CFL

Today marked the final game of the opening week for the Canadian Football League as the Calgary Stampeders defeated the Montreal Alouettes 38-10.

The long offseason came to an end as the CFL made its return during Canada Day weekend which saw all the Western teams defeat all the Eastern teams.

There were a lot of story lines as the weekend began, ranging from Ricky Ray's new start in Toronto after being traded from Edmonton for Steven Jyles over to Geroy Simon's opportunity to take over as the league's all-time receiving leader.

The weekend started with a Friday night double header that saw Hamilton host the Saskatchewan Roughriders at home for their final season at Ivor Wynne Stadium and the party was spoiled early on as Saskatchewan routed Hamilton 43-16 behind 390 passing yards and four touchdowns by quarterback Darian Durant.

Durant entered the season coming off a 5-13 season where he threw for 3,653 yards, 18 touchdowns and 14 interceptions. There were some questions surrounding Saskatchewan following last season when they went out and acquired coveted free-agents Dominic Picard and Brendan LaBatte while drafting Ben Heenan to add to their offensive line.

For Hamilton, it was a new start for Henry Burris who was traded to Hamilton in exchange for Kevin Glenn ending Burris' tenure with Calgary. It will be a new beginning of sorts for Burris who looks refreshed and ready for a new season with Hamilton.

Running back Kory Sheets was a newcomer on the field making his debut with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and made the most of his opportunity, rushing for 80 yards and one touchdown and adding 43 yards through the air.

One of the offensive players of the week had to have been Weston Dressler who stole the show catching 13 passes for 180 yards and three touchdowns. Chris Getzlaf was no slouch either, with three receptions for 96 yards and one touchdown.

For Hamilton, Chris Williams continued on following his rookie of the year award last season notching nine catches for 109 yards. Chevon Walker made his debut for Hamilton after the club made Avon Cobourne a healthy scratch, rushing for 132 yards on seven carries and one touchdown. Cobourne's future with the club could be questioned if Walker continues his play.

Andy Fantuz made his debut for the Black and Gold after signing with the Tiger Cats in the off-season in a less than stellar debut with five catches for 49 yards.

Moving down West the B.C. Lions opened their 2012 contest with a 99th Grey Cup rematch against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and continued exactly where they left off a season ago.

Quarterback Travis Lulay looked like he was already in midseason form finishing the night with 233 yards behind 17 completions on 25 attempts, one touchdown and one interception which was on a Hail Mary to end the second quarter.

The major story in that game for Winnipeg featured the offensive line who had just one returning veteran in Steve Morley starting and that inexperience was exposed big time with the quarterbacks struggling to get time to allow plays to develop or make any attempt at a running game.

Another unfortunate injury saw Buck Pierce removed from the game just before half-time with what was labelled a lower-body injury. Pierce has struggled to finish a full season, but did well last season.

For B.C., they were able to award receiver Geroy Simon with his new title as the league's all-time leading receiver passing Milt Stegall's record of 15,154 yards late in the game.

Simon has spent 13 seasons in the CFL playing for both Winnipeg and B.C. and have had a very successful career including two Grey Cup championships.

Saturday evening saw the Edmonton Eskimos welcome back Ricky Ray as a visitor with the Toronto Argonauts.

Both quarterbacks came in under new offenses and will likely need a few weeks to get organized with their new playbooks as each team struggled, combining for 15 punts with Toronto having eight of those under Ricky Ray.

Grant Shaw was up against Noel Prefontaine and made the most of his night connecting on all four of his attempts while Prefontaine struggled connecting on just two of his four kicks.

In the end, both teams had their shots but were unable to get points on the board even behind Adarius Bowman's 110 yards for Edmonton or Chad Owens 100 yards receiving for Toronto.

The final game that ended the season's kick-off had the 2008 Grey Cup rematch on showcase as the Calgary Stampeders hosted the Montreal Alouettes.

Anthony Calvillo struggled out of the gate, having two punts and a forced fumble in the first quarter with Calvillo throwing for 19 yards after completing three of his first six passes.

Is it possible that age has finally caught up with Calvillo after all these years? We have barely witnessed Montreal struggling offensively ever but never like their start on Sunday.

The exact opposite was going on for Drew Tate and the offense behind Jon Cornish being pushed into the leading role following Joffrey Reynold's release. Cornish rushed for 86 yards and two touchdowns, adding 28 yards receiving for 114 all-purpose yards in his first full season as a starter.

Defensively the Stampeders continued to make plays with Keenan MacDougall scooping up a forced fumble by Juwan Simpson and Charleston Hughes adding a sack.

