Mike Reilly‘s arm brought the heat on a chilly summer’s evening last night.
After shouldering the blame for last week’s upset loss to the BC Lions, the veteran quarterback was throwing darts to a bullseye for most of the CFL game’s first half – completing 19 of his first 20 passes.
When the smoke cleared, Reilly had passed for a season-high 424 yards, and three touchdowns as the Eskimos torched the Montreal Alouettes 40-24 in front of 29,702 happy customers at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium on Diversity Is Strength Night, presented by TELUS.
Reilly also scored his league-high eighth rushing TD in the fourth quarter as he extended his streak of throwing or running for a touchdown to 38 consecutive regular-season starts.
With the win – Edmonton’s 10th straight against Montreal – the Eskimos (6-3) take over sole possession of second place in the West Division behind the 7-0 Calgary Stampeders.
The Esks have one more game – 5:30 p.m. Thursday against the 3-5 Tiger-Cats at Hamilton – before taking on the Stampeders in the annual Labour Day Classic and Labour Day Rematch home-and-home series in early September.
“We would liked to play better than we did in the second half, but that’s how it goes, man,” said Reilly.
“It goes in waves,” he continued. “It felt like there was a stretch there later in the game where it was almost an impossible task just to complete a ball. When they’re bringing pressure, and they’re tipping a ball at the line of scrimmage and doing things like that, that happens. But if you’re going to play like that, you live and die by that sword.
“We were a little bit off of hitting a couple of big ones that really would have put that game out of reach early.”
Reilly, who leads the league with 3,046 passing yards and 19 touchdown passes, was a man on a mission to get the Eskimos offence back on track against the Alouettes (1-8). His only incomplete passes on 26 pass attempts in the first half were because of a miscommunication with wide receiver Derel Walker, who was going one way while Reilly threw to a different location, Reilly getting hit as he was throwing a pass and the Alouettes knocking down a pass at the line of scrimmage.
Reilly finished the game with 33 completions in 42 attempts (78.6 per cent) and went over the 25,000-yard mark in his career, closing within 84 yards of Condredge Holloway for 18th place on the CFL’s all-time passing leaders list.
Wide receiver Bryant Mitchell, who has had limited playing time with the Eskimos since joining the team in 2015, was one of the beneficiaries of Reilly’s pinpoint passes. He had seven catches for a career-high 128 yards and a touchdown in his first start of the season.
“When you’ve been that patient, and it’s taken you that long to get onto the field, you know how special it is to be out there and you don’t want to waste the opportunity,” Reilly said about Mitchell. “He played like that tonight.”
Mitchell, 26, played seven games (mostly in the first half of the 2017 season) and had back-to-back 100-yard performances when injuries decimated the Eskimos receiving corps last year, but he’s been patiently waiting for his time to shine in 2018.
“It’s always special when he gets in there and does well because of how much work he puts in,” Eskimos head coach Jason Maas said. “He’s had a little bit of an injury bug while he’s been here, but every time he’s on our roster, he impacts the game. He works extremely hard. There’s probably not a harder worker on our team than Bryant.”
Mitchell, 26, scored an amazing touchdown in the second quarter when he raced across the field from the far side to to come out of nowhere to make the catch in the end zone after Reilly just threw the ball up in the air into the end zone to avoid being sacked.
“What does Duke always say? See ball, get ball,” Mitchell said. “I went to go get it.”
“Sometimes you throw a great ball that gets picked and, sometimes, you throw one like that that turns into a touchdown,” said Reilly. “I’m not going to complain. Bryant did a great job. I didn’t think he was going to get all the way over to that side of the field.”
The Eskimos were having trouble at that point early in the second quarter figuring out how to block the Alouettes’ blitz. They were on the verge of giving up a quarterback sack on four consecutive plays when Reilly basically threw the ball away with a Montreal player already in his face.
“Sacks as a stat are deceiving because none of those were on the offensive line,” Reilly said. “The offensive line did a great job. They were picking up the right guys. The five were taking their five (attackers) every single time.
“Myself, the running backs, the wideouts, we’ve got to do a better job. We’ve already seen it on the iPads. We made the adjustments, but we’ve got to be better at picking it up in real time when it happens.
“We’ll be better for it,” he said. “I’m glad it happened. I’m glad we got to see it because that’s something that can happen later in the season and we’ll be ready for it.”
Rookie running back Shaquille Cooper had an impressive CFL debut with veteran C.J. Gable on the one-game injured list. Cooper, 25, rushed 17 times for 102 yards and caught five passes for another 41 yards and his first CFL touchdown on an 11-yard swing pass to give the Eskimos an early 10-0 lead.
