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 Toronto Argonauts

Landry: Veteran Backs Continue to Silence Doubters

July 24, 2015 - Canadian Football League (CFL)
Toronto Argonauts News Release


Andrew Harris and Brandon Whitaker are in similar places but for slightly different reasons.

They are proven veteran running backs who, just weeks ago, faced questions about their abilities to continue to be valuable contributors at the pro football level.

The two will be in exactly the same place on Friday night when the Toronto Argonauts visit the BC Lions, in Vancouver. That place, literally, is the same football field.

Figuratively, though, it is one of redemption and performance in the face of doubt.

"It's a part of the game," Whitaker replies, nonchalantly, when asked about his doubters. "The more banged up you get, the more you're supposedly losing a step."

"As a running back, the ankle is a big part of what you do," Harris says, about his battle to show he could regain his dominant form after injury.

Both Whitaker and Harris have been adept at combining yards with great regularity throughout their careers, be it by carving through the line of scrimmage after a hand off or gathering in a short pass in the flat and taking off.

Their statistics as well as their styles, are loaded with similarities. Whitaker has a career rushing total of 3,596 yards on 658 carries, a 5.5 yards per carry average, since entering the league in 2009. Harris, who began his career a year later (but saw no touches until 2011), has racked up 3,432 yards on 644 lugs, an average of 5.3 per trip.

Out of the backfield, Whitaker has caught the ball a total of 203 times for 1,782 yards. Harris has him bested in that category, with 224 receptions for 2,279 yards, an incredible 10.2 yards a catch (Whitaker's career average stands at 8.8).

Eye catching numbers. Yet here they are, in 2015, each trying to prove a little something. Trying to show that any epitaphs written about their respective careers were a little bit premature.

For Harris, it's about proving that he can still dominate after suffering through a separated ankle injury, complete with ligament damage and a rehab stint that was antagonized by a calf muscle tear. For Whitaker, it's that at the age of 30 - "Almost thirty," he corrects with a laugh - that he still has the engines needed to be the sea change kind of player he's always been, despite being cut by the Montreal Alouettes.

"I've got nothing to prove to the naysayers," Whitaker tosses out, casually. "I'm out here for my family and my teammates. That's all that matters to me."

Harris is similarly possessed, now, although he does admit that some negative, early season talk did rub him the wrong way. "Yeah, it did a little bit," he says. "The most I felt it was after that Week One game. People were really criticizing and saying I wasn't the same, it looked like I'd lost a step...." he trails off as though dismissing the thought with a backhanded wave.

In the early stages of the 2015 season, both Whitaker and Harris have silenced the skeptics. After a lacklustre first game, Harris has rolled in his last two, with a total of 262 yards from scrimmage.

That total includes a dandy 15 yard touchdown run in Regina last week. Whitaker was held to just 53 yards in the Argos' last game, a loss in Calgary a week and a half ago. However, he's totalled 343 combined yards in three games, ranking him number two in the CFL based on combined yards per game average (114.3).

Harris admits that he wondered just when he'd get back to feeling like the man who ripped through opposing defences from 2011 through September of last year. Or, more specifically, when he would have faith in his surgically repaired ankle again.

"Going through training camp I was a little bit worried," he confesses, adding that the worry lingered into his first game of the season, B.C.'s loss in Ottawa on July 4th. "The ankle itself felt really good. It was just the confidence in it that was still kind of off."

The doubts are gone, now, erased in Harris' performance the following week against Saskatchewan, where he rushed for 72 yards and caught passes for 74 more. He remembers the moment his faith was restored and it came in the second quarter.

"We were second and eleven or something," he says of the catch and run in question. "I took a couple of hits and broke a tackle and that definitely was one that, basically, spiked my confidence. And I felt normal again."

For Harris, then, a 2015 resurgence has come after a struggle to feel like his old self. Whitaker's has come with no such luggage, despite a list of injuries suffered throughout his career. In fact, he says, he almost immediately felt like he was home when he joined the Argonauts just after training camp had wrapped up.

It's been an easy transition for me," Whitaker says, praising the Argonauts' organization from top to bottom and realizing the importance of sliding in to an offensive system that, really, had already been built around his kinds of abilities. Scott Milanovich brought the template over from Montreal - where he'd previously coached Whitaker - when he became Toronto's head coach in 2012. "It pretty much is the same," Whitaker agrees. "Some different terminology and a couple of tweaks here and there. It's an offence that I trust and I've been successful in."

Unlike Harris, who needed to learn that he could bounce back from a major injury, Whitaker's already done that. Hamstring and foot problems robbed him of big chunks of his Alouette days. A major knee injury, in 2012, cut that season in half and meant Whitaker faced the same kind of doubts that Harris talked about.

"I've learned a lot from my injuries over the past couple of years," Whitaker says. "It's helped me be a better football player." The lessons are ongoing, he declares, and he knows well the differences between the life of a rookie and that of a veteran.

"As a young man coming in, you took care of your body but it didn't affect you as much," he says of football's rigours. "It (wear and tear) just kind of builds up on you. You learn from it. I've been able to take care of my body (this season). The coaches and the therapists here are unbelievable."

If the negativity of doubters is fuel for the early season successes of Andrew Harris and Brandon Whitaker, only one of them admits it.

"Coming out in that game against Saskatchewan, you know, I really had a chip on my shoulder," says Harris. "I just wanted to prove myself. I knew I was going to have to prove it to myself and to everyone else. Having a little chip on your shoulder, as a football player, it never really hurts."

That chip might have been discarded, now, though perhaps not fully. In its place, Harris has found a renewed self-assurance.

"Now, I'm exploding through hits," he says. "I'm bouncing off hits and the confidence is definitely there."

Harris and Whitaker. Similar styles, similar story lines. And, so far, in lock-step among the leaders in 2015.

Two of the CFL's most dominant backs over the last half-decade are in form as they get set to duel at B.C. Place Stadium on Friday night.


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