Dear Stefan, hear you are OK, please get better soon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/07/2009 (5930 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The head coach got free beer. One fan even offered to buy his mother a jersey.

Good for Mike Kelly.

But what free stuff did Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback Stefan LeFors get for his first CFL victory?

Squat, that’s what.

“A handshake, that’s all I get,” the amiable pivot reported. “That’s how it should be.”

Just as well. The 28-year-old LeFors, after all, isn’t much for the spirits anyway. Besides, it’s not like the Louisiana lefty lit up the Calgary Stampeders, finishing a modest 13-of-27 for 156 yards, with two TDs and an interception.

Still, although LeFors’ ongoing development remains moist clay, let the record show in the inaugural games of the Bombers (1-1) season, he has given his team a chance to win (or tie) in Game 1 and knocked off the defending champs a week later. Not bad for a quarterback still wearing his CFL training wheels.

Yet one can’t help but recall the time, in 1998, when the legendary Troy Kopp rallied the Bombers from a 20-plus point deficit to defeat the Saskatchewan Roughriders for the Bombers’ first victory of the season. In September. The Bombers improved to 1-10.

The next day, Kopp was being showered with largesse, including a car dealer who offered free keys to a rental.

No such luck for LeFors. Not even a “previously owned” vehicle.

“No. Nothing like that,” he said. “Because I didn’t win the game, obviously. I have a lot of work to do. The guys around me made me look good, I guess.”

This where LeFors gets real, citing the old axiom that quarterbacks get too much credit for victories and too much blame for losses. True that. But it’s comforting to realize that LeFors is a guy who isn’t just spouting rhetoric. He’s not just reading off of some phoney quarterback cue card.

“It just goes with the position,” LeFors continued. “It’s how you handle being in that spotlight, whether it’s good or bad. Honestly, the win was good but I don’t think it was at all because of me.”

For all that Stefan LeFors hasn’t yet done on a CFL football field, it’s at least admirable that his cleats appear to be planted firmly in the turf. Because history records that the apprenticeship of CFL quarterbacks can be rife with false starts and steps backward. Look no further than young Mr. Kopp, who was a backup who came off the bench in relief to get that unlikely victory back in 1998. The next game, he turned into Keystone Kopp in a dreadful start in Toronto. Kopp never won another game in a short-lived career as a Bomber.

Of course, LeFors shouldn’t be confused with Kopp, or any of the blur of young quarterbacks who have been spit out of the league after promising debuts. After all, he already has come to terms with ignoring the oscillations that accompany his fledgling occupation. Heroes are the stuff of comic books and deli shops. Hence LeFors believes a quarterback’s most coveted assets aren’t purely physical.

“I’ve got to be the same guy every day, no matter what’s going on around you,” he reasoned. “You obviously don’t want to be too high or too low. There’s going to be times when that’s going to kinda happen, but you have to do your best to keep an even keel. The play before, if you get hit in the mouth you get up and tell the linemen, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Get up like you’re all right and go on to the next play.”

LeFors’ nonplussed approach is not news to Bombers head coach Mike Kelly, who staked his reputation in a huge way by acquiring LeFors from Edmonton to be the centrepiece of a massive rebuild. Good thing, too, given the swirl of Controversies of the Week that have besieged the Bombers early in LeFors’ learning curve.

“You need to be the eye in the storm,” Kelly said. “And I think Stef brings those qualities. There’s no doubt in my mind that we got that first win together. It wasn’t lost on me that the players handed me the game ball. And I was kinda thinking that night as I was lying in bed, replaying the whole night, maybe Stef should have got the game ball, too.”

See? Forget a car or beer. LeFors didn’t even get the game ball after CFL victory No. 1.

The quarterback just smiled and shrugged.

“No free stuff,” he said. “I’m good.”

Yes, so far LeFors has been exactly that. Good.

The key to the Bombers’ season — and that doesn’t include a gratis automobile, either — will be if and when Stefan LeFors gets better.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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