{"id":474073,"date":"2026-02-14T07:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/474073\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T07:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T07:59:10","slug":"riders-add-aeneas-williams-award-winner-james-burgess-jr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/474073\/","title":{"rendered":"Riders Add Aeneas Williams Award Winner James Burgess Jr."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Saskatchewan Roughriders have signed\u202fAmerican defensive back\u202fJames Burgess Jr.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Burgess Jr.\u202f(6\u20193-190)\u202fsigned with the NFL\u2019s New England Patriots as an undrafted free agent in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Burgess Jr. spent four collegiate seasons (2021\u201324) at Alabama State, finishing his senior year with four interceptions while playing cornerback. In 12 games during the 2024 season, he recorded 53 tackles (including\u00a0four for\u00a0loss), 10 pass deflections, one sack, one forced fumble, and one fumble recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His standout 2024 campaign earned multiple honors, including the Aeneas Williams Award, given to the nation\u2019s top HBCU defensive back, as well as First-Team All-American and First-Team All-SWAC recognition. In 2023, he recorded two interceptions \u2014 both returned for touchdowns \u2014 alongside 32 tackles and 11 pass deflections in 11 games.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Saskatchewan Roughriders have signed\u202fAmerican defensive back\u202fJames Burgess Jr.\u202f\u00a0 Burgess Jr.\u202f(6\u20193-190)\u202fsigned with the NFL\u2019s New England Patriots as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":474074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-474073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474073","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=474073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/474074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}