“You obviously see how special he can be with some of the runs he made tonight and he’s made the tough runs, too, for a couple of yards here and there that he needed to get,” Maas said. “He’s definitely what we thought we would be. Until he gets in a game and sees it, you never know what you’re going to get, but he stepped up to the plate and did an extremely good job.
“He’ll only get better the more reps he’s in there.”
Cooper, who has been on the sidelines since training camp, almost scored a second time late in the game but fumbled the ball into the end zone as he stepped out of bounds at the Montreal one-yard line.
“I think I got a little too excited, but it happens,” Cooper said about his fumble. “You live, and you learn. I learned my lesson.”
The lesson he learned? Don’t get stopped at the one-yard line because Reilly will keep the ball and plunge into the end zone behind his big offensive linemen.
“Now I feel the way C.J. feels,” Cooper said with a smile, “but I’m a team player. Mike got in there, and that’s all that matters. We got the win.”
“I thought he did a nice job,” Reilly said about the running back. “The stage certainly wasn’t too big, so that was good to see.”
Second-year receiver Duke Williams, who had been limited to six catches over the past two games, had seven receptions for 72 yards and a TD while Walker finished with five catches for 82 yards. They rank 1-2 in the league with 831 yards and 816 yards, respectively. Kenny Stafford, who had four catches for 55 yards on Sunday, is in eighth place among CFL receivers at 570 yards.
Williams was penalized for a second time this season for a creative touchdown celebration after scoring his sixth TD to tie Walker for the league lead.
After scoring for the first time in three games with a 10-yard catch early in the second quarter, Williams crawled on his hands and knees through a triangle-shaped advertising sign behind the south end zone. He was followed by two of his fellow receivers.
“The league has a policy that says you cannot use a prop,” Maas said about the 10-yard objectional conduct penalty. “The first game he got called with that was with his towel (Williams pretended to be having a picnic in the end zone). I didn’t know the towel could be used as a prop, but he found out the hard way that it is.
“We have pointed out to him that nothing except for celebrating with your teammates is acceptable,” Maas continued. “He was celebrating with his teammates, but you cannot use anything to celebrate.”
Personally, Maas doesn’t have a problem with Williams’ post-scoring antics.
“Am I all for the league saying that’s OK? Sure, I don’t mind that,” Maas said. “It’s not showing their sideline up. It’s not showing that particular player up. Maybe down the road (the CFL will) look at it and say that kind of thing isn’t really harmful.
“It maybe brought some advertising to Booster Juice. (Owner) Dale Wishewan is a great guy, a great business owner, so I’m sure he was pretty excited to have that play going again. So maybe the league will look at that, but until they do, it’s a penalty in our eyes and (Williams) can’t let it happen. … Until the league says, that’s
OK, it’s not OK over here, and as long as it’s going to hurt our football club, Duke will never do that kind of thing again.”
The 10-yard penalty combined with a 47-yard kickoff return gave the Alouettes possession of the ball at the Edmonton 41. They scored a touchdown four plays later to close within three points of the Eskimos – 17-14 – two minutes into the second quarter.
It was the second time that Montreal scored after having a short field to work within the first half. The Alouettes also recovered a surprise onside kickoff in the first quarter at the Eskimos 53-yard line.
“It’s unfair to our defence when we put them in bad spots like that,” Maas said.
Sean Whyte took care of the rest of the scoring by kicking four field goals (38, 49, 35 and 20 yards) and four converts for a 16-point night – his biggest output in almost two years – to move past Blake Marshall into 11th place on the Eskimos all-time scoring list with 406 points.
Included in that performance was Whyte’s 100th field goal with the Eskimos. He’s only the fourth Edmonton player to reach that milestone, joining Sean Fleming (553), Dave Cutler (464) and Jerry Kauric (118).
Whyte has made 89.5 per cent of his field goals this season – 17 of 19 – including the last 13 in a row.
Even though the Eskimos took nine penalties for 105 yards, Maas was generally happy with the improvement in his team discipline except for cornerback Mercy Maston getting ejected along with former Esks receiver Adarius Bowman for an altercation in the last minute of the first half.
“I don’t like to have a guy get in a fight and throw a punch and get kicked out,” Maas said. “That’s bad football and, obviously, hurt our team.”
With Maston out of the game, the Eskimos alternated 2017 draft pick Jordan Hoover and 2018 first pick Godfrey Onyeka at corner in the second half.
SHORT YARDAGE: Eskimos middle linebacker J.C. Sherritt, who played his 100th CFL game Saturday, had his third quarterback sack of the season. That’s a single-season-high he’s reached three times previously … Reilly rushed for 30 yards on eight carries to pass Ricky Ray for fourth place on the Eskimos quarterbacks all-time rushing list with 2,675 yards … The Eskimos have had a 100-yard receiver in nine straight game … Stafford passed the 2,000-yard receiving mark in his CFL career.