STAMPS IN GREY CUP
The Stampeders’ Alex Singleton Reacts To The Team’s Win Against The Winnipeg Blue Bombers In The Cfl West Division Final At Mcmahon Stadium On Sunday.
The Calgary Stampeders are heading to the Grey Cup for a third straight year.
Whatever else can be taken away from Sunday’s 22-14 victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the CFL’s West Division Final, the most important thing is the Stamps earned themselves a chance to compete for a championship and a shot at redemption.
Their opponent will be the Ottawa Redblacks in a Grey Cup rematch from two years ago. That night didn’t end well for the Stamps, who lost 39-33 in overtime. Last year, they also got to the Grey Cup only to wind up on the short end of a 27-24 loss to the Toronto Argonauts.
They’re hoping the third time is the lucky charm.
The road to the 106th Grey Cup at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium hasn’t always been pretty, and Sunday’s win was often downright ugly offensively, but this is a Stampeders team built on defence, and on Sunday they painted a defensive masterpiece.
When the offence stumbled in the third quarter — and for the first half of the fourth quarter — the defence went into shutdown mode.
They hassled Bombers QB Matt Nichols — who completed 15 of 32 passes for 156 yards — and limited all-star running back Andrew Harris, who finished with 71 yards on the ground but never really broke out for a game-changing play.
Finally, when the Stamps needed it most, quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell — who completed 17 of 31 passes for 214 yards and three TDs — found that extraspecial something and led his team down the field before connecting with Eric Rogers for his third touchdown of the game to put the Stamps up 21-11 with less than four minutes on the clock.
While it might not have been obvious to people in the stands, the Stampeders insist they always knew the offence would get it together.
“We just keep going and give the ball back to (the offence) and you know at some point they’re going to make a play,” said Stamps defensive tackle Micah Johnson. “There’s too many playmakers over there. Bo knows the game too well, coach (Dave Dickenson) calls great calls. We were excited.”
While the Stamps might have had full faith it was going to work out, there were lots of times when it didn’t seem so obvious.
In the early going, it was the Bombers who looked like the more confident and polished team.
While they didn’t necessarily move the ball up the field all that much, the Bombers took advantage of having a heavy wind at their back to put up field goals on two of their first three drives.
Their first was an impressive 57-yarder from Justin Medlock, and after Stamps kicker Rene Paredes missed an attempt from 45 yards on the next drive, Medlock put the Bombers up 6-0 with a 37-yard FG.
Perhaps more important than the points, though, was the six minutes the Bombers spent with the ball as they ground their way down the field.
It was similar to what the Bombers did on Oct. 26 when these teams met in Winnipeg and an exhausted Stamps defence struggled to contain the Bombers in the second half.
But the second quarter saw the momentum shift.
The Calgary offence found its groove.
Starting a drive on their own 18-yard line, Mitchell took over. For nearly eight minutes of game time, he marched the Stamps downfield, spreading the ball out among his receivers and giving the ball to Don Jackson when they needed a run.
By the time Mitchell found Rogers in the end zone for a 12-yard touchdown, the defