Dru Brown is returning to Winnipeg after the Blue Bombers acquired the quarterback in a trade with the Ottawa Redblacks on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The Blue Bombers also received a second-round pick in the 2027 CFL draft and sent their first-round selection in 2027 and a conditional second-round pick in 2028 to Ottawa.<\/p>\n
The move comes after Brown lost his starting job in Ottawa to Jake Maier before the season.<\/p>\n
Later Tuesday, the Redblacks signed quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson, who won two Grey Cups with the Toronto Argonauts under current Ottawa coach and general manager Ryan Dinwiddie.<\/p>\n
Bethel-Thompson, 37, completed 155-of-243 passes for 1,746 yards with nine touchdowns and nine interceptions in 15 appearances for the Montreal Alouettes last season.<\/p>\n
“We’re excited to add a player like McLeod to our football club. I’ve worked with him in the past, and I know the type of competitor he is,” said Dinwiddie in a statement. “He’s a veteran quarterback with a lengthy resume and the experience he brings will be a valuable addition to our organization.<\/p>\n
“He’s seen just about every situation in the game and we’re looking forward to having him in our locker room.”<\/p>\n
Brown appeared in 38 games with Winnipeg from 2021-23, helping the Bombers win the Grey Cup in his first season.<\/p>\n
He mostly served as a backup to star quarterback Zach Collaros but went 2-1 in three starts.<\/p>\n
After his negotiating rights were traded to Ottawa in January 2024, Brown signed with the Redblacks and became their starting quarterback.<\/p>\n
He went 8-6-1 in his first season with Ottawa and helped the team reach the playoffs for the first time since 2018, but regressed last season when he went 2-7 in an injury-plagued season.<\/p>\n
He will return to a depth role behind Collaros in Winnipeg. The Blue Bombers dressed Canadian Taylor Elgersma as Collaros’s backup in its first two games of the season.<\/p>\n
Brown holds the CFL record for most touchdown passes in a season without an interception, set in 2023 with nine.\u2028<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dru Brown is returning to Winnipeg after the Blue Bombers acquired the quarterback in a trade with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":757726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-757725","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\/757725","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=757725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/757726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}