Almondo Sewell is on a roll and not just because of the somersaults he does after each quarterback sack.
The Eskimos 30-year-old defensive tackle has registered a sack in five consecutive games for the first time in his career. Only Marcus Howard (2011) and Ted Laurent (2012) also accomplished the feat for the Eskimos since 1999.
“I’ve just got to keep going,” said Sewell, who is trying to make up for lost time when he failed to bring down the opposing quarterback for nine straight games earlier this season. “I’m playing catch-up right now.
“I wasn’t quite happy in the beginning of the season when I got hurt and I had to play through some injuries – I couldn’t do my moves the way I wanted to do them – but I’m not making any excuses. I’ve got two more games to catch up. I can do it.”
The six-foot-four, 288-pound Sewell, who got hurt in the third game of the season, had a sack in the season opener but didn’t get his second one until Sept. 16. Having never had sacks in more than back-to-back games in the past, he is now trying to catch the league leaders – Micah Johnson, Charleston Hughes and Ja’Gared Davis, all of the Calgary Stampeders, and Victor Butler of the Toronto Argonauts are tied with nine sacks this season. Sewell is also trailing defensive end Odell Willis (eight) and defensive tackle Euclid Cummings (seven) on his own team.
Not only do the Stampeders have one of the top sack attacks in the CFL, with 46, they have also allowed the fewest sacks (21), so Sewell and his defensive linemates will have their work cut out for them when the teams meet at 5 p.m. Saturday at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium.
It’s another momentum-building contest for the Eskimos, 10-6, who have won their last three games and are trying to keep alive their hopes of a second-place finish in the West Division and a home playoff game in the West semi final.
“If Winnipeg loses two, then we get home-field advantage,” said Sewell, the Eskimos most outstanding defensive player last year and a CFL all-star each of the past four seasons. “So we have that as a possibility. It’s always nice to play at home in Edmonton.”
The Blue Bombers can crush those dreams with a win over the B.C. Lions on Saturday afternoon, but a loss keeps Edmonton in the running as long as the Green-and-Gold can also defeat the Stampeders, who will be trying to extend their streak of avoiding back-to-back losses to 104 games.
Licking the Stamps is never easy. Calgary, 13-2-1, is the first team in CFL history to win at least 12 games in six consecutive seasons and has also won 16 of the last 18 games with the Eskimos and 11 of the last 12 games in Edmonton during the regular season.
The only exceptions were the Esks 27-16 (at home) and 15-11 victories in the fall of 2015 – plus the West Division final – en route to winning the Grey Cup.
“We’re saying we’ve got to win four in a row to get us to the Grey Cup,” Sewell said. “Then we’ll figure out what happens after that one. But for right now, this is like a momentum thing with us.”
Eskimos head coach Jason Maas was asked earlier this week about the importance of winning Saturday’s game to get the Calgary monkey off their back – after four consecutive victories during the past two years – before the teams possibly meet again in the playoffs.
“I don’t really care if we play them after this game, to be quite honest with you,” Maas said. “I don’t want to think about that. I really just want to focus on beating them this game and that’s where our players are focused. We want to beat the crap out of them right now. We’ve got one chance to do it right now and I don’t want to think about it any longer than that as far as playing them at any other time. I just want to focus on beating them in our house right now.”
Maas pointed out that the Eskimos have built up a lot of momentum “because we’ve been playing well for six weeks,” even if they didn’t win all of those games.
“We’re playing in our building, we haven’t beat them going on two years now, so there’s a lot of motivation,” he added. “Our guys are ready.
“I feel very confident we can beat them. We’ve played them extremely tough in our building the last two times we’ve played them.”
The Eskimos were in the middle of their six-game losing streak when they last played the Stamps in their traditional home-and-home series in early September. Calgary barely won the second game 25-22 in Edmonton after safety Cauchy Muamba just missed deflecting away Bo Levi Mitchell’s third-down pass into the end zone to Marquay McDaniel with 35 seconds remaining.
“If Cauchy’s fingertip is an inch bigger, we possibly win that game,” Maas said.
The Eskimos defensive line will play a big role in the outcome of Saturday’s game. It turned in one of its most impressive performances of the season last week in Vancouver against the B.C. Lions with a combined five sacks, seven quarterback pressures and 11 tackles (including three for losses).
“We should have had about nine sacks,” said Sewell, a seventh-year veteran who got the ball rolling against the Lions with a sack on the Eskimos first defensive play.
“Whichever one of us gets the first sack in the game, the rest of us have to get going or we’ll be left behind. We have a very competitive D-line room, so you better get your sack.”
Sewell also contributed three QB pressures against B.C. while Cummings had two sacks and a pressure, John Chick and Da’Quan Bowers each had a sack, and Willis had two pressures with rookie Kwaku Boateng contributing one.
“You get the two guys who can race off the edge or do different things and people are always worried about that,” Maas said. “But, really, it’s the two guys in the middle who can push the pocket toward the quarterback so he doesn’t feel comfortable when he has to step up in it.
“Most of the time, one of the two big guys is going to get double-teamed. If they’re the wrecking crew that they are, they can usually create a lot of havoc inside and let the other two guys on the outside get the one-on-one matchups and win them.”
Chick may be the odd man out on Saturday if the Eskimos rotate defensive end Phillip Hunt back into the lineup.
Sewell, who also has 13 defensive tackles in his last five games and 30 on the season, always sets a goal for quarterback sacks each year. He hit his target of 12 in 2016, but wouldn’t reveal the number he has written down in his home for this season.
“He’s physical and he’s feeling healthier,” Maas said about Sewell. “He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve been around.”
One number Sewell doesn’t mind talking about is 100. He reached the century mark in CFL games played two weeks ago.
“That’s a huge deal for me, man,” he said. “I never thought I’d actually play this long. The first year I got here in 2011, I got cut and I came back. I was always a little nicked up through my career. But it’s a huge accomplishment for me.”
The Eskimos will field a much different team on Saturday than they did when they last played Calgary in early September.
While the defensive line is intact, only defensive halfback Forrest Hightower and weak-side linebacker Adam Konar remain from secondary and linebacking corps. Brandyn Thompson shifts from defensive halfback to strong-side linebacker for this game as Kenny Ladler takes a breather for the first time this season. Safety Neil King returns to safety after missing the last two games with an injury while backup defensive back/kick returner Chris Edwards returns after sitting out the last game.
On offence, running back C.J. Gable is back after missing the last game for precautionary reasons and kick-returner Jamill Smith is activated for his fourth game of the season after emergency fill-in Brandon Zylstra lost a fumbled punt return each of the last two games. Offensive tackle Joel Figueroa misses his second game in a row, meaning that Colin Kelly remains at left tackle and D’Anthony Batiste at right tackle.
SHORT YARDAGE: With Ladler out of the lineup, that leaves quarterback Mike Reilly and offensive lineman Matt O’Donnell as the only Eskimos players to start every game this season. Slotback Cory Watson, fullback Calvin McCarty, offensive lineman David Beard, defensive end Kwaku Boateng, linebacker Christophe Mulumba-Tshimanga, special teamer Natey Adjei and backup quarterbacks James Franklin and Danny O’Brien are the other players who have been on the active roster for every game … Reilly needs to pass for only 412 yards over the last two games to break Ricky Ray’s club record of 5,663 yards set in 2008 … Zylstra needs six catches to become only the seventh Eskimos receiver with 100 receptions in a season … Adarius Bowman, who had a breakout game with nine catches for 136 yards last week, needs only 55 receiving yards to become the sixth Edmonton receiver to reach the 7,000-yard mark in his career.