For five straight years, Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ offensive lineman Stanley Bryant has found himself playing in the Grey Cup come November. For the last several of those, he’s spent the days leading up to the big game dodging questions about his potential retirement.
The 38-year-old’s answers have always remained steadfast and focused on the task ahead of him. This year, however, the tune changed ever so slightly. While he certainly isn’t thinking about retirement ahead of the 111th Canadian football title game, he definitely has thought about it this year.
“We started 0-4, that kind of thought ran through my mind then,” Bryant admitted on Wednesday. “But recently, no, that thought hasn’t come to my mind. I’m enjoying it. I love the journey we had this year.”
The future Hall of Fame left tackle has played 14 seasons in the CFL, the last nine of which have been with the Bombers. He’s won the league’s Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman award four times during his tenure, racking up eight All-CFL selections. But with Winnipeg struggling at the start of the year, there was a possibility that the living legend would have bowed out at the bottom if things hadn’t turned around.
“That’s tough to say. I can’t think about that because we’re here now,” Bryant said. “I’m just happy with where we at now and then we’ll see after this game how it feels and what things are.”
Bryant isn’t alone in coming to grips with the realities of post-football life. The Bombers’ longest-tenured player, Canadian defensive tackle Jake Thomas, may be only 33 but is wrapping up his 12th season with the club. He’s still having fun playing the game but knows it can’t last forever.
“I’m not coming into this game thinking it’s going to be my last but I also am a realist, and I see we have a good plethora of Canadians behind me,” Thomas told 3DownNation. “We’ll have a conversation about that once this is all done.”
“My body still feels good enough to play, so I don’t want to put a time on it. We’ll kind of cross that bridge after this game and go from there.”
The native of Douglas, N.B. appeared in all 18 games this year, recording 23 defensive tackles and two sacks. Remarkably, after playing more than 200 career CFL games, he says his body is holding up better than it did in the middle of his career.
“My body feels great this year. It’s been probably one of the best my body has felt throughout a full season,” Thomas said. “I think the older you get — ask Stanley Bryant next to me — you just figure out what you need to stay healthy longer.”
Bryant missed two games this season for the first time ever as a Bomber, both in the aftermath of an illness which caused him to collapse early in the team’s Week 12 game against Hamilton. It was a scary moment made all the more shocking due to his remarkable durability, not having missed a start due to injury since 2015.
While the Goldsboro, N.C. native’s ability to play through physical pain has made him an all-time great, he’s had to deal with the emotional pain of a Grey Cup loss the last two years. Bryant was the first to leave the locker room after last season’s defeat against Montreal and admitted the result cut him especially deeply because of his certainty that they would win.
Nevertheless, he insists that the outcome of Sunday’s clash with the Toronto Argonauts will not factor into any decision about his future.
“I don’t think it will because I look at it as just two things. You lose and you always want to come back and say, ‘Oh, we’ll get it next year.’ You win and you’re like, ‘I don’t want to go out on a hot horse,'” he explained. “I just have to sit back and reflect on whatever the result is and make a decision.”
What might have an influence is the fact that next year’s Grey Cup game will take place at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg — something that Bryant needed to be reminded of. The allure of making it six straight title game appearances — and hopefully back-to-back victories — may be too much to resist.
“I forgot about that. Yeah, ’25 Grey Cup in Winnipeg, that’ll factor,” he grinned, eyes lighting up. “But I think at the end of the day, we’ve got to win. It’s needed. We’ve been here five straight times, lost the last two, won the first two. It’s time for us to change that story and get another Grey Cup victory.”
The Bombers and Argonauts will face off at BC Place in Vancouver for the 111th Grey Cup on Sunday, November 17 at 6:00 p.m. EST.
