It’s too early to start dreaming up colourful nicknames like the Eskimos “Alberta Crude” or Ottawa’s “Capital Punishment” from back in the 1970s, but Edmonton’s rebuilt defence is starting to find an identity.
Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach Chris Jones is supposed to be the defensive genius, but the Eskimos defence was just as good as Jones’ Scrooge-like unit on Thursday, limiting the Riders to just five points over seven possessions during the final 27 minutes and 19 seconds to record a hard-fought 26-19 victory in front of a season-best crowd of 35,623 at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium.
Edmonton’s third win in a row lifted the Green and Gold into sole possession of second place in the West Division at 5-2 while the Roughriders dropped to fourth place at 3-4. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers (4-3) are in third place.
“A win’s a win, man,” Eskimos head coach Jason Maas said about a game in which starting quarterback Mike Reilly had only six completions in 19 pass attempts after three quarters. “You play a Western opponent at home, a tough opponent. They gave us everything (they had). It was a tough grind-it-out type of win, and we’ll take it.”
While Reilly didn’t deliver his best performance – in part because of the aggressive Saskatchewan defence – the Esks defence also played like a brick wall, stopping the Riders on four plays inside the 10-yard line on one series late in the third quarter – twice from the one-yard line – and limiting the visitors to a 33-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter.
“You love to see that fight in your team,” Maas said about those two defensive stands.
“To come together and make those plays was huge,” said middle linebacker J.C. Sherritt, who had a team-high of six defensive tackles along with Korey Jones, who was making his first start at weakside linebacker this season. “Defensively, we’ve been improving on a weekly basis for about four weeks.”
Defensive tackle Almondo Sewell played a big role in jamming up the running lanes during the two plays from the one-yard line, which he said is “almost like a 99-per-cent chance they’re going to score,” when he was mad at himself for jumping offside after Saskatchewan lined up at the Edmonton nine-yard line for a field goal on third-and-four late in the third quarter.
“I had to make something happen,” Sewell said. “I got called on a dumb penalty down there, and I had to make up for it. I thought I saw something. It wasn’t there. I’ve got to be more disciplined towards that.
“I don’t jump offside at all, but for some weird reason today, I had a jump offside,” he added. “I’m just happy they didn’t score, and we stopped them.”
Saskatchewan turned the ball over on downs but still picked up two points when the Eskimos failed to move the ball past their six-yard line on their next possession and had punter Hugh O’Neill concede a safety touch.
That left Edmonton with a slim 17-16 in the final minute of the third quarter.
“It saved us a point,” Sherritt said, “because it was going to be three or possibly seven (points) in a game that was tight.”
Sewell also frustrated the Riders by forcing them to kick a field goal when he tackled running back Marcus Thigpen for a three-yard gain on a screen pass after Esks receiver Nate Behar lost a fumble at the Edmonton 28 early in the fourth quarter.
“We talked about it all week,” Sewell said about Maas challenging the defence to find an identity. “He said: ‘Are you going to be an aggressive team or are you going to be a passive team?’ We were an aggressive team tonight.”
The Eskimos opened the scoring after Reilly threw to a wide-open Derel Walker down the sidelines for a 61-yard pass-and-run play to the Riders’ 13 in the first quarter. Four plays later, running back C.J. Gable (14 carries for 81 yards) blasted into the end zone for a three-yard touchdown run.
Saskatchewan tied the score by the end of the first quarter, and then Sean Whyte kicked his first of two field goals – this one from 49 yards – to give Edmonton a 10-7 lead by halftime. The Riders scored on a 41-yard pass-and-run play by Duron Carter less than two minutes into the third quarter to take a 14-10 lead.
That’s when Walker became a one-man show for the Edmonton offence. During the next series, he made a key catch on second down, drew an illegal contact penalty on a Saskatchewan defender for another second-down conversion and hauled in a 33-yard rainbow toss from Reilly followed by a three-yard dive into the end zone to put the Eskimos back in front 17-14.
“All I did was run, and Mike placed the ball beautifully,” Walker said about his fifth TD of the season. “It was a great throw. The (offensive) line protected and held up to give Mike time to place a beautiful ball. All I did was catch it and fall in the end zone, really.”
The catch in double coverage helped Walker turn in his best performance since the season opener, catching a total of six passes for 154 yards. After the third quarter, he had accounted for a mind-boggling 138 of Reilly’s 146 passing yards.
“It was good to catch some balls downfield and being able to make some plays for the team and put us a good position,” said Walker, who is third in the CFL with 617 receiving yards on 37 receptions.
