It was a word thrown around a lot by the Toronto Argonauts at the beginning of the 2016 season.
Optimism.
The reasons were obvious. The team had put a hellish year in the rear-view mirror, a season that featured ‘home’ games in Ottawa, Hamilton and of all places, Fort McMurray, Alberta. Yet somehow the team still qualified for the playoffs despite having a travel itinerary from Hades.
It was a veteran team with a well-respected coach, a future Hall of Famer at quarterback with an impressive receiving corps at his disposal, a defence with a new-look secondary and a new home field to pump some adrenaline into the team’s fan base.
Without trying to dump a cup of Morton’s Salt in a still open wound, everything that could go wrong did. But, like, that was so 2016.
And as quarterbacks and rookies reported for the first day of the 2017 training camp at York University, the O-word was brought up again and met with mixed results.
Ricky Ray is back for a sixth season with the Argos, his 15th in the CFL. Now 37 years old, the veteran is excited to be working with new head coach Marc Trestman, who like Scott Milanovich – a man Ray referred to as the best head coach he’d ever played for – is very quarterback friendly.
“I’m obviously excited about it,” said Ray. “I really enjoy playing in this system. This is basically the stuff they (Trestman and Milanovich) worked on together in Montreal and kind of brought to this league.”
“I’m definitely excited to play for Marc and see his take on the offence and how he’s going to coach it differently,” continued the QB. “It’s been a lot of fun to learn some new things.”
Ray says he is optimistic about the season ahead, but that’s the norm.
“That’s kind of the way you feel going into every year,” admitted the Northern Californian. “Marc’s done a great job going down to mini-camp in Florida, just seeing how he wants to operate things and how detailed he is. Everything matters here. The littlest thing matters and has an effect on whether you win or lose.”
As for Trestman, he returns to the CFL after spending the last four seasons in the NFL with Chicago and Baltimore. He was a little more guarded about what to expect.
“You’re always going to be optimistic, the glass is always going to be half full,” said the coach, before admitting “We’ve got a long way to go to find out exactly what we have and who we are.”
The head coach says he couldn’t really say much about the video he’s watched, but he did like what he saw in the Argos recent mini-camp in Florida.
“After leaving (Florida) I felt we have a lot of guys who love football, who have some football intelligence and were willing to listen and learn and work,” said Trestman, “That I did see.”
The other half of the former Montreal tandem that’s new to the GTA is general manager Jim Popp. He too is excited to get things started in his new home. But what does he think of the talent level that he’s inherited?
“Some of it we’re still finding out because we don’t know them as well,” said the GM. “Overall, as a shell, I have no complaints. I think there’s a great group of the Nationals that can start, we need some depth there. There are some areas that have quality players, all-star players, and there are areas that need to, as a group, be rebuilt, like the receiving corps, like the secondary, some of the linebackers. Some of those areas are thinner than others.”
At the conclusion of his synopsis, Popp uttered the nine words that probably sum up best where the Argos are at this stage.
“We can be very competitive if everything comes together.”
That is where the Argos stand as camp opens; a mixture of the known and the unknown. A group of individuals trying to impress the football operations staff enough so they can make the cut and begin the process of becoming a team.
And that’s where the fun – and the frustration – comes in for the fan base. Watching things come together under the guidance of two men who had a great deal of success building a dominant franchise in Montreal should be an interesting journey. There will undoubtedly be some bumps in the road along the way, but as the old saying goes, half the fun is getting there.