Stampeders remain a work in progress
DANIEL AUSTIN
For fans, the Calgary Stampeders’ Thursday night win over the Ottawa Redblacks was a whole lot of fun.
But for the Stamps, it was proof that there’s a lot of work to do if they’re going to reach the same heights they hit last season.
It was a wacky, wild game that was filled with a whole lot of mistakes, but the Stamps are now 1-0-1 after a two-game set against the reigning Grey Cup champions. Not bad.
Here are the takeaways from Thursday’s 43-39 win at McMahon Stadium.
It’s almost surreal just how beatup the Calgary Stampeders already are on both the defensive and offensive lines.
The D-line depth was being stretch going into Thursday’s game, and the offensive unit appeared to lose both Cam Thorn and Shane Bergman.
Head coach Dave Dickenson didn’t have any major injury updates on Friday afternoon at McMahon Stadium, but his words weren’t exactly encouraging.
“We’ve got both lines pretty ravaged,” Dickenson said. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll have some guys who are ready when their opportunity and number is called and they’ll have to go out there and do their best.”
The Stamps switched Derek Wiggan over to offence to finish the game, but who knows if that’s any sort of long-term — or short-term solution. It’s possible that first-round draft pick Randy Colling just might get a call on the D-line sometime soon, but the Oline needs bodies back soon.
Put plainly, the Stampeders run-game hasn’t been as good as it needs to be so far this season.
Andrew Buckley’s 60-yard touchdown helped make the numbers look better than they were, but Jerome Messam hasn’t looked quite like himself through two games, with 116 rushing yards and a touchdown in 27 carries so far.
It’s worth noting that those two games were against the Grey Cup champions, though, and the Redblacks did a great job of limiting the Calgary run-game last season. The low run-totals may have more to do with the Redblacks defence than Messam.
“Ottawa’s always done a pretty good job taking away our run game,” Dickenson said. “We were able to mix it up a little bit and we’re happy Andrew got the big 60-yarder to increase our totals. That’s a part of our game where we want to be tops in the league and we have a ways to go to get there.”
You have to give the Redblacks receivers credit for the damage they did on Thursday night, but the Stampeders can’t be happy with the performances they got from their defensive secondary.
Yes, Brandon Smith is hurt. And yes, Tommie Campbell hasn’t had much time to get game-ready, but the fact remains that the Stamps simply weren’t good enough at stopping Trevor Harris from finding his targets downfield.
There were a couple critical mistakes at big moments, too, and Josh Bell summed up the situation in the secondary in the plainest possible terms after the game.
“Man, we need a lot of work,” Bell said.
They do, but they’re not likely to see a pass-attack as scary as the Redblacks for a while, so they’ll fortunately have time.
This final takeaway isn’t going to be especially impressive from an analytical perspective, we apologize. But boy oh boy is Tunde Adeleke fun to watch.
The 21-year- old is going to make a lot of people feel old this year, and he became the youngest Stampeders player in history to return a punt for a touchdown when he zigged and zagged through the Redblacks special teams unit to score in the fourth quarter.
The spin was brilliant and the feint to the left that followed sent just about the entire city of Ottawa flying in the wrong direction.
Who knows what the rest of the season holds for Adeleke, but it’s OK if Stamps fans just wanna step back and enjoy the youngster’s gorgeous return for a little while.