Andrew Harris has big post-playing career goals in the Canadian Football League.
The 37-year-old newly-hired Saskatchewan Roughriders’ running backs coach wants to take his coaching and player personnel career as far as possible in the CFL. He had been talking with “a few” teams about coaching or personnel jobs before agreeing to a deal in Riderville.
“This is the first step for me. I want to eventually either be a GM or a head coach in this league. What I was doing after playing, in sales, I can go back to any time. I felt there’s a certain window and shelf life being relevant and staying fresh within the body of work you put in. I played 14 years and I got a lot of knowledge to pass on,” Harris said.
“I felt like if I would have waited any longer, then maybe this opportunity would have went away. This is the next big step for me in football post-career and now coaching career. The end goal for me, I’m trying to navigate that right now, is becoming a head coach or a general manager at some point in time.”
Harris produced the best career by any Canadian running back in CFL history. The five-foot-nine, 215-pound ball carrier retired with 1,952 carries for 10,380 yards, 5.3 per carry, with 51 touchdowns while recording 609 receptions for 5,489 yards plus 32 touchdowns. He’s one of six players in league history to eclipse 10,000 rushing yards in a career.
“The one thing I know the most about is playing running back. It’s a good place to start to figure out which way I want to go. I’m excited about the role I have today and really want to be the best at it as possible,” Harris said. “I’m not really looking too far ahead of how it’s all going to play out. I’m going to take it day-by-day, come to work with my hard hat, lunch pail, and try to make the team as best as it can be.”
Harris has talked to Saskatchewan general manager Jeremy O’Day about scouting. He wants to be a “sponge” while learning from the Riders scouting staff and football operations department. O’Day assigned him a group of running backs to evaluate who are eligible for the 2025 CFL Draft.
“If I would have gone into scouting or something right away it would have been good, but this is a transition into getting reintroduced back into the CFL. There’s a lot of draft prep. This is really the opportunity that came up and I think the one that would have been most natural for me,” Harris said.
The Winnipeg, Man. native didn’t expect to be wearing green and white, considering his hometown’s “thick” rivalry with Saskatchewan. However, it’s the best situation for the former Blue Bombers star as Harris is in the process of moving his family back to Winnipeg and plans to be in Saskatchewan when needed during the offseason, along with training camp and the season.
“As a coach, all you’re expected to do is prepare your athletes to play the best they can and try to take the emotion out of it as much as possible. Being a Winnipegger, that’s going to be hard to do, but they’re the team that wanted to give me the opportunity to coach, which I wanted to do,” Harris said.
“Ability is nothing without opportunity. They’re the ones who gave me the opportunity. I’m going to do what I can to make sure that I’m giving the backs, the offence, the run game, the O-line, the whole team the best I can to help make an impact.”