{"id":548500,"date":"2026-03-20T07:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548500\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T07:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T07:08:13","slug":"hogan-cassar-preparing-for-season-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548500\/","title":{"rendered":"Hogan: Cassar Preparing for Season and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

They\u2019re the words every Toronto Argonaut fan wants to hear from a player.<\/p>\n

\u201cI bleed Double Blue. I can\u2019t see myself leaving and playing for someone else and playing against Toronto. I grew up in Toronto, I\u2019m born and raised here, I\u2019ve been going to Argo games my whole life, and I was drafted here.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

But in the CFL he\u2019s 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\u2019t going to happen with players like Wynton McManis and Henoc Muamba manning the middle of the second level in Cassar\u2019s time with the Argos.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He\u2019s 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\u2019t be on the field for punts, kicks, and returns.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe reached out to me and said he could see me rotating in on defence,\u201d Cassar told Argonauts.ca. \u201cHe\u2019s going to have a lot of different looks, I\u2019m 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\u2019m just happy to contribute any way I can on his defence.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Cassar is excited about working with Quick, the same can be said about the coach\u2019s eagerness to work with a player he\u2019s admired for several years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cJack is obviously a stellar, stellar special teams player, but when he was coming out of Carleton I was very intrigued by him. We\u2019ve spoken openly about my expectations for him and there\u2019s definitely a role for him in our defence.\u201d<\/p>\n

And now it\u2019s up to Quick to add to his skillset and become a juggler, trying to find playing time for a deep, talented group of linebackers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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\u2019s a complete linebacker, he really is. He\u2019s one of the first people I talked to when I took the job and I\u2019m really excited about (working with him).\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question the Argos struggled defensively last season. Quick will have some talented returning players to work with, but there\u2019s an incoming group of players that should help make his job easier.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cassar is among those who can\u2019t wait to see how the pieces of the puzzle come together. But how good can the finished product be?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re as good as we want to make it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to put in the work. We\u2019ve got the bodies, we\u2019ve got the people we need in the building to be great, but now we have to go out and earn that greatness. That\u2019s going to come with our preparation, that\u2019s going to come with having competitive practices, and being the most physical defence in the league. And that\u2019s something we\u2019re going to have to live by this entire season.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThe part that interested me most was the sponsorship side,\u201d said Cassar, not surprising from a Commerce major who has already interned in the off-season with MLSE partnerships, mostly on the Raptors side.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to see how the CFL operates through their sponsorships and how that\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s added to his list of possibilities after experiencing different sides of a sport he loves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They\u2019re the words every Toronto Argonaut fan wants to hear from a player. \u201cI bleed Double Blue. I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-548500","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\/548500","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=548500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}