Marcus Crandell was seemingly in a no-win situation.
From the moment he became a Calgary Stampeder, circumstances conspired to make his football life unpleasant.
For starters, when the quarterback from North Carolina joined the Stamps as a free agent in 2001, he was following some very tough acts. Consider the names of the starting QBs who had racked up miles of passing yardage for the Red and White in the decade before Crandell’s arrival.
Flutie. Garcia. Dickenson.
If the deck wasn’t already stacked enough against Crandell, the 2001 Stamps were in a team in transition.
For one thing, that was the first season since 1989 that a Calgary quarterback didn’t have the luxury of throwing footballs to Allen Pitts, one of the greatest receivers in CFL history. In addition, five all-stars from the 2000 squad — Dave Dickenson, Eddie Davis, Shonte’ Peoples, Marvin Coleman and Tony Martino — were no longer on the squad.
That was also the year franchise ownership was transferred from Sig Gutsche to Michael Feterik.
So when the Stampeders, who had a streak of 12 consecutive winning seasons heading into 2001, got off to a 3-6 start, it was Crandell who was the biggest target of criticism from the media and the fans.
The classy Crandell, to his eternal credit, never flinched. He patiently answered all questions from reporters. He absorbed the boos from dissatisfied fans and refrained from pointing fingers at other players who might share the responsibility for the club’s poor results.
To add injury to insult, Crandell hurt his shoulder in the Stamps’ Labour Day loss to the Eskimos.
Ben Sankey — who had started the season as the No. 1 QB but went down with an injury in the season-opener — took over the controls for the Stamps but the team continued to wobble, with Calgary suffering through a three-game losing streak in late September and early October.
By the time Crandell was healthy and ready to return to action, Calgary was 5-9 and in jeopardy of missing the playoffs for the first time in 13 years.
With Crandell back under centre, the Stamps salvaged their season by winning three of their final four games. Crandell was only adequate in those four contests, completing 75 of 134 passes for 1,076 yards with two touchdowns and five interceptions. He added a pair of rushing majors.
It was in the post-season that Crandell really shined.
In back-to-back-to-back weeks, the Stamps faced and conquered a BC team that had thumped the Stamps 34-16 in the next-to-last week of the regular season, the division-champion Eskimos and a heavily favoured Winnipeg Blue Bombers squad that had posted a 14-4 mark in winning the East.
Crandell was nearly flawless in the Stamps’ march to the Grey Cup as he threw nine touchdown passes without a single interception. By tossing for 309 yards and connecting with Marc Boerigter and Travis Moore on TD passes, Crandell earned Grey Cup MVP honours as the Stamps stunned the Bombers 27-19 at Olympic Stadium in Montreal.
“After we won our way into the playoffs, I guess the rest was history,” Crandell recalled in a 2004 interview. “It was one of those experiences where we all came together at the right time and gelled. Everyone made a lot of plays to win games, and for us to win the Grey Cup and for me to be named the MVP, just capped it all off. Really, I was just happy to have been given a chance.”
Rather than gloat about having proved the critics wrong, Crandell shared the credit with his teammates and with Stamps offensive coordinator George Cortez.
Besides, Crandell had had too winding a path — in the two years prior to winning the Grey Cup, Crandell has been with the Eskimos, with the Scottish Claymores of NFL Europe, with the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers and with the XFL’s Memphis Maniax — to do anything but savour the moment.
After playing sparingly in three seasons with the Eskimos and bouncing around in 2000, Crandell had finally found a football home.
“Patience is part of my personality,” he told a reporter during the Stamps’ championship run in 2001. “I got it from my family, I guess. It hasn’t always been easy waiting around and wondering if I’d ever get my chance. But it came, and we’re here and now we want to win it.”
Crandell played three more seasons for the Stamps and fared well, particularly in 2002 when he threw for more than 4,000 yards and tossed 26 touchdown passes, but the transition that had started in 2001 hit full rebuild in those years as key figures such as Kelvin Anderson, Travis Moore, Alondra Johnson, Vince Danielsen and Wally Buono, the architect of the great teams of the 1990s, all departed.
Crandell finished his playing career with the Saskatchewan Roughriders — picking up a second Grey Cup ring in 2007 — and went into coaching.
He served as an offensive assistant for the Riders in 2009, was named Edmonton’s offensive coordinator in 2011 and joined the expansion Ottawa RedBlacks as quarterbacks coach in 2014.