{"id":956762,"date":"2026-11-03T12:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956762\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T12:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:58:12","slug":"mike-miller-calls-shawn-lemon-future-hall-of-famer-wants-him-back-with-toronto-argos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956762\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Miller calls Shawn Lemon ‘future Hall of Famer,’ wants him back with Toronto Argos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto: Guang Quan\/3DownNation. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

Shawn Lemon has nothing if not ambition, age be dammed.<\/p>\n

The 38-year-old believes if he played an entire regular season games with the Toronto Argonauts in 2026, he would have led the Canadian Football League in sacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not doubt him. Anything Shawn Lemon talks about, he understands the game and what he\u2019s capable of for sure,\u201d head coach Mike Miller said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u00a0have a whole 18 games this season,\u201d Lemon said, \u201cI\u2019m 1,000 percent confident that I lead the league in sacks. I\u00a0play ball, if I\u2019m available to play, and I play a whole season, I feel like I can catch anybody.<\/p>\n

The six-foot-two, 248-pound pass rusher recorded nine sacks in 11 games with the Double Blue, plus one knockdown, two forced fumbles and 19 defensive tackles. He finished tied for fourth among the three-down league\u2019s quarterback takedown leaders. Clarence Hicks led the way with 12 in 18 games, second was Malik Carney with 11 in 17, third was Noah Taylor with 10 in 17 and fourth was Mathieu Betts with nine in 17.<\/p>\n

Lemon has the 10th most sacks in CFL history with 112. He\u2019s likely the most productive pass rusher in his Canadian football era. That said, there are bigger goals for the 15-season veteran. The Charleston, South Carolina native wants to catch his former Calgary Stampeders teammate on the all-time sack list.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want Charleston Hughes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lemon sits 24 sacks behind Hughes. It would likely take two high quality seasons for him to reach the newly minted Canadian Football Hall of Famer. That would mean playing professional football as a 40-year-old.<\/p>\n

1) Grover Covington \u2014 157.0
2) Elfrid Payton \u2014 153.0
3) Bobby Jurasin \u2014 140.0
4) James \u2018Quick\u2019 Parker \u2014 139.5
5) Charleston Hughes \u2014 136.0
6) Joe Montford \u2014 135.0
7) John Bowman \u2014 134.0
8) Vince Goldsmith \u2014 130.5
9) Stewart Hill \u2014 126.0
10) Shawn Lemon \u2014 112<\/p>\n

The Lemonator joined the Argos in late July and helped the team\u2019s pass rush improve drastically. Toronto finished the campaign with 44 sacks, most in the CFL. Saskatchewan (41) and Edmonton (40) were second and third. Canadian Jonathan Kongbo posted a single-season career-high six sacks playing at the other defensive end spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou talk about Shawn Lemon, I think he\u2019s a future Hall of Famer. The guy\u2019s done a fantastic job. In our locker room, especially, a great voice. That leader, he\u2019s been there, he\u2019s encouraging. Helps whether it\u2019s helping another d-lineman out with some technique or talking to a young rookie about the league and how to prepare. It\u2019s very valuable,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n

Lemon enters the offseason as a pending free agent, but he would \u201clove\u201d to be back in Toronto.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose things are not up to me.\u00a0I love the game of football. Football\u2019s been a part of my life since I was five years old. The rest of my life\u00a0I\u2019m gonna be doing something with football. I would love to play, but we\u2019ll see what happens,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Miller stated he \u201cwould definitely be interested\u201d in Lemon returning to the Argonauts for the 2027 season.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s fantastic. He takes great care of his body. He trains very hard,\u201d the 56-year-old bench boss said. \u201cLet\u2019s face it, this guy\u2019s got a great skill set. He\u2019s\u00a0got a great passion to play this game, and you see it on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2026 East Division all-star seems to have lots of juice left to squeeze.<\/p>\n

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Football insider, reporter and analyst.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Guang Quan\/3DownNation. All rights reserved. Shawn Lemon has nothing if not ambition, age be dammed. The 38-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[166835,166836,100127,22069,49,48,7028,521,522,520,185018,527,3300,285979,75446,299730,55635,942,82,3302,15656],"class_list":["post-956762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-argonauts","tag-argos","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-charleston-hughes","tag-football","tag-lemon","tag-lemonator","tag-mike-miller","tag-sack","tag-sacks","tag-shawn-lemon","tag-sports","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-argonauts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956762","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=956762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}