All-time Ole Miss great Chad Kelly named CFL’s Most Outstanding Player
All-time Ole Miss great Chad Kelly was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Canadian Football League on Thursday.
The award is handed out annually to the best player in the CFL. League coaches and the Football Reporters of Canada choose a winner from two nominees from each division. Kelly received the honor at the league’s awards banquet.
Kelly, 29, quarterbacked the Toronto Argonauts, who tied the CFL record, and set a new franchise best, with 16 regular-season wins. They only lost twice and started 6-0 for the first time since 1935.
He inked a three-year extension in the off-season.
“Look, it’s been every kid’s dream to play in the NFL, make a boatload of money and win Super Bowls,” Kelly said, in a previous interview with Pro Football Focus. Kelly is the CFL’s highest-paid player.
“But we always talk about, ‘Where your feet are is where you need to be present in the moment.’ And right now, I am up here in Canada loving every second of it.
“I love this game; I love this city. Can I see myself being up here for 10 years? Heck yeah. I envision myself being able to just be the best quarterback I can be and keep getting better every day.”
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Kelly was a CFL All-Star as well.
He won 15 of his 16 starts — the best winning percentage (93.8) by any player in league history with at least 14 starts. Kelly completed 270 of 394 passes (68 percent) for 4,123 yards, 23 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
He signed with the Argonauts in 2022.
“At some point, maybe the NFL will call,” Kelly told PFF. “But being up here is helping me get better, and I’m thankful for where I’m at and I’m learning so (many) new things, nuances of defenses and offensive plays. There’s a lot of similarities in the concepts and combinations that they bring, north and south. So I think it’s just all going to keep on becoming more natural and maybe one day it happens.
“Maybe it doesn’t.”
Kelly set 25 school records (game, season and career) in 22 starts over his Ole Miss tenure.
Among them: Kelly went a school-record 22 consecutive games with a passing touchdown. His 12 career 300-yard passing games are the most in school history.
Kelly, the MVP of the 2016 Sugar Bowl, finished ranked Top 10 in Ole Miss history in career passing yards (third), pass attempts (seventh), completions (fourth), passing touchdowns (third), total offense (third) and touchdowns responsible for (third).
“I think he will be remembered as one of the best competitors that ever played (at Ole Miss),” Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze previously said of Kelly, in an interview with ESPN. Freeze was Kelly’s head coach at Ole Miss.
“He’s the quarterback that helped lead us back to the Sugar Bowl for the first time since Archie (Manning). The Ole Miss people will remember that for a long time. He will be etched in a memory of everyone that followed our program as one of the greatest competitors to play that position here.”
