Steve Milton: Danny McManus: A fun, even-keeled leader
Darren Flutie was usually Danny McManus's go-to guy for the big play on the field. And he was often the Hall of Fame quarterback's go-to guy for the horse play off the field.
McManus, who will have his No. 14 affixed to the Tiger-Cats' Wall of Honour at halftime of the Ticats' crucial game against Saskatchewan at Tim Hortons Field Friday night, has a deliciously dry sense of humour. His democratic playfulness in the Hamilton locker room helped cement his unquestioned leadership as much as his strong arm, confidence and even-keeled approach won his teammates on the field.
Ron Lancaster (their head coach) used to pass out this inspirational message once a season, and had been doing it since we were all in Edmonton together," Flutie recalled the other day. And after a few years, I'd start to joke a lot about it so Danny would ask me what I thought, just to get me to rip on it.
But he'd only do it when coach Lancaster was standing right behind me and I couldn't see him. I'd turn around and there he'd be, looking at me. Absolutely stone cold. Danny got me on it a few times."
Flutie and McManus are close friends. When they were both trying to become CFL regulars in the early 1990s, they were on the scout" team with the B.C. Lions. They combined to help the underdog Lions upset Flutie's brother Doug and the 15-3 Calgary Stampeders in the 1994 western final right in snowy Calgary, with Darren catching the winning pass from McManus, then they upended the Baltimore Stallions in the Grey Cup. They were starters together in Edmonton, reaching the magnificent 1996 Grey Cup Snow Bowl in Hamilton before coming with Lancaster in 1998 to Hamilton, where they combined for 372 receptions and 26 touchdowns. They also propelled a team that had been 2-16 the previous year into the 1998 Grey Cup, losing narrowly to Calgary. They made up for it the following year with a decisive victory over the Stampeders, cemented by Flutie's memorable one-handed touchdown catch.
There were highlights all over my career, but the biggest one was the 99 team and being able to see the guys who went through the 2-16 season up there on the stage getting the Grey Cup," McManus said this week. They went through a lot tougher times than I did and I really felt for them. I felt for the city too. When we came back from Vancouver, there were tons of people at the stadium, and the parade was nuts, they'd waited so long."
It was the last time the Ticats won a Grey Cup. And the following year, McManus, who is the franchise's all-time leader in several passing categories, became the first CFL quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards in six consecutive seasons.
The lowlight of McManus's career was also easy to pinpoint. The 2003 team went bankrupt, then was taken over by the league on its way to a worst-in-modern-CFL-history 1-17 record. Flutie was retired by then, and McManus had a bad year before rebounding for a second 5,000-yard season in 2004.
In 2003, everybody on the team was loaning money to the players who needed it to survive until the league kicked in," McManus recalled. And when the league kicked in, they just took care of all the formal written contracts. All the side deals for personal promotions - all legitimate public relations stuff - were gone."
McManus, popular in the community, was out a significant amount of money on that and, as if the wound needed any more salt, the day before a September game, his SUV was clipped by another car and caromed onto its side after McManus had obeyed a four-way stop outside Ivor Wynne Stadium.
It was the worst year ever, for sure," McManus said, now laughing.
That ability to laugh at himself comes, he says, from his late mother Shirley, who urged him not to take himself too seriously.
In that vein, a play McManus recalls even more vividly than the Cups and passing records was his 19-yard touchdown run against Saskatchewan in 1998.
I was scared to death every step I took," said the famously non-running pivot. I was waiting to get hit the whole time. It was a play fake, and they went with the play fake and no one was there except the guy covering Andrew Grigg, who blocked him at the two.
It was more laughter than celebration in the end zone. People just couldn't believe it."
Operating together for a decade in three different cities, McManus and Flutie had a feel for each other's reading of the game that bordered on psychic, and they've been ranked as among the CFL's top 10 passer-receiver combos of all time. They roomed together in training camp and on road trips and watched Monday Night Football together every week. McManus said Flutie was so smart it was like having another quarterback on the field, and his ability to open up other receivers was vastly underrated. Flutie, in turn, praises McManus's strong arm, quick release and ability to foresee a revised pattern, but most of all, he appreciated his even-keeled nature on the field.
McManus said that came from his Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden.
His words still ring in my ear," McManus said. That the players are able to read whether you're confident in the next play or not. You don't want them to get too high, you don't want them to get too low, you want them to do their job just two per cent better on the next play.
It's the belief factor. They have to believe that you believe. What really got me was him saying, In that huddle there are 10 sets of eyeballs looking right at you.'"
When he came north, that became 11 sets of eyeballs. Friday night when he goes onto the Wall of Honour, there will be 23,000 sets.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com