Jonathan Kozub/CFL.ca
Janarion Grant reduced Michael ‘Pinball’ Clemons to one word.
“Wow.”
You can search high and low for a poetic description of the incredible 90-yard return touchdown that Grant put together last week against the Saskatchewan Roughriders; you can dub Rod Smith’s call of the play over a scene from a nature documentary, Marshawn Lynch-style.
When Clemons — a CFL legend for his shiftiness and escapability and one of the most loquacious figures in the league’s history — reacts with that one word, it should tell you everything you need to know about what we all saw last week.
“Every time I see it, it’s, ‘Wow,'” Clemons said this week, as his Toronto Argonauts prepare for their Sunday night clash with the Edmonton Elks at Commonwealth Stadium. It’s fitting in that sense, that Clemons’ next words were deferral to the CFL’s return GOAT, in Henry ‘Gizmo’ Williams.
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“Gizmo was the artist, right?” Clemons said.
“For me, he laid the landscape for everybody else and he is the guy that everybody else tries to approach and challenge and to no avail at present. We certainly look like we’ve got a group of guys that can contend but…there’s only one Gizmo.”
If you ask CFL fans about the game’s greatest returners, it might be Gizmo and Pinball that come to mind first. Brandon ‘Speedy’ Banks isn’t on a CFL team this season (though he will be honoured at the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ home opener on Friday) and he might be the next, most recent electric returner to come to mind.
You could argue that Grant, who had return touchdowns in the Bombers’ 109th Grey Cup loss to that Argos’ team that Clemons is the GM of and in the Western Final against the BC Lions, is making a strong case to be looked to as the next great returner in the CFL.
“Without question. There’s no hesitation or reservation about that,” Clemons said of Grant.
“He is truly special and we’ve got a couple of guys that look like they may be coming along as well. It makes our game even better, it truly does. It is one of the most exciting plays in sport when we see someone return a kick or a punt for a touchdown.”
Through his 12-year career and his 23 years with the Argos in a variety of roles, Clemons has played with, against, coached and seen many of the great returners the CFL has produced. While each one is built differently and has different strengths (“I was more quick than fast,” he said of his own on-field style), there are commonalities that bond the greats.
“The game slows down, even for the guy who actually catches it and gets north and south,” Clemons said. “Hopefully they can make that first person miss. Everything goes in slow motion. It’s chaos for everyone else. They don’t know where you’re going to run, whether they’re covering or they’re blocking. For the runner, everything is in slow motion. When you feel hurried and you feel rushed, sometimes you don’t field the ball cleanly and that creates chaos. It is those times when you do it right that everything is in slow motion.”
As a coach — Clemons patrolled the Argos’ sidelines from 2000-2007 — Clemons enjoyed and was also perplexed by returner Bashir Levingston. It took time for Clemons to accept that his returner had his own style and made choices that would have had catastrophic outcomes for other players.
“It was a lot of, ‘NO, NO NO — YEAH!’ Clemons laughed, revisiting the six seasons they spent together.
“He was the scariest player that I ever played with or coached. You didn’t know what was going to happen. One of the most dynamic players. How he reversed field and some of the things he did…so unorthodox. He challenged what is the norm by doing things exactly like you shouldn’t, but making them work out. Sometimes you have those players, those people that are just that.”
Levingston set a record in 2007 when he took a missed Paul McCallum field goal back 129 yards for a touchdown.
“The field goal return is such an interesting thing, because of his speed and his ability to turn the corner and do the things that he did. That’s another dynamic in our game that I think is underrated,” Clemons said.
It’s a skill that Grant has shown in his time with the Bombers, along with an ability to explode on any type of return — kick, punt or missed field goal — and make a game changing play. As the Bombers look to improve to 3-0 on Thursday night against the BC Lions, Grant stands as that dynamic, game-changing/back-breaking player, operating in slow motion as the chaos flies around him.
