RedBlacks dominate CFL awards night

The four-year veteran added two interceptions, two fumble recoveries and one forced fumble.

Chris Jones was the coach-of-the-year finalist after Edmonton finished tied with Calgary for the league’s best mark of 14-4 but secured top spot in the West after winning the season series.

“An old, tough ball coach type of guy”, said linebacker Damaso Munoz.

Whyte, a Semiahmoo Secondary grad, began the year with the Montreal Alouettes, the team on which he’d played since 2011, when he was traded by his hometown BC Lions.

Sirvencent Rogers was named Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman.

Burris is a finalist for the CFL’s outstanding player award along with Calgary Stampeders quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell. Great reg. season. @CFL.

Campbell brought Mark Nelson to Ottawa. “And I know that cuts deep”. “He was a player and gets what it’s like being a player, interacts well with them”.

“Not very often have I heard a coach just talking to his players and at the end the players start clapping”, he said. Eerily so. But he has worked his way up the coaching depth charts from special teams to defence to coordinator to head coach – and then he took on the expansion Redblacks for his first head-coaching gig. “From playing rugby, to ending up on the same football team as Wally’s son”, Whyte said.

“When you’re in this business a long time, you don’t take things personally”, Gibson, now the head coach of the University of Regina Rams, said Wednesday.

Nelson plays down his own contribution.

“I’m happy for a number of people there”.

“When I was a kid growing up, I had an older brother and a younger brother and we learned real quick if we were playing football in the backyard and somebody got hurt and came running in to mom, it was either get back outside and keep playing or you’re done for the day and you don’t get to play with the boys any more if you can’t handle it”, he said.

With that, Chambers and his Edmonton teammates punched their ticket to the 103rd Grey Cup and face the Ottawa Redblacks in Winnipeg this Sunday.

“Well, it sounds like a good deal to me, I don’t even have to win the Grey Cup and I get to win coach of the year?” said Campbell.

Burris admits he plays better when he’s angry. He estimates there have been 16 stops. “That’s stuff that can be hard on a family at home”. So he knows a little bit about unfortunate departures. “I hate getting touched and they do a great job of keeping me from being hit”.

Burris posted a CFL-record 481 completions this year and led the league in passing with 5,703 yards in collecting his second career outstanding player award.

“We went from being a 4-14 team to 12-6 last year when he came on board to 14-4 this year”.

The RedBlacks, who are 7 1/2 points underdogs against the Edmonton Eskimos, won three of the six major player awards on Thursday night at the Club Regent Event Centre.

“I would find him and I would just say, ‘Remember this, man. Like remember this because we’re going to talk about this at some point in time and we’re going to laugh about it. And we’re going to say, man, that sucked, but we had to go through that to find success, ‘” Reilly said. “And now as a group now we feel we all have something to prove”.