In a sport where collective success is the only thing that matters, there is a certain irony to the emphasis placed on “winners” in the draft evaluation process. Individual players who have been contributors to successful programs are both praised and prized as they begin their journey into pro football, often without much consideration for the strength of the structures that allowed them to “win everywhere they’ve been.”
Brandon Davies-Lyons certainly doesn’t fall into that category. The hulking lineman from York University has a total collegiate record of 2-28 — not counting forfeitures — labouring away for a school that recruits have long joked is a worse fate than not playing at all.
“As someone who comes from a team that doesn’t win much, you realize that being a winner is not easy,” Davies-Lyons told 3DownNation earlier this offseason. “It’s not tennis, you can’t just be one guy doing everything. It actually takes a lot to win, a lot of things have to go perfectly.”
Yet, as he prepares to showcase himself for scouts at the CFL Invitational Combine on Friday, it is impossible to consider Davies-Lyons anything less than a winner. Against long odds, the affable big man with a broad grin has persisted through one of the darkest eras of football in U Sports history to help spark a turnaround, all while making a meaningful impact off the field for those in need.
His non-profit foundation, NDN Athlete Action, has organized annual food drives since 2022, helping to address food insecurity for Indigenous people in the GTA through their support of the Native Men’s Residence and Native Women’s Resource Center of Toronto. He also works closely with the Durham District School Board to help mentor at-risk youth in his spare time and has been invited to attend the national Diversity in Sports Conference as part of the Emerging BIPOC Leaders program for three years running.
Davies-Lyons’ passion for serving his community is rooted in his upbringing. Born in Oshawa, Ont. to a teenage single mother, he was taken in by his grandparents when he was little more than a year old. They gave up their retirement to prevent him from being placed in foster care, a moment he believes changed the course of his life forever.
Others were not so lucky. He has at least seven siblings born while his mother battled drug addiction and homelessness, all except the last of whom were taken by Children’s Aid with no ability for his grandparents to support them. To this day, he has only met one of them — a 19-year-old sister who contacted him for the first time last year.
While his mother has been clean and sober since 2020, the pair’s relationship will never be conventional as a result of that history.
“She was always in and out of my life. Not that she didn’t want to be involved, but she was always in jail, homeless, on drugs — I just didn’t see her because she was doing the wrong things,” he acknowledged.
“We kind of have more of a brother-sister relationship. It’s still my mom, I still respect her that way. I still love her, obviously. I don’t mean no disrespect, but I think because we were raised by the same people, it kind of gives you that brother-sister relationship.”
As a child, Davies-Lyons knew that he was of Mi’kmaq and Ojibwe descent, but felt a limited connection to his culture. He grew up in the city, far removed from the reserve, and both his grandfather and estranged father were adopted as children, creating further distance.
“It wasn’t until probably high school that I really started thinking about it and then in university that I met a lot of people that have the same situation as me,” he recalled. “People that have the blood but don’t know their culture. I started meeting people, going to these student groups and learning a lot more.”
It was that process of self-discovery that led to the creation of his non-profit, which began as a social media project to highlight the stories of Indigenous athletes at both the professional and amateur levels before morphing into something more active. While he had heard occasional stories about hockey players like Jordin Tootoo, Indigenous role models were few and far between growing up — especially in football.
“No one knows who the first Indigenous football player was and there’s probably a good chance that whoever they say it was may not have even been the first,” Davies-Lyons said, remarking on the CFL’s spotty record when it comes to honouring historical Indigenous players.
“There are a lot of people out there who were in my shoes who were, I don’t want to say ashamed, but they felt embarrassed to talk about their heritage, especially back in the day. The last residential school was closed in 1996, the CFL has been around for over 100 years. They didn’t talk about that stuff back then.”
Davies-Lyons has now become the very role model that he sought to highlight when he began the project, but that hasn’t come without its own trials and tribulations. The six-foot-four, 300-pound lineman committed to York in 2020 out of a desire to stay within driving distance of his ailing grandfather but also bought into the sales pitch that the historic OUA basement dweller would come out of the pandemic revitalized. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The Lions would not win a single game on their own merit through his first three years on campus, with a single post-humous forfeiture interrupting a string of what would have been 22 straight losses. Over that span, they were out-scored by a combined total of 1,117 to 134.
“A lot of guys transferred out. If you ever look at those rosters from 2021, a lot of those guys still play football in U Sports but at different schools,” Davies-Lyons said of the recruiting class that was supposed to change things. “There’s no bad blood or anything like that, do what you’ve got to do for yourself and your family, but I’ve always been someone who doesn’t want to switch up and change. Once I’m committed to something, I’m not a quitter. This is my home and these are my people.”
Things hit rock bottom in 2023 — a season in which the team was left to operate without an official head coach. York was shut out in five of their eight games and never allowed fewer than 52 points against. On three occasions, opponents surpassed the 80-point mark with relative ease.
Davies-Lyons would spend long hours after losses sitting in stunned silence in his car or laying awake in bed, struggling to comprehend what was happening and wondering if his commitment was worth it.
“You can’t lose 80-0 every week and have it not be tough. That means you’re not trying and you don’t care about the sport,” he insisted. “That crushed me. It almost felt like, ‘What are we doing? This isn’t real.’ But we didn’t have an actual head coach. It didn’t even really feel like a football team. It just felt like a bunch of dudes coming here, and we just played football.”
“That was probably the toughest part. There was no culture, no standards. Nobody at York really lifted and that obviously caused injuries. We were weaker and slower than every other team.”
While turnarounds are subjective when you’re coming off arguably the worst season in U Sports history, things shifted dramatically with the hiring of head coach Dexter Janke in 2024. Davies-Lyons describes the former fifth-round CFL Draft pick’s arrival in glowing terms, praising his commanding aura for creating a nearly gravitational pull. This was a players’ coach determined to leave the program better than he found it and people began to buy in.
There was still one more challenge in store for the young lineman before his patience and perseverance would bear fruit. The Lions once again lost the first three games of the season with Davies-Lyons at nose tackle, while piling up injuries along a paper-thin offensive line. Desperate for bodies, a proposal was raised to train the fourth-year prospect as an emergency replacement at guard — a role he had never played at the university level.
Davies-Lyons initially balked at the idea and politely declined to make the switch, but couldn’t sleep that night feeling as though he’d betrayed his own character and let his team down. He called offensive coordinator Rick Walters to let him know that he would suit up for him if needed. After just two days of practice, he was named the starter at right guard against Toronto, where York held on to win the 54th annual Red & Blue Bowl by a score of 19-17.
“It was just incredible. You got goosebumps. I was on Cloud Nine,” he said of winning his first-ever U Sports game. “The first five minutes, I was really hyped and then when I started seeing the alumni, the fans, when I looked at my teammates that had been through it with me, I just started crying. It made it all worth it.”
Still wearing his number 94, Davies-Lyons would start the final five games of the year at guard while still getting in for some rotational defensive reps. Two weeks after their first win, the team toppled Waterloo by a score of 39-24 to get their second — a game that may have been even more special for their two-way contributor.
In the lead-up to kickoff, he organized a campus tour for Indigenous kids from the Durham District, treating them to a luncheon and getting them into the game for free. Afterwards, the students clamoured for autographs while grateful parents asked him to pose for photos, all while his mother and newly discovered sister looked on after having attended the game.
“It was kind of a full circle moment,” he smiled. “I don’t consider myself a mentor yet. I’m not even close to perfect or close to where I want to be in life. Obviously, I’m still young and have a lot to learn, but I guess they see something in me that I want to try to help them as best as I can, and that’s why I do that.”
Davies-Lyons admits that he has a lot to learn as an offensive lineman and his statistics on the defensive side of the ball hardly jump off the page — just 16 tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss, and one sack in 30 games. However, the versatility he’s shown and his large, pliable frame has CFL teams intrigued.
After exceeding expectations against NCAA competition at the College Gridiron Showcase in Texas last month, he heads to the Invitational Combine in Waterloo looking to punch a ticket to the main showcase in Regina — just as his York head coach, Janke, did back in his draft year. The biggest unanswered question is which side of the ball he’ll play on if he does get a CFL shot, though he doesn’t have much of a preference.
“I actually have no clue what I’ll play, I won’t know until draft day. I tell every scout that I’m a football player. Whatever you guys want me as, I’ll do,” Davies-Lyons said. “There’s a value to being able to do both. Whatever team I’m on, if they want to dress one less O-lineman or one less D-lineman, whatever the opposite of my primary position is, and somebody goes down, I can help out.”
As teams debate which way they project his future, he remains committed to showcasing himself in both sets of positional drills and taking alternating reps in one-on-ones.
“I remember a couple years ago, Deionte Knight did like eight or nine one-on-one reps right after the other and if that has to be me, so be it,” he laughed. “I’ll line up at three-tech, give a move, then flip right over to guard.”
If he succeeds, that will just mean twice as many wins for a player who’s long overdue.
