Marc-Olivier Brouillette hasn’t played a CFL game all season, but he has been practising … law.
Now, the 31-year-old is returning to the football field.
Brouillette, who signed as a free agent with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in February before retiring on the eve of training camp, reported to the Roughriders on Wednesday. He’s expected to play Sunday when Saskatchewan entertains the Calgary Stampeders.
“It seems like every week we lose one of our Canadians,” Roughriders head coach-GM Chris Jones said Wednesday when asked about the team’s continued pursuit of Brouillette. “We’ve been fortunate to get some guys back here or there, but certainly with Marco, you get a guy who possesses a lot of experience. That’s tough to replace.”
Brouillette graduated from law school in 2009 and was called to the bar in 2014, but he initially put off his legal career so that he could play for the Montreal Alouettes.
After seven seasons with the Als, the 6-foot-1, 220-pound safety/linebacker signed a free-agent deal with the Roughriders, eager to be part of Jones’ program and to play in a new stadium in front of 33,000 fans a game.
On May 27, however, Brouillette decided to retire instead of travelling west.
“It was a long process,” he recalled Wednesday. “I hadn’t made my mind up completely until the day I was set to leave for training camp.
“I was tossing and turning about the idea. If I couldn’t commit 100 per cent to it and my head and my heart were somewhere else while I was out here, I would have been doing my teammates, the coaches and the whole organization a disservice by being out here and not being fully committed to it.”
In late June, Brouillette took a job at Morrone Avocats, a law firm in his hometown of Montreal that focuses on construction and real estate law. Everything about his post-football career was going well — until he went to a game between the Als and the visiting Toronto Argonauts on Aug. 11.
“Watching on TV, everything was fine; there was no chance I was ever going to play again,” Brouillette said. “Then I got on the field during pre-game warmup, the music was going and the guys were warming up. That night was tough. I almost picked up the phone and reached out to (the Roughriders) to see if I could come back.
“I thought maybe that would subside after a couple of days and that feeling would go away, but it didn’t. Then on Friday, with the number of injuries that the Riders suffered (during a 27-19 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats), John Murphy got on the phone, reached out to me and asked me if I’d be interested in coming out for the rest of the season and helping the guys for this playoff run.”
The Roughriders lost several Canadians in that contest, including safety Mike Edem and special-teamer Beau Landry.
Murphy — the Roughriders’ assistant vice-president of football operations and player personnel — obviously was persuasive. Brouillette said he would have been in Saskatchewan on Saturday, but obligations in Montreal kept him there until Tuesday night.
Before leaving town, he spoke to his boss at the law firm and agreed to continue serving his clients from long distance. With his email inbox likely filling up, Brouillette was on the field for the Roughriders’ practice Wednesday and he’s expected to play at least on special teams Sunday.
Brouillette wouldn’t say if he plans to stay in Saskatchewan beyond this season, but he stressed that he’s now 100-per-cent committed to the Roughriders’ cause.
“The fire got lit inside of me,” he said. “When I realized that it was a possibility to get out here, it reignited something in me that I didn’t have during the off-season and that led to me making the decision to retire.”
Brouillette, whom the Als selected in the third round (23rd overall) of the 2010 draft out of the University of Montreal, has 202 defensive tackles, 30 special-teams tackles, eight sacks, six forced fumbles and five interceptions in 103 career CFL regular-season games. He was named an East Division all-star last season.
• The Roughriders announced the signings of three other players Wednesday.
National defensive back Elie Bouka was signed to the active roster.
The 6-foot-1, 205-pound product of the University of Calgary was selected by Saskatchewan in the third round (24th overall) of the 2016 draft, but he signed as an undrafted free agent with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals.
Bouka spent the 2016 season on injured reserve in Arizona due to a bad hamstring. The 25-year-old from Laval, Que., went to camp with the Cardinals again this fall, but was released with an injury settlement due to a bum ankle.
Saskatchewan also added two internationals — defensive lineman Montori Hughes and returner Jacoby Ford — to the practice roster.
The 6-foot-4, 350-pound Hughes played collegiately at the University of Tennessee-Martin. The 27-year-old from Murfreesboro, Tenn., played 23 games in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts and New York Giants before being cut by the Kansas City Chiefs in August.
Ford, a 5-foot-9, 190-pounder out of Clemson University, was taken by the Oakland Raiders in the fourth round (108th overall) of the 2010 draft. He played 38 games over four seasons with Oakland before making NFL stops with the New York Jets and Tennessee Titans.
The 30-year-old from West Palm Beach, Fla., had stints in the CFL with the Alouettes and Edmonton Eskimos.
The Roughriders also announced they had put international defensive tackle T.J. Barnes on the suspended list. The 27-year-old played one game, making one defensive tackle against Hamilton.
Jones said Barnes told him his heart wasn’t in pro football any longer.
