{"id":137435,"date":"2025-09-12T01:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T01:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/137435\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T01:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T01:14:12","slug":"cfl-legend-doug-flutie-believes-canadian-qb-nathan-rourke-is-nfl-calibre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/137435\/","title":{"rendered":"CFL legend Doug Flutie believes Canadian QB Nathan Rourke is ‘NFL-calibre’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo courtesy: Ben Green\/Buffalo Bills<\/p>\n

Doug Flutie calls it how he sees it.<\/p>\n

The first time the Heisman Trophy winner, six-time CFL Most Outstanding Player and one-time Pro Bowler saw Nathan Rourke live, he believed the Canadian was an elite quarterback.<\/p>\n

\u201cRourke out in British Columbia, the day I saw him play \u2014 and it\u2019s a couple of years before he signed with Jacksonville \u2014 he was an NFL-calibre guy right away, I thought. His decision-making, his ability to make plays on his own, the timing of getting the ball out, throwing with rhythm,\u201d Flutie said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as though Flutie predicted the future. Rourke earned an NFL shot by winning the CFL Most Outstanding Canadian award and spent one season south of the border, mostly with Jacksonville, before finishing the year with the New England Patriots, where he dressed for three games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get on the field enough, you start feeling confident, see things clearly, and you\u2019re relaxed out there. Once you\u2019ve played a handful of years up here, it\u2019s no different from [the NFL]. That\u2019s why you can jump. I jumped and went back to the NFL, Jeff Garcia, and then Dave Dickenson, back-to-back-to-back, all went,\u201d Flutie said.<\/p>\n

Rourke\u2019s NFL attempt ended after playing one preseason game the following season with the Atlanta Falcons, following an offseason stint with the New York Giants. He came back to the CFL and proved once again his ability to play at a high level in the three-down league.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the CFL, you can get away with just being a great athlete, moving around and buying time. And then there\u2019s the guys that can do that, but also have that timing and rhythm and reading the coverage and going through a progression, and that\u2019s the difference-maker,\u201d Flutie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cVernon Adams is dynamic, a very great athlete. Bo Levi [Mitchell] down in Hamilton; Bo\u2019s a consummate pro, a smart quarterback. There are talented guys [in the CFL]. Once you get to a certain point where you\u2019ve had that experience under your belt, you\u2019re on a level playing field, you can go play anywhere, and that\u2019s where Bo is, that\u2019s where Vernon Adams is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flutie said playing in the CFL put the fun back in football for him while highlighting Don Matthews and Michael \u2018Pinball\u2019 Clemons. He shared that his 37-year-old daughter, Alexa, still talks about Grey Cup parades in downtown Toronto when the Argonauts won back-to-back in 1996 and 1997.<\/p>\n

\u201cUp here, it was spread the ball out, six receivers, throw the ball all over the field, use the quarterback as a runner \u2014 do all these things that really suited my abilities. It\u2019s stuff now that the NFL is copying from us,\u201d Flutie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t ever written down in a playbook, but we made up the RPO \u2014 we did it on the fly. If that guy comes off to tackle me, I\u2019m throwing you the ball. It was very innovative, and it carried over to the NFL. Now the athletes are playing quarterback down in the NFL, and they\u2019re doing all the things we used to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamar Jackson can be used as a great example. 30 years ago, Jackson\u2019s best path to playing professional football likely would have come in the CFL. However, with NFL offences and thought processes evolving, the Baltimore Ravens selected him in the first round, 32nd overall, during the 2018 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould he have been as high of a draft choice as he was? No. You could still get there, make it and prove your worth, but you weren\u2019t a first-round draft choice and get anointed the position,\u201d Flutie said. \u201cYou had to go earn it if you were that kind of an athlete quarterback, rather than the six-foot-four guy that stood there and threw.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy: Ben Green\/Buffalo Bills Doug Flutie calls it how he sees it. The first time the Heisman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-137435","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}