They’re the words every Toronto Argonaut fan wants to hear from a player.
“I bleed Double Blue. I can’t see myself leaving and playing for someone else and playing against Toronto. I grew up in Toronto, I’m born and raised here, I’ve been going to Argo games my whole life, and I was drafted here.”
Jack Cassar, a linebacker and outstanding special teams player for the Argos, re-upped with the club in December, a couple of months before he could have become a free agent.
One couldn’t blame Cassar if he had left town to get more reps on defence. He was a star at the OUA level with Carleton; named the conference’s Stand-Up Defensive Player of the Year and a First Team All-Canadian. It was impossible not to notice him every time he stepped on the field.
But in the CFL he’s been mostly relegated to a special teams role, though never looking out of place when he had the opportunity to play linebacker. He never got a chance to make the position his own, but that wasn’t going to happen with players like Wynton McManis and Henoc Muamba manning the middle of the second level in Cassar’s time with the Argos.
He’s hoping that it will change this year. Not necessarily grabbing the starting job, as Isaac Darkangelo and Aaron Casey will also be battling for that role. But conversations with new defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Greg Quick have given him reason to be optimistic he just won’t be on the field for punts, kicks, and returns.
“He reached out to me and said he could see me rotating in on defence,” Cassar told Argonauts.ca. “He’s going to have a lot of different looks, I’m sure similar to how it was in Montreal (where Quick was the linebackers coach before joining the Argos this off-season) where they were in a 3-4 defence (three linemen, four linebackers) and having that extra linebacker on the field. He can see me coming in and rotating there. I’m just happy to contribute any way I can on his defence.”
While Cassar is excited about working with Quick, the same can be said about the coach’s eagerness to work with a player he’s admired for several years.
“Jack is obviously a stellar, stellar special teams player, but when he was coming out of Carleton I was very intrigued by him. We’ve spoken openly about my expectations for him and there’s definitely a role for him in our defence.”
And now it’s up to Quick to add to his skillset and become a juggler, trying to find playing time for a deep, talented group of linebackers.
“It’s a long season and over time who knows how he (Cassar) continues to mature and fit into our scheme? This might be a bright opportunity for him to have a little bit of a more significant role in the defence and not just against the run. He’s a complete linebacker, he really is. He’s one of the first people I talked to when I took the job and I’m really excited about (working with him).”
There’s no question the Argos struggled defensively last season. Quick will have some talented returning players to work with, but there’s an incoming group of players that should help make his job easier.
With Adarius Pickett, DaShaun Amos, Ralph Holley, Dewayne Hendrix, Jonathan Kongbo, Enock Makonzo, Robert Priester, and Paris Shand among the players joining the team, expectations are high.
Cassar is among those who can’t wait to see how the pieces of the puzzle come together. But how good can the finished product be?
“We’re as good as we want to make it,” he said. “We’re going to have to put in the work. We’ve got the bodies, we’ve got the people we need in the building to be great, but now we have to go out and earn that greatness. That’s going to come with our preparation, that’s going to come with having competitive practices, and being the most physical defence in the league. And that’s something we’re going to have to live by this entire season.”
A football player is considered to be in his prime in his late 20s, then considered on the downside of his career just two or three years later. Cassar is entering his sixth season with the Argos, twice as long as the average CFL career.
Despite his obvious enthusiasm for playing, the 29-year-old is already pondering what his post-career life will look like and recently took part in the CFL/CFLPA’s Mentorship Program, a week-long exercise which gave players some insight into what their life might be like should they choose to remain in the sport.
Seven players, including his former teammates Flo Orimolade and Landon Rice, were selected for the program after an application and interview process. They were exposed to several aspects of the CFL outside of the locker room.
“The part that interested me most was the sponsorship side,” said Cassar, not surprising from a Commerce major who has already interned in the off-season with MLSE partnerships, mostly on the Raptors side.
“Being able to see how the CFL operates through their sponsorships and how that’s one of their major sources of income for the league, sponsorships you see on the field and that you see on the sidelines. I found that the most interesting.”
The players also visited the TSN site and talked about football media with Kate Beirness and Henoc Muamba. The group found out about the behind-the-scenes things like how the schedule is made, health and safety strategies, league finance, and they helped the league run the Invitational Combine in Waterloo, running drills and keeping track of the athletes performances.
Ironically, it was the first time Cassar had been to a combine. He was drafted in 2020, the year the event was cancelled because of the global pandemic.
The good news for Cassar is that he has a lot of on-field steps to complete before he must figure out where his post-playing path will lead him. He’s added to his list of possibilities after experiencing different sides of a sport he loves.