Mitchell and Bridges Express Highest Respect for Their Opponents Ahead of CFL Awards

When he looks at the other man nominated for CFL Most Outstanding Player, Bo Levi Mitchell sees something familiar; his own confidence and desire to have his number called when the game is winding down, and the kind of plays the opposition knows are coming still need to be made successfully.

“I think he showed that in the last drive against us in Winnipeg this year,” Mitchell said of Brady Oliveira here in Vancouver yesterday as Grey Cup Week got into full swing, culminating in Sunday’s championship game and the CFL Awards ceremony tonight. That gala will be highlighted by the Ticats quarterback and Blue Bomber running back as the finalists for the biggest individual award.

“They have a lot of trust in him. They have some great guys in front of him, great blockers and some receivers who are very scary that you have to respect, but when Brady has the ball in his hands, he can go the distance, he can run you over, he can juke you, and he blocks. As a quarterback, I respect that, I love seeing a guy who is willing to put his face in your face. He’s a team guy. You watch it. He’s a beast.”

The Ticats have one other finalist in the awards races, receiver Shemar Bridges, who goes against Edmonton linebacker Nick Anderson for Most Outstanding Rookie. Bridges, who injured his leg in late September and missed the final three games of the season, smashed the Ticat single-season rookie record with 83 catches, just six short of the all-time CFL mark which he also would likely have eclipsed without the injury. His season was blunted just 67 yards short of 1,000 yards in receptions.

Because he’s the best player on the team with the best record, Oliveira has long been the frontrunner to win the MOP vote. The ballots were in more than a week ago and their category will be the centre point of the Awards gala at the convention centre which hugs the city shoreline.

Oliveira, playing for his hometown team had an excellent season and is also heavily favoured to win his second straight top-Canadian award. As power running became a must-have in the CFL, Oliveira led the league with 1,354 yards and all-purpose yards (1,829).

A brilliant season, but as pointed out in a Ticats Today episode on the Ticats Audio network, Mitchell’s season has been underrated because of turnover issues in the first half of the season and the fact the Ticats fell short of a playoff berth. 

He led the league in touchdown passes and was the first CFL quarterback to reach 5,000 yards in six years, and only one other quarterback, the Bombers’ Zach Collaros even got to 4,000. His 5,451 yards were a personal-best  and a Ticats’ franchise record, and he clicked for a stunning total of 875 yards and five touchdowns over the season’s final two games.

Like Oliveira carrying the ball when everyone knew he’d be running—“there’s not a better feeling than when a team knows you’re going to run the ball and you wind up handing the guy ball and he finishes the game for you,” Mitchell says—Mitchell threw the ball when everyone knew he was going to be throwing.

Yet he outdistanced No. 2 Collaros by 1115 yards, a margin of 26 percent, while Oliveira was 10 percent more productive yardage-wise than No. 2 runner William Stanback. And according to league officials, in the 21st century—25 years of which have now been played—only one other gap between No. 1 and No. 2 in passing yardage has ever been larger than Mitchell over No. 2 this year. That occurred in 2015 when Henry Burris was 1142 up on No. 2 Mitchell, then in Calgary. In no other year in the 2000s has the chasm between first and second been even remotely as large as those two. This year’s was one of the biggest such gaps in the entire history of the league.

Earlier today Mitchell discussed his 2024 with Ticats.ca, beginning with his strenuous off-season workouts with strength and conditioning coach Marcellus Bowman and his appearance at training camp with a walking boot covering the ankle which underwent surgery last season.

“It’s been an amazing year,” he said. “I had a lot of confidence because of the way I trained in the off-season. The walking boot was more of a precautionary thing and I had a lot of confidence in the doctors, in that they wanted to stabilize it, don’t let the ankle move for a couple of days and let the stuff settle. That’s why they’re doctors. They were right and knew it was the best thing after surgery.

“I was moving around a lot better and it was probably my best year throwing the football. I was asked to do a lot on the field, in the situations we were in.

“We had an amazing team but we were down a lot at the beginning of the year and had to kind of push the ball downfield. It was one of those years where we had five receivers who played basically 90 percent of the year until we lost Shemar and we had an O-line who was solid in front of us. I felt I could stand there as long as I wanted to. It was a great year statistically for me but it was a team effort. We had a lot of great players on offence and it showed.”

Mitchell said that if there was one situation he would take back this year it was “obviously the Montréal thing”, referring to being pulled in favour of backup Taylor Powell after an interception against the Alouettes, and then losing the starting job the next game before Powell was injured early: “throwing the ball, late, over the middle which was the killing thing for Scott (Milanovich), which made him make the decision.”

But when he got the job back, he finished as strongly as a quarterback possibly could, with “a mentality that I will throw the ball and try to win games, and I think it showed.”

Mitchell is part of TSN’s broadcast crew for the fifth time and will work Grey Cup and Saturday, talking about “not only my experience with the two teams but my knowledge of the teams, their offences and the positions the quarterbacks are in. I know a lot about Zach and what he’s been through and I covered him the last few Cups and (Argonauts starter) Nick Arbuckle was a teammate of mine. I came up through the ranks in Calgary with him. (Argos coach Ryan) Dinwiddie was my quarterback coach so there’s a lot of familiarity there.”

He says he’s looking forward to tomorrow’s Award show, with his wife and two daughters getting to attend, and says he’s got a great suit to wear. Bridges is also eagerly anticipating the evening and attending his first Grey Cup game. He knows he’ll be in tough against Anderson whose 111 tackles were tied for the CFL league and were second most ever by a CFL rookie.

“I played against him a couple of times during the season and he was flying around the field,” Bridges said. “He tackled me in the first game on a shallow route in the first game we had in Edmonton. He’s an energy type of guy. I have a friend who played with him and he has a lot of respect for him.”

Bridges says he was fortunate he didn’t require surgery for his injury, is deep into rehab and expects to be in full training condition well before the start of training camp.

“I feel great,” he said. “I’m glad to be here and to be able to tour around Vancouver with my mother. I’m super excited for the experience of the Grey Cup, it’s a fun thing to be part of. It’s an honour to represent Hamilton and to be out here with Bo.”