You’ve got to hand it to Trevor Harris for handing it to Ryquell Armstead.
“He’s the consummate professional,” Saskatchewan Roughriders Head Coach Corey Mace said of the CFL team’s starting quarterback.
“If we ask him to hand the ball off and not throw once, he’ll do it, as long as it carries into us playing winning football.”
This, dear reader, is easily verifiable.
“I don’t care if I throw 18 times or 80 times,” Harris said after Tuesday’s practice at Mosaic Stadium. “It’s about making sure that we have more points on the scoreboard and about getting a win.”
Harris’s words always have substance, but his actions speak loudest in this case.
The 12th-year CFLer is coming off a game in which he attempted only 18 passes — the Roughriders’ lowest total since 2018 — in a 37-29 victory over the host Calgary Stampeders.
Afterward, Harris had one more handoff to perform. He presented a game ball to Armstead, who rushed 25 times for 207 yards in his debut as a Roughrider.
“During a couple of drives, I said, ‘Man, this is nice!’ ” Harris said with a smile. “It was handoff, gash, gash. I was thinking, ‘This is sweet.’
“It felt like back in high school. We ran the Wing-T and we were dominant. We just ran the ball all over people.
“When it was my turn, I wanted to make sure I was efficient in the pass game.”
He most certainly was.
Harris completed 16 of 18 passes for 248 yards and one touchdown.
His completion percentage (88.9) was the highest of any quarterback in Roughriders history who has thrown 18 or more passes in a game.
He finished the contest with a stratospheric quarterback-efficiency rating (152.1) and is now the league’s leader in that category (106.2).
Harris also sported an impressive number when Pro Football Focus released its weekly Honour Roll on Tuesday.
Against Calgary, he graded out at 92.5, thereby earning the best mark of anyone who suited up at any position for any team this past weekend.
Harris was also the pace setter in Week 11, when he registered a grade of 93.9.
When grading himself, however, he is a tough critic — even after a game in which he threw only two incompletions.
“There’s always something, even if it’s a ball placement here and there, where you could have helped a receiver run after the catch a little bit more,” the Roughriders’ No. 7 said.
“There’s also things that, if you play again, I’m not sure I could replicate. The game is the game and you have to leave it there. Coach (Marc) Mueller always says that there’s not a string attached to the ball, so let it go. Let it rip and let it fly.
“I missed a lay-up of a throw to Sam (Emilus). I kind of did a chest fly (weightlifting motion) with the ball instead of throwing it, because he was so wide open and it was such an easy throw.
“It was my easiest throw of the night and I turfed it. Embarrassment … but we came back and converted the second-and-10.
“It was a good night overall.”
Especially when you consider the regularity with which he somehow fired the football through windows that appeared, at least from my vantage point on the recliner, to be prohibitively narrow.
The margin for error was, at times, the size of “a hay needle” — a description aptly used by Kian Schaffer-Baker.
“That’s something Trev does every single day,” the fourth-year Roughriders receiver added. “He comes out and makes every single throw.
“He’s precise on everything. He makes the right reads. It makes my job easy when you have a quarterback who can make throws like that.”
Discussing this with Harris on Tuesday, I did some spitballing and asked if there was perhaps a parallel to a baseball pitcher who, on certain days, has a livelier fastball or an unhittable breaking pitch.
Who can explain why, in select starts, a pitcher can reach the plate at 100 miles per hour instead of 98? In terms of control, there is sharp … and then there is hay-needle sharp.
“I work with my mental performance coach, Dr. Chantale Lussier, and we talk about that a lot,” Harris replied.
“Oftentimes, the difference between your best game and your worst game is not a physical difference.
“In terms of physically throwing the football, I’m as good as I have been, ever. I feel like I can place the ball with timing and all those things.
“It’s about where you’re at mentally.”
That is where the checklist, as outlined by Harris on Tuesday, enters the equation.
- Are you mentally ready?
- Have you played the game before the game?
- Are you going through your progressions?
- Are you giving yourself a chance if your primary, secondary or tertiary reads are not open?
- Are you standing tall in the pocket and not getting happy feet?
- Are you trusting the system?
“I’m blessed to have a tremendous play caller and tremendous teammates,” Harris continued, once again referencing Mueller.
“I just want to go out there and do my one-12th and make sure I do everything I can in terms of putting us in position to succeed.”
If that requires him to run the ball, fine.
In defiance of the calendar, Harris boasts a rushing average that improves with time.
Check out these numbers, which are expertly boldfaced to provide the ultimate reading experience.
Average per carry from ages 26 and 35: 4.5.
Average per carry since turning 36: 7.7.
We repeat: Seven point seven.
How, I inquired with incredulity and awe, is this even remotely possible?
“It’s more or less just me picking my spots,” the 38-year-old son of Tom Harris said.
“In terms of running versus finding my three, four and five (receivers) in progression, it’s kind of leaning more toward finding those checkdowns and letting them run with the football. If it’s something obvious, then I can take off with it.
“I’m getting a lot of messages from people, telling me to slide — including my dad, who is the one who originally told me to never slide. He said, ‘Quarterbacks are wimps and you’re not going to be one,’ so he made me promise not to slide.
“I’m just making sure I’m putting myself in the right position in terms of staying healthy for the next play but also knowing when it’s time to put my body on the line and go get it.”
That time arrived most recently in the waning seconds of Friday’s first half.
Seldom a scrambler, Harris noticed a void up the middle and took off for 14 yards — to the Stampeders’ six-yard line — before absorbing a ferocious hit from a linebacker who is well-remembered here.
“Ahhh, I smacked Cam Judge,” Harris said with a smile, before acknowledging that “I think I ricocheted off him for about five yards.”
Five yards were gained by Armstead on the next play.
Harris punctuated the possession by scoring on a one-yard quarterback sneak one second before intermission.
By then, Mace was breathing a sigh of relief, having weathered that moment of terror when a marquee quarterback and key leader — someone who missed six games with a knee injury earlier this season — is sent flying.
“It just goes to show the grit,” Mace said, admiringly.
“With the things he has been through physically, he put his body on the line for the betterment of the team.
“Ideally, do I want the end result to look like that? Of course not. But I thought it brought us juice, specifically in that situation where we were trying to score at the end of the half. That’s Trev.”
That pretty much says it all.
“He’s a pro’s pro — the kind of guy every coach is happy to have in the building,” Mace concluded. “I can’t say enough good things about 7.”