Not often can you say that you've held Anthony Calvillo to just under 100 yards passing after a full half but the Calgary Stampeders were able to pull that off, including just one touchdown.

Overall and although it is only week one, it's tough to not say that Calgary is giving B.C. a run for their money at being the team to beat in the West, possibly the league.

Offensive Player of the Week: Darian Durant came into the season and made a statement early against the Hamilton Tiger Cats throwing for 390 yards and four touchdowns and no interceptions after finishing the 2011 season 5-13.

Defensive Player of the Week: Bryant Turner moved into the position vacated by retired Doug Brown and will attempt to hold the defensive line together. Turner on Friday night recorded four tackles and three sacks for his team.

Special Teams Player of the Week: Grant Shaw helped propel his team to victory on Saturday connecting on all four of his field goal attempts when the offense was unable to convert touchdowns.

Canadian Player of the Week: Jon Cornish started his first season with the Calgary Stampeders annotated as the starting running back and made the most of his opportunity rushing for 86 yards and two touchdowns.

If Hard Knocks, the HBO series that provides a behind-the-scenes look at the training camps of professional football squads, has taught us anything, it’s that it’s usually not a good sign for players when they’re paged by front office officials in the lead-up to a season-opening contest.

Belton Johnson, who spent the past two CFL campaigns with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, recently learned firsthand that good news isn’t often delivered by the powers that be during training camp.

“When I got that text, I was like, ‘Man, that’s weird... ” the 31-year-old Mississippi native said, referencing a text message he received late last week. “I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, I knew I parked in the right place. We had the day off. It was strange.

“I went downstairs and (Tiger-Cats head coach George) Cortez called a group of us in and told us we were released.”

The former Ole Miss Rebel, who has made his livelihood in professional football since 2003, noted that he saw “the hurt” in a few of his ex-teammates’ faces. Johnson was admittedly surprised by the news himself—“I told Brian (Simmons) I felt like I was on an episode of Survivor, I got blindsided,” he noted—but he wasn’t exactly as taken back by the impromptu meeting as some of his younger colleagues.

“With the offensive linemen, you’ve got me, Brian Simmons, and then you have three other younger tackles that did very well in the camp,” Johnson explained. “I told Brian from the start, I said, ‘Somebody is gonna get cut, traded or released. Something is going to happen. I don’t know what it is, but one of us is going to get the axe.’

“I kind of assumed that it was me, because I made more money and I’m a bit older than the rest of the guys. I’m not that old—I’m only 31—but in football, once you start crossing that 30-year-old mark, people start calling you old.”

Johnson has been around professional football for a decade and his younger brother, Marcus Johnson, also had a run in the professional ranks, so he knows all too well that, at the professional level, football is in many ways more business than sport.

Despite that, it would be hard to fault Johnson for being upset about his release—the news did after all come about a week before the team’s regular-season opener. But the ‘6’5”, 315-pound lineman insisted that he is by no means bitter over the news.

“This is my 10^th year playing pro football,” Johnson said. “I mean, I’ve been cut before. If I was younger, I probably would’ve broken down and cried or something, but once you’ve been released and you know stuff like that can happen, I feel like it just makes you tougher...This is my 10^th year playing professional football, so it was kind of like water running off a duck’s back.”

Further, Johnson noted that—despite his untimely release—he has nothing but great things to say about his two-year stint in Ontario.

Perhaps he took his walking papers in stride because he’s a true professional or maybe it’s because Johnson, who more often than not takes time to interact with his fans via social media, is just a good guy. Both of those reasons are valid, but it could be because Johnson insisted that he feels that his departure from the Ti-Cats doesn’t necessarily signal the end of his run in the CFL.

“I’ve still got it,” offered Johnson, who said he plans on playing a maximum of two more seasons in the league. “I was out there out-running some of the 24-year-old guys. I’ve still got it. And I’m telling you, knowledge and experience is worth having up here, especially with some of those defenses.”

Johnson noted that although he’s not sure which teams will be interested in bringing him into the fold to bolster their offensive front, he’s “very confident” that he’ll be playing football in 2012. But he also emphasized that he, unlike many athletes, won’t have any problems leaving the world of professional football—whenever the time to hang up his cleats ultimately comes.

“For me personally, I don’t think it will be difficult (to walk away from professional football),” said Johnson, who has worked for SGI in Regina for the better part of the past two years. “I feel like I’ve had a great career so far and I’ve accomplished things. I don’t think it will be hard to walk away at all.”

