Moffat: Whitaker’s return an emotional one

The last two years he’s left defences bewildered, but his nightmares this off-season sometimes left him bewitched.  

“B-Whit aka Brandon Whitaker is ready for dream time.

“I would have dreams of making cuts, making people miss, scoring touchdowns, catching balls.  It motivated me a lot.  Especially on those days when it felt like it was never going to get better.”

“You have a lot of up and down days and sometimes I’d wake up in so much pain.  Other days I’d wake up and feel like I was ready to play.

But when you tear up your knee as well as Whitaker did, the nightmares haunt you as well.

“I had some nightmares of flashbacks to the injury, the tough moments after the surgery.”

“If not every night then every other night I was having dreams like that,” says the 2011 rushing king and All-Star running back.  

The soft-spoken Oklahoma native’s voice trails off for a quick moment.

“The first month (post-op) is pretty tough, the toughest part of it.  There were some hard times, I had some nightmares. It ended up being motivation, any flashback.”

The darkest nights sometimes come after the brightest days.  He took many in the CFL by surprise in his first full season as a starter. After three years as an understudy to Avon Cobourne and sharing back-to-back Grey Cups, Whitaker was finally given his chance to shine in 2011 when Cobourne signed with the Tiger-Cats via free agency.

He rushed for almost 1,400 yards (a career high 150 in a single game) and caught 72 passes for 638 more.  

Not bad for a back out of Baylor who was cut not once, but twice by the Alouettess in 2008.

In 2012, his pace through 10 games was even more bedeviling. The 27-year-old had already racked up as many touchdowns as the full season before, hit 100 yards twice in a game and upped his personal best receiving total in a game to 137.

Then it all came to a crashing halt with the injury, and off-season free agency loomed like an abyss.

Speculation had Whitaker pulling off a power-sweep around injury worries and landing a tryout with Marc Trestman’s Bears in Chicago.  Maybe that was a polite way of saying no one in Canada would touch the wreckage of a man.

Two special women helped pull him through, his girlfriend Angela and his niece Aariyah.

“My niece, I spoil her like she’s my little girl; she’s the love of my life.  That’s my little angel.  She’ll be two in August.  And I got a little knucklehead nephew whose got girls all over him.  He’s four turning five, but my niece is my motivation.”

“I try to see her as much as I can in the off-season.  She’s like ‘Uncle B, Uncle B are you going to play football again?’”

“My girlfriend Angela gave me 24 hours after the injury.  I shed a few tears and then she tells me about ‘the 24-Hour Rule.’  You get to sulk for 24 hours, whine and then it was back to work like a recluse for nine hours a day.”

“She was always smiling,” he says of his “soon-to-be-wife” who would be happy if Brandon wins a ring before she does.
“She knows a Grey Cup ring comes with a cheque and could lead to a better wedding ring,” Whitaker chuckles.     

Whitaker is used to catching defences flat-footed, but through a new Pilates program in Austin, TX he found out his own flat-footedness was messing with his ankles, knees and hips.

“They worked on my hip alignment, especially my style of running with my foot rolling in, puts more pressure on the inside of the knee.  My hips were off.  There are a lot of things I learned about my whole body that I didn’t know about.

“It was the best thing I’ve ever done and it’ll be a part of my off-season for the rest of my career.”

Don’t think he’s ungrateful for all the support just because he’s dreaming big about his performance on the field again.   The pride of Edmond, OK believes it’s time someone in the CFL ran for 1,000 and caught 1,000 yards worth of receptions.

His boyhood idol Marshall Faulk did it more than a decade ago and Roger Craig did it the year Brandon was born. The biggest hero of his boyhood dreams, an Oklahoma State legend, Barry Sanders twice hit 2,000 yards rushing, but never 1,000 through the air.

Whitaker has met Sanders during off-seasons in Oklahoma and has studied the Hall of Famer’s college film highlights.

“It’s definitely a goal I have.  I take a lot of pride in catching the ball out of the backfield.  In this league you don’t run the ball as much, so for those guys down there or here it would be unbelievable.

“It’s definitely something I’ll continue to drive for.  I’m just excited to get back out there to be honest with you.”