Courtesy Toronto Star:

It took a couple of weeks after that loss in the Eastern final, but Mike O’Shea can see clearly now and is ready to do it all again.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to come back,” said the Toronto Argonauts’ long-time linebacker and defensive leader.

That was yesterday, the day Rich Stubler was being officially introduced as the team’s new head coach.

O’Shea couldn’t have said that the day after that upset by the Blue Bombers. In fact, he hadn’t much wanted to talk at all that dreary afternoon as he cleared out another locker, headed into another off-season, this time with retirement more of an option than it was the off-season before.

“I had to have time,” the 37-year-old veteran said yesterday. “Certainly to let the emotional letdown subside. I mean, it’s tough going into that game year in and year out and losing. It makes you sort of question what you’re doing.”

The reference was to the East final, where the Argos have gone down five of the last six years – the exception being 2004, when they won it all, O’Shea’s third Cup win.

But of his now 15 CFL seasons total, 11 with the Boatmen, 10 have ended with a playoff loss.

“And it doesn’t get any easier to handle,” said O’Shea. “There’s just so much emotion that goes into a season and a lot of it gets stifled, right? I try and play very even-keeled so, at the end of every season, there’s an outpouring of emotion and a ton of different sorts of feelings. You certainly can’t make any good decisions while you’re going through that.

“The kids want me to play football again and the wife just wants me to be healthy, feel good – which I do,” he said.

“And, obviously, having coach Stubler tell me he wants me back makes any decision easier.

“I don’t think there was ever a point where I was doubting whether or not I wanted to play.

“I don’t think I’ve ever lost sight of the fact that I love going to work every day.

“It just gets pretty murky when you lose like we did. You know, it gets clouded over a bit, then the weather clears and it’s apparent, again, what it is you love to do.”