Stars Ready to Shine: Brady Oliveira up for outstanding double
11/14/2024 02:12 PM
VANCOUVER — Honouring the top performers across seven categories, the sold-out CFL Awards will see the league’s best awarded for their outstanding work all season, with seven teams represented across the nominations.
At the 2024 edition of the CFL Awards, the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Montreal Alouettes both appear in three categories each, while Brady Oliveira will be representing the Winnipeg Blue Bombers twice over with his nominations.
The Riders' dreams of making it to the 111th Grey Cup fell short in the Western Final, but the team still has the chance to walk away from awards night with a good amount of hardware after some well-deserved nominations.
Reigning Grey Cup champions Montreal also look to celebrate their season once more despite falling to the Argos in the Eastern Final, as Most Outstanding Defensive Player, Most Outstanding Canadian and Coach of the Year are all categories they are nominated for.
111th GREY CUP
» Watch the CFL Awards LIVE on CFL+
»Hall: 7 iconic Grey Cup moments in history
» Prediction Time: CFL.ca writers' 111th Grey Cup picks
» Connect, Collect and Win: Introducing the Grey Cup Festival Hub
» Buy tickets to the 111th Grey Cup!
Oliveira is up for the Most Outstanding Player award once again as he topped the league in rushing yards for a second consecutive season with 1,353, becoming the first player to accomplish the feat since Andrew Harris did so from 2017-2019. He has now eclipsed the 1,000-yard mark in the past three seasons, and led the CFL in yards from scrimmage for a second straight year with 1,829.
Consistent in his work and crucial to the Bombers’ success, the season Oliveira had has led his team to a fifth-consecutive Grey Cup appearance, and has also put the Winnipeg native up for the Most Outstanding Canadian award as well.
On the special teams side, Janarion Grant returned 67 punts for a league-leading 989 yards and three touchdowns during the regular season, earning himself a nod for Most Outstanding Special Teams Player. He is up against BC’s Sean Whyte, who made 50 field goals this season at a 94.3 per cent success rate tallying 186 points on the season.
Even with nominations in Most Outstanding Defensive Player, Most Outstanding Lineman and Coach of the Year, Riders head coach Corey Mace, along with his two players who arrived in BC as CFL Award finalists, are clouded by disappointment, surrounded by the festivities of what they hoped would have been their team, reminded of a season ending long before they were ready for it to.
The Riders improved vastly this season under Mace, who is up for Coach of the Year, going from back-to-back seasons of missing the playoffs with 6-12 records, to ending the year in second in the West Division and beating the BC Lions in the Western Semi-Final before falling to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Rolan Milligan Jr. and Logan Ferland are also finalists for Most Outstanding Defensive Player and Most Outstanding Lineman respectively, but no amount of hardware will be a consolation or a silver lining for how Saskatchewan’s post-season played out.
For the award nominees from the Riders in attendance, there won’t be any moment for celebrating these accomplishments for even being considered for these awards, but instead the feeling that they should still be out on the field, getting ready for the Grey Cup looming over them.
“These suck. I mean, I love you guys, but this sucks because you just want to be here with the whole organization,” said Mace when asked if winning any CFL Awards would take the sting out of the Western Final loss.
“Maybe to see the other boys [would] bring a smile to my face, but you just wanted everybody to be a part of this.”
Mace is up against Jason Maas of the Montreal Alouettes for Coach of the Year, while another Riders and Als battle will take place on the stage as Milligan Jr. is up for Most Outstanding Defensive Player against Montreal’s Tyrice Beverette.
Milligan Jr. led the league with eight interceptions, and tallied 111 total defensive plays on the season which ranked fifth overall in the CFL. He also racked up 10 pass deflections, 71 defensive tackles, and 20 special teams tackles.
Milligan Jr. led the league with eight interceptions this season. (Matt Smith/CFL.ca)
“I was kind of sour about coming up here at first, just because of the loss. She kind of talked to me a little bit like, ‘You should go still. It’ll be good for you. If you win the award, this is not necessarily a failure,” said Milligan, whose wife supported him in attending the awards despite a sour finish to the year.
The loss will sting for a while, especially watching on as Winnipeg gets ready for the Grey Cup with Oliveira nominated for both Most Outstanding Player and Most Outstanding Canadian, but the Riders are still taking away positives from the experience.
Ferland is up against Toronto’s Ryan Hunter for Most Outstanding Lineman, and credits much of his personal as well as his team’s success to Mace and the culture being built in Saskatchewan, and while the end result wasn’t what the team had hoped, getting to represent the group on the CFL’s biggest stage is still an honour.
“I think it’s incredible. It should go without saying, I think what he’s done, his age coming into it, his experience coming into it, what he’s done with the group that we have,” said Ferland.
“How much trust he has instilled in the guys will very well deserve an award. And I think everyone around the league would agree.”
The Riders aren’t up for any awards directly against the Bombers, though they will be watching on as Oliveira has the chance to take home a double – but his fellow nominees make the decision a tough one.
Isaac Adeyemi-Berglund of the Als is also nominated for Most Outstanding Canadian, while Hamilton’s Bo Levi Mitchell is Oliveira’s competition for Most Outstanding Player – his fourth nomination and potential third grab of the award.
Mitchell won his first MOP in 2016, and then again in 2018, seeing success with the Calgary Stampeders where he won two Grey Cups – being named the MVP in both of those games – earning All-CFL and All-Star honours and was the league’s passing touchdowns leader in both of his MOP seasons.
After not playing in 2020 and a less than ideal year that saw Mitchell out of the starting spot in 2021, he was then traded to the Ticats in 2022. The 2023 season consisted of injuries and just passing the 1,000-yard mark on the season.
“While you’re playing, the only thing you can do is judge yourself on your bad years, right? Just going through injuries and playing bad football, not winning championships, that’s the only thing you judge yourself on when you’re playing,” said Mitchell.
This year, Mitchell proved to himself, and everyone who thought that the two-time MOP player was far from his best form, that the best of his play was yet to come.
In 2024, Mitchell threw for 5,451 yards, the most in his career, and set a Ticats franchise record, tallying 1,115 yards more than Winnipeg’s Zach Collaros who sat in second as Mitchell earned his first-ever CFL passing crown.
In addition, his 32 touchdowns were the second most of his career, and eight more than McLeod Bethel-Thompson who took second place.
“A big part of me wanted to continue to play was [because] I didn’t want to get to a position of just playing good football or just being a starter, I wanted to be number one. I wanted to be back on top,” said Mitchell.
“Not saying that I have gotten there, but it definitely feels better being an MOP nominee than not, right? So even to be in that consideration was [great], especially with the amount of good players we had this year.”
But with the experience and growth from having the longevity of a CFL career like Mitchell has, processing the losses become a little easier, and puts attending a night like the CFL Award into perspective.
In a season where Mitchell broke franchise records and has the chance to make history again as just the fifth player in league history with three MOP trophies, being able to leave a legacy is what matters,
“I think the four nominees and two, possibly three wins is one of those things that, those are what you think about when you’re done,” said Mitchell.
There’s still a bitter taste of not being able to get into the postseason, despite some stellar play from Mitchell, as well as Ticats receiver Shemar Bridges, who is up for Most Outstanding Rookie against Edmonton linebacker Nick Anderson.
Even with the appreciation for the award nominations, his own and for others, Mitchell still believes that there are many teams in the league that wouldn’t have wanted to play the Ticats in the playoffs.
“In our minds, if we got into playoffs, it was going to be us or no one,” said Mitchell. “That’s kind of the mindset we had.”
The CFL Awards can be streamed live on CFL+ starting at 10:30 p.m. ET.
