Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda.
The Eskimos played well enough to win Saturday’s CFL game with the Toronto Argonauts in front of 12,196 spectators at BMO Field, but they didn’t win because they made too many mistakes on execution and communication and took too many penalties.
“That’s a game we’ll look back on and say we should have had a win handily if we would have done things how we’re expected to do them, but we weren’t even close to good enough tonight,” quarterback Mike Reilly said on the 630 CHED post-game show.
Reilly wasn’t about to sugarcoat the 20-17 loss to the Argos – Edmonton’s fifth defeat in the last six years at Toronto.
“We had a good game plan,” he said. “Our defence played great all game long. Offensively, we could not get out of our own way. We did some things really well, but when it mattered down in the scoring zone, where we’ve been really efficient all year long, we just killed it, man.
“It was bad; it was bad football. There were a lot of penalties, and there was a lot of miscommunication, a lack of execution from everybody on the offensive side of the ball. We have to be a lot better.”
Edmonton’s second loss in as many games against an East Division opponent dropped the Eskimos, 2-2, into a three-way tie for second place in the West Division with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
“I’m not saying we didn’t play well – I thought we did in a lot of stretches – but you have to finish, and you have to be more disciplined in order to do that,” Edmonton head coach Jason Maas said. “At the end of the day, I thought all three phases (offence, defence and special teams) played really well at times and together really well.
“But the name of the game is finishing. If you do not finish drives – just like we saw last week with BC – the other team can stay in the ball game. When you’re outplaying a team at times, you need to have that killer instinct in the red zone to be able to put them away and finish drives and just get yourself more momentum. We just weren’t able to do that.”
After spotting the Argonauts an early 12-0 lead only six minutes into the game, the Eskimos slowly chipped away at the deficit while making five consecutive drives into Toronto territory. But it wasn’t until wide receiver Derel Walker caught a 14-yard pass and dashed another 10 yards into the end zone late in the third quarter that the Esks were finally able to score a touchdown and take their first lead of the game, 14-12.
All Edmonton had to show for their previous trips across midfield were three Sean Whyte field goal attempts (a miss from 32 yards and successful kicks from 33 and 40 yards), an interception in the end zone and a Hugh O’Neill punt.
“We moved the ball well, got down into the red zone a lot of times, but we just had stupid little errors,” Reilly said. “We got into the end zone for a touchdown and then it gets called back (holding penalty) … and we end up not scoring the touchdown to finish that drive.
“There were things like that throughout the entire game and throughout all the spots on the field – beginning of drives, end of drives, middle of drives. It was bad discipline, bad execution.”
Still, Reilly completed 28 of 40 passes for 370 yards and a touchdown and ran a ball-control offence for 11 minutes and 38 seconds in the second quarter and for 27:44 over the first 45 minutes. Slotback Duke Williams also turned in his third straight 100-yard receiving game with eight catches for 125 yards.
But the Eskimos also took 12 penalties for 126 yards after taking less than 10 penalties in each of their previous 10 regular-season games. There were four penalties for holding, two for objectionable conduct, one for roughness and a time-count violation because the offence didn’t have enough players on the field.
“Discipline was a major factor in this game,” Maas said. “The penalties that we were taking definitely kept us out of scoring positions.
“Sometimes you get away with (a lack of discipline), and that lends itself to sticking around,” he added. “But everyone noticed it tonight. When we go in our team meeting (on Sunday), and we point out all these errors that were on us, it’s going to make everyone feel sick. … We needed to win tonight.”
Eskimos middle linebacker J.C. Sherritt, who led the defence with eight tackles, was frustrated by the infractions.
“The objectionable conduct penalties, the penalties we took throughout that game were so unnecessary,” he said. “It’s professional football. If you’re going to make mistakes like that, you’re going to pay for it no matter how good you’re playing.
“It’ll be fixed. I can promise that” he added. “It was made clear last year. … If you continue doing certain things, you just won’t be on the team. To take stupid penalties, to do things like that, it won’t be tolerated here.”
Because the Eskimos held only a slim 17-12 lead after a third Whyte field goal from 41 yards in the fourth quarter, the Argos still had a chance to rally and James Franklin – Reilly’s former apprentice the last three years – took advantage of it in his first start with the Argos. He threw a five-yard touchdown pass to Declan Cross followed by a two-point convert to Armanti Edwards with two minutes and 57 seconds remaining in the game.
It was Franklin’s third game-winning drive in only four CFL starts. He also ripped a page out of the Eskimos game plan by putting together two time-consuming drives that used up nine minutes and 14 seconds during the game’s final 10 minutes to keep Reilly – a master of manufacturing last-minute game-winning drives – off the field.
Franklin relied upon running back James Wilder Jr. (21 carries for 120 yards) to open the game with a 76-yard march over nine plays before the QB plunged into the end zone from two yards out for the touchdown.
Toronto missed the convert but scored again right away when Eskimos running back C.J. Gable lost a fumble at the Edmonton 35-yard line on the team’s first offensive play of the game. Franklin threw a 30-yard pass Edwards and then handed the ball to Wilder for a five-yard touchdown run.
The Eskimos appeared to be on the verge of getting back into the game when Reilly threw into the end zone for Derel Walker on a 10-play drive in the second quarter. But the pass was intercepted by the Argos’ Ronnie Yell after Walker slipped on the artificial turf.
“I was trying to plant my right foot and down goes Frazier on that one,” Walker said. “The end zones are pretty tough. I just went down on that go ball and couldn’t recover to get back to the ball, so it was picked off right by the pylon in the end zone.”
BMO Field has a natural grass field from goal line to goal line because it was built for soccer, but artificial turf in the end zones.
“It’s not something that we don’t know about,” Reilly said, “but “I’ve never seen DWalk slip and fall on a one-on-one jump ball.”
Saturday’s game marked only the third time in 16 CFL games this season that the team trailing after the third quarter has come back to win. It was also only the third close game in the league this season.
The teams have a rematch at 7 p.m. Friday at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium, where the entire field has the same surface.
“You’ve got to thank the stars for that,” Sherritt said about playing the Argos again right away. “Just as a competitor, any time you take a loss to someone, you want payback, and we get a shot early.”
SHORT YARDAGE: Williams leads all CFL receivers with 433 yards on 22 catches … Kenny Stafford added seven catches for 98 yards … Bryant Mitchell had one catch for nine yards in his season debut … Gable was limited to 39 yards on 14 carries after his career-high performance last week … Mark Mackie, a 2017 eighth-round draft pick who rejoined the team this week because national defensive end Kwaku Boateng was unable to play, had his first CFL quarterback sack, first defensive tackle and a hurry in his first game as a professional football player … Rookie cornerback Maurice McKnight had his first CFL interception and six defensive tackles.