This is my “emperor’s new clothes” CFL column.
The age old parable about the delusional and naked royal fat guy can be applied to football fairly easily. In this case, the subject is Darian Durant as an elite quarterback in this league.
Many people believe this to be an accurate assessment of the Roughrider pivot, but that does not make it true.
Durant is the best Rider quarterback since Henry Burris.
Kerry Joseph managed the team well enough to win an MOP and Grey Cup, but his strong suit was his personal running game and an enormous will to win.
Joseph was micro-managed to a higher level by Kent Austin and crashed back to Mother Earth when the Austin training wheels were taken away from his game. His current unemployment is no fluke — merely a dose of reality.
Reality is currently absent from the Durant assessments. The quarterback talent measurements after Hank have been generous on the side of mediocrity, so a quarterback like Durant would automatically seem like a superstar.
The bar has been set very low by former Rider quarterback gems like Nealon Greene and Michael Bishop. An 87-year-old guy with advanced rheumatoid arthritis could clear that bar with room to spare.
So Darian Durant is a breath of fresh air for Rider Nation.
He can get the job done on a talented team at a competent level most of the time. But he owes a huge debt of gratitude to a highly talented corps of receivers who are primarily Canadian. They make Durant’s job a lot easier — in theory.
The problem is that Durant has a lot of trouble dialing in his game with the receivers.
He does not have enough touch on the ball to be considered elite in a Calvillo or Burris way.
Fortunately, his receivers are so good that they can make the circus catch — or die trying. Last year’s injury to superstar slotback Wes Dressler was a direct result of a high pass and his willingness to sell out to make a catch.
It is fair to say that not every pass is going to be a perfect spiral.
Large hostile guys on the field will throw off even a Doug Flutie. But Doug Flutie learned how to throw on the run, and he was an undersized guy with an average arm. Darian Durant will never be in the same league as Flutie, and too many unrealistic comparisons to the league’s best quarterbacks are coming Durant’s way.
Durant is not a pocket passer like Kevin Glenn. Glenn is shorter and less mobile than Durant, but Glenn has better accuracy and he has mastered the inside crossing routes with his receivers. A pocket passer has to make lightning-fast reads and get the ball very rapidly to his primary target or check-down options. This is not Durant’s strong suit.
Durant also likes to test the boundary targets well past his personal passing strengths and abilities. He also hangs on to the ball too long while a herd of talented receivers wait in vain for the pass to come their way on the designed timing play.
Right now I see an average quarterback fortunate enough to be a part of a great team. Not enough material to cover this football emperor with superstar clothing.
Jim Sutherland is a local freelance writer whose columns appear on Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at mystarcollectorcar.com