Steve Milton: Matt Shiltz returns to face the team that restarted his career
Matt Shiltz is a studious man, so he is aware of the temptation to try to do too much, as there always is when a professional athlete faces a former team. Especially one that ultimately rejected him.
But even in the immediate afterglow of last week's tactical, and necessary, victory over the Toronto Argonauts the Hamilton Tiger-Cats quarterback recognized that his next assignment - his second straight start as Dane Evans' throwing shoulder works back into game shape - would require emotional control and a coolly analytic approach.
Shiltz, 29, will indeed be at the helm again, with Evans also in uniform, when the Ticats visit Montreal Saturday afternoon to play the Alouettes, with whom they're tied for second place in the CFL East standings. Shiltz had been with the Alouettes since 2017, and played in seven games last year, starting three, before he was released in early February and signed within 48 hours by the Cats.
He led the Ticats to last Friday's comeback 34-27 victory over the Argos by overcoming his dearth of practice time that week, a first-quarter Argo interception which triggered an Argo lead, a lower-body injury that kept him out of the entire third quarter, and a deflating penalty which negated an apparent Lawrence Woods' punt return touchdown.
Shiltz has conceded that it is natural to want to show a team that rejected him that they had made a colossal misjudgment. This will be the first return to Montreal for him and Khari Jones, who was his head coach with the Als and is now a Ticats' offensive consultant.
But, he said, he'd channel the adrenalin rush in order to follow the game plan offensive co-ordinator Tommy Condell lays out for him.
No denying that I spent five seasons there and loved the people, loved the fans, loved the city, have a lot of friends on the team," Shiltz was saying this week. But I'm excited to be where I'm at now. I think it's a good new beginning in my career."
Shiltz will rely partly upon his academic background to reduce the game, and his role in it, into specific problem-solving bits. He graduated with a double major in accounting and management information systems, from Butler University where he was the starting quarterback much of his four playing years but also switched to defensive back for his sophomore season when it better suited the team's needs.
He was also named the Pioneer Football League's Athlete-Scholar of the Year in 2015, and made the conference's all-academic first team multiple times.
I always took pride in that, handling my business in the classroom as well as the football field," he says. I think a lot of it translates onto the football side. When you're studying for a math exam, you have to go through all the scenarios and problems you might face and you can apply that to the sports world."
After graduating his 2015 senior season, Shiltz had looks from the NFL's Chicago Bears and Indianapolis, and the CFL's Ottawa Redblacks and Calgary Stampeders but no concrete offers so, assuming his quarterbacking days were done, he started his off-field career, studying for his CPA (Certified Professional Accountant) exams and working in the auditing group of professional services giant Ernst & Young. But he was planning to leave the company and take a full-year internship in football operations with the NFL Colts.
Around Christmas time my mom (Karen Kabellis-Shiltz) said, You never know how God's going to work in your life. You just never know when a team will call you.' And I was, like, Yeah, whatever, that's not how it works. You have to get film, you have to play.'"
But, soon afterward, his agent called while Shiltz was in an audit meeting with a company client and said that Kavis Reed, then the Alouettes' GM, was interested in signing him. He went to a Florida mini-camp, earned an invitation to the 2017 training camp, and made the team. He finished his final two CPA exams after that season but likely won't put in the practical-work time required because once his CFL career is done, he wants to stay in football in management or operations.
The Alouettes traded for veteran Travis Harris last October and Shiltz slipped down the depth chart. He was cut in February, and GM Danny Maciocia fired head coach Jones just four games into this season.
Jones and Shiltz were still together in Montreal nine months ago, on Nov. 29, the day after the Tiger-Cats had defeated the Alouettes in the East semifinal at Tim Hortons Field. That morning his 61-year-old mother, who was a cancer survivor, was killed in a car accident in Dallas while returning from dropping off one of Shiltz's two brothers at the airport.
We had our exit interviews on the Monday, and that's when I got the call in the locker-room," Shiltz says, his voice breaking. I had a lot of friends on the team right there with me, and Khari was one of the first people to talk with me and support me. I still have a lot of love for Coach and the guys who were in the room to hold me up.
My mom was my biggest supporter both in football and in my faith life and she would send me pre-game reflections and be the one I'd vent to or talk to. She'd keep me grounded, keep me motivated. I know she loved me and my two brothers, we were her world.
It's definitely still very fresh. It was hard on Mother's Day, on her birthday. I definitely play with her as inspiration. I know she wants to see me keep pursuing this."
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com