Henry Burris and Nik Lewis are now officially honoured members of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. Members of the classes of 2020 and 2021, respectively, Burris and Lewis were inducted on Friday night and share yet another link in their football journeys.

Teammates for seven seasons, Burris and Lewis were core members of a Calgary Stampeders renaissance and won the 96th Grey Cup together in 2008, along with then head coach and fellow 2020 inductee John Hufnagel. Nearly half of Lewis’s CFL record 1,051 career receptions were thrown by Burris and, more than a decade after their time as teammates came to an end, the bond between the two remains.

“It’s such an honour to (have) seen Henry grow from 2005 when he got (to Calgary) to who he became to win the Grey Cup,” Lewis told me when I chatted with him last week. “He’s always the best quarterback I’ve ever played with, he had tremendous arm strength, he could run the football. You always need your dance partners and for me, I was so fortunate to be around Henry…for so long.”

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Lewis and Burris sustained three disappointing playoff exits together before finally getting over with their Grey Cup win in 2008. It was Burris’s first title as a starter and the first championship period for Lewis. While they’d both go on to win again later in their careers, 2008 really set the trajectory for a pair of Hall of Fame careers.

“He’s a guy who people said couldn’t do this, couldn’t do that, but all he did was just make plays,” Burris reflected when talking about Lewis. “Day in and day out, he was a consummate professional, he brought that attitude of never say die, he was always ready to kick people’s butts each and every day. He went out there with the mentality that he was going to run through people

“When you have a guy who plays like that, who brings that type of standard, that type of mindset, you only want to put the ball in hands. I knew anytime I threw the ball in his direction, he was going to catch it or nobody was going to catch it.

“Defensive backs all respected him, all defenders respected him, coaches respected him because they knew he was a guy you could not play around. They knew when they saw Calgary on the schedule…82 was going to make sure the guy covering him was going to have a very bad day. Trust me, when you know they’re afraid of a guy like that, you feed him the rock and feed him the rock all the time and that’s exactly what I made sure I did.”

Congratulations to Burris, Lewis, Hufnagel, Clyde Brock, Freddie Childress, Greg Vavra, Will Johnson, Mike Walker, Orlondo Steinauer, Don Wilson, Marv Levy, Doug Mitchell, and the late Larry Uteck. Combined, those are your two classes of 2020 and 2021 and it was awesome to finally see them all get their day.

Silver linings

Edmonton and Ottawa are both 0-2 to start the season, but there’s reason to be optimistic in both cities.

The Elks fought hard in Saturday’s 26-16 loss to Saskatchewan and, against a quality opponent, took massive steps forward from their season opener. Kenny Lawler has lived up to the big-ticket hype in his first two games, while Edmonton’s defence made life difficult on the Riders for a good chunk of Saturday night. New head coach Chris Jones knows what he’s doing, and that was a positive performance week over week.

The REDBLACKS, on the other hand, could be feeling a little empty with nothing to show for two good efforts against the two-time Grey Cup champs. But despite a pair of losses to Winnipeg, Paul LaPolice’s team looks solid. Free agent additions Jeremiah Masoli, Jaelon Acklin, and Darvin Adams have all been strong, while Ottawa’s defence held an explosive offence under 20 points twice in a row.

For both the REDBLACKS and Elks, I see more building blocks than things to be discouraged by.

Quick hits

Speaking of the Bombers, you know they’re not satisfied with the way things have gone despite their 2-0 record, which is a scary proposition for the rest of the league. It feels like Winnipeg is a high-end sports car working its way to peak performance but can still flex with the flick of the accelerator. Kind of like those last two fourth quarters.

We all know how much discussion there was about Saskatchewan not stretching the field last season. Through two games of 2022, though, that conversation seems to be on hold. We’ve seen Cody Fajardo take deep shots in Riders wins over Hamilton and Edmonton, including a nice 41-yard hookup with Shaq Evans on Saturday. It’s a positive development in what has already been a very nice start to the season.

How much fun was that overtime thriller between the Stamps and Tiger-Cats? I give Calgary a lot of credit, because it would have been really easy to pack it in down 24-3 at halftime. Led by great individual performances from the likes of Rene Paredes, Titus Wall, and backup running back Peyton Logan, the Stamps figured it out and made big plays in the fourth quarter to move to 2-0.

And finally, as weird as it was to see Andrew Harris and Brandon Banks wearing Argos double blue on Thursday, it was equally as cool to see them perform the way they did. Banks reeled in Toronto’s only receiving touchdown and did so in vintage form, while Harris, in typical fashion, went over 100 yards of total offence.