Eddie Davis reflects on living ‘dream job’ as a professional football player

Eddie Davis can use one word to sum up his professional football career: Exciting.

“When you look at it, I grew up wanting to play baseball and professional sports in general,” the former Saskatchewan Roughriders defensive back said. “When you grow up in the U.S., you want to get into the NFL. That didn’t happen for me. I was able to jump to the CFL and I got to do something for 15 years that many people dream of doing.

“I had a dream job for 15 years. I got to play a sport for 15 years, I got to create friendships and relationships for 15 years (and) I got to bring people excitement and joy for 15 years. You can’t ask for anything else. This is what people live all their life to get an opportunity to do and I did it.”

Davis, now 47 years old, became one of the CFL’s top defenders with a career that saw him play with the Birmingham Barracudas, Calgary Stampeders and Roughriders.

But Davis admitted that growing up in St. Louis, football wasn’t even on his radar.

“I grew up playing baseball and of course being from St. Louis you’ve got to stick with baseball. Everybody’s first love is the Cardinals and that was my first love but I kind of migrated to football once I hit high school,” Davis said.

He had no intention of ever playing football, but a friend in high school asked him to try out for the team in his sophomore year.

“So I went and tried out and next thing you know I was the starting tailback and defensive back on the team,” Davis said.

While he played basketball and baseball and ran track while playing football, Davis chose to focus on football in his junior year.

“I had a lot of people telling me I wasn’t going to do much in football. I liked challenges and for me, I went out and tried to prove people wrong,” Davis said. “First thing I did was get a football scholarship to continue playing at college.”

Davis ended up at Northern Illinois University playing with the Huskies, for whom he started 19 games. He recorded 129 tackles and four interceptions, with three of them coming in his senior year.

“I never really had any intentions of playing professionally but as college went along, I got better and better at the craft and decided my senior year, ‘Why not give this thing a shot?’ ” he recalled.

While he thought the St. Louis Rams might take him in the NFL draft, that never came to fruition, so he turned his attention to some contract offers from the CFL.

“Ironically, though, my high school track coach, Devon Ford, actually played for the B.C. Lions,” Davis said. “That was something that we talked about, but it wasn’t like we talked about it a whole heck of a lot.”

Davis said he called up his agent to tell him he would be playing in the league based in Canada.

“I just kind of pulled one off of my desk and called my agent up and told him, ‘Look, tell this team I’m going and I’ll go down and play for them,’ and it just happened to be the Birmingham Barracudas,” Davis said.

While the Barracudas survived only one season in 1995 before folding, Davis has fond memories of playing for a CFL American expansion team.

“It was awesome. That was my first foray into professional sports. That first half of the season was awesome. We had great fans come out to the game — 30(,000), 40(,000), 50,000 people came out to the games,” Davis said. “As soon as that college season started, that’s when we started to see our numbers drop off.”

Davis admitted there was a learning curve going from the American game to the Canadian one.

“To play the Canadian game, you have your slight changes in the game as far as how you would cover receivers,” he said, “and having those receivers moving before the play started, that was something I had to psychologically wrap my head around.”

After the Birmingham franchise folded, Davis was taken in the dispersal draft by Calgary — the team that then employed former Barracudas general manager Roy Shivers.

“I thought that Birmingham team was going to stick around and then once I heard that the team had folded and they had a dispersal draft, I was kind of interested to see who would pick me up,” Davis said. “(Shivers) wanted to bring in players that he knew from his team previously.”

Davis earned a starting job with the Stampeders and enjoyed a lot of success in Calgary, including a 26-24 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the Grey Cup on Nov. 22, 1998.

“In Calgary we had some great players, Hall of Famers, and we had some great teams in Calgary. Winning that Grey Cup in ’98, that was my first real championship as opposed to when I won the city championship in Little League,” Davis said.

“I think the emotional roller coaster that we went through during that game with the score going back and forth and then for Mark McLoughlin to kick that field goal right at the end of the game was awesome. That was a huge moment for me in professional sports and professional football of course.

“With that being my first Grey Cup, it’s kind of hard to explain everything but it was a great feeling.”

During his time in Calgary, Davis was a roommate with another player who would turn into an all-time great — quarterback Henry Burris.

“Hank is probably one of the slowest people in the world. Hank takes a long time to do things. He’s very systematic in what he does but he takes a long time to get through things.” Davis said with a laugh. “We had some fun time.

“We had good parties at the house, we cooked a lot of food and played some video games together and just had a good time growing up together in the CFL.”

While Davis joined the Roughriders in 2001, he has some not-so-fond memories of visiting Mosaic Stadium with other teams.

“That locker room was horrible. Nobody wanted to be in that visitors’ locker room. It was cramped and it was tight,” Davis said. “Even worse was Taylor Field itself. The field was horrible.

“They used to have sand underneath the field and the field was stitched together so the lines and the green part were stitched together so there were seams. At the seams, the sand would come out and so you had spots on the field where it was just impossible to stand on your feet. You would slip and slide and go everywhere.

“That whole experience coming to Taylor Field — and you add the fans on top of that, the fans on top of your head giving it to you the whole game — it was rough.”

Davis said the fact Shivers was then in Saskatchewan, along with then-head coach Danny Barrett and defensive co-ordinator Richie Hall, made the decision easier to sign with the Green and White as a free agent.

“Having Richie, Roy and Danny just made me feel more comfortable coming to Saskatchewan at the time,” Davis said. “Saskatchewan was a place people didn’t really want to come to. I think guys were running away from Saskatchewan as opposed to coming to it.”

He spent the next nine seasons with the Roughriders, including being a part of the 2007 Grey Cup-winning team. Saskatchewan defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 23-19 in that game.

“Going out and getting that win for the fans and for us and Saskatchewan in general was a great feeling of pride,” Davis said. “It’s something that that province deserved. With those fans having those lean years and still being as rabid as they were, to bring that back to Saskatchewan was an awesome feeling.”

His final game was on Nov. 29, 2009, in the Grey Cup against the Montreal Alouettes. The 28-27 loss lives on in infamy for Rider Nation.

“I felt like we had just won the game and then I see all these red flags (signifying a penalty for too many men) and of course I run to the ref to ask him what’s going on. I can just see the look on (the ref’s) face and he was disappointed for us,” Davis said.

“We were handling (the Als) in that Grey Cup game the entire first half and then things were going back and forth in that second half. Still, to come down at the end and lose it like that was devastating.”

Despite how Davis’ last game ended, he knew it was time to walk away from the sport he loves.

He finished his career with 801 tackles, 111 pass knockdowns, 34 interceptions and 16 sacks, a resume that got him into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2015.

Davis and his wife moved from Calgary to Arizona and now own a fitness facility. Davis said one of the things he’s most proud of was being an inspiration to the next generation of defensive backs.

“It was my duty to play the game as hard as I did and to pass my knowledge on to other players. It’s everybody’s duty to make the game better. The game should progress over time and each generation should be better than the last,” Davis said.

“If you really, truly loved the game like I loved football, you should want to pass down that knowledge and experience to the next generation even though this next guy is trying to come get your job.”

This Rider Alumni feature is appearing one day before the 2020 Roughriders were scheduled to play host to the Toronto Argonauts at Mosaic Stadium. The 2020 season is on hold due to COVID-19.