Peter McCabe/CFL.ca
Marc-Antoine Dequoy says he’s not quite sure what I mean when I tell him he seems like a football musketeer to me.
The Montreal Alouettes’ star free safety is not overly keen on the term so I try “swashbuckler.” No go again.
If it seems to you, as it does to me, that Dequoy plays his football with great joy and energy, with style and eagerness, with good nature and a penchant for physical combat, that’s something he has been doing for most of his life.
“Just running to the ball has brought me a lot of opportunities in my career,” says Dequoy, chatting after practice as he and the rest of the Alouettes were prepping for a big Week 9 clash with the Tiger-Cats in Hamilton. “It’s pretty much how I roll.”
Like a gridiron musketeer.
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Dequoy has been playing football since the age of six, when he loved to take part in neighbourhood games and even then, he had a relative speed and physical presence that set him apart. The same stuff he exhibits now as a professional. “It’s still a kid’s sport,” says Dequoy, “we just hit a lot harder.”
That’s a rather swashbuckly thing to say.
Dequoy continues to amiably reject my labels, though. He has his own. “I would say I’m a trooper for the Alouettes,” he says, trying to help me out. “I’m a first line guy, I’ll put my body on the line for that team for sure.”
Musketeer, swashbuckler, trooper. However you choose to describe Marc-Antoine Dequoy’s football personality, he’s had it as long as he can remember.
“I was a hyperactive kid,” says the 28-year-old native of Ile Bizard, QC, who would go on to a university career with the Montreal Carabins before being selected in the second round of the draft, 14th overall by the Alouettes in 2020.
“Running and hitting people, that was my cup of tea for sure,” says Dequoy. “That’s what I love.”
Yeah he does.
Dequoy really had no formal football coaching until he was around 14 or 15 years old. “They just put me on the field and I just had the instinct,” he says of those neighbourhood games. “So I grew up, like, you chase the ball down.”
If I were to describe Dequoy as a player, and if I were describe the Alouettes’ defence as a unit that just ‘chases the ball down,’ that would be an over-simplification. But it does serve as one reason why Dequoy likes to play in, and is thriving in, coordinator Noel Thorpe’s system so much.
“Ball dominance and population,” says Dequoy, speaking in terms he says Thorpe uses for his defensive philosophies. ‘Populating the ball’ is a phrase Dequoy likes, and it basically means the same thing as “running to the football,” a phrase more well-known to fans in describing very active defences.
“When you populate the ball, plays are going to happen,” says Dequoy, and he gives an example from last season. He remembers his first CFL interception — against Saskatchewan — clearly. Dequoy, who’d started the play in deep centre field, sprinted to the short slot where a sliding Duke Williams popped the ball up into the air while attempting to pull in a low pass from quarterback Cody Fajardo, now Dequoy’s teammate in Montreal. Dequoy arrived at exactly the right time to snatch the ball, barely slowing down to do it, and then sprinting 21 yards for a major.
“Hit the ball or try something,” says Dequoy of a Montreal defence asked to think beyond just making a tackle. “You can create turnovers. That’s a mentality that I do love. He (Thorpe) lets us be aggressive and play fast to the ball, “but we make sure we do it responsibly, for sure.”
Last season, in a defence that worked hard to populate the ball, Dequoy had a breakthrough year, his second in the CFL. In Year 1, he was primarily a special teams worker bee, the way many U SPORTS grads are as they find their way onto a roster to begin their pro careers.
In 2022, though, Dequoy made 17 starts on the Als’ defence, picking off four passes, forcing one fumble and scoring a touchdown while making 38 defensive tackles and chipping in with four more on special teams. He was Montreal’s nominee for Outstanding Canadian.
This season, the beat goes on. Dequoy has 19 tackles so far, 2 fumble recoveries, a knockdown and a tackle for a loss. And he has one interception, although he did have another — a pick-six versus BC in Week 5 — that was called back on a penalty.
He seemed to get stronger and stronger as last season progressed, as did Montreal’s defence as a whole. That’s no mystery, says Dequoy. It was merely a matter of Thorpe, who’d taken over the defence four games after the season had begun, getting to know the personnel better as the weeks went by. Things were pretty straightforward, scheme-wise, until that familiarity took hold.
“He started to play to our strengths,” says Dequoy, “and adjust to us. He does know our strengths.”
Dequoy’s strengths are extremely noticeable on a football field. His eagerness to rally to the ball is one. His blazing speed is another. He ran a 4.35-second 40 at his pro day in 2020 and it was reported that he had the flu when he did it. Speed is something Dequoy’s always had, he says, though it’s not all just about what nature gave him.
“I was fast as a kid but it really came along later,” says Dequoy, who remembers a time when he was injured during his late teens as being crucial to the development of his speed. He didn’t just sit around, waiting to get healthy. He did what he could to build his physical gifts.
“I started combining workouts and technique and I just really burst into it,” he says of his impressive velocity. “In another life I could have been a 200-metre runner.”
If Dequoy’s natural inclination is to be a high energy football player, and if he consciously built on that energy with improved fitness and technique, that tendency is powered even more by his adoration of the Alouettes as a team, something he’s had since he first started populating the ball as a kid in neighbourhood skirmishes. When he signed a contract extension with the Als last off-season, he called it continuing “my adventure with the Alouettes.”
“It’s a team I grew up watching,” says Dequoy. “It’s always been a dream of mine to play for the Alouettes. It’s a blessing. I’m just so happy about it.”
And it shows in the way Marc-Antoine Dequoy plays the game of football.
Whatever word you use to describe him.
