BY MIKE MASTOVICH
Andrew Hawkins remembers watching his cousin Geroy Simon on television when Simon was a wide receiver playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference during the mid-1990s.
“He’s a guy I looked up to ever since I was a little kid,” said Hawkins who, at 23, is 11 years younger than Simon. “I remember seeing him on TV when he was at Maryland in college when I was a little kid. It blew my mind. Now, everything has come full circle.”
The two Johnstown natives will be on the same field today during one of the Canadian Football League’s biggest games of the season.
Hawkins is on the Montreal Alouettes roster as a rookie wide receiver. The former University of Toledo standout has worked hard to earn playing time and in recent weeks has proved he can be a productive part of Montreal’s offense.
Simon is the “grizzled” veteran of 11 CFL seasons. He is a slot receiver for the British Columbia Lions based in Vancouver. In the past decade, Simon has emerged as one of the top receivers in league history with 12,547 receiving yards and 84 touchdowns since 1999.
The Alouettes and Lions will play in the Eastern Conference championship in Montreal with a berth in the Grey Cup Final at stake. The Grey Cup is the CFL’s equivalent to the NFL’s Super Bowl.
“I’m excited,” said Hawkins, who earlier this year gained fame by finishing as the runner-up on former NFL great Michael Irvin’s reality TV show “4th and Long.”
“I never would have imagined this,” the Bishop McCort graduate added. “Geroy, I was really hoping they won just to get a chance to play against my older cousin.”
Simon has been a prolific receiver at Johnstown High, Maryland and British Columbia. He’s a gifted athlete with skills that might have landed him in the NFL had the right breaks unfolded for him.
Instead, he’s dominated in the CFL.
This year after a slow start, Simon finished in his typical fashion, making 79 catches for 1,239 yards and six touchdowns. The big-play receiver is anxious to share the field with his cousin. Simon never had an opportunity to play Andrew’s older brother, Artrell Hawkins, who spent 10 NFL seasons mostly with the Cincinnati Bengals as well as Carolina and New England.
“The thing with Andy is he’s got a lot of experience through other peoples’ eyes – my eyes, his brother Artrell’s eyes,” Simon said. “You’ve got to treat these games just like any other games. You can’t let these games get too big for you. Once you start thinking about the fans and the ramifications of the game, that puts pressure on you. He should play it like he’s on the fields in Prospect.”
Hawkins has 13 catches for 131 yards and three touchdowns.
“At the beginning of the season I played special teams here and there,” Hawkins said. “We have a good team. We finished the season 15-3. If it’s not broken don’t fix it. Then the coaches told me they thought I gave them another element. The last four games I cracked the starting lineup. I had three touchdowns in four games, and that feels good. This is the most action I’ve gotten since college.”
The 5-foot-8, 165-pounder continues to build on a big year in which he was one of Irvin’s top players on the reality TV show in which a group of offensive and defensive players competed for a spot in the Dallas Cowboys training camp.
“It helped a tremendous amount,” said Hawkins, who was frequently called “Hawk” by Irvin and the other participants on the show. “The coaching I got from Michael Irvin took my game to another level. If nothing else, it got me mentally ready. What I went through in the show, what’s going on here in Montreal isn’t even 10 percent of what I went through mentally on the show.”
Simon has become a football celebrity in Vancouver and is well-known throughout the CFL. A former CFL Offensive MVP, Simon has overcome adversity this season.
“This is a really trying year for me,” Simon said. “The beginning of this year was pretty tough for me. I had a really slow year, and I was battling injuries the first five or six weeks of the season. We had lost one of our top receivers last year. Basically teams were taking me out of the game plan. They were putting two or three guys on me. I got singled out.
“The quarterback wasn’t looking for me. We started out 1-4. The quarterbacks realized if they wanted to be successful they would have to get me the ball. Once I got more touches, we started being more productive. The first nine games I had 450 yards or something like that. To end up where I ended up (1,239 yards) was crazy.”
British Columbia plays in the Western Conference. But because the Lions finished better than the East’s third-place team, they crossed over in the playoff bracket.
Coincidentally, Montreal’s general manager is Jim Popp, the son of former Franklin Borough star and Cleveland Browns assistant coach Joe Popp.
“I was in his office three weeks ago. He said, ‘You’re from Johnstown.’ I said, ‘What do you know about Johnstown?’” Hawkins said of a visit to the GM. “He said, ‘Joe Popp is my father.’ I turned around and on the wall of his office he had two framed articles by The Tribune-Democrat.”
On Friday, Jim Popp took a break from his hectic pregame duties as GM and talked about Hawkins’ work ethic and contributions.
“He provides us a different look,” Popp said.
As for two cousins from Johnstown meeting in the CFL conference final, Popp noted the irony.
“What a great story,” he said.
Simon also appreciates the Johnstown ties to this game.
“It’s pretty cool,” he said. “This is my 11th year. To have someone from Johnstown even show up at a game is pretty cool. But to be playing against someone from Johnstown, especially someone from my family, is cool. To see Andy up here doing well means a lot. He’s a good football player.”
