VANCOUVER – Eleven years in this racket, and Nik Lewis just froze when he saw it happen, because all these years later he never thought he’d see anything like that happen.
His boy, all of 24 years of age, took a snap in practice, rolled to his right and off balance — and off his back foot — sidearmed the football 60 yards down the field.
Lewis stopped in his tracks. Eleven years in, after Burris and Glenn, and Crandell and Tate, nobody had done that before.
“He’ll make the throw that other quarterbacks won’t,” Lewis said Thursday of Bo Levi Mitchell. “Some quarterbacks want to avoid
contact to make the throw. He doesn’t care. He just wants to make the throw.”
Oh, and make the throws is what ol’ Bo Levi did on Sunday afternoon in Vancouver. Over and over again, as a matter of fact. Off play action, where the Stampeders made Jon Cornish the best decoy in football; over the middle to his fellow Texan, Lewis, setting up the Grey Cup’s first touchdown; into the end zone knowing there was no way Brandon Stewart could cover Eric Rogers to draw pass interference.
The game plan wasn’t to throw as much as the Stampeders did, but Mitchell kept throwing strikes. The face, and future, of the
Stampeders franchise is now 16-2 in his career as a starter.
“I thought he played lights out,” Calgary head coach John Hufnagel said of his quarterback.
Mitchell is a winner, and has now done it at every level. A state title for Katy High School, a bowl game victory at SMU and a national championship after transferring to Eastern Washington. Now, with the keys to an offence with the most explosive receiving corps in the CFL, Mitchell is only getting started in Calgary. Sunday’s coronation at the pro level is the validation – that no matter what task or what test is before him, he’ll unflinchingly deliver.
“I’m the quarterback on the best team in the league,” said Mitchell, 25-of-34 for 334 yards in the Grey Cup win.
Truthfully, some in the Stampeders weren’t that sure, even when anointing him starter this season. It was the natural progression, of course, one that had been brewing for two seasons. But quietly, some in the locker room were skeptical in training camp. They remembered Mitchell forcing it, watched him throw the deep ball in triple coverage. Sometimes even guessing while the bullets were flying.
“You never know with a young quarterback,” said Lewis. “Some can tank. Or some can go in and take over like he did.”
In the off-season, Mitchell flew to San Diego on his own dime and spent a month working with Jeff Garcia at his passing academy. Through 6 a.m. workouts and on-field throwing sessions, he improved. But most of all, Mitchell was looking for institutional knowledge, for advice, and for Garcia to give him a further understanding of how to handle all that comes with the responsibility of quarterbacking at the pro level.
“What I noticed this year,” his offensive coordinator, Dave Dickenson, said this week, “is that nothing really fazed Bo.”
And you saw it in the first moment of Stampeder uneasiness Sunday. Five minutes had gone by in the third quarter, and Brandon Banks had just taken a punt back to mid-field, Rob Maver had been crushed on a vicious, legal, hit by Justin Hickman on the return, and Zach Collaros was getting into a rhythm.
The Stamps were on their own 15 when Mitchell trotted out to the huddle, and he systematically began picking apart the Hamilton
defence.
The pocket collapsed, and he danced around it, finding his third read, Marquay McDaniel, for 12 yards. On the next play, Eric Rogers broke his rout 15 yards past the line and the ball was right there. Twelve more to Mo Price, nine to Rogers, 16 yards over the middle to Sederrick Cunningham.
Two plays later, with nothing downfield, Mitchell rushed for 15 and a first down.
“I don’t think you can do something for so long, and be so confident in yourself and the guys around you, to be nervous,” said Mitchell.
Calgary settled for a field goal on that series, the game-clincher as it turned out, but the message was sent: Mitchell’s going to come after you, and he’ll do it in so many ways.
“I thought it was quite impressive. It was textbook,” Hufnagel said of what his quarterback did on the drive. “He was able to do all the things you need from a quarterback to do.”
The Stampeders plan was to use the country’s top athlete, and the league’s best Canadian, as a decoy. Cornish knew it, and was fine with it because he trusted Mitchell being at the controls, being able to deliver.
He saw it late in the first quarter, on the Hamilton 14, when the play call came in: rebel right, shovel right. The genesis of the play is to have the tailback, Cornish, leak out of the backfield, selling the run or the dump pass; the slot, Lewis, act as if he’s about to pick up the blitz, but when the defence bites on the tailback, the quarterback tosses a shovel pass to the slot receiver. It requires pinpoint timing, and exact precision in its execution, and it unfolded the way it was drawn up. Cornish drew a swarm of white jerseys, Lewis rumbled to the one, and the Stampeders were in the end zone on the next play.
“Bo Levi Mitchell came so prepared for this game,” said Cornish. “Guess what? We have a real quarterback starting for us.”
They do, and as Juwan Simpson said, there’s more to come.
“I told y’all he could do it,” Lewis said, his championship t-shirt covered in confetti, over his shoulder pads. “You’re going to keep seeing this for a long, long time.”