Arden Zwelling
CFL.ca
Less than a year ago Karl McCartney was prepared to walk away from football altogether.
After an underwhelming year with the Saint Mary’s Huskies that saw McCartney battle a shoulder injury and spend most of his season on the bench, he made what could have been his last trip to a football stadium in his life.
After the Huskies were eliminated from the CIS playoffs, falling 38-14 to the Calgary Dinos in the Uteck Bowl, McCartney walked into head coach Steve Sumarah’s office and told him and the rest of the coaching staff that he didn’t intend on returning to Saint Mary’s next season and that he was moving on with his life.
Like every young football player he still wanted to play in the pros and, for the majority of non-imports, that road leads directly through the CIS. But McCartney and Saint Mary’s were far from a match made in heaven.
“I wasn’t having the best year. I wasn’t playing much. That kind of strayed me away from football,” McCartney said, looking back on his situation with the Huskies. “I wasn’t getting as much love at Saint Mary’s as I thought I should have.”
McCartney returned to the east coast university in January for the second semester of the school year, but by mid-February he had left school and returned home to the Bahamas where he works for a family business selling wholesale car batteries and tires.
McCartney still had a dream of playing in the CFL, but now that he was out of not only the CIS but also the country, he had all but dropped off the league’s radar. He didn’t receive an invitation to the CFL’s annual evaluation camp or the CIS East-West Bowl which he had attended in 2009.
McCartney’s future playing football, it seemed, hung entirely in the balance.
“It was a big risk. I basically put [my career] in God’s hands,” McCartney said of leaving school. “I knew some CFL teams had tapes on me but it was all up in the air. If I got a break or not – who knows. I might still be home selling batteries and tires right now.”
That’s why it was a relief when the Calgary Stampeders contacted McCartney for a workout ahead of the 2010 CFL Canadian Draft. After proving his mettle over two days of drills in Florida, the Stampeders decided to take a chance and draft McCartney in the fifth round, 37th overall.
Now, after Calgary gave McCartney’s football career a second life, the 22-year-old is third in the league in special team tackles and earning time on defence as a linebacker spelling Juwan Simpson.
Not bad for a guy who, as TSN analyst Duane Ford put it, was “done with football.”
“In some instances, yes,” McCartney said when asked if there was ever a time when he thought he might never play football again. “But I would have started to miss it and probably would have just gone back to university a year or two later.”
Whatever path McCartney decided to take back to the game, the Stampeders are glad it went through Calgary. The six-foot, 231-pounder has had an immediate impact on last year’s Western conference runner-up.
McCartney leads all rookies in special teams tackles with nine and his three defensive tackles are second to only Roughriders rookie linebacker Shomari Williams, who was selected first overall in the draft. He is also the only rookie defender so far this season to record a sack, bringing down Argonauts’ pivot Cleo Lemon in week one.
Well, bringing down is a bit of a stretch – Lemon fumbled the snap and fell on the ball, allowing McCartney to simply ground him by contact for the easiest sack he may ever make in his career. But this is the pros and McCartney will take what he can get.
“Honestly, at the time I didn’t even know it was a sack,” McCartney said with a laugh. “I just saw the ball on the ground and ran for it and jumped on him. It wasn’t like I actually got to hit him or toss him around but I guess a sack is a sack.”
And when it comes to special teams, a tackle is a tackle – a maxim McCartney can now repeat nine times. Most rookies see the majority of their playing time with the special teams units but even McCartney admitted that he didn’t expect to be third in the league in special teams tackles.
Opposition returners, it seems, just won’t stop running at him.
“I’m just trying to hustle down the field. I have a great group of guys around me and if every lane is sealed up he has to go somewhere,” McCartney said. “We have great special teams – we’re all really aggressive. I guess I’m just one of the lucky ones because it could be any of the guys.”
McCartney credits Huskies defensive coordinator and special teams coach Danny Laramee – who coached with the Edmonton Eskimos before joining Saint Mary’s – for much of his technical development in the special teams game.
For his philosophical instruction, McCartney turned to his long-time friend and mentor Brian Warren, who played ten years in the CFL for Edmonton and Toronto, winning a Grey Cup in each city. It was Warren who encouraged McCartney to work hard on special teams in order to earn himself time on defence.
McCartney has known Warren – a former linebacker himself – since his days at boarding school in Toronto. During Stampeders training camp the two spoke virtually every day, a ritual that helped McCartney keep his focus through the rigors of two-a-day practices and the distractions of being a green professional football player.
When the Stampeders were in Hamilton and Toronto in weeks two and three, Warren made sure to stop by the team’s hotel to check in on his protégé and take him to dinner.
“[Warren’s] advice has helped me a lot. He’s been telling me what I have to do to be ready every day and be noticed on the field,” McCartney said. “He’s been around the league and he’s really helped me stay focused on football. I’ve really taken advantage of having his advice and things have been working out great.”
To say things are working out is an understatement, considering McCartney was almost out of the game entirely at the beginning of this year. Of course, if things didn’t go his way in the CFL, the Nassau-native had a backup plan.
While he can always return to work for the family’s auto parts business in Nassau, McCartney knows the door will also be open on the Bahamas national rugby team where he played for three years before coming to Canada to play football.
An intimidating inside centre, McCartney is looking forward to an opportunity to get back to the game that Canadian football originated from.
“When I’m done with football, I definitely want to give rugby another shot,” McCartney said. “Whether its football or rugby – I just like to be on the field running around and hitting people.”
