Jerome Messam is not simply going to be hand Cornish's job.

For the past two seasons, the running back position has been a weekly guessing game of, ‘Is Jon Cornish going to play?’
The Calgary Stampeders are hoping to slightly alter that question now that No. 9 is comfortably retired.
Instead of wondering if their oft-injured former star tailback is going to be on the field, the Stamps are hoping to pose the question of ‘Who’s going to get the football?’ to opposing defences on a weekly basis.
“We just had our meetings yesterday and Dave (Dickenson) repeated it: ‘Hey, we’re always the leading rushing team in the CFL,’ Stamps quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell said on the second day of training camp Monday at McMahon Stadium. “That’s a big thing. We might not have the leading rusher in the CFL, but we’re going to have guys that add up to it.”
Thanks to the double-whammy of an offensive line devastated by injuries as well as a banged-up ball-carrier once again in Cornish, the Stamps fell to fourth in the CFL in rushing last season, averaging 96.6 yards per game. Following years of going the feature-back route, the Stampeders may become a running-back-by-committee situation. Not because they don’t have a guy capable of carrying the load, either. Jerome Messam, coming off his second career 1,000-yard rushing season, can do that. He just may not be needed to.
Tory Harrison, 28, who caught five touchdown passes in his rookie year last season, is also expected to play a role, while former Baylor University star Lache Seastrunk, 25, lurks and could be the wildcard in the Stampeders’ ground game plans.
“I’m just going to come in and be me,” said Messam, who’ll have a significant role in his first full season in Calgary, after coming over from the Saskatchewan Roughriders at the trade deadline last fall. “Play well and pick up where he left off and be a solid back and one that’s reliable. “I’m really focused. I’m just happy that my body feels great and everything else will fall into place. As long as I’m healthy, I’m not worried about the production.”
While Cornish and Messam were born only five months apart, their respective workloads up to the age of 31 are much different.
Cornish retired with 1,026 carries on his hall-of-fame resume, while Messam has lugged the football only 614 times in his six CFL seasons. With the nagging injuries that plagued the nimble 6-foot-3, 245-pounder now, hopefully, a thing of the past, Messam has a good feeling about 2016.
“I’m just trying to be the best, man, and be great,” Messam said. “I want to make the CFL hall of fame one day. “I’m excited just to be able to be with a team where we have so many weapons and defences can’t really key in on one thing. If everyone stays healthy, the sky’s the limit for this team. Dickie’s offence is very powerful and, when ran correctly, I think, we can put up a lot of numbers.”
Behind a healthy offensive line, the numbers will be there. For somebody. But the feature-back in football is dying a slow death, and after more than a decade of one guy doing most of the heavy lifting in Calgary — before Cornish it was Joffrey Reynolds — the depth chart may dictate otherwise.
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