QB Index: No one team should have all that power

The QB Index is a weekly power ranking of quarterbacks across the CFL, voted on by CFL.ca staff. The ranking reflects recent performance, historical value, statistical indicators, team success and overall on-field evaluation. 

TORONTO — Let’s for the sake of fun speculation indulge ourselves a little here in this space.

Nathan Rourke is a limited participant in the BC Lions’ practices this week, after being seen throwing on the sidelines of Lions practice a week ago. We’re eight weeks removed from Rourke’s Lisfranc sprain and subsequent surgery, which many (myself included) assumed had spelled the end of his remarkable season.

Let’s imagine a scenario where Rourke sees action in some of one of the Lions’ final two games on the regular season schedule, either this week in Edmonton or next week in Winnipeg. Let’s imagine that he shakes a little rust off and is a viable option for the team wherever they start their playoff run the week after in the Western Semi-Final.

If that’s a scenario we’re looking at, the rest of the league should take notice of the BC Lions.

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If we go back 20 weeks to the start of the season, the Lions’ quarterback stable was made up of question marks. We didn’t know how good Rourke would be. We still haven’t seen much of Michael O’Connor to make any kind of firm conclusions on his CFL ceiling and in the limited action that Antonio Pipkin saw in the wake of Rourke and O’Connor’s injuries this year, he wasn’t able to rack up the yards and points that Rourke had been able to.

The Lions hit the jackpot with Rourke and with him at the helm they’ve been a force this season, sitting at 8-2 at the time of his injury. The one question around this otherwise loaded team at that point would have been quarterback depth.

In a roundabout way, through circumstances the Lions never welcomed, they’ve addressed that.

If Rourke is healthy and available, with all due respect to the Calgary Stampeders, no team in the league will go into the playoffs with a better 1-2 QB punch than the Lions.

It’s easy to forget that Rourke is still a first-year starter and that the playoffs would be an especially large challenge for him, whether he got the 10 games in that we saw this year or he was healthy through all 18. Head coach Rick Campbell can go into the post-season now knowing that if Rourke were able to play and for the first time this year he looked like a first-year starter, he had a highly qualified quarterback to turn to in Vernon Adams Jr.

While Adams’ playoff experience is limited — he’s played in the Eastern Semi-Final in 2019 and 2021 with the Alouettes — Campbell would have an excellent option at his disposal if either Rourke isn’t healthy or sharp enough yet to play, or if Rourke did get on the field and faltered.

The Lions took the league by storm this season with Rourke and as a result of his untimely injury, could head into the playoffs an even more dangerous team — if Rourke is healthy and available in two weeks’ time — than they were back in August when we were all wondering how far they could go.

If it all works out that way, that’s an incredibly important late-season storyline to follow.