Henry Burris, from panic to the pinnacle

Henry Burris evaded the retirement question as easily as he stepped away from pass-rushers Sunday night.

"I can't say this while I'm riding this roller coaster," he offered, when asked about going out on top.

If ever an athlete had a mic drop, it was Burris during the Ottawa RedBlacks' 39-33 overtime win against the Calgary Stampeders. On a night when his left knee locked up during warmups, the 41-year-old became the oldest quarterback to win the Grey Cup, beating the team that moved on from him five seasons ago.

Not yet

"I want to spend time with my family. I got a date with Toucan Sam, my family, the Grey Cup, and some milk," Burris said. "December is for my family and I'm going to enjoy my holidays with them and then we'll talk about it."

His 461 passing yards - against the league's No. 1 defence - were the fourth-most in Grey Cup history.

"Sometimes athletes can get greedy - the 2017 Grey Cup is in Ottawa," Burris added. "Having a chance to win back-to-back is a pretty sweet thing. But there are so many factors. I have a wife (Nicole) who is being overwhelmed by a 10-year-old and a seven-year-old (sons Armand and Barron). This is the icing on the cake and the cherry on the top, but as I think Brad (Sinopoli) said, 'Two cakes would be even sweeter.'"

Pregame scare

Burris limped off the field at the end of warmups. When players returned for O Canada, a certain No. 1 was conspicuously absent and Trevor Harris was getting ready.

"He had a little bit of panic on his face for the first time since I have known him," Harris told theScore. "The cartilage, something was going on, but he pushed through it and played an awesome game."

"You expect nothing less from a guy that is going to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer," Harris added. "You get up in age (and) you start to wonder about how many years you have left. How many plays you have left."

Thanks to the RedBlacks' stout pass protection and use of the hurry-up offence, Burris didn't have to run much and was sacked only once on 47 dropbacks.

"They adjusted my (knee) brace to where I couldn't fully extend it," Burris told the media. "That's where the pain was, in the last 10 degrees of extension. They gave me some 'happy pills' to help it feel better. I was moving around in the dressing room just seeing if I could play."

Top of the mountain

Burris is No. 3 in CFL career passing yards, while Sunday answered the long-running "Good Hank, Bad Hank" meme. In back-to-back postseasons, he's directed Ottawa to playoff wins against his two most recent former teams - the Stampeders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

"What else can they say right now? For all the things they say I can't do, and 'Good Hank, Bad Hank,' what's bad about winning a championship with an organization that's only been existence for three years?" Burris continued.

"The team we were able to beat tonight was a team where the business of the game came between a great thing we had going on in Calgary. But as an athlete you still take that personal. Hamilton cut me and I signed with Ottawa and people were like, 'Ottawa's a new team, Hank's gonna struggle.'"

Burris added that Sunday was the pinnacle of his career.

"Hands down, the best one ever. I was part of a Grey Cup in Calgary in '08 and was part of the touchdown on second-and-25 last year, the Miracle on Bank Street (Greg Ellingson's 93-yard game-winning touchdown in the 2015 East final). You could never think that a moment like that could be trumped - sorry, had to say that word."

The pun was about the only misfire Burris had all night.