Nick Arbuckle stood on the confetti-filled turf at BC Place wearing every facet of his suddenly very public life.
His sweat-soaked uniform jumped out first, with the lights of TV cameras bouncing off of his face. At his feet was a baby bag, his young daughters, Aaliyah and Ariyah almost at his heels, with his wife Zakiyyah nearby. There was joy, pride, tears. The weight of the past week and maybe of a football existence that was built on resilience no matter how much the game tried to chip away at it, had been validated in one incredible, unthinkable night.
You re-live your life to this moment in a matter of minutes in these situations.
111th GREY CUP
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Arbuckle had just been named the MVP of the 111th Grey Cup, a young but travelled backup filling in for last year’s MOP-winning starter. He led the Toronto Argonauts to what many outside of their locker room deemed unlikely, if not impossible. He’d thrown 100 passes this year, before going in for Chad Kelly to close out last week’s Eastern Final. In his CFL career he’s bounced from Calgary to Toronto, to Ottawa, to Edmonton then back to Ottawa and finally this year back to Toronto. He spoke of his oldest daughter living in seven homes in the four years of her life.
An unsigned free agent this year, Arbuckle said this week that he was about a month away from making the move from football player to football coach, before the Argos signed him on May 19. Almost six months to the day of his signing, Arbuckle threw a pair of touchdowns in a Grey Cup win, pushing the Argos into that dynastic conversation that they’re nudging the Winnipeg Blue Bombers out of.
“I don’t really think too much about what it means for me, as much as what it means for my family,” Arbuckle told a growing circle of reporters on Sunday night.
He’s watched his oldest daughter make friends in junior kindergarten. He and Zakiyyah have made friends with the other parents at the school. “We have a community. We have a life,” he said.
Before last week, there was uncertainty about the future. Now?
“It killed me to think about having to uproot them and move them again,” Arbuckle said. “Maybe I won’t. Maybe my wife can keep her friends and my daughter can keep her friends in her school. And if not, and we do something else, you know, we’ll do it. But it’s just beautiful to feel like there’s a lot of hope for my family moving forward.”
Arbuckle and his family celebrated the Argos’ Grey Cup win on the field at BC Place (Thomas Skrlj/CFL.ca)
That security rests in what just may be an ironclad bond with his head coach, Ryan Dinwiddie.
Seventeen years ago, it was Dinwiddie in Arbuckle’s cleats, thrust into the starting job of a Grey Cup game for the Blue Bombers. Back then, Dinwiddie and his teammates said similar things in the week leading into that game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders. That the game doesn’t have to be more than it is, that they have a defence capable of going above and beyond, that this was winnable to them. When game time came, Dinwiddie threw three interceptions in a loss.
Dinwiddie has been an Arbuckle supporter from before Day 1, seeing film of him at Georgia State, then teaching him the CFL game in Calgary while he was the quarterbacks’ coach. He lobbied the Argos’ organization to bring Arbuckle in in the middle of their training camp this year.
“It was just great to share that moment with him. I’m just so happy that he’s a Grey Cup champion quarterback. He deserves it,” Dinwiddie said. “He’s been through a long journey and he’s been resilient. He wasn’t put in a favourable position, I don’t feel in Ottawa, in Edmonton. I just…I trust him. I know he can win ball games for us.
“We have a great bond. He understands a lot about me and I understand a lot about him as far as what we want to do on the football field. We also know a lot about each other as far as our character, who we are, what we stand for.”
“I think we’ve always been linked,” Arbuckle said.
Arbuckle remembers the last five or six weeks of the 2016 season on the Stamps’ expanded practice roster, with Dinwiddie teaching him the ins and outs of the CFL game. He got him in the weight room deadlifting and working out with the d-linemen to improve on short-yardage pushes. He remembers going from Ottawa to Toronto in 2021, saying it felt like a midnight move, with those short stays with other teams leaving him damaged before he felt reborn in Toronto this year.
“He got to see a new me and a me that’s been through the desert,” Arbuckle said.
“Just going through challenges and learning and growing as a person and changing as a person, having kids and a family. He got to see the me that was finally ready to embrace the moment and help this team win in any way possible.”
Seventeen years later, Dinwiddie got to (or had to, depending on your perspective) re-live what had to be a massively disappointing week through a quarterback that he has an undying faith in. Arbuckle delivered. It wasn’t a perfect game, but it was enough to lift a group that proved itself to be supreme in all three phases. It’s validation for both of them, for a team that was counted out all year, that drew the ire of fans at points and crossed the finish line in the most unimaginable way.
Unimaginable to those on the outside, at least.
“It never really crossed any of our minds that there would ever be any other outcome,” Arbuckle said. “I think that goes for every player on the team. You saw the energy and the belief and focus of every player. I don’t think there was ever a doubt in our building, from the top-down, of what was about to happen out here.”