You might say that Sam Emilus is proving Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Trevor Harris right when he referred to the pass catcher as a future hall-of-famer.<\/p>\n
With leading receiver KeeSean Johnson out with injury, Emilus led all receivers with 10 catches for 108 yards from Harris to help the Riders defeat the Montreal Alouettes 25-17 in the Grey Cup game at Princess Auto Stadium on Sunday.<\/p>\n
That earned the 28-year-old Montreal native the Cup\u2019s Most Outstanding Canadian Award.<\/p>\n
\u201cRIDER NATION!\u201d whooped the youngster as he held the award over his head in jubilation while standing on the podium where the Grey Cup trophy was officially presented.<\/p>\n
The 10 receptions was just two short of tying a single-game Grey Cup record shared by Montreal\u2019s Red O\u2019Quinn and Edmonton\u2019s Tom Scott.<\/p>\n
\u201cTen (catches?) Holy (crap),\u201d said Riders head coach Corey Mace. \u201cI don\u2019t know what else you want to say about Sammy, man. He\u2019s my favourite. We go out there, we start four Canadians and I would say that the passport doesn\u2019t matter. These dudes are just good football players. That\u2019s how we look at everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m incredibly proud of Sammy, though. He deserves everything. Battling in and out of injury. He pushed through it, man, and again, (now) with that Grey Cup champion next to his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emilus overcame both an ankle and knee injury that limited him to seven regular-season games where he still caught 37 passes for 588 yards and two touchdowns.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Emilus made many of his receptions in tough situations and most of them kept drives alive. He caught six tosses for 56 in the first half alone. His longest was 31 yards.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing into this game, I was about to give everything I had for Coach Mace, the coaching staff, the players and the whole organization,\u201d said the six-foot, 200-pounder. \u201cI get more motivation playing for other people \u2014 my teammates and the coaches \u2014 so, I knew they were going to get everything I had out of me. We earned it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going into the game, Emilus had admitted it would be extra special to beat the team from his hometown that he grew up watching.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the fun part,\u201d Mace said while sitting beside Emilus at the podium in the post-game media conference room. \u201cIt\u2019s what\u2019s going to happen in that locker room. Sam doesn\u2019t even know it yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Roughriders running back coach Andrew Harris won his fifth Grey Cup in five tries, with each one having a Winnipeg connection. The former Blue Bombers running back won his first when the B.C. Lions beat the Bombers in 2011, then two with the Bombers in 2019 and 2021, and then beat the Bombers for the Toronto Argonauts in 2022. The fifth he won as a coach on Winnipeg\u2019s home turf.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo do it here in Winnipeg is a surreal moment and, hopefully, it\u2019s a start of a long coaching career for me,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m excited for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going for the next one now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You might say that Sam Emilus is proving Saskatchewan Roughriders quarterback Trevor Harris right when he referred to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-289018","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\/289018","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=289018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}