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<\/p>\nThe six-foot, 242-pound Sankey played all 998 regular-season snaps on defence with B.C. He also recorded a career-best 12 pass knock-downs while his three sacks and four tackles for a loss both matched personal bests.<\/p>\n
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Sankey, 32, received 158 points to finish ahead of Toronto Argonauts linebacker Adarius Pickett (99) and Calgary Stampeders defensive lineman Clarence Hicks (94). Fourteen players received votes.<\/p>\n
Mike Benevides, B.C.\u2019s defensive co-ordinator, shared Sankey\u2019s accomplishment during a team meeting. Sankey becomes the third player Benevides has coached to win the award.<\/p>\n
\u201cMan, I can\u2019t even, I\u2019m like, shaking,\u201d Sankey told his teammates following Benevides\u2019 announcement. \u201cI can\u2019t even describe the feeling.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a pleasure just to be in this building with you all; it\u2019s really something special. I respect everybody here; I love you all. Man, we\u2019ve got to go win this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
B.C. visits the Edmonton Elks in the West Division final Saturday. The winner advances to the Grey Cup, which will be played Nov. 15 in Calgary.<\/p>\n
The other Benevides-coached players to win the award are Betts (last season) and Cameron Wake (2008, when Benevides was the Lions defensive co-ordinator). Like Betts, Wake actually won the honour twice (first coming in 2007) before heading to the NFL to play with the Miami Dolphins (2009-2018) and Tennessee Titans (2019).<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom Day 1, \u2018Sank\u2019 has set the standard for what we have wanted to build on defence,\u201d Benevides said. \u201cHe\u2019s the epitome of a pro and the latest in a long line of great winners we\u2019ve had here.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom Day 1 of training camp and the first defensive meeting in Kamloops, he\u2019s instilled greatness in our unit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wake registered 39 sacks over two seasons with B.C. before adding 100.5 during his NFL tenure. Benevides was the Lions\u2019 special-teams co-ordinator and linebackers coach in 2007.<\/p>\n
Sankey is completing his fifth CFL season. He has appeared in 92 career regular-season games, accumulating 570 tackles (nine for loss), five special-teams tackles, 11 sacks, nine forced fumbles, five fumble recoveries, 29 pass knock-downs and four interceptions.<\/p>\n
Sankey won a Grey Cup in 2023 with the Montreal Alouettes and has cracked the 100-tackle plateau four times overall.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The six-foot, 242-pound Sankey played all 998 regular-season snaps on defence with B.C. He also recorded a career-best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":957089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[879,49,48,521,522,2467,520,2461,2468,2460,2462,2463,44,2464,2465,2466,82],"class_list":["post-957088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-central-vancouver-island","tag-cfl","tag-nanaimo","tag-nanaimo-breaking-news","tag-nanaimo-news","tag-nanaimo-news-now","tag-nanaimonewsnow","tag-news","tag-oceanside","tag-parksville","tag-qualicum","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957088","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=957088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/957089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}