” because he always seemed to know where the ball was going to be. Ellis was a film study freak, the sort of player both the coaches and players marveled at his in-depth knowledge of the game plan. In a 2013 interview with BillsMafia.com he listed his top-3 artists as: DMX, 2pac and Teddy Pendergrass. I appreciate that kind of musical range! Trust me, if you haven’t listened to Pendergrass, give him a try on YouTube and compare him with DMX.
T.J. Heath
The man who must start every game day with a mango smoothie (I rank mango as the world’s best fruit) had an interesting answer about one of the bad things about Canada. He cited the level of traffic as an annoying part of Canada, especially all the drivers in the summer. As someone who spends Fridays fighting traffic to get up to my cottage, I have to fully agree. This is the first time that I have ever heard that answer.
Heath is certainly not one of the luckiest players. Back in 2017 some no good thief broke into a storage facility in Jacksonville in 2017 and stole a great deal of his game balls, including the first ball he ever intercepted as a member of the Blue Bombers. Speaking of bad luck, Heath has an odd run of it when it comes to bring shipped out of town. T.J. was traded from Toronto to Winnipeg in 2016 after picking off two passes against Hamilton. Then during his second run with the Argonauts this season he was moved to Montreal two days after recording an interception against Winnipeg. On the bright side, Heath, at least you got to move out of the city with the worst traffic in Canada.
