Dru Brown will pay his former team a visit less than a month after being traded when he starts at quarterback for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Sunday night at the Ottawa Redblacks.
The Blue Bombers (3-2) may have a quarterback controversy on their hands. Zach Collaros, 37, was off to a poor start to the season before sustaining a neck injury in Week 5.
Brown took all the snaps on July 10 in a 30-21 home win over the Toronto Argonauts, completing a stellar 25 of 31 passes for 339 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Collaros was ruled out for Winnipeg’s Week 7 matchup with Ottawa and Brown will make another start.
Brown gets his chance at revenge after he lost his starting job to Jake Maier in preseason and requested his release from the Redblacks.
“It probably was a little bit of a distraction, just how (Brown) went about it, but I thought he did his best to support Jake,” Ottawa coach and general manager Ryan Dinwiddie said in June. “He wanted to go someplace else, so we gave him that opportunity to do that.”
Now there’s a chance that could come back to bite the Redblacks (0-5), the last remaining winless team in the CFL.
Sunday’s matchup is between the two lowest-scoring offenses in the league, tied at 23.8 pointer per game. Each team has seven passing TDs this year; only the BC Lions are behind that with six.
Maier, Brown’s replacement as QB1 in Ottawa, tossed four interceptions in last week’s 40-17 drubbing at the hands of the Edmonton Elks.
“I knew (this potential storyline) was going to be coming weeks ago,” Dinwiddie told reporters this week. “I only worry about the guys in this building. Obviously, we wanted to keep Dru around, and it didn’t work out. … But we still believe in Jake. Obviously, the four interceptions are not what we wanted.”
Winnipeg coach Mike O’Shea didn’t want to feed the potential fuel, saying the revenge game angle was something “the media has to cover,” but one of his top receivers, Nic Demski, said “the whole team” is rooting for Brown to stick it to his old club.
“Everybody knows what the situation is,” Demski said. “It’s pro football but, at the end of the day, everybody has a personal relationship with Dru since he’s been here before. Everybody knows how hard he works and how much preparation he puts into this.”
–Field Level Media
