Steve Milton: Brandon Banks will feel ‘weirdness’ facing Ticats on Friday
The blocking sleds and tackling dummies have all been moved back to Tim Hortons Field as the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' 2022 training camp at McMaster ended with a walk-through practice Thursday morning. After the Ticats play their final pre-season game Friday night in Guelph, head coach and president of football operations Orlondo Steinauer and his staff will pare the roster to 46 active players and another dozen on the practice squad.
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Brandon Banks says, The initial feeling will be weirdness," when he sees his former Hamilton Tiger-Cats teammates file into Guelph's Alumni Stadium for Friday's pre-season game against the Toronto Argonauts, for whom he is now a starting wide receiver. It's going to be very strange to see people you've been friends with for a long time being on the other side."
Banks joined the Ticats late in the Guelph Year' of 2013 and became one of the most memorable players in the history of the franchise, signed with the Argos as a free agent in February after the Ticats informed him he wasn't in their 2022 plans. He was the league's Most Outstanding Player in 2019, was a rare winner of the receiving triple crown (receptions, yards, touchdowns) and scored dramatic touchdowns on kickoff, punt and missed-field goal returns.
He says he's adjusted to being an Argo, loves working with quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson and has come to realize that sometimes change is good." He says he's stronger mentally and emotionally and that 2021, took a lot of out of him because the pandemic kept his children out of Canada.
But mostly, he said, he's physically healthy after a series of painful injuries in recent years.
I'm not going to get any faster, I'm just getting smarter on the field," he told The Spectator. I'm 100 per cent healthy and it feels good. I don't think people realized that I played hurt last year. They think I'm old, which I am, but I still have a lot left."
Banks' first two CFL games were played against the Argos, the second of those in Guelph, and he reminds everyone that he was then wearing No. 87, not the No. 16 which became synonymous with outrageous excitement and prompted his Speedy' nickname. He also says, Tell the Tiger-Cats fans I will always love them."
He considers Simoni Lawrence and the departed Jeremiah Masoli are my best friends in Canada," and understands that if he makes a crossing-pattern reception Friday night he could be venturing directly into Lawrence's short-side territory.
If that happens I'm going to pull a full Simoni on Simoni. I'm going to talk some (bleep) on him."
Veteran right tackle Chris Van Zeyl, who practised Tuesday after missing the rest of camp, will start and likely play the first quarter with the rest of the A unit Friday night. Veteran starters Micah Johnson (defensive line), Bralon Addison (receiver) and Cariel Brooks will be given the night off. Also missing will be three Canadians on the six-game injury list: receivers Lemar Durant and Tyler Ternowski and centre/guard Coulter Woodmansey.
Ticat quarterback Dane Evans and his wife Nikki were emotionally shaken by Wednesday's fatal shootings of four staff members at a medical centre in Tulsa. Evans was born in Oklahoma, went to high school four hours from Tulsa in North Texas and played three years for the University of Tulsa. The couple, who are expecting their first child any day, spend parts of the off-season in Tulsa.
This one hit really close to home because it's Tulsa, obviously," said of the latest of many mass shootings in the U.S. Our best friend, who is a neurosurgery assistant, works there on the same floor where it happened, but her boss had told her she could go home early ... just 15 minutes before it happened. I love that city. When we're not in Hamilton, we're home in Tulsa."
The signing of defensive tackle Mohamed Diallo, who played at Arizona and Central Michigan but didn't get any offers from the NFL, means that six of the seven Hamilton selections in the 2021 Canadian draft will be in uniform Friday. Only third-rounder Deane Leonard, 18th overall, won't be here because was selected by the Los Angeles Chargers in last month's NFL draft. Leonard and Diallo were both considered futures" picks by the Ticats because they were strong NFL prospects. Diallo's arrival is important because if he can make it to the game-day roster, he would join defensive end Mason Bennett to use in relief of defensive tackle Ted Laurent. That, with Tunde Adeleke at safety and sophomore Stavros Katsantonis also available, should allow the Ticats to meet the seven-man Canadian minimum with two - or three - on defence and five (sometimes more) on offence.
Friday's game at Guelph's Alumni Stadium starts at 7:30 p.m. and will not be shown on TSN, which is carrying the Montreal Alouettes at the Ottawa Redblacks in the early time slot followed by the Saskatchewan Roughriders at BC Lions. The Ticats-Argos game will be carried on the Ticats Audio Network and simulcast on CHML.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com