When Dejon Brissett was drafted by the Toronto Argonauts in 2020, he recalls his first time driving down the Gardiner to the BMO Field, seeing the Argos logo come into view.
“That was a pretty cool experience,” he says.
It’s definitely not something a young Brissett would have ever imagined — considering he grew up playing basketball in Toronto (as did his younger brother, Oshae Brissett, who went on to play for the Toronto Raptors and won his first NBA championship in 2024 with the Boston Celtics) and watching the NBA. He excelled at track, winning OFSAA twice for triple jump and receiving some interest from the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA].
“I had some D2 and D3 interest for basketball, but once I started getting some D1 interest for football, that’s when I made the shift,” Brissett recalls.
He played football in Virginia during his collegiate career — which made his call from the Argos even sweeter. “At the time, my brother was playing for the Raptors, and my family hadn’t seen me play for a while because I was in [the U.S.] for so long, so it was a cool moment, not just for me, but for my family as well,” he says. “We had a mini draft party, just me, my brother and my mom in the living room. Five minutes into the draft when Toronto called, it was this crazy moment for all of us!”
FAST FACTS
Name: Dejon Brissett
Favourite place in the city: Path on the Lakeshore close to BMO Field
Favourite memory: Seeing his brother play for the Raptors
Which Toronto sports franchise he most wants to see win: All of them!
Favourite athletes: Steve Nash, DeAndre Hopkins
Since Brissett joined the Toronto Argonauts, it took him just one year on the active roster to get to the Grey Cup — where he had a special teams tackle in the team’s 2022 victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Two years later, he did it again, playing in the Grey Cup-winning match against the Bombers in 2024.
His performance earned him a coveted award: the Dick Suderman Trophy for the Grey Cup’s Most Valuable Canadian. “That was really rewarding for me, especially because my mom, my dad, my brother and my sister were there, my friends were there. To be on that stage and to get that award just meant so much.”
Mindset is everything for Brissett. After a knee injury almost took him entirely out of the season at the start of 2024, he says he saw it as an opportunity to focus on other things — and to attack his rehab.
“I would watch YouTube videos of bones healing, sped up times two, training my mind to heal my bones,” he says.
It helps that he’s part of a team with what he describes as “top-tier culture,” noting the locker room is tight knit. “After a win, we celebrate and we forget about it. After a loss, we watch and we learn and then forget about it,” Brissett says.
That impressively even translates to a Grey Cup win: “We’ve already flushed the fact that we won last year; we don’t even talk about it.”
But that doesn’t mean they don’t get frustrated at a loss, including a few tough ones at the start of this season.
“We expect to be great every single week. So we’re figuring out what we’re doing wrong, and we’ll fix it for the weeks to come.”
The strategy appears to be working — the Toronto Argos scored their first win of the regular season on June 29 against the Ottawa Redblacks, with a final score of 29-16.
Off the field, Brissett is using his winning mindset to support the organization he started in 2022, Ignite Sports Group. Dedicated to mentorship, motivation and comprehensive training programs, Brissett says this is his way of giving back.
He recalls one instance after a speaking engagement at a local school that inspired him to launch Ignite: “The principal pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, to come speak to this one kid; he’s been fighting, he’s not coming to class and he needs a little bit of guidance.’ And so I spoke to him, and I told him if he doesn’t get in trouble for the rest of the year, he can come to an Argos game,” he says. “A couple months later, we’re doing programming in the youth detention center, and a kid ran up to me and said, ‘Hey, I know you.’ It was that same kid. Right there I realized, there’s a gap that he fell through between the last time I spoke to him and now.”
Brissett built Ignite Sports Group to be one of the organisations there to fill in those gaps that kids fall through. If his Instagram messages are any indication, he’s making an impact: “Kids message me all the time telling me they’ve been inspired to change the way they’re living because of me.”
