“I’m Excited About It” — Bo Levi Mitchell Ready to Return in 2027

Bo Levi Mitchell wants to make this absolutely crystal-clear to Ticat Nation.

There has never been any doubt—not even at the worst of times—that he would be back under centre when the Ticats open training camp next year.

He reiterated that resolve this week in his first full interview since undergoing successful surgery on his right ankle on July 6, the day after he was injured against Winnipeg in the fourth game of the season. He was taken from the field by ambulance, stunning an anxious group of teammates, the visiting Blue Bombers and capacity hometown crowd into concerned silence.

Because Mitchell had also injured that same ankle and required surgery in the middle of the 2023 season, there was some public speculation that this injury might compel the presumptive first-ballot Hall of Famer to consider retirement.

Not a chance, Mitchell says, and never has been. His already-spectacular career was, at age 36, on an astonishing upward trajectory that stretched back to his return from the previous injury. The Ticat offence was loaded and muscularly dominant in the season’s first quarter and he’s buoyed for next season where he wants to pick up where he left off.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Mitchell said. “My family’s excited about it. I’m excited about it. I knew, the moment I went down (he’d play again); my wife (Madison) was in the ambulance, we were holding hands and just talking and we said, ‘We’re not going out like this.’ So, we’re excited. I’m sure there will be some cool, fun announcements happening soon.

“It was a tough (injury) to happen. Obviously, I think we all felt the season was going great. Personally, I felt awesome. As you get older, you kind of worry about how your body's going to react to training camp and everything, but I felt so good, and my arm felt so good. And I think we were moving the ball really well and feeling amazing. So, when it comes out of nowhere, it's always a tough one as we all kind of felt in the stadium that day.”

Mitchell is well ahead of the original recovery schedule and has passed several rehabilitation milestones, including moving quickly from a leg-support cart to a walking boot, cutting the “hopping-on-one foot” time projection by several weeks, walking without the protective boot, then running and doing full workouts. He credits the Cats’ athletic training staff and strength and conditioning coach Marcellus Bowman for their diligence.

“The update is, I’m feeling great,” he said. “I'm running. I'm at 100% body weight and out on the field, jogging around, moving around. I'm shuffling, I'm dropping, I'm throwing the ball. So everything is definitely moving in the right direction. Curtis (Richards, head athletic therapist) and Taylor (Beausoleil, assistant athletic therapist) have been pushing me in rehab and doing a great job of trying to progress as fast but as smart as we can. They’re saying, ‘Our job is to get you back on the field, but safely, not to push you to the point where we're rushing you back before you're ready and then you're putting yourself at risk when you go out there.’

“So, I think the plan has always been to try to get back as quick as possible. Obviously with what's happening right now in the season, it's been a little bit tougher to decide.”

Head coach Scott Milanovich has said more than once that the club would not put Mitchell in harm’s way, and the injury added to an already trying 2026 for Mitchell. His father Dwight “Mitch” Mitchell passed away in the family’s hometown of Katy, Texas in mid-March, less than two months before training camp opened.

“This year was going to be dedicated to my dad, the guy who's been there for me sport-wise,” Mitchell said. “He was my coach in baseball when I was growing up. Losing him this last off-season, I wanted to do it for him. I came off the injury in ’23 in eight weeks but then the opinion was that this one was going to take longer…so then the emotions started to come in about my dad and not being able to do what I wanted to do for him this year. But talking with Madison, it was ‘hey, that doesn't change anything. You can still do what you want to do in your career for your dad. Just because it's not this year doesn't mean it can't happen.’”

Mitchell’s emphatic declaration that he’ll be back under centre should have a favourable effect on the roster, reaching beyond the obvious dividend of a franchise quarterback returning with the enthusiasm that he’ll be as good or even better than he was prior to the injury. That can act as a magnetic pole for potential free agents—the Ticats’ own and others around the league—who now know the Cats will have excellent quarterbacking depth, led by their sure-fire Hall of Famer.

“It’s just naturally how we work as athletes,” Mitchell agrees. “I'm sure when Tom Brady left the Buccaneers, there were some people who were probably ready to move on and go to a different team. Not to compare myself to Tom Brady but I'm just saying when you lose a franchise quarterback, those kinds of things happen.

“So, I'm very excited to announce that I'm coming back and make sure everybody understands that, especially season seat members. Get those things renewed!”

It’s remarkable that his most recent two-plus seasons have been among the most productive, by many metrics, of the two-time CFL Most Outstanding Player’s career. He was a back-to-back finalist for MOP and arguably should have won in 2024 when he threw for the most yardage of his career. And over the first quarter of this season, he had nine touchdown passes and just one interception, as well as the highest completion rate (78.1 percent) of his thick resumé.

Under the tutelage of Marcellus Bowman, he had dramatically altered his body and his commitment to overall fitness, strength and nutrition. And with every season, he has grown more and more in synch with Scott Milanovich’s perceptions and priorities.

“After my first year here, I just committed to getting into the weight room a lot more with Marcellus and I’ve made it very well-known that he did an amazing job of showing me where my weaknesses were,” Mitchell says. “He said, ‘you know you have your strengths, and we can make those better, but let’s get at those weaknesses.’

“It was mainly legs, getting the legs to a point where you can move around the pocket, feel strong, take certain hits.

“And it got to the point where Scott wanted me to be able to take off and run and get first downs. Every quarterback in the league can do it. I did it plenty of times earlier in my career. So, it became the emphasis of that off-season.

“From that, then going into training camp and getting to be with Scott for an entire off-season and talk ball with him, then to have an entire training camp with him, him learning me and me learning him, I think that was huge. In any kind of play-caller/quarterback symbiotic relationship, he has to know what I'm thinking and I need to know what he's thinking, and why he's creating this play and why he's calling that play. You can see the progression over the last couple of years, and when continuity gets to continue, great things can happen.

“I think learning Scott's offence, I feel so confident and comfortable. This past training camp is far and away the best I've ever felt and looked in football. So, I knew this was going to be a special year.

“I think we're hitting just the bottom edge of that first part of the prime of this relationship. And I very much would like to see it through.”

Mitchell gives a nod to the adage that a team is what their record says they are, but he firmly believes that the Ticats are not a 4-11 club.

“Obviously the record shows something different than I think what our team is, right? You look at our offence as a whole, the O-line, receivers, running-back room. And then you look at our defence, you look at our special teams …. we’ve got dogs all over the field. There have been a couple of games where whether it's in the third quarter or the middle of the fourth quarter, a penalty happens here, a turnover happens there. That turns a three-point game into a seven-point game, and it turns into a loss.

“We know we can make the play. We've done it before. We've gone from last to first place and we were minutes away from going to compete for a Grey Cup last year. And I think we all feel that we are right there and can do that again.

“And same thing with me and the ankle, I've been through it before. Now I know that I can come off an ankle injury and play great football. So, I'm excited to get back and make it happen again.”