Owens Closes In On Record

ARGONAUTS.CA STAFF

MISSISSAUGA – In 1990, Canadian Football Hall of Fame player Michael ‘Pinball’ Clemons was the first professional football player ever to run for more than 3,000 combined yards in a season. Raghib ‘Rocket’ Ismail did it again one year later. No player in the NFL has ever has ever done it and only Clemons has done it twice, with seven years in between each feat. While some have come close, no player has ever been able to achieve at least 3,000 combined yards in consecutive seasons.

With five regular season games left in 2011, Toronto Argonauts receiver and kick returner Chad Owens, the Flyin’ Hawaiian, is on pace to do something no player in professional football has ever accomplished. By season’s end, he should become the first player in pro football history to accumulate at least 3,000 combined yards in consecutive seasons. In 2010, he was the CFL’s Most Outstanding Special Teams Player and a CFL All-Star when he totalled 3,288 yards. It was the sixth-highest single season total in CFL history (third highest in Argos history). Today, he leads the CFL with 2,431 combined yards, just 569 yards from the milestone, and is averaging 187 combined yards per game.     

Along with Michael ‘Pinball’ Clemons, Owens could become just the second player in professional football history to achieve more than 3,000 combined yards twice in a career. Clemons first accomplished the feat in 1990 with 3,300 yards and then set a single-season professional football record seven years later with 3,840 combined yards during a fairytale 1997 campaign.

Owens is already one of just 10 players in CFL history to put up more than 3,000 combined yards in a season, and he’s one of just three different Argonauts along with Clemons and Ismail.

NOTE: Combined Yards, also called All-Purpose Yards, is defined as receiving yards + rushing yards + punt return yards + kickoff return yards + missed field goal return yards.