Brown: “I can’t really express how excited we are.”

Dru Brown’s next chapter in the Canadian Football League is about to unfold right in the very spot where it all began.

So, call it Dru’s déjà vu with the blue.

Brown, acquired last week by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in a trade with the Ottawa RedBlacks, will be on the practice field with his new/old club Tuesday morning some three years since he last wore blue and gold and six years from his first signing here in 2020.

Speaking Monday on the Blue Bombers Handled Internally Podcast with hosts Zach Collaros, Blue Bombers Senior VP, Team Strategy and Public Relations Darren Cameron and yours truly, Brown said walking back into the locker room and meeting rooms at Princess Auto Stadium — a place he called home from 2021-23 — brought back a flood memories.

“I really loved my time here,” said Brown during the podcast. “As I look back, my whole family loved it here. My wife loved it here. So, we are pretty excited to be back.

“I can’t really express how excited we are — not just with me and coming back with you (Collaros) and being with Tommy (Condell, offensive coordinator) and back with Osh (head coach Mike O’Shea) but my wife is excited because she has lifelong friends that she met here and now they’re all in the same phase of life where they’re moms.

“There’s something to be said about that.”

Brown first signed with the Blue Bombers in March of 2020 but had to wait to get on the field with the club until the 2021 season due to the cancellation of the ’20 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He spent the next three years as an understudy to Collaros, where the two quarterbacks bonded through their mutual football junkie approach to the game, with that then leading to a friendship off the field.

Brown was 2-1 in his three starts as a Blue Bomber and in his final year with the team, 2023, set a CFL record for the most touchdown passes thrown without an interception in a season with nine. A month before he was scheduled to become a free agent, the Blue Bombers traded his negotiating rights to the RedBlacks, who then signed him and declared him their starter.

He was 10-13-1 in his starts over two seasons with Ottawa and when the RedBlacks underwent a regime change over the winter with Ryan Dinwiddie named the new GM and head coach, Brown was given a vote of confidence heading into training camp.

Yet, after Ottawa’s first preseason game — in which Brown did not throw a pass — Dinwiddie declared free agent addition Jake Maier as the club’s new starter.

Asked for his perspective on what unfolded in Ottawa, Brown said:

“(Dinwiddie) was always like, ‘You’re our guy.’ And then I show up and he just made the decision to go with Jake. Again, I was super-excited for Jake because there’s guys in the league who sometimes get dealt a bad hand, they struggle a little bit, and they get spat on and I always thought he was a great player. I tried to look at it from the lens of being happy for him because he’s a great guy. I’m happy for his family. But I’m obviously pretty disappointed with a lot of the things that transpired.

“… Initially you’re kind of surprised. It was four days or so before we talked to the media and he told me. I was pretty surprised because I hadn’t even taken a meaningful snap yet. I felt like I had a good camp. I didn’t think there was a whole lot of performance issues there — maybe a day or two or a couple reps here and there of trying feel out certain things. But I don’t think I just showed up and forgot how to play football.

“He told me that and then I thought about it and thought about what led to that moment because I was just caught off guard. I was like, ‘How can you make that call that early?”

Brown said he met with Dinwiddie after the decision became public and asked for his release, not a trade, as has been suggested.

“Ultimately, you want to make that decision (on who will be the starting QB) but I don’t believe in having two guys the same age as 1A-1B (Maier and Brown are both 29 years old). I don’t believe in that,” said Brown. “I think your team needs one guy and then obviously a very capable guy behind him. But the team dynamic… the guys in the locker room need to know who is going to play quarterback for them, who’s going to speak, who is going to be the guy that they can lean on. And it was pretty evident that was going to be a little bit of a struggle because I had been there for two years, I had a relationship with a lot of guys who had been there. I obviously didn’t get a ton of time to develop (a chemistry) with a ton of guys that they had brought in. It was unexpected. That’s when I told (Dinwiddie) that I wanted to be released — that is true, that I asked for that.

“,,,I’m proud of how I handled myself in that whole situation. I was with Jake until 4-5 p.m. every day during the work week with, ‘Hey, this is what we should do. What do you think about this?’ and talking through things. We had some really good times just chopping it up over football.”

After the trade the narrative from Ottawa suggested Brown had become a distraction, while Dinwiddie referenced his mechanics and arm strength as being factors in the decision.

“Honestly, it kind of hurts a little bit just because I just think if you ask anyone in my 20 years of football, ‘Is Dru a problem?’ They would be like, ‘Absolutely not,'” Brown said. “Whether you’re the starter or the back up or whatever your situation is I just felt I was about the team. I was a little hurt by that because the only things I confronted were in private so it’s not like I was out to embarrass anybody publicly or in front of the team. It was just one-on-one conversations because that’s how I was raised to do it.

“Was I upset visually for a couple of days? I would bet. Someone could look at me and be like, ‘That guy looks like he just got fired on his day off.’ There was some grace there, for sure on their end but I felt like I still loved on the guys that I knew well.”

That, of course, is all fading in the rear-view mirror now. And while Brown returns to essentially the same situation he was in at the end of 2023 with Collaros the starter, they are also at different stages in their careers. Collaros turns 38 this summer and is on the final year of his contract; Brown is not yet 30 and has 27 starts to his name (12-14-1).

There is also the familiarity and comfort he feels in this building and that can be priceless.

“The environment here… I was really lucky with Tommy being in Ottawa the last two seasons,” said Brown. “The workplace was a lot of fun, and I felt like I learned a lot. Now I come here and I’ve got (Zach), I’ve got the other guys in the room that are awesome and then you just add Tommy to the mix… just being in there this morning, two hours felt like two minutes.”