“It was just a matter of time before he was going to have a night like this,” said Reilly, who finished the game with 13 completions on 27 attempts for 257 yards and Walker’s touchdown.
Reilly was frustrated by his performance at times Thursday.
“(Maas will) be hard on me tomorrow in the film room and I expect him to be because that wasn’t up to my standards a lot of the time tonight,” Reilly said. “But if you’re not playing great and you still beat a good divisional opponent, you’ve got some good things in store.”
Reilly, who said they were having issues with the headsets early in the game as far as getting the play calls from the sidelines, felt the Eskimos played “the way we needed to play” in the fourth quarter when they scored the final 10 points in the last 2-1/2 minutes for another come-from-behind victory.
“It was a tough one tonight, for sure,” Reilly said. “We played against a good football team, and we found a way to win and made the plays when they needed to be made, so you’re not going to hear me complain about that.
“It wasn’t one of our better games offensively. We were just a little bit out of sync. I missed a fair amount of throws that I normally hit and that made the game tougher than it could have been. But credit to them. Part of that is on them. They’re matching up and playing tight man coverage. The ball has got to thrown more precisely than I did tonight on a number of occasions, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Teammate Duke Williams was held to two catches for 41 yards to end his streak of five consecutive 100-yard games, but the fleet-footed slotback teased the fans with a 98-yard pass-and-run play only to be ruled down on the field after only 17 yards following a review from the CFL command centre in Toronto. He still leads the league with 713 yards on 37 catches.
“Walker and (Kenny) Stafford in the fourth quarter were tremendous,” Maas said. “The slant that Walker caught was not an easy catch. Kenny’s big catch over somebody in the middle of the field (for a 46-yard gain to the Saskatchewan 22) was a huge deal for us leading to that game-winning score.
“They were big-time catches,” Maas continued. “We expect that out of those guys. It wasn’t there all night, but when we needed it the most on that drive, it happened.”
Reilly scored the go-ahead touchdown on a one-yard sneak, but he had to come up with his best Gable impersonation – spinning out of the grasp of the Riders’ Nick Marshall – to get into the end zone.
“I don’t know if we’ve been stopped on the goal-line in those short-yardage situations (this year),” Reilly said. “Maybe in Winnipeg on first down we got stuffed one time. But our big guys up front always do a great job.”
Maas admitted after the game that he might have said some things that weren’t complimentary about Reilly during the TSN broadcast, which featured live mics on the starting quarterbacks and coaches.
“I’d never criticize Mike,” Maas said. “It’s difficult to play the position the way he does at such a high level every single week. When he’s off a little bit, the thing I know about him is he keeps grinding. At the end when it’s an important throw, I know he’ll make it.
“At the beginning of the game, would he have liked to have a couple of those balls back? Sure. But the rest of the game he was doing everything possible for us to win. When it needs to be made, there’s no other guy I’d rather have back there than him.”
The Eskimos had to play without veteran centre Justin Sorensen, who missed the game with a leg injury. Versatile David Beard, who has played centre before and practices at the position each week, shifted over from right guard and Jacob Ruby stepped into the lineup.
“That’s a tough pass rush that Saskatchewan has,” Reilly said. “I thought our guys did a nice job. They gave me enough time to make the plays we needed to make.”
Maas also pointed out that the Eskimos rushed for more than 100 yards (Reilly had five carries for 22 yards) “so in order to do that, you have to be doing some really good things up front.
“To have two moving parts (changes) on your O-line that, for us, is one of the strengths of our football team, it just showed how deep we are,” he added.
Whyte also kicked a 46-yard field goal to give the Eskimos a seven-point lead with 34 seconds remaining and two converts for an eight-point outing. With 96 career field goals with the Esks, he is only one three-pointer behind of Grant Shaw for fourth place on Edmonton’s all-time list.
SHORT YARDAGE: The Eskimos collected 108,270 pounds of food on the Purolator Tackle Hunger promotion to assist the Edmonton Food Bank … The 50/50 take-home jackpot, presented by belairdirect, reached $410,982 … Reilly moved into 20th place on the CFL’s all-time passing yards list with 24,383 yards … Walker slipped past Eddie Brown into 13th place on the team’s all-time receptions list with 283 catches … Sherritt moved past former middle linebacker Danny Bass into fourth place on the Eskimos all-time defensive tackles list with 467 … Beard recovered a fumble after Reilly was stripped of the ball for one of the four times he was sacked in the game … Chris Edwards returned kicks in the second half after rookie Jordan Robinson was injured 2-1/2 minutes into the third quarter … The Eskimos were more disciplined Thursday, taking only seven penalties for 59 yards.