Jun
Little guy Stefan Logan still casts shadow at Lions camp
Courtesy Vancouver Province:
He’s the one player who is talked about more than any other at Lions camp and yet he is not in Abbotsford, nor anywhere in the country.
If he’d actually played longer than one season in the CFL, Stefan Logan would already have achieved legendary status for all the discussion about him.
Not a day goes by when there isn’t at least one question about the jitterbug tailback who has taken his act for a tryout as a returner with the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers.
Not an hour, seemingly, goes by when the four imports who hope to take his place are not compared, but never to each other. For a player whose 5-feet-6, 181-pound frame stretches the limits of acceptable reporting standards, Logan remains the elephant in the Lions’ locker room.
It would be easy for the player with the most experience at the position to demand that such talk ceased, yet few on the Lions understand the process of building a team better than Ian Smart.
The fourth-year tailback may not be receiving the number of practice reps deserving of a first-stringer but Smart isn’t the least bit rankled:
“Everybody’s getting the same amount of opportunities. Can’t complain at all.”
The battle to replace Logan has been one of the bigger positional tussles the first week, and chances are it’s about to become even more serious.
Logan finished final mini-camp Thursday, and silence from the Steelers the next few days would mean he’ll carry on to main camp.
That runs through Sept. 5., so the earliest he’d figure to return to B.C. is halfway through the CFL season.
It means that although the Lions’ first exhibition game doesn’t take place until Wednesday on the road at the Calgary Stampeders, the season could well reach a crossroads before it ever gets under way. Yet nobody in the organization seems the least bit impatient with Logan and an option-year process that can potentially keep the CFL team on a very lengthy holding pattern.
“The thing is if you don’t at least try [the NFL] it will eat you up for the rest of your life,” said slotback Geroy Simon, who has kept in contact with Logan and himself has first-hand knowledge of a longshot tryout down south.
B.C. offered Logan an additional $30,000 in the offseason to honour the second year of his CFL contract, which was $30,000 more than he received to sign in Pittsburgh.
But the incentive carried no weight when measured against lifelong dreams. So the process being undertaken by the Lions must not only produce a lynchpin for the running game, it also must account for a solid returner.
Smart grudgingly admits this takes him out of the running for winning two jobs with the Lions. He’ll either return kicks exclusively or battle for time with four others in camp who desperately could use a game or two in order to clear the logjam.
Imports Emmanuel Marc, Damian Sims and Martell Mallett have all taken turns turning heads. Also not looking out of place is Nanaimo junior Andrew Harris, who’s been guaranteed one preseason game strictly off his camp work.
Still, all are being viewed in comparison to a player who is at camp only as a discussion topic.
“[Logan] is in a situation where he has a chance to do a lot of great things,” said Smart, who also is keeping in touch with his former B.C. teammate.
“I think he will. I’m just going to seize the moment.”
