Courtesy CFL.ca:

Jason Clermont, one of a large handful of receivers whose career has benefited by throws from Dave Dickenson, was both rhetorical and ominous answering the question.

How, the Lions slotback was asked, should his former quarterback be remembered for the five seasons he logged with the CFL team?

“How should he be remembered? People might want to forget him,” Clermont said Tuesday. “We shouldn’t be remembering Dave. We should be watching to see what he is going to do and maybe be a little bit afraid that we have to play against him. Don’t underestimate what Dave can still do.”

What Dickenson will do, now that he has been given his release by the Lions, remained an open question after he met the media Tuesday.

He could still retire and take a job as a financial advisor, which has been a side focus for years. But he is content for now to wait until January for possible offers from CFL teams that may yet include the Lions. And for that reason, his farewell gathering contained no tears, remorse or bitterness.

He even was still referring to the Lions as his team and said he’d have cut himself, given the size of his $400,000 contract, if in coach Wally Buono’s shoes.

“Wally could have picked up my [option] and there was still a chance you’d seen the last of me,” Dickenson said. “Even though it’s tough to close the chapter it was well-written, I believe, and it was time to see if there’s another chapter.”

Dickenson’s pass-catchers are convinced more is in store.

“He was so good for so long I don’t want to see him leave,” said fellow slotback Geroy Simon, the league’s two-time receiving yards leader. “If he plays, he’s going to be great.”

With the Lions having taken a risk by releasing him, it now falls to opponents to assess the worth of the 34-year-old as a player or coach. As head-coaching changes are imminent with at least three CFL teams, the next six weeks will amount to a slow courtship at best.

Also to be considered is if Dickenson could be happy as a backup.

“I guess the big thing is whether you’re going to play football,” he said.

It all suggests not enough time has passed for a path to emerge or wounds to heal, not when players are still baffled as to why the Lions altered course offensively in the West Division final loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

“We threw out our running game and that was a mistake,” Dickenson said. “[Joe Smith] was our MVP and we kind of ran out of ideas.”

“Personally, I don’t know why we made so many changes,” said Simon.

“I’d like to see us establish more of an identity offensively with whoever is our quarterback,” said Clermont.

Now in charge of a team that has neither Dickenson nor Casey Printers, Buono will today begin to determine whether Jarious Jackson is a candidate for the job by initiating contract talks. But until he left the Lions practice facility Tuesday, centre stage belonged to Dickenson for reflection.

A crowd of 20,191 showed up for his first regular season game five years ago. There were 34,242 fans in the stands for the final

regular-season contest last month. The player whose will always won out over his physical limitations figures he was at least part of the turnaround.

“It’s almost as if you were growing something new here. Vancouver has become its own little sports monster. We were proud to take it from that infancy stage, and I still say ‘us’ because I feel really proud to be part of that,” Dickenson said. “Everything has gone right. It was going to end. It just happened a little quicker.”