A hungry, fiery Masoli returns to the REDBLACKS

Chris O'Leary

Senior Writer

@olearychris

If, like many people, you think back to the Ottawa REDBLACKS’ 2022 season and wonder what if, Jeremiah Masoli has some advice for you.

More than anyone else, Masoli, the centre of that hypothetical universe, knows there was a lot of football to be played before he went down with a season-ending broken leg in Week 5. He knows the East Division was up for grabs, even with his REDBLACKS dropping to an un-pretty 0-4 at the time of his injury (“You ask me and we would have been right on par with any of those other teams in the East,” he says).

You can dwell on it. The temptation has been there for the 34-year-old, too. But ask yourself this: why? What’s the point in dwelling?

“You’ve got to move on,” Masoli says. “Those are all what-ifs. You’ve got to walk in reality.”

Fresh off some promotional work for the league last week in Hamilton, Masoli sat in the restaurant of a downtown hotel in a REDBLACKS sweatshirt, a pair of jeans and a fresh pair of all-black Air Jordan 13s.

After one of the most trying seasons of his 10-year CFL career, he walks into reality in 2023 in style.

Masoli is intent on turning the franchise’s fortunes around in 2023, after coming back from the broken leg he suffered in 2022 (Chris Tanouye/CFL.ca)

As what he describes as a mostly normal off-season in terms of his injury recovery and what it allowed him to do winds down, Masoli is embracing the positives around him. He’s been in Ottawa working with the team’s training staff this winter.

“Grateful,” he says of the progress he’s made and his approach to this coming season.

“Super grateful that I’ve got this opportunity to keep playing and as extreme as that injury was, I always knew that was temporary and I was going to come back anyway, regardless.

“I’ve been up in Ottawa throwing in the domes, but lately we’ve finally got a little sunshine and getting back out there at TD Place in the sun on the turf, it honestly felt great. Any time you have to take a step away from the game it gives you that appreciation for it, even more so when you get back. The love of the game. I really love the game, the brotherhood, the camaraderie. I’m looking forward to a lot of things this year, especially working with the new coaches.”

While Masoli already got to know head coach Bob Dyce last season, he’s been able to develop that relationship through the winter. Both had their places in the organization cemented through the off-season, with Dyce shedding the interim head coach label that came in the wake of Paul LaPolice’s dismissal and Masoli signing a new contract with the team in January that will keep him in Ottawa through 2024.

Dyce’s choice as offensive coordinator — former Montreal Alouettes’ head coach and O.C. Khari Jones — is one that has Masoli excited about the possibilities of the coming year. Seeing what Jones did with Vernon Adams Jr. when the two were in Montreal has Masoli, a quarterback with a similar dual threat game, very interested in what the REDBLACKS’ offence will look like.

In just four games last season, Masoli threw for 1,083 yards for the REDBLACKS (Matt Smith/CFL.ca)

“I think if you look at my career, we have had a lot of systems that are predicated kind of solely on the quarterback really deciphering everything and making the right decisions at all times,” Masoli says.

“I think, in Khari’s offence, he kind of takes a little bit off our plate in terms of that and makes it a little more simple. Lets us play fast and free. So I’m looking forward to that. I know he’s somebody that’ll call the game to win it, not necessarily call it to hang 300 passing yards or anything like that. He’s calling to win the game whether that’s running the ball, screens, play action runs, whatever it is.”

On the mend from the second major leg injury of his career (he tore his ACL seven weeks into the 2019 season), Masoli enters this season with a vigour to return to the game and to capture the Grey Cup that has eluded him to this point. Visiting Hamilton this past week, his time as a Tiger-Cat no doubt played through his mind, including that heartbreaking overtime loss in the 108th Grey Cup to Winnipeg.

Watching his close friend and fellow San Francisco native McLeod Bethel-Thompson win his first Grey Cup as a starter in 2022 only stokes the fire that’s burning inside.

“I can’t think of anything else. I’m obsessed, man,” Masoli says.

“I’ve got some some really close friends, quarterbacks included, that have won Grey Cups. To get so close (in the 2021 Grey Cup game) and not be able to hold one up, man, it definitely stings. That’s my motivation, man. On top of that, you know, it’s not just for myself, but for all my teammates and the city of Ottawa. The fan base really deserves for us to start winning at home and to really bring home the Cup.”

We’ll never know what might have happened last year and where a healthy Masoli might have taken those REDBLACKS. Only looking forward now, Masoli is intent on walking into this year’s reality and taking the talent that’s visible on paper for the REDBLACKS and transferring it to wins on the field.

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