Stampeders look back on lost opportunity for Grey Cup win
To a man, they all shared similar sentiments.
That they’re a very good football team, that they’re family — and that they just didn’t get the job done.
On their final gathering of the 2017 season, the Calgary Stampeders looked back in frustration — with the knowledge that losing to the Toronto Argonauts in the Grey Cup was also a team effort.
“I haven’t had the chance to watch the film, but I’ll do it,” head coach Dave Dickenson said with a sigh. “I’ll watch it today probably and I’ll probably get more upset. I was sick to my stomach. Our guys had great effort, great focus, just couldn’t get it done. They played hard, they were committed ... sports sucks sometimes.
“Listen, it hurts. I’m not over it and I didn’t even put all that blood, sweat and tears like these guys. But it’s part of history. Hopefully, we can keep as many of these guys together as we can, get up off the ground and live on to fight another battle.”
For defensive end Charleston Hughes, it wasn’t how he expected his fifth trip to the Grey Cup to end.
“Unfair means you need to try harder,” he acknowledged. “Focus in. I felt me and my team were well prepared, they made more plays than us. I’d just leave it at that. There’s no one to blame, we lost as a team and we all take the slap in the face as a team. They both hurt, but when you take two back-to-back like that, then you know that something has to happen, something has to change. We have to nut up.”
The ever-optimistic Alex Singleton, the CFL’s defensive player of the year, promised: “We’ll go back for the third time.
“Go back for the third time and change it.”
A lot has been made about a couple of plays — the fumble by receiver Kamar Jorden late in the game and the interception thrown by quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell on the final drive, a pass intended for Marken Michel — but the players and coaches know two plays do not an outcome make.
“There were a lot of plays you want back in that game and certainly that was one of them,” said Dickenson of the fumble. “The whole team is disappointed, but it wasn’t that one play. It was a big play, but there are other ways we could have won that game. Basically, we needed a lot of plays to go wrong and they all seemed to go against us there.”
“You guys don’t play the game,” Mitchell said. “I’ll stand by that decision for the rest of my life. It was a smart play. It was the right play. We were pretty confident in that decision to take a shot with Marken. I just missed the throw. If that ball is three yards farther, we’re celebrating, talking about ring sizes.
“I feel bad for the guys that I didn’t make that throw.
“It stings and hurts, but I don’t have time to sit here and sulk and cry about it. I’m ready to get out there, focus on my family at Christmas, and then jump back into training.”
Mitchell was to meet with doctors on Tuesday afternoon, with the plan to use dye to check for tears on his ailing right shoulder.
“We think there’s something in there going on,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”
According to safety Josh Bell, the defence has a lot to answer for as well.
“A lot of people won’t point the finger at the defence, but in my mind, I’m always looking in the mirror,” he said. “I feel like with two and a half minutes on the clock, we have an opportunity to not give up a field goal, hold them right there, and put our offence in the position to win the game for us. But we allowed them to score three points.
“We filled out the box score; we had about 50 points, 15 rebounds, 10 assists, but we couldn’t make the free throws at the end of the game.”
Calgary making it to the dance the past two years has to count for something — at least that’s how fullback Rob Cote sees it.
“Do I want to be doing the loser interview? No I don’t,” he said. “Would I have rather we lost out here two weeks ago (West final)? Absolutely no. I’m very proud of what this team has done and to be a part of it and to have my name associated with this organization is something that I will always be very proud of.”
For a moment of levity in a rather subdued situation, we turn to halfback Brandon Smith.
“A game of that magnitude, it hurts, it cuts deep,” he noted. “But it’s life. It could always be worse. Like I’ve been telling everybody, I still have all my teeth, right? That’s how I look at it. Imagine if we’d lost and I had no teeth.”