Ed Kapp is a contributor for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations were obtained firsthand.

Toronto can quite rightly proclaim themselves as the sports Mecca of Canada (and indeed one of the biggest in North America as a whole.) 

While ice hockey will always come first, the city has over the years successfully embraced a variety of sports, especially when compared to other areas of Canada.  Whereas baseball ultimately failed in Montreal, Toronto still has the Blue Jays and despite the current woes of the Raptors, you will not see them moving anywhere else as opposed to the Grizzlies leaving Vancouver.

However, as the Toronto sports scene has expanded, the team that has been affected most negatively by this growth is the Argonauts.  Despite a proud history as the oldest existing professional sports franchise in all of North America and fifteen Grey Cups, support has continued to dwindle in recent years.

In this respect, while the decision to host the 100th Grey Cup in Toronto made perfect sense (going full circle and returning to where the first game was played) it could also be perceived as a Hail Mary attempt to breath new life into the team, and more specifically, the fanbase.

CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon will be hoping that the celebrations throughout the coming season will help galvanise the population of Southern Ontario and promote interest, thus leading to increased attendances at the Rogers Centre. 

Last year, the Argonauts were dead last in the league with an average crowd of just over 20,000.  Anything close to 30,000 a game in 2012 would be considered a major success.

To that end, the trade for Ricky Ray from Edmonton was a step in the right direction, especially after the recent trials and tribulations behind centre for the double blue  (I still have nightmares about Cleo Lemon).  While the move surprised many people (including Ray himself), it will be up to Toronto to take full advantage of the Eskimos decision to part company with the future Hall of Famer.

While the addition of Ray raised awareness for sports fans in Toronto, the team is taking a calculated risk in investing so much money at the quarterback position.  Amongst other issues, salary cap implications led to little movement in free agency and the decision to move on from All-Star left tackle Rob Murphy, who ultimately decided to retire.

Indeed, any momentum gained from the addition of Ray will have been further compromised by Tuesday’s retirement of defensive team captain Willie Pile. 

Everywhere you look on the team, there are various questions ranging from who will step into a leadership role to how well the quarterback will be protected by his offensive line (as well as Murphy, the Argos also lost centre Dominic Picard to free agency and released tackle Edawn Coughman).

Make no mistake, this is an important season for both the Argonauts as a team and the league as a whole.

It has often been stated that the CFL cannot survive without a franchise based in Toronto.  If the regions fans are unmotivated to support the team during a season when Canada is proudly celebrating 100 years of the Grey Cup, we may be a step closer to finding out how accurate a claim this is. 

A common adage in professional football is that the game is a great sport but a terrible business.

Anwar Stewart, who has spent the better part of the past decade wreaking havoc on opposing offenses for the Montreal Alouettes in the CFL, recently learned firsthand just how tough the business side of football can be.

“[Montreal] had other plans—they wanted to go young—so there was nothing that I could really do,” offered Stewart, 36, who was released by the Alouettes earlier this year.

“I felt like I fought my butt off, you know? I took the backseat and let them, you know, start guys and take pay cuts and stuff. I did some things that I know other players wouldn’t have [done]—taking pay-cuts and the way they treated me at times ... I was loyal to them—and I thought maybe they would do the same thing for me—but I wasn’t in their plans. So what can you do?”

Stewart emphasized that if he had his way, he would’ve preferred to finish his football career in Montreal and would’ve taken another pay cut to do just that. But the two-time CFL All-Star insisted that he is, despite having his run with the Alouettes cut short, satisfied with what he was able to accomplish during his run with the Als.

“I feel awesome, man—I really do,” said Stewart, who boasts a resume that includes 66 sacks, 10 interceptions and three defensive touchdowns—which is  to say nothing of his three championship rings.

“I feel so blessed to have done the things that I’ve done [in Montreal]. I look back at some of the records that I have here—with the sacks and the interceptions for touchdowns—and I look at that and I’m like, ‘You know what, man, that is awesome,’ ... Who can say that they’ve won three Grey Cups and been to seven or eight Grey Cups in 10 years?”

Despite the fact that Stewart is yet to strike a deal with a CFL club and is thus unsure if he will have a chance to fulfill his goal of playing in the 100^th Grey Cup, he is nevertheless preparing as if he will be making his living on the gridiron in 2012.

“I’m training like crazy—I’m in great shape,” Stewart said. “I’m dieting and everything is still going. I’m still planning on playing somewhere.”

Wherever “somewhere” ultimately is, Stewart insisted that he feels he still has a lot to offer a professional football franchise—both on, and off, the field.

“I’m still productive—I’m still out there making plays,” said Stewart, who claimed seven sacks and an interception during the past season. “I’m smart, I’m a team-player, I’m a student of the game. I have a lot of knowledge and wisdom to teach young guys. And, you know what? I have a lot to teach them when it comes to pass-rushing and defenses and how to read offenses before the ball is even snapped.”

“Off the field, I’m a people’s person—I’m a very community-oriented guy. I really like to get in the community and represent the organization to the fullest and really get that brand out there...I think, at the end of the day, organizations need guys like that.”

Ed Kapp is a Contributor for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained first-hand.

We’re just four days into the frenzy that is the free agency period, and through that time the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have been mostly sellers, re-signing only their own players.

Coming into Wednesday, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers had 17 players up for free agency, sans Doug Brown who retired at the end of the 2011 season.

From those 16 remaining players, eight have been re-signed, six of those from the offense, while the team has parted ways with three players, losing two to the Edmonton Eskimos.

One of those three was their prized possession, offensive lineman Brendon LaBatte—the club tried extensively to re-sign him, but he wanted to move home and signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Another was a 6'6" receiver by the name of Greg Carr who made defenses tremble with his size and hands.

When asked about losing Carr to Edmonton, General Manager Joe Mack did not seem fazed and went further to suggest there are pieces in place to replace Carr.

But what many of the fans have been visibly upset with has been management’s lack of free agent signings from other teams.

Quite frankly, I am perfectly okay with that. This is a team that one season finished last in the league at 4-14, then turned it around and went to the Grey Cup behind head coach Paul LaPolice.

This is a management team that has, throughout the 2011 season, signed players to the practice roster and extended contracts.

Coming into the 2012 season, the team will retain 37 players from the 2010 roster and 19 players from the 2011 roster. That is 56 players who have gained a large amount of experience through their time with the club and in the league.

There is no question that management will bring in talent throughout training camp to test the qualities of the players on the team now, and to push the veterans to be better than they were yesterday.

Is there a player or two on the market I would have liked to see the club go after? There is no question. Would I have liked to secure the services of Greg Carr or Brendon LaBatte and not see them change teams? Who wouldn’t?

I have found that one key to being successful is putting the right piece in the spot that allows that performer the best chance for success. If you do not have the right pieces in place, you can add all the so-called talent you want but at the end of the day you just have players.

Winnipeg was successful in retaining three potential free-agent quarterbacks and will have several of last season’s offensive playmakers returning in Clarence Denmark, Terrence Edwards, Cory Watson and Chris Garrett.

On the defensive side, the majority of ‘Swaggerville’ will be returning under defensive coach Tim Burke. There will be a new offensive mind in town with the hiring of Gary Crowton.

You look around the league and see teams making trades, such as Toronto and Edmonton with Steven Jyles and Ricky Ray, or Calgary and Hamilton with Henry Burris and Kevin Glenn.

Seeing teams go out and actively sign free agents while Winnipeg sits back and watch may be detrimental and a cause for panic for some fans.

This is the part of free agency that sucks, but I have 100 percent faith in the job that the management team is doing and trust that they will put pieces in place to keep this team competitive for years to come.

I, for one, cannot wait for the 100th Grey Cup in Toronto this season ;)

The news many fans in Winnipeg have been waiting for was finally announced today by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers as quarterback Alex Brink has now officially signed a new contract.

With free agency just days away, Alex Brink was set on becoming a free agent if a deal was not put in place before the noon deadline.

This latest signing means that all three quarterbacks that were headed towards free agency have been re-signed.

Buck Pierce, Joey Elliot and Alex Brink will now join with fellow teammates, Justin Goltz and Brandon Summers this summer in camp.

Playing with very limited time in his rookie year with the Bombers, it wasn’t until last year that Alex Brink really showcased his talents to the club and the fans after some injuries plagued starter Buck Pierce.

Brink put up two starts and played in eight games last season, throwing for 140 passes, completing 89 of those along with five touchdowns to four interceptions for 1,023 yards.

At the same time, Brink was called upon in many of the short-yard situations, mostly goal line calls and rushed for 148 yards and six touchdowns.

However, at the end of the day this signing means that the Bombers will enter 2012 with the same quarterback crew from two years ago, with the addition of Justin Goltz and Brandon Summers last season.

That kind of continuity is rare when players are found with injuries or a desire to put up more playing time.

Entering the 2012 season, four teams will have question marks surrounding their starting quarterback position. However, for the Bombers, all three players are capable of driving the offense on any given night.