How Bryson Barnes gave Ottawa Redblacks fans the parting gift of hope

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“I wanted to make sure that I never lost the mentality of just one play at a time, regardless of what had happened before, just continuing to chip away,” he added. “And I wanted to put my head on my pillow at night knowing that I took good care of the ball and I was able to find completions and move the chains. We’ll watch the tape. Obviously, there’s going to be a lot to improve on. I’m excited to watch it, but I feel like I’m gonna be able to sleep pretty good tonight, knowing that I did those three things.”

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Who is going to be the Redblacks’ starting quarterback next season?

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Surely not Jake Maier again, nor McLeod Bethel-Thompson, the aging veteran who replaced Maier at the post a couple of weeks ago.

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They aren’t going to sell belief or tickets.

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Chad Kelly? The sometimes-spectacular Argos QB who annually leads the CFL in interceptions and limped off the field early in the first quarter Friday?

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Maybe a reunion with Redblacks head coach Ryan Dinwiddie is a possibility, but, if the Argos let Kelly escape via free agency, they’d be in the same position Ottawa was in this season.

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Barnes, who turned 25 on Oct. 7, might not come to camp as the No. 1 guy, but, based on what he did with his only opportunity to date, he certainly has to be leading the conversation today.

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Why, oh why, wasn’t Barnes given a chance earlier?

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That had to be the question asked most often by anyone even vaguely familiar with the Redblacks’ plight, which was comparable, if not worse than “Silly Season ’88,” when the Ottawa Rough Riders stumbled and bumbled their way to a 2-16 record.

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Dinwiddie liked the chances to get that first win better with Maier and Bethel-Thompson because they’ve been here and done that.

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Asked the day before his debut when he felt “ready” for the starting assignment, Barnes figured “it was around week five or six, when things finally started to kind of click.”

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Dinwiddie felt differently.

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“Well, I would say, if we put him in there early in the year, you might not see this performance where he’s at right now,” Dinwiddie said late Friday night. “Young quarterbacks, especially in this league, you got to develop them. You know, 12-man football, guys moving around … He’s fresh out of college, right? So we had to make sure we gave him the time to develop.”

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Any doubts Dinwiddie had in Barnes had disappeared with less than three minutes remaining, when the Argos took the ball over on their own 39, down by two points.

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“We told the defence, ‘Hey, let them score,'” Dinwiddie said. “They would have ran down the clock and had a chip shot (field goal), right? So hey, let them score. We can go down and win it with a touchdown.”

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So how, now, does Dinwiddie see Barnes projecting going forward?

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“Well, I think right now let’s just be happy with his production that he had tonight, right?” said Dinwiddie, who confirmed Barnes would get the ball for next Saturday afternoon’s season finale in Hamilton, as if anyone had a doubt. “He’ll be our guy next week. Let’s develop him again, right? Put him in a favourable spot to execute and go from there.

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“I think everybody wants to have an answer right away after you know one game. Let’s not jump the gun. But, you know, Bryson’s got a bright future with us.”

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For his part, Barnes sounded like he might want to talk more about how Day 1 of the deer hunting season went rather than his game when he called home.

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“You enjoy it for about 12 hours, and then you get right back to it and right back to work for the next week,” he said. “It’s the last week; it’s obviously got to be our Grey Cup, it’s got to be our Super Bowl. That’s got to be the mentality even though the season hasn’t gone the way we would have liked it to.