Photo Credit: Johany Jutras
Whether it’s by one, two or 40 points, “losing sucks,” according to Eskimos head coach Jason Maas.
But when a team has been struggling for a while, sometimes there are silver linings in the dark clouds that can prove to be valuable.
“I have a lot of pride and hope in what I saw tonight,” Eskimos quarterback Mike Reilly said after Saturday’s 25-22 loss to the Calgary Stampeders in front of 34,312 spectators at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium.
“Guys are definitely on edge, but it’s time to take a deep breath,” said Reilly, who was forced to sit out three plays in the third quarter by the CFL’s injury spotter. “I know we’re a damn good football team. That’s the best team in the league right now and we had them down to the wire. Clearly, we have the ability, we have the talent. We just have to clean some stuff up and the discipline is definitely one of those areas.”
The Eskimos, who reeled off seven consecutive wins to open the season, now find themselves in third place in the West Division with a 7-4 record. They are trailing the 9-1-1 Stampeders and 8-3 Winnipeg Blue Bombers. The B.C. Lions (6-5) and Saskatchewan Roughriders (5-5) are right behind them.
Edmonton, which travels to Toronto to play the 4-7 Argonauts at 2 p.m. Saturday at BMO Field, did a lot of good things on offence, defence and special teams during the second game of a home-and-home series with the Stamps, but still ended up losing both contests when Calgary scored the winning touchdown on a third-down gamble at the Edmonton five-yard line with 54 seconds remaining.
“We’re certainly closer to playing like we did earlier in the year than we did the last three weeks,” observed Reilly, who completed 37 of 47 passes for 461 yards and a touchdown (33-yard pass-and-run play with rookie wide receiver Duke Williams in the fourth quarter) with only one interception. “But we’ve got to build on it, we’ve got to learn from it, we’ve got to get better from it.
“We had a little bit of that dog back in us. If we can continue to play with that type of mentality and that type of confidence and just change up the mental mistakes that are holding us back, then we’re going to be in great shape.”
Reilly said this is the point of the season where “the real football starts” and it becomes “Go time.” The Esks have certainly had the green light as they raced through their final seven games of the regular season each of the last two years with a combined 12-2 record.
Whether they can do that again will likely come down to being able to fix some of the mistakes that plagued the team in Saturday’s loss. The heavily penalized Eskimos took 10 more infractions for 107 yards, including a couple at key moments during Calgary’s game-winning drive.
On one play, defensive tackle Euclid Cummings sacked Stamps quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell, stripped the ball and recovered the fumble at the Calgary 37 only to see the entire play wiped out because he had jumped offside. That could have been the ball game if the Eskimos had been able to run the clock out from there.
Two plays later, defensive back Chris Edwards was called for objectionable conduct after an incomplete pass to give the Stampeders a first down at the Edmonton 49. Wide receiver Anthony Parker caught a 44-yard bomb to the Esks’ five-yard line on the next play.
“When you’re going to play against the top team – admittedly Calgary is the top team, they’re the best team in the league right now, the record proves that – you can’t make mistakes, you can’t slip up, you can’t beat yourself,” Reilly said. “Credit to them, for sure, because those mistakes don’t just happen. The other team causes mistakes to happen.
“They did a great job tonight and they took their opportunities when they had them. We did, too, but they had the last opportunity for the most part. We had a chance there at the end, but …”
The Eskimos got the ball back with 29 seconds left on the clock and went all the way down the field to the Calgary 39 before recent pickup Chris Milo attempted a 46-yard field goal to tie the score on the final play of the game. Unfortunately, Milo’s kick went wide right.
Milo also missed a convert on Derel Walker’s first touchdown of the season, a two-yard run early in the second quarter to give Edmonton its first lead, 6-3. Walker, who caught eight passes for 93 yards, rejoined the team last week after an unsuccessful tryout with the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Esks may have also lost points about five minutes into the third quarter when Reilly was removed from the game with the Green-and-Gold threatening at the Calgary 11-yard line.
Because of the concussion protocol, Reilly had to sit out the next three plays. While backup James Franklin managed to throw a nine-yard touchdown pass, it was called back because Williams was ruled offside and the Eskimos had to settle for a 21-yard field goal from Milo, who made three of his four attempts in the game, including three-pointers from 26 and 12 yards plus a convert for a 10-point outing.
“If the hit was so concerning that I would have to come out of the game, I would think it would probably be a deemed a roughing the passer hit,” said Reilly, who felt he was coherent when asking the referee why there wasn’t a flag on the play while still on the ground before running up to the line of scrimmage to run a quarterback sneak on third down.
“How are you going to take me out of a game for a hit to the head and there’s no flag on it?” he asked. “You’re going to take me out when we’re driving in the red zone in an important part of the game? It was frustrating because there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Maas, who called Reilly “the toughest quarterback in our league,” said the Eskimos team doctors knew right away that their QB was OK when he got to the sidelines and quickly answered the 10 questions in the concussion protocol, but the rules force the player to sit out at least three plays.
The Eskimos won the time of possession in each quarter, but the last one, when Calgary had the ball for only eight more seconds but scored three fewer points, 10-7. Edmonton’s defence registered six quarterback “pressures” and a sack by rookie middle linebacker Christophe Mulumba-Tshimanga in the game after getting some heat in the media because it didn’t create enough in recent games. Defensive end John Chick had three pressures while weak-side linebacker Adam Konar and safety Cauchy Muamba made interceptions and strong-side linebacker Kenny Ladler registered six defensive tackles and three more on special teams.
“I thought we got good pressure on (Mitchell) most of the night,” Maas said. “It created some errant throws, which is uncharacteristic of him.”
Brandon Zylstra led the Eskimos receivers with 10 catches for 187 yards
“We just have to build on what we did well as a team and we did a lot of things well so there’ll be a lot of things that will carry over into next week and the rest of the season,” Konar said.