An avid Argos fan & season ticket holder, Don Landry has covered almost every type of news from sports to music to talk radio in his 25 years of broadcasting and has conducted over 10,000 interviews with the likes of Prime Ministers, sports legends, showbiz stars, power brokers and many more. Follow Don on Twitter @argoslandry or visit his website at donlandry.com.
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DON LANDRY
Argonauts.ca Columnist
TORONTO — Do the Argos have their “go up and get it” guy?
It appears that they finally do. By signing free agent receiver Jason Barnes, the Boatmen may have just found the player they were so desperately lacking last season.
In 2011, inconsistencies at quarterback were only partly to blame for the Argos’ inability to move the ball with any great regularity. Those quarterbacks (the departed Cleo Lemon and Steven Jyles) were handcuffed, in that, they were throwing to a batch of receivers that had trouble hauling in the slightly more than routine catches, never mind the difficult ones.
If an offence is to catch fire, it absolutely must have receivers who can go up and battle for the ball in tight quarters and win those battles on a regular basis.
Barnes seems to be a receiver who can do that, as well as run a very effective corner route from that slot position. One has to figure that to be a vital asset to have, especially when Ricky Ray is your new quarterback.
Ray has dined out on that throw throughout his CFL career. Undoubtedly, he’ll be happy to have a familiar pair of hands at the other end of those tosses this season.
Barnes’ numbers from the 2011 season are very decent, with 50 catches for 869 yards and seven touchdowns in 14 games. Pro-rated over a healthy 18 game season, that works out to, roughly, 1,117 yards on 64 catches, with nine touchdowns.
That would be an exceptional lift for the Argo receiving game, which was led, in 2011, by Chad Owens and his 70 catches for 722 yards. Leading touchdown getter amongst Argo receivers was Brandon Rideau, with five.
It could be suggested, and not without merit, that Barnes was able to accrue his numbers, in part, due to the presence of an excellent stable of Eskimos receivers over the course of his three-year stay in Edmonton.
No doubt that when the opposing defence has to worry about the nightmare of covering the immensely talented Fred Stamps, the other guys are likely to get a little more room to operate out there.
That’s the real challenge for Barnes now, as the Argonaut go-to guy. Can he be the kind of receiver that, like Stamps, gets scads of attention and is still able to find ways to get open and come down with the ball?
For this signing to really be a hit for Toronto, Barnes needs those numbers of his to improve. To be considered in the class of the very best receivers, he’ll need to increase his pass reception total by about a third. If he’s able to do that, the yardage and TD numbers are likely to rise, too.
More than one CFL observer has wondered if Barnes really is a marquee receiver, a linchpin game-breaker with the ability to be the kind of guy every CFL team must have.
In a small sample from the 2011 season, there is at least some evidence to suggest it CAN be so. Whether it WILL be is another question entirely.
While Stamps was missing three games with a serious (very serious as it turned out) abdominal injury, Barnes had a chance to shine as a prime Edmonton Eskimo target. However, suffering with his own injuries, he played just
one of those games himself. Against the Montreal Alouettes in Week 7, Barnes hauled in six passes for 128 yards. Again, that’s a pretty small sample.
However, in it you do not find any evidence to suggest that Barnes can’t be a big time performer without the protection of one of the league’s very best receivers.
Look around the league and you would be hard-pressed to find one top notch passing offence without just such a receiver, or receivers.
In fact, outside of the Argos, you’d have been hard-pressed to name a team that didn’t have one or two of them (at least) in 2011.
Jamel Richardson and S.J. Green in Montreal, Geroy Simon and Arland Bruce in BC, Stamps and Barnes in Edmonton, Nick Lewis and Romby Bryant in Calgary, and finally Terrence Edwards and the quick to emerge Clarence Denmark in Winnipeg.
The Argos have now added, it appears, that kind of guy. Is it enough to completely repair what was the league’s most challenged receiving corps in 2011?
Not likely. But it’s a heck of a start. And free agency has just begun….