How the Ottawa Redblacks' QB tandem of Jake Maier and the thick-bearded "MTB" came to be

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The strong-armed Bethel-Thompson, who turns 38 on Friday, has completed 66.8 per cent of his passes for 18,755 yards, 103 touchdowns and 69 interceptions in his 105-game CFL career.

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An owner of two Grey Cup rings from his days with the Toronto Argos, the 6-foot-3, 230-pounder completed 17 of 34 passes for 182 yards in his last CFL game on Oct. 25, 2025, as a member of the Montreal Alouettes.

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Dinwiddie likes the ability of both Maier and Bethel-Thompson to “push the fall downfield” better than Brown.

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What was MTB doing when he got the call from Dinwiddie?

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Besides working out with Masoli, Bethel-Thompson was taking care of some family business.

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“We were moving from Los Angeles back to the Bay Area for my daughter to go to kindergarten,” said the owner of one of the best QB beards the CFL has ever seen.

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He and Masoli were also training young high school and college quarterbacks.

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“Kind of sharing my football knowledge where I could, and trying to peek over that fence as to what was next,” said Bethel-Thompson, who wants to pursue a coaching career “in college or the NFL” when his playing days are done. “And stay in the game, stay connected with it, because it’ll always be a part of my life.”

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Bethel-Thompson said he spoke with Brown before making his way to Ottawa.

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“Obviously, this team has already been through a lot this year, but there’s still a lot of season left, and they’ve got a lot of good players in that locker room,” said MTB, who added that his first order of business is to fully grasp the Ottawa offence. “So it’s just figuring out what the vibe is, what the culture is, and how I can add a little bit to it and help here and there.”

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What did Brown say about his final days in Ottawa?

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As a guest on “Handled Internally”, the Blue Bombers’ weekly show/podcast, Brown spoke about how happy he is to be back in Winnipeg, where he spent the first three seasons of his CFL career.

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“I really loved my time here,” Brown, who was traded last week for a first-round draft pick and a swap of seconds, told host Ed Tait. “My whole family loved it here, my wife loved it here, so we are just pretty excited to be back.”

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He did take exception to a quote from Dinwiddie, who said Brown was a “little bit of a distraction” after finding out he was being replaced as Ottawa’s starter.

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“I was super excited for Jake, because you know there’s guys in the league that sometimes get dealt a bad hand and they struggle a little bit, and they get spat on, and I always thought he was a great player,” said Brown, who asked for his release from the Redblacks when he lost his No. 1 job before throwing a pre-season pass. “So I tried to look at it from the lens of like being happy for him because he’s a great guy. But obviously, I was pretty disappointed in just like a lot of the things that transpired.

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“Honestly, (the distraction comment) kind of hurts a little bit, just because I just feel like if you asked anyone in my 20 years of playing football, ‘Is Dru a problem? ‘ they would be like, ‘Absolutely not.’ Whether you’re the starter or the backup, I always kind of felt like I was about the team, and yeah, I was a little hurt by that because I did feel like the only things that I confronted were in private. It’s not like I was like out to embarrass anybody, publicly or in front of the team; it was just one-on-one conversations because that’s how I was raised to do it. Was I upset visually for a couple of days? I would bet someone could look at me and be like, “Oh, it looks like he just got fired on his day off, you know what I mean,
but we’re all human. There was some grace there, for sure, on their end, but I still feel I loved the guys I knew well.”

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