Sean Lemon
Shawn Lemon and the Argos lost in heartbreaking fashion to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at BMO Field on Saturday.
There is little that Shawn Lemon hasn’t seen or heard in 15 years and eight teams playing in the Canadian Football League.
He has lost games he should have won, such as the Argos’ playoff loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Saturday.
He has played in seasons like this one, impossible to explain. He has been suspended for drugs and gambling and at the 38-years of age, running around like a kid at BMO Field, he picked up two Winnipeg fumbles, ran like he was a running back at times, and thought he might have scored.
“If I score on one of those, we win,” said Lemon, the oldest of Argos, and on sad days like this one, maybe the wisest of Argos as well.
When it ended, with the Argos somehow all but giving away a 25-22 defeat to a rather ordinary Bombers team, Lemon stood up in the dressing room and made an emotional speech to his teammates.
It wasn’t something he had planned on doing.
It was a speech, his coach, Mike Miller, was talking about after the gut-punch of a Eastern semifinal defeat. A speech his teammates that will live with them as this strange season is now over.
The Argos began their season in June and didn’t play a home game until August because of the FIFA World Cup. The team spent three months together in Guelph. There was no home games. And Lemon wanted to remind them of all of that yesterday.
Season like no other
“I’m so proud of myself, so proud of this team,” said Lemon almost half an hour after the defeat. “We overcame a lot of adversity this year. I wanted to tell them, we’re all in this together. And I wanted to tell them how proud I was of them.
“I told them, when you start the season like we did, we played twice in Saskatchewan, twice in Winnipeg early, that’s crazy, that’s never happened before. I’m going to walk out of here today with my head hanging high. I’m proud of myself and thankful for this team. I wasn’t even on the team for the first seven weeks. I wasn’t in training camp. But I’ve come to love these guys.”
And they have come to love him.
He gathered a fumble in the second quarter, off an almost sack, with the Argos leading by three, and ran 23 yards looking like he was Brady Oliveira. The Argos turned that huge momentum play until a momentum loss of sorts when they scored three points instead of seven.
In the third quarter, it was Lemon Time again. A ball bounced, again he picked up a fumble. Again, the ancient warrior thought about scoring but didn’t get very far. But one play later, the million dollar quarterback, Chad Kelly, was stripped of the football, injured and Winnipeg scored on defence. That was Kelly’s last play of the game.
Instead of the Argos being up by a bunch at the end of the third quarter, they were up by two.
“That was an ugly one for sure,” Winnipeg quarterback Dru Brown said of the game. “We know how funky (this league) can get.”
A win that got away
Funky when a 38-year-old defensive lineman can run around like a kid after all these years and all these teams and still make a difference. Not knowing if this was his last game or not. He probably won’t make the decision on his future, teams around the league will.
The hope from here is that he signs in Hamilton, at least for one game, just for purposes of history. Playing for the Tiger-Cats would make him the only player in history to have played for all nine CFL teams.
But it’s too soon to think about that or talk about that now. He was surrounded late in the afternoon by Double Blue, his teammates, the colours in the locker room, those waiting around to shake his hand.
No season ends well or happily in any sport. Football has one-game playoffs. Win and you keep playing. Lose and your season is over. The Argos should have won Saturday. Instead they gave the game away with their own conservatism and an injury to their quarterback.
“I love football,” said Lemon. “It’s been such a big part of my life since I was 5 years old. I’m 38 now, so it’s been 33 years old my life in football.”
There are no defensive linemen older than him in Canadian football. There is one in the National Football League older. Calais Campbell of Baltimore is one year older than Lemon, not changing games the way the Argo has this season.
He had nine sacks in the 11 games he played — those are beyond Hall of Fame numbers for what has already been a Hall of Fame career, minus the difficulties along the way. The Blue Bombers turned the ball over four times and the Argos barely took advantage. How often can you turn the ball over four times and win?
This could have been a finger-pointing ending for the Double Blue — with the defence blaming the offence and a dreadful special-teams breakdown ultimately proving costly — but Lemon would hear nothing of that.
“When we lose, it says Toronto Argonauts,” Lemon said. “We win as a team, lose as a team. We’re not pointing at anyone for this. If I score on that fumble return, who knows, who knows what happens? I love these guys. I love this team.”
He then shook hands with more of his teammates. Most of them kids to him. It was time to say goodbye, maybe his goodbye to the game he loves.