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Evidently, crime does pay.
The Toronto Argonauts’ daylight robbery of the Edmonton Eskimos last December netted a gold mine in quarterback Ricky Ray, and almost simultaneously they lifted defensive co-ordinator Chris Jones out of Cowtown by hook and by crook — and Sunday, guess whose fingerprints were all over the Argos’ dismantling of the Calgary Stampeders in the 100th Grey Cup?
So much for the Alberta Advantage.
Ray, who’s about the coolest customer in the room most every time he suits up -— and especially, it seems, on the big stage — shrugged off an interception on the first offensive play of the game, threw for 232 yards and two touchdowns, and Jones’s bruising defence stifled running back Jon Cornish and almost all of Kevin Glenn’s other weapons en route to Toronto’s 35-22 derailing of the favoured Stamps.
That No. 44 guy wasn’t too bad, either: Argo bowling ball Chad Kackert ripped and rammed his way for 195 yards, rushing and receiving, and his selection as the game’s oustanding player was a tribute to the welts he raised on Calgary tacklers that may not go away until the new year.
But Ray was the story coming in — to the season, and to the Grey Cup — and he was the story going out. A 33-year-old, through-and-through professional, illogically deemed expendable in Edmonton, doing exactly what he was acquired to do: lead the chronically unloved Boatmen to a hometown Grey Cup at the end of the biggest, costliest buildup and celebration in the history of the Canadian Football League.
If the Argos can’t build some momentum in Toronto after the jump-start they’ve received this season — a lot of it revolving around the quarterback that made them complete — and especially this week, they may have to abandon ship.
But GM Jim Barker, who may have saved his job with the Ray trade even as it contributed to Eskimos’ Eric Tillman losing his, doesn’t see these Argos being a one-and-done deal.
“Oh, we’ll compete every year, there’s no doubt in my mind,” he said. “That game against Montreal [the Eastern final] showed we’re ready to take over now.”
Ray has a year left on his contract, but he’s not the itinerant type. Surrounded here by a strong cast and a stern defence, he should be able to wring a few more years out of that old-school body and unpreposessing style.
He’s no gazelle, but Sunday, he deftly stepped around blitzing Calgary defenders a couple of times in that vital first half — notably dodging inside the rush to hit Jason Barnes for a 62-yard strike, the longest Grey Cup completion of Ray’s career and one of several big plays given up by a Calgary defence that seemed to bear no relation to the one that upset the B.C. Lions a week ago.
For that matter, the Calgary offence, which had opened up such enormous holes in the Lions’ secondary, had no such luck against the Argos until late in the game. Toronto scored its first two touchdowns off Calgary turnovers — a Cornish-Glenn fumble that led to Ray’s first TD throw, a five-yarder to CFL MVP Chad Owens, and a horrible pass by Glenn that was picked off and returned for a 25-yard touchdown by Pacino Horne.
The Argonauts took control of the game with a 17-point second quarter for a 24-6 halftime lead and nursed it home from there, taking few risks, continuing to pound Cornish and the Stampeders at every opportunity.
Ray, who threw a late TD pass, another short one, to Andre Durie, had no big mistakes, and simply lent an air of calm to what easily could have been an overwhelming atmosphere, with a hugely pro-Toronto crowd of 53,208 at jam-packed Rogers Centre making enough noise to shake dust from the rafters that has probably been there since the last time the New York Yankees were in town.
It was Ray’s third Grey Cup triumph in four tries — following victories with Edmonton in 2003 and 2005 — and the Argos’ 16th title, their first since 2004. They have gone 5-0 in championship games since losing to Edmonton in 1987.
