It’s been an incredible run for Zach Collaros as quarterback of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
The Bombers have signed Collaros to a three-year contract extension, keeping him in Winnipeg through the 2025 season. He was scheduled to become a free agent in February.
“Winnipeg has been an amazing home for me and my family,” Collaros told 680 CJOB Tuesday.
“Obviously very happy today, with this getting done, and really looking forward to the future here — but we’ve got a very important month ahead of us — so I’m happy to have this behind me, so to speak, and be able to focus on that.”
The Bombers are 14-2 under Collaros in 2022. The team is on a bye week and will play their final regular season game Oct. 28 against the B.C. Lions before hosting the Western Final on November 13.
Since Collaros arrived in Winnipeg following a trade-deadline deal with the Toronto Argonauts in October 2019, the Bombers are 31-4 when he starts.
After winning Grey Cups in 2019 and 2021 along with being named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player and Grey Cup MVP last season, Collaros has been sensational in 2022, and is a favourite to win the MOP once again.
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His 35 passing touchdowns lead the CFL and his 4,115 yards are the most he’s thrown in his career.
Collaros, who could have become a free agent in February, said changes to the league’s collective bargaining agreement set the stage for a multi-year deal. Half the salary in the final year of his contract is now guaranteed.
It was widely reported he was paid $550,000 this season, his 10th in the league.
Bombers general manager Kyle Walters told reporters the reigning CFL most outstanding player got a raise and he’s “a pretty good football player and we paid accordingly.”
“He’s a winner and he’s a leader and we just want him here. It’s as simple as that,” Walters said.
“We’re lucky that it worked out the way it did for us, and happy to have him locked in.”
Collaros, a father of two daughters aged two-and-half years and 11 months, said it’s been difficult at times for his wife, Nicole, to follow him from their off-season Toronto home but she backed his decision.
“I’ve lived this crazy life of travelling around pretty much this entire adult life and it’s still a little new for her,” he said.
“It’s her trusting in me and packing the kids up and being away from grandparents isn’t easy, but she loves the community, she loves the team, she loves the wives and everybody here, so it’s been good.”
–With files from the Canadian Press
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