Burris: Being released ‘added a chip on my shoulder’

CFL.ca Staff

OTTAWA — Henry Burris couldn’t hide the chip on his shoulder.

This week’s Eastern Final between the Ottawa REDBLACKS and Hamilton Tiger-Cats isn’t about him, he says, nor is it about the team he brought to the brink of a Grey Cup Championship in 2013. It’s about an Ottawa team that has built something special and is two wins away from winning the Grey Cup.

But when pressed, the 40-year-old favourite to win Most Outstanding Player this season says he was never thrilled with how things ended in the Hammer.

On Sunday he has a chance to get even.

“As a player you always use that as inspiration for yourself,” Burris said, reflecting on his departure from the Ticats. “As momentum, fuel in the tank.

“I’m not using that directly for Kent or anybody out there, but of course I disliked what happened and the person who’s in charge, he used to be the quarterback so he’s used to taking the blame.

“He understands, he used all the inspiration that he could when he was a player and I do the same thing.”

Burris recalls how things ended in Hamilton after a storybook run to the Grey Cup Championship. In Austin’s first year as a head coach, the Ticats overcame a difficult schedule with home games at Guelph along with persistent injury troubles.

They lost in the Grey Cup to the host Saskatchewan Roughriders, while Burris says he figured out pretty soon after that he wasn’t going to be back with the Black and Gold in 2014.

“Once I didn’t really hear anything after the Grey Cup and no calls were being made, after the first couple of weeks after we went to the Grey Cup in Regina I knew the writing was on the wall because I think the last time we had talked to Hamilton was during the season and we didn’t hear anything back,” says Burris.

“Then all of a sudden I got the call from Kent and he said ‘hey, before it hits the press we want to let you know we’re going to go in a different direction and we’re going to go with Zach’.”

Burris’s wife Nicole was on her iPad at the same time Austin called and saw that the Ticats made the move to add Collaros, then a fast-rising but unproven quarterback who had shone in a chance as a backup behind Toronto’s Ricky Ray.

“She looks over at me and shows me that Hamilton has signed Zach Collaros, so it was already out there.”

With a chance to add an up-and-coming quarterback that seemingly fit Austin’s system well, the move made sense for the Ticats. By now Collaros has done more than justify Austin’s thinking, asserting himself as one of the top CFL pivots and putting himself in the MOP discussion up until a mid-season injury that put him out for the year.

Yet even in hindsight it was a bold decision. Not often does a Grey Cup-contending team make such a big move at quarterback, especially when it’s involving a future Hall of Famer. The gamble paid off for Hamilton and has since paid off for Burris, too.

Burris struggled through a two-win season for the REDBLACKS while some critics wondered if his career was winding down and whether he’d even be the starter in 2015. But after the team added five new receivers, four of which hit 1,000 yards this season, along with a new offensive coordinator and revamped offence, he’s put up some of the best numbers of his career.

Now he says he feels at home both on and off the field.

“For me this is the number one experience because I’m in a place where I’m wanted,” says Burris. “The fact we’ve been able to come here and turn this thing around, it’s truly, truly feeling like home now because this is truly what the people here have been waiting for for a long time.

“Really at the end of the day the naysayers can’t say anything about me doing this or doing that because the proof is in the pudding and right now it’s tasting so sweet.

“But it’s not complete – we have to do what we can to finish this and to me that would be the perfect story to be able to tell 20, 30 years ago how we were able to turn this organization around and do it in a short period of time.”

Now Burris has a chance to win a Grey Cup Championship with a different team, in the process knocking the team that released him out of the playoffs.

“It is what it is – no matter how the ties were broken,” Burris says. “What happened to me in Saskatchewan, Calgary and Hamilton, it added a chip on my shoulder.

“But it’s a chip on my shoulder to go out there and do the things I can to help my team be successful. And at the end of the day being successful is the best way you can get back at people.”