On Friday night at the Hamilton Convention Centre, DeVonte Dedmon was awarded some hardware. He won the 2021 CFL Special Teams Player of the Year award, as the Ottawa Redblacks kickoff return specialist. Over the 2021 CFL season he had a combined 2,063 return yards as well as 3 kick return touchdowns. Dedmon also had 171 scrimmage yards and an offensive touchdown, giving himself the league lead in all-purpose yards with 2,234 total.
Although the Ottawa Redblacks did not have a lot of success on the field in 2021, only winning three games all season and missing the playoffs once again, it’s clear that DeVonte Dedmon was a bright spot to their roster, and is very well deserving of every accolade he receives for what he’s accomplished in red and black. He has signed back with Ottawa for 2022, and is expected to continue to make that same impact when he returns to the field for the Redblacks then, and not only is he expected to make a large impact on the football field for Ottawa in 2022, but his name off of the field is to grow even bigger and bigger. One thing with DeVonte Dedmon, since the day he landed in Ottawa for Ottawa Redblacks training camp in 2019, he’s had the mindset that he can’t look back.
His very first touch as a professional athlete, in a pre-season game against the Hamilton Tiger Cats, Dedmon returned a kickoff 101 yards to the end zone. He has since returned 5 kicks to the end zone over 16 regular season games, breaking Henry “Gizmo” Williams’ record for fastest player in CFL history to reach that milestone, doing so in just 15 games, and has 3,179 yards all-purpose to his name. The milestones he’s reached have all come with hard work, and Dedmon is a key part to the Ottawa Redblacks identity because of the selfless personality he has, where he does everything to benefit the team around him, while also making a name for himself as a fan favourite in the city of Ottawa, starting to build his network off of the field in the community.
JZ MEDIA 