CFL Awards notes, Part II: CanCon on OL, first K battle since 2006, outstanding non-all-stars

While the historic battle between B.C. linebacker Solomon Elimimian and Toronto quarterback Ricky Ray for the CFL's Most Outstanding Player award is the most significant outcome of Thursday's announcement of divisional nominees for the league awards, there are plenty of other notable storylines. We explored some of those in Part I; here's Part II, taking a look at another stellar season for Canadian content on the offensive line, two kickers dueling for top special teams player for the first time since 2006, the first defensive rookie battle since 2006 and some players nominated for league awards who weren't picked as divisional all-stars. Here's a breakdown of each of those storylines:

Offensive line CanCon: For the second consecutive season, the two nominees for the league's top offensive lineman (Jones and Montreal tackle Jeff Perrett) are both Canadian. (Last year saw Saskatchewan guard Brendon LaBatte win over Toronto centre Jeff Keeping.) Before 2013, that last happened in 2008 when Scott Flory beat Gene Makowsky. That speaks to the amount of good Canadian linemen currently in this league, and to teams like the Stampeders and Alouettes making drafting and developing Canadian linemen a huge priority.

Special kickers: Kickers and punters are a huge part of special teams, but returners often get more of the glory when it comes to year-end awards. Of the last 10 recipients of the John Agro Special Teams Award, only three (Calgary's Sandro DeAngelis in 2006, B.C.'s Paul McCallum in 2011 and Calgary's Rene Paredes in 2013) have been kickers and/or punters, with the rest being return men. That's going to change this year,  though, as both nominees (Winnipeg's Lirim Hajrullahu and Toronto's Swayze Waters) handle both punting and kicking duties for their teams. Two kickers haven't faced off for this award since DeAngelis beat Toronto's Noel Prefontaine in 2006.

Outstanding, but not all-stars: Perrett, the Montreal tackle, and Hajrullahu, the Winnipeg kicker, carry the unusual designation of being divisional nominees for outstanding player awards, but not divisional all-stars. At first glance, that seems counterintuitive, but it happens every once in a while, and one reason why is that there's a different voter pool for each. Voting for both the all-stars and the outstanding player awards is done by the Football Reporters of Canada and the league's head coaches, but not every FRC member has a vote (disclosure: I don't), and not every member who does get to vote gets to vote for both. The release about the divisional all-stars mentions that the division all-stars "were selected by 87 voters, including members of the Football Reporters of Canada (FRC) and CFL head coaches," with west market FRC voting members, west coaches and national FRC voting members voting for the West ones and east market FRC voting members, east coaches and national FRC voting members picking the East ones. The outstanding player awards are picked by a smaller overall pool of 68 voters (FRC members and CFL head coaches); however, they're selected from the team award winners in each category, which are picked by the local FRC members and the local head coach. Thus, different results do sometimes happen.

In Hajrullahu's case, there are further extenuating circumstances. The divisional all-star awards separate out the positions of kicker and punter, and the players who won there (B.C.'s Paul McCallum and Calgary's Rob Maver) were better by the numbers than Hajrullahu in each category. Hajrullahu does both jobs very well, though, and that perhaps makes him a better candidate for top special-teams player than either of the single-job guys. In Perrett's case, it's not as easy to explain the discrepancy; the divisional all-star voters favoured Montreal teammate Josh Bourke and Toronto's Chris Van Zeyl at the tackle spots, but the award voters preferred Perrett. That's a weird only-in-the-CFL quirk, and one that could easily be fixed by standardizing the voter pools, but it's not a huge crisis. All three players had good seasons, so if one group wants to favour Perrett and the other prefers Bourke and Van Zeyl, that seems fine by this perspective. 

See Part I for breakdowns of Jon Cornish and Brett Jones' remarkable nominations. Also see our look at the battle for Most Outstanding Player.