Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Ricky Ray ready to return?

The Fan in Toronto had former CFL star Ricky Ray on the air with Chuck Swirsky on Monday for a wide ranging discussion on football and Ray's current status in the NFL. If you're a CFL General Manager it might be worth your while to get his agent on speed dial and your bean counters into the office as there might be something to track here! Ray sounded very much like a kid at summer camp longing to come home, his voice expressing a sense of disappointment with his current situation in pro foootball.

With the New York Jets rather deep at the Quarterback position these days, not to mention winning quite handily as well, Ray has found himself relegated to the clip board squad. Basically being used as a practice roster body, Ray gave some less than subtle hints that he wouldn't necessarilly be against a return to the CFL and a chance to get some playing time in real game situatiions.

The former Edmonton Eskimo pivot has had an educational if somewhat limiting experience in New York, feels he has fine tuned his game off the field but would definitely like to get back to the days of running an offence for real and leading his team on to a championship. He made some interesting observations about the differences between the CFL and NFL game and seems to have made the best of his non playing moments in the Jets camp.

But players want to play and Ray sounds very much like a frustrated fellow, realizing that the Jets won't be calling him onto the field short of a disaster in the ranks. He doesn't sound like someone inclined to spend two or three years carrying clipboards and running the alternate offence in practice. Which may be good news for CFL fans, as his exciting brand of football certainly caught the imagination of the country in last years Eskimo march to the Grey Cup.

It's a bit early yet, but he's thinking about his future but the signs are not to far from the surface. You never know, Ricky Ray may be making a run to the border come next May!


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