It is special to be playing in my third Grey Cup, it’s just a testament to the organization, for real. It feels like I’ve just been in the right place at the right time, honestly.  I’m appreciative and because we lost the two before, now I know what it takes.

Communication is super important in my position, and it’s also important for the guys to trust me. But we’ve been playing together for a good little minute now, so the guys trust me and I trust them – I know they’ve got my back.

Bo and I communicate all the time, too, and sometimes we butt heads because we both want to be great. I love the competitive aspect of his game, and he loves the competitive aspects of my game, so we love each other, and we’re going to get the job done.

And I’m very proud of him for winning Most Outstanding Player.

It’s almost surreal that he won, because he’s just a genuine guy. You don’t realize who you’ve got in your backfield until other people start talking about it – we just think of him as Bo. When the media starts talking about him and how great he is then you start thinking, ‘wow, we’ve got a potential Hall-of-Famer in our backfield.’

But all the accolades and stuff don’t really matter, we’re just trying to get this trophy.

This year is a little different for us, though. Sometimes in the Grey Cups you get tight, it’s the big game – everybody just starts stressing. I think we’re more relaxed this year, we understand how everything works.

Also, right now, this is probably the healthiest we’ve been in a minute.  I missed a few games earlier because of my right knee, but things happen and we did a great job of getting Nila Kasitati, our backup centre, ready and he came in and did a great job. I feel like our comradery has been showing the entire year.

And after almost three years, the distractions of CFL week don’t matter anymore. We have a lot of veterans on the team like me, who this is their third straight year so we try to keep the new guys on the straight and narrow, too, so we’ll be ready to play.