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EDMONTON — When it comes to Most Outstanding Player, it’s hard not to think of Mike Reilly as a leading candidate to win it in 2016. Ask him though and the idea doesn’t even register.
The prestigious honour is about the only thing Reilly hasn’t won in his three years as a starting quarterback, but he’d trade 100 of those for a Grey Cup any day of the week.
“For me, I don’t really care about that type of stuff,” Reilly said during an off-season adidas shoot in Toronto. “I want to win championships – I don’t care how we do it.”
Sure, we’ve heard the old cliché a thousand times before. But for whatever reason, when Reilly says it, you know that he means it — that they aren’t just tired, hollow words.
Part of it goes back to just a couple of years ago, when the Kennewick, Wash. native first became a CFL starting quarterback with the Eskimos and put up some of the best numbers of his career. The problem was his team couldn’t win football games.
“In 2013 we went 4-14 and wins were hard to come by and stats were probably easier to come by,” recalled Reilly. “I threw for more yards that year and more touchdowns than any other year in my career.”
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Reilly’s passing and rushing totals that season remain career highs, yet those are the days he’d rather forget. Today Reilly still couldn’t help but remember a game that year against the Argos when he threw for more than 500 yards and lost.
“I can tell you this, it felt extremely empty,” Reilly lamented. “I’ve joked around but it’s probably true; I’m probably the only quarterback in the history of this league I would guess to throw for over 500 yards and lose a game, and also throw under 50 or 60 yards – whatever I threw for in Hamilton last year – and win a game.
“And I felt way better after that Hamilton game than that Toronto game. It’s not like I was extremely proud of my performance in that game, but we won.”
For Reilly, it’s plain old fact that there isn’t necessarily a direct correlation between winning football games and putting up gaudy numbers. And to even do one of those things requires plenty of help from those around you.
“Anybody that wins an MOP didn’t do it by themselves,” Reilly said.
Solomon Elimimian deserved to win it, Reilly added, but couldn’t have enjoyed his record-breaking season in 2014 without defensive linemen taking on double teams and Adam Bighill squeezing somebody back. Jon Cornish, he continued, needed the help of his O-line and receivers blocking downfield.
Last year’s MOP Henry Burris had the same five offensive linemen play every single game and four receivers each reach 1,000 yards.
“You can’t get any of that stuff without other guys being great. To me, those awards are not just ‘you were great’,” Reilly reiterated. “You and your teammates were great together.”
It’s not to say 2013 wasn’t an important year for Reilly and the Eskimos. That four-win season, you could argue, was when the drastic turnaround in Edmonton truly began.
In a year the defence gave up a lot of points and the quarterback faced a ton of pressure, the Eskimos were finding out that in Reilly they had a gamer; a quarterback that could take a big hit and keep coming back for more, who wasn’t afraid to put it all on the line for his team.
“To me, those awards are not just ‘you were great’. You and your teammates were great together.”
Mike Reilly
Chris Jones gets a lot of the credit for the 10-game turnaround over a span of two years, but what kind of role did Reilly play?
“Probably as big a role as anything,” answered teammate and linebacker JC Sherritt. “Just being flat out honest, it’s the hardest position to play in all of sports. Good quarterbacks are hard to find, man.
“To get a guy to come in like that – you’re always in it. No matter what, you’re always in the game.”
It wasn’t just Reilly’s play on the field, though. It was the toughness; the confidence. Reilly often inspired his defence as much as his own offence.
“Just knowing from a defensive standpoint; we’ve got a shot with this guy,” said Sherritt. “If we get a stop, if we get a turnover, we can win this whole thing. And just from the jump, what he brought – it was a game-changer. How he plays and how he carries himself is contagious with the confidence he brings his teammates.”
Whatever it takes to get the job done, Reilly will stop at nothing.
“We definitely get mad at him because he’s not going to listen to anybody telling him to slide or anything like that. We’ll tell him to get down, but deep down in our hearts us defensive guys respect the hell out of him.”
Just as soon as Reilly would run through a wall for his teammates, his teammates would run through one for him. The value of that came to him not in 2013 but long before that when he played for Pat Reilly, a coach and player for 50-plus years and his father.
“He always just taught me to play the game as hard as I could,” said Reilly. “He was my coach so he wasn’t going to let me come off the field because I took a big hit.”
For Pat, football was a sport that taught younger players how to become men because it’s the ultimate team game: “One guy can screw the whole thing up,” said Mike.
And when you’re coached by your dad, of course there’s a higher standard.
The thing Pat hated the most was parents trying to get too involved in the coaching. He knew if he treated Mike harder than the other kids, the parents would have no right to complain.
“He could be like, ‘I’m coaching your kid hard? Look how I’m coaching my kid and I’m his parent and I’m not complaining, so what do you have to complain about’?
“That kind of sucked at the time,” Mike conceded, “but I’m glad that he did that because it made me mentally tough and I think that’s how good coaches are.”
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Now you can see why Mike Reilly never gives up. His dad wouldn’t let him.
“He was like ‘you’re going to stay out there because when you commit to something, you see it all the way through because your teammates depend on you and they put in all this hard work’.”
From that aspect, nothing has changed. Reilly brought that mentality with him to the professional level because he knows what’s at stake.
“I know that incomes are on the line,” said Reilly. “I know this is how I put food on the table and a roof over my wife’s head – by playing this game. And I know that coaches and other teammates depend on me to go out and perform for them to make a living.”
He also knows what happens after 4-14 seasons and after Grey Cup seasons.
“People lose their jobs,” he said. “People get opportunities to make more money.”
“At the end of the day, we’re not getting paid to throw touchdown passes – we’re getting paid to win games.”
So if Mike Reilly wins MOP, it probably means his team also had a great season. And it’s not that he’d turn such an honour down, but if he had to choose one or the other?
“I’ll take Grey Cup every day of the week.”
And you know he’s not just saying it.
