Landry: Argos ready to begin journey to try to repeat as champions

The Toronto Argonauts got their rings. That’s cool. But do you know what’s really cool?

A second ring.

“We don’t get really special until you do it twice in a row,” Argos’ general manager Michael Clemons can be heard saying during the team’s Grey Cup ring ceremony video, posted to Toronto’s social media accounts.

He knows something about that. While Pinball has won a Grey Cup as a head coach (2004) and one as a GM (2022), he once one two straight as a player, back in 1996 and 1997.

As the Argonauts embark on a season-long celebration of their 150th anniversary, kicking off on Sunday night when they host the Hamilton Ticats at BMO Field, they seem quite capable of capping the party with another championship. It’s a talented team filled with veterans who know how to get the job done. So many of them did it just seven months ago.

But you know what they say about getting to the top of the mountain and how staying there is a whole different thing.

The Argos will attempt to do the whole different thing in 2023, but they will have to fend off the hunters who will be extra keyed up to take them on this season.

“It’s something that we’ve thought about,” Clemons said on Wednesday as the occasional coach’s whistle punctuated our conversation, an Argo practice going on in the background. “How do you accomplish this? Try to pay attention to the details.”

“It (the attempt at a repeat) makes you more aware that what you desire to do is going to require organization, it’s going to require detail. It’s also not going to be smooth. There are going to be challenges along the way. We’ve tried to ready ourselves for this journey.”

Failing a repeat as Grey Cup champions, this Toronto season could still be termed a success if it comes with a winning record. Because what the Argos would like to do – what Clemons has stated on more than one occasion – is to present a consistently competitive crew year in and year out, removing the boom/bust characteristic that has been a hallmark of the team’s existence for some twenty-five years, now.

Booms are great, and the Argos have had their share of those, winning the championship in 2004, 2012, 2017 and then again last season. But the busts have been there as well, with four-win seasons in 2008, 2018 and 2019. There was a three-win season in 2009 and a five-win season in 2016. Toronto enjoyed four straight winning seasons from 2004 – 2007, and only once since then has the team stacked two such seasons together and those would be the two most recent.

Staying competitive, winning consistently and keeping productive players in double blue year after year are goals that Clemons has for his team, and this past off-season went far in helping the GM achieve those goals. Right now, though, Clemons doesn’t want to talk about year over year consistency. If the GM’s attitude is any indication of the overall team personality, the Argos are focussed only on the singular, upcoming campaign. “Our shorter goal is to repeat,” he said. “They give this trophy out every year.”

Clemons and the Argo front office staff have done a very nice job in re-signing or extending a significant number of key players and then augmenting the line-up with a few key pick ups via free agency and trade.

Grey Cup Most Valuable Player and Canadian, linebacker Henoc Muamba is back. So is running back A.J. Ouellette (two touchdowns in the Grey Cup) and veteran Andrew Harris. Receivers Kurleigh Gittens Jr., DaVaris Daniels and Markeith Ambles were retained. Defensive end Robbie Smith, who clinched last November’s win over Winnipeg with a late-game blocked field goal, was also re-signed. Linebacker Wynton McManis, the team’s outstanding defensive player in 2022, and defensive backs Royce Metchie and DaShaun Amos were kept in the fold.

In free agency, Toronto found replacements for a couple of key defenders who moved on – defensive end Ja’Gared Davis and SAM Chris Edwards – by signing free agents Folarin Orimolade (from Calgary) and Adarius Pickett (Montreal) to fill those positions, respectively. The Boatmen also added even more depth to an already impressive linebacking corps (don’t forget how good Jonathan Jones was last season when he replaced an injured McManis) when they swung a deal with the BC Lions to land Jordan Williams, who finished fourth in the CFL in defensive plays in 2022, with 110.

One of the losses that stung the most was that of all-star corner Jamal Peters, who signed with the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons over the winter. However, the Argos even scored there too when Peters was released by Atlanta and re-signed with Toronto earlier this week.

Toronto’s off-season motivations were clear; To keep as many of their players in the boat as possible in order to take a run at a repeat.

However, the Argonauts begin the 2023 season without the quarterback who was chiefly responsible for last season’s glory, instead being helmed by one who could just as well have a question mark on his jersey as the number 12 that he does sport. Right now, at least.

The biggest and most obvious question surrounding this season’s version of the Argos is whether the team has the quarterback it needs in order to mount a serious bid for a repeat. In a perfect Argo world, McLeod Bethel-Thompson would have returned for another lap in double blue with Chad Kelly taking on a bigger and bigger role as the season progressed, in order to smoothly ease into transition. They won’t get that luxury now, and with McBeth in the USFL, the 29-year-old Kelly must prove he can flourish as QB1 straight away.

On one hand, Kelly is lightly-played entering his second regular season in the CFL, having thrown only 45 passes in his first. So there is the question as to whether he has the goods, over the long haul, to keep the Argo offence moving the way it needs to. On the other, his spectacular turn in a relief role in last year’s Grey Cup is proof enough to many, coming as it did in such a pressure-cooker and against such a strong Blue Bombers’ defence. Kelly’s Grey Cup heroics might have been highlighted by a key scramble and a run for a critical first down, but those heroics also included good passing decisions accompanied by authoritative throws.

Asked to sell the skeptics on Kelly’s arrival at the top of the team’s depth chart, Clemons balks.

“I won’t sell them on Chad Kelly,” Clemons replied. “Chad Kelly will do that work himself. He’s earned the opportunity to do this. He is our number one quarterback. And with that he is our leader.”

Kelly has been saying all the right things and doing many of them, too. He spent the off-season in Toronto in order to stay as connected to the organization as possible. He had throwing sessions with teammates like Gittens Jr. and Daniels. He says he worked out three times a day and was paying particular attention to nutrition and hunkering down for extra film study. “There’s still so much more I can learn,” Kelly told me last March. “And to up my game even more I’ve gotta see things even faster, right?”

The quick flyover view of the 2023 Argonauts is this: most of the key players from their championship run of 2022 are back and the team is both solid and deep in talent pretty well across the board. The key question comes at quarterback but it is not the only one. There is another one that always floats around a team trying to defend its championship of the previous season. Is the hunger to do it all again there? The will?

By framing his team as a good one that has accomplished something great but not yet special, Clemons may have found the right kind of motivation to keep his Argos from feeling already well-fed.