Arbuckle's roving CFL journey culminates in opportunity of a lifetime

MONTREAL — Football is a game where opportunities can appear or disappear in an instant and where things often come full circle.  

And there is no better example than the Grey Cup bound Toronto Argonauts, who emerged from Saturday's East Division Final at Montreal with a 30-28 win, setting up a matchup against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers next Sunday in Vancouver. 

The Argos led 24-16 late in the third quarter when quarterback Chad Kelly took off up-field with the ball and was tackled by multiple Alouettes at about the Montreal 20-yard line. 

Kelly got up, but immediately went back to the ground. Players around him started waving to the trainers. Within minutes, the entire Argo roster was surrounding Kelly, who was taken off the field on a stretcher and shuttled to Montreal General Hospital where he was due to have surgery Saturday night for an injury to his tibia. 

A player who had waited three months to play quarterback for the Argos while suspended over off-field matters had lost his opportunity in the blink of an eye, at the most critical moment of the season. 

That is football, a game where a player's season or even career can change on a single play. 

The flip side is that opportunities are born this same way. That was the case when backup quarterback Nick Arbuckle took the reigns with the Argos' season on the line and a quarter to play. 

Arbuckle met Toronto head coach Ryan Dinwiddie when he first came to the CFL to join the Calgary Stampeders' practice roster in the fall of 2016. 

At the time, Dinwiddie was a young quarterback coach with the Stampeders, best remembered for being the backup quarterback who had to start the 2007 Grey Cup game for Winnipeg, after starter Kevin Glenn was injured during the division final. 

Arbuckle didn't see action for Calgary until 2018 and then shone in 2019 while filling in for the injured Bo Levi Mitchell. After that season, the Ottawa Redblacks came calling and rewarded him with a contract to be their starter. Then COVID-19 happened and the 2020 season never took place. 

Arbuckle was in Toronto next year but lost the starting job to McLeod Bethel-Thompson and was traded mid-season to Edmonton for the rights to Chad Kelly. (Yes, football loves irony.)

In 2022, another mid-season trade sent him from Edmonton back to Ottawa, where he became a spot starter the rest of that season and the next. 

And then, this past off-season… nothing. By April and May of this year, Arbuckle thought his CFL career might be over. That is until – with Kelly suspended and not at training camp – Dinwiddie made a plea of Argos general manager Pinball Clemons. 

"I told [Clemons] we've got to sign Nick Arbuckle," Dinwiddie explained after Sunday's win. "I need him."

Arbuckle played sparingly for Toronto and didn’t play at all after Kelly returned in mid-August. Until Dinwiddie gave him the start for the Argos’ meaningless season finale at Edmonton two weeks ago. 

That game, where he threw the ball 32 times for 378 yards, didn't seem so meaningless on Sunday, given the circumstances into which Arbuckle was thrown in the East Final.  

After Montreal scored a touchdown on its first possession following Kelly's departure, Arbuckle drove the Argos into range for a critical field goal. Then, after the Als scored another touchdown, he bled-out the final two minutes of the clock so that Toronto could win the game in victory formation.

In both instances he made critical second-down throws against a Montreal defence that had done its job for most of the day against Kelly. 

The biggest moment of Arbuckle's career arrived six months after it seemed like it might be over. Now he finds himself as the starting quarterback in next Sunday's Grey Cup game. 

A couple of coincidences jump-out immediately. 

Arbuckle having a Grey Cup start drop in his lap is remarkably similar to what Dinwiddie experienced in 2007 playing for Glenn. And thus no one will be able to better understand what Arbuckle is facing than his head coach.

"My relationship with Ryan is why I'm here," Arbuckle said Sunday. 

The odds will be stacked against him next Sunday. 

But here’s another coincidence to consider: In 2021, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup and lost just a single meaningful game all season, in July to the Argonauts. 

Arbuckle was the starting quarterback in that game and had one of the best days of his career, throwing for 310 yards and doing what no other quarterback did that season in a game that mattered against the Bombers. 

Given how we got here, no one should be surprised if it happens again.