Everything in place for Argos to thrive

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This article was published 20/03/2017 (3160 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This will be the first year, as a franchise, that the Argonauts literally have all of the pieces in place to take a run at creating a presence in Toronto.

We’ve all heard it before, though, the “maybe this time the Toronto Argonauts finally have what they need to become a viable entity in the CFL,” and then disappointment inevitably sets in. Well, let me be the first to say that maybe, this time, the Argonauts finally have what they need to become a viable entity in the CFL.

Whether it was the wrong ownership group, the wrong stadium, the wrong coaching staff, the wrong players or the wrong leadership, the franchise in Canada’s largest market has always had reasons and excuses as to why they weren’t able to exact a response from the masses, but it now appears, for the first time in a long time, all of the water fowl are lined up in a row.

Lets start with the most important part of any franchise — which is often forgotten and which is a whole other column — the franchise quarterback. While Ricky Ray is no spring chicken at 37 and is coming off a season where he was limited to only nine games, he managed to lead the CFL in accuracy and completion percentage. While he is far from a slam-dunk from a marketing perspective, he has led three different teams to titles — one as recently as 2012 — and that is what counts the most.

Additionally, while you would never want to give up a first-round draft pick for your No. 2 pivot, that is what the previous regime did, and it does leave the team with some very nice depth at the most important position on the field.

While many skeptics claim Ray is on the downside of his career, if there was ever a tonic for boosting and rejuvenating one’s day job, it is having Marc Trestman waltz in as your head coach. While it is true that when Trestman brought Calvillo back from the dead in 2008 — at almost the exact same age as Ricky Ray — he didn’t have the same injury history as Ray, but he was still a headliner in a smash-up demolition derby all the same. If Trestman accomplishes one thing this season with his $600,000 contract in tow, it will be to fortify and protect the pocket for Ray like it was the remaining pages and years of Donald Trump’s tax returns.

While there are plenty of talented coaches in the CFL, unless your name is Wally Buono, none have gone to the Grey Cup three times in their first five years, won two of them and pulled off a .656 winning percentage while doing it. Whether you think his immediate success was largely aided by a hall of fame quarterback in Anthony Calvillo matters not. He is now working with another shoo-in for CFL football immortality, one whose accuracy and football prowess has not yet wavered.

Add to this foundation an ownership group with the deepest of pockets and professional sporting landscape competency in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment chairman Larry Tanenbaum and Bell media, and a general manager in Jim Popp — who, if anything, has only to prove that he can win outside of Montreal and Calvillo’s legacy — and you have more pieces of the puzzle. Finish it with the smaller, intimate BMO Field stadium, which is the opposite of cavernous Rogers Centre, and for the first time, this franchise has all of the ingredients at once to take a legitimate run at relevancy in Toronto. They’ve had bits and pieces before, at different times, but never a complete list: A franchise QB, a proven and elite-level coach and GM, wealthy and steady ownership and a place to play suitable for the Canadian football environment.

We’ve seen the rebranding and reinvention of this franchise countless times over the years, but never to this degree. We’ve written about last chances and opportunities for this club, but always with holes of different sizes to fill. The only problem with this latest foray is if it doesn’t come together this time, over the next couple of years or so, and they still aren’t able to detect a pulse from the masses, there will no longer be any possible, or plausible reasons to excuse it.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97