Jamie Nye: Injuries are a necessary evil to find new CFL stars

Opinion

You just never know when the next great quarterback is going to show himself in the CFL.

However, there is usually one common factor when he’s discovered. The starter gets hurt.

Jeff Garcia needed Doug Flutie to go down to become a star in Calgary. Ricky Ray became a rookie sensation in Edmonton thanks to a Jason Maas injury.

Here in Saskatchewan, would we have known how good Darian Durant was if Marcus Crandell and Steven Jyles both didn’t get injured in the first two weeks of the season in 2008?

Or how about most recently? Is Cody Fajardo a household name if Zach Collaros doesn’t get popped by Simoni Lawrence in Week 1 of 2019?

Heck, the stories of Collaros and Trevor Harris both started in Toronto due to Ray getting hurt.

The Canadian Football League is unique that way. There is no draft where quarterbacks go first overall and the hype machine is built around them for the years leading into the moment their name is called.

Instead, sometimes they sit on a team’s hidden negotiation list for years until a press release gets sent to the media on a quiet afternoon in January or March or April that the team has signed some collegiate star. He likely led his conference in passing.

That brings us to Mason Fine. His story started on Dec. 20, 2020. While Rider fans were probably already mailing it in before the holidays and getting their Christmas shopping done on the final Sunday before Christmas, the Riders signed some quarterback 99 per cent of us had never heard of.

The Riders signed Fine to a three-year deal — rare for a newcomer to the CFL. The standout from the North Texas Mean Green was more intriguing because of his university’s nickname than he was because of his name recognition to Canadian football fans.

But the three-year deal made it clear back then that general manager Jeremy O’Day believed Fine was worth investing some time into. And Fine was committed to getting acclimatized to a new league with different rules.

Now here we are.

It feels like Fine’s first real opportunity is also his last.

Yes, Rider Nation felt all hope for 2023 was lost when Harris grabbed his right knee and the cart slowly drove him off the field Saturday night.

It’s a devastating blow for any organization to see their franchise player go down.

However, there is nothing that says Mason Fine can’t be the next man up.

No, he wasn’t making us yearn to make him the starter after his two starts at the end of last season. But to be fair to Fine, he was simply being led to slaughter behind one of the worst offensive lines in the history of the CFL.

The Riders as a group appeared to have given up on the 2022 season long before Fine was able to take control. This year is a new story.

This year the team appears different, doesn’t it? It appears to have a little more resolve to push on despite some serious bad luck to start the year.

The Riders’ six-game injured list this week is going to read more like a starting offensive lineup with Harris, Derel Walker, Kian Schaffer-Baker, Brayden Lenius, Jake Wieneke, Philip Blake and Jerald Hawkins all missing long term.

So if you want to predict that the Riders’ season is a lost cause with Harris joining that list, go right ahead.

I’m going to have my fingers crossed that, for the betterment of the league, we have a new quarterback we can get excited about. They’re become fewer and farther between, whereas the injuries are not.