One Question For 2024: Will we see a REDBLACKS bounceback?

CFL.ca Staff

As the 2024 season approaches, each team has a question that looms over it that will shape its season. CFL.ca asked players across the league about that question. Our series continues with the Ottawa REDBLACKS and just how quickly a team can turn its fortunes around in the CFL.

Through his three seasons in the CFL, Adarius Pickett has gotten an up close look at the Ottawa REDBLACKS. In each of those three seasons — the first two with Montreal in 2021 and 2022 and last year with Toronto in 2023 — the same thought continued to surface.

“Really, I always felt like Ottawa had a good football team with good players. It’s just they didn’t know how to finish,” he told CFL.ca last month in Hamilton at the league’s content capture.

“I was always like, ‘Man, if they had a couple more players, they could be really good.’ I feel like I’m one of the new players that can help them out.”

The 27-year-old defensive back says it with the combination of humility and confidence that you might expect from a CFL All-Star (2023).

In Pickett’s three CFL years, the REDBLACKS haven’t been a part of the playoffs; that’s part of a larger four-year playoff absence in the nation’s capital. Pickett is determined to change that.

The question for him, and the question that’s hung over this franchise for the last four seasons is a simple one: how do you make that change?

“I think it’s a sense of belief. I think it’s a sense of leadership and just a mentality where when we step on the field, we’re going to dominate,” Pickett said. “I think that’s created in training camp and I think that’s created through practice.”

Pickett knows about domination. After showing bursts of his ability in his 2021 debut season with the Als, he jumped up to 73 tackles, four sacks, two forced fumbles and an interception in 2022. After signing with the Argos last year, he became a centrepiece of a juggernaut defence. Pickett’s 105 tackles were a career high and placed him third in the league. He added a career-best six sacks and a forced fumble, along with 19 special teams tackles, en route to East Division and CFL All-Star recognition.

The Argos fell short of their Grey Cup goal in 2023, but Pickett learned a lot in that 16-win season.

“I think being accountable to one another in the locker room, togetherness in the locker room. That’s what I saw in Toronto,” he said.

“We won 16 games and it wasn’t always pretty. Some games the offence didn’t play well. Sometimes the defence gave up too much and some games the special teams had to come through to help lead the charge to the win. There was never a sense that we were going to lose when we were on the field. We felt like we had a real talented team, we shouldn’t lose. From having that mindset we stepped on the field and didn’t lose a lot.

“Thats the difference I’ve seen in Ottawa the last couple of seasons that I’ve been in the CFL, they don’t believe they can win. They win, it’s like, ‘We won?’ In Toronto we felt like we were going to win regardless. Being on teams in life, in general, successful teams I’ve been on, when we were really good we knew we were going to win. I think coming over there and creating that mentality will change that culture. I think that’s done in practice and meetings and in the locker room before you step on the field.”

Over the last two seasons, the REDBLACKS have also been hampered by injuries to quarterback Jeremiah Masoli. He suffered a broken leg in 2022 and after rehabbing his way back into action in Week 5 of the 2023 season, the 11-year vet tore his Achilles tendon. In his absence, the REDBLACKS have turned to young pivots that were forced to learn on the fly. Masoli restructured his contract over the off-season, allowing Ottawa general manager Shawn Burke to trade for and sign former Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ backup QB Dru Brown.

Brown has spent the past three years backing up Zach Collaros, getting an immersive first-class education on what a successful quarterback does in a highly-successful organization. Brown is ready to take his shot at becoming a starting quarterback and will have Masoli — who helped the Hamilton Tiger-Cats thrive in a similar situation with Dane Evans — there to push him and help him along the way.

“I don’t know if it’s his job to lose but it kind of seems like that from the outside looking in,” Pickett said.

“I think it’s a matter of can he come in and can he be productive? My message to Dru is to go out there and have fun. You’ve been behind a phenomenal quarterback for a couple of years and you got a chance to learn, got a chance to grow. Now it’s your turn. Don’t go out there trying to be the hero, you know? Understand that hey, you’re playing with the team.”

Pickett has studied his share of quarterbacks through his career. A player like him cashes in on quarterbacks trying to do too much, on someone that’s desperate to keep a drive alive when sometimes letting the punter or field goal kicker have the final say on the possession is the better move in the moment.

“Turning the ball over will kill the momentum of the game,” Pickett said.

“Just go out there and play like you always played in your whole life. You know, you’re there for a reason, play with the confidence play with the swag. And you know, at the end of the day, if you’ve got to go two and out or whatever, it’s not bad, having to kick, whether it’s a punt or whether it’s a field goal, like you don’t have to go full on it every game. Don’t feel like that. Just go out there and play. And I think that’s my message for a first-year starting quarterback.”

With change rippling its way through the CFL over the off-season, Pickett heads into 2024 determined to help get the REDBLACKS back into the playoffs and playing as that team that believes it can win.

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