Taylor Shire
Regina Leader-Post
Mitch Picton couldn’t have picked a better ending to his CFL career.
After helping the Saskatchewan Roughriders win the Grey Cup last season, the 30-year-old receiver has decided to retire from football after eight years with his hometown club.
“Over my time with the Riders, I can’t over emphasize how much fun I had,” Picton said during a press conference Friday at Mosaic Stadium. “It was a dream come true to play for this team, play for this province, represent this team and this province in the best way that I could.
“It’s something I took pride in every day. Not a day went by that I wasn’t thankful to come to work here. I truly do love the game of football. These last eight years, and before that with the (University of Regina) Rams, it truly has been a dream come true, and something that I’ll never forget.”
After a standout career with the Rams, Picton — a LeBoldus high school product — was selected by the Roughriders in the fifth round of the 2017 CFL draft.
He spent a couple seasons on the practice roster, seeing game action twice in 2019, before making his first reception in 2021. While he never had eye-popping stats — with 96 receptions for 1,081 yards and six touchdowns in 64 career regular-season games — he was among Saskatchewan’s most dependable receivers in recent years.
Roughriders general manager Jeremy O’Day pointed to a stat dug up by the team’s analytics department that noted Picton was the only receiver with 70-plus targets since 2022 that didn’t drop a single pass.
“As a player, Mitch was very reliable and dependable,” said O’Day. “Probably can’t say enough things about what he did for our organization.
“He took great pride in being prepared for the season on the field. He’s big, strong; he could block, could play special teams (and) had great hands. He knew every position across the board for the receivers; something that made him very valuable. You could put him at any position, and he knew exactly what he was doing. Quarterbacks could always count on him. We always said Mitch is a quarterback’s best friend because they always knew exactly where he was going to be at the right time, in the right place.”
Something I’m very proud of is that I wasn’t a high draft pick,” added Picton. “I had to come in and earn everything that I had and that I achieved.
“It was a lot of long hours, long days, early mornings. There’s no shortcuts in this game. The game knows when you put in the work and when it doesn’t, and you’re rewarded for the work that you do put in. And I feel like that’s a testament to what I’ve been able to do over the last nine years.
“The quote you always hear is the best ability is availability,” he continued. “And I would kind of counter that with the best ability is reliability, because if you’re available, but you’re not reliable, you’re not doing a whole lot of good. So to me, that was something I knew that I could create value in that place.
“You have guys who are faster than me that ran better routes than me; also all those sorts of things, bigger, faster, stronger. But I knew that if I could understand what defences were doing and how to manipulate a defence, if I could understand our playbook inside and out … I realized that’s how I was going to be able to create value for myself and also to be reliable in the eyes of coaches, quarterbacks and my teammates.”
And even though Picton, who also served as a player ambassador the the team’s foundation, could have played a few more seasons, he decided it was important to leave on his own terms, with a Grey Cup ring as the cherry on top.
“There comes a point where you feel like you can walk away from the game moderately intact, and I feel like that’s where I am right now,” said Picton. “There’s not a ton of happy endings in this game, right? Not many people get to walk away on their own terms. Most guys either get cut, have a career-ending injury, or something like that. Do I feel like I could have squeezed another year or two out of it? Probably. Did I want to be broke down and be put back together and (risk) potential injuries and things like that? Not really. “It did hold some weight to me to be able to walk out on my own terms as a Grey Cup champion and be able to end my career as I see fit.
“If you had told me when I got drafted nine years ago, which is crazy, that I’ll be standing here as a Grey Cup champion with the career that I’ve had, I never would have believed you. It’s been more than I ever could have imagined. I truly cannot overstate how much freaking fun I had over these years.
“When you’re in the grind, it’s tough to see at the time, and then you kind of look back on it, and it truly was the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”
