On the worst on-field afternoon of Chad Kelly’s professional football career, Mike Miller was home in Liberty Village, somewhere between chemotherapy and radiation, trying to find a way to get to tomorrow.
“That was heartbreaking for me,” the Argos veteran quarterback coach said, watching Kelly and the team crumble in last November’s Eastern final. “You love the guys, you love the team, they give you everything they’ve got, you give them everything you’ve got, and it was tough not being able to be there.
“It was tough watching that and not being able to be part of it.”
Kelly has had other problems this season in his return from suspension in the Canadian Football League, none of them life-threatening.
He was and remains the most dynamic quarterback in the CFL and one of the league’s highest-paid players. But as he has returned to form, so too has his coach made his way through the season, winning — for now — his battle with throat cancer.
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Ready for a playoff game at BMO Field on Saturday — almost one year to the date of the playoff disaster against Montreal that Miller couldn’t be a part of last year.
It wasn’t until after the Eastern final, during Grey Cup week, before Kelly was awarded the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player award, that he talked about not having Miller on the sidelines for the biggest game of last season. He talked about needing someone to calm him down, needing someone to be there when he felt abandoned in the game.
He needed Miller the way most quarterbacks need their coaches in tough times, but Miller’s tough time was life-threatening and circumstances dictated that he couldn’t be alongside Kelly in the football moment he seemed most exposed.
They started together with the Argos. Kelly, the wayward quarterback, and Miller, the football coaching lifer from just outside Pittsburgh, unofficially the birthplace of American football.
Pennsylvania is where Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath and Joe Montana and Dan Marino first threw the ball. And Scott Milanovich, too. And Miller, from Plum High School, just outside Pittsburgh, where he began his journey in football.
He coached in college and the NFL and NFL Europe and the XFL and the CFL — football lifers who aren’t head coaches travel to where the work happens to be — and has been coaching for his entire adult life. He’s 54 years old now, wasn’t sure he’d be getting to 55, but he’s more than standing for the big game Saturday against the Ottawa Redblacks.
In a brief and relatively unhappy experience with the Montreal Alouettes 11 years ago — his first time coaching in the CFL — Miller got to know one of the Als’ other assistants, the quality control coach, Ryan Dinwiddie.
Neither of them stayed in Montreal for long. But when Dinwiddie needed a quarterbacks coach for the Argos after being promoted to head coach, he reached out to Miller, who had been an offensive coordinator with the Arizona Cardinals and Dinwiddie wanted him to tutor his quarterbacks.
The rookie backup that season was Kelly. Their relationship clicked right from the beginning. McLeod Bethel-Thompson was the starting quarterback in 2022, but it was Kelly who came off the bench to win the Argos the Grey Cup. And, in doing so, he won the starting position for the 2023 season.
There was an instant chemistry between the quarterback and the coach.
“I get along great with Chad,” Miller said. “Here’s a guy that just works hard every day, wears passion on his sleeves, wants to be pushed, wants to get better. You love being around a guy like that, who loves what he does.
“I have great respect for him.”
Now that’s something you don’t hear every day about Kelly. He’s had a history of making poor decisions in a number of football stops. No one ever questioned his talent. Maybe his temperament. Maybe his decision-making. But not the talent.
‘I love Chad,” Miller said. “I really do. We have a lifelong relationship. When Chad and I sat down before this season, we talked about what was possible. Last year, after the Grey Cup, we said we’re not defending anything, we’re not defending champions. Last year was last year. This year is this year. We’re starting over again.”
This season of starting over has been significant and poignant for both Kelly and Miller. For Kelly, he had to come back and deal with those who didn’t want him here, who didn’t want to cheer for him. For Miller, it’s about winning his personal battles, about getting his health and his career back.
“I always say to the players: How do you respond to good things and how do you respond to bad things? You have to learn that. If you play long enough, you’re going to have games like (the Eastern Final loss to Montreal) and you’re going to have great games,” Miller said.
“We’re not here to prove anything to anybody. We’re here to do our jobs. Every day, we’re looking to get better. That’s what coaching is. You sit in a room with these guys. There’s an energy to it. There’s an energy to this team. RD (coach Dinwiddie) has put together an amazing group that works so hard.”
It was just over a year ago that Mike Miller didn’t feel right. He went to see his doctor last September. By October he was being treated for cancer at Princess Margaret Hospital. Like any coach, he wanted to stay coaching. The doctors told him he needed to focus on himself, not his job.
His mom came north to live with him through the worst of times, which included the football implosion against the Alouettes.
“I shed a tear or two that day,” Miller said. “Going through everything I was going through.”
The tears were for himself and for a quarterback lost. And now the opportunity to change everything — good health, good fortunes, the way it’s meant to be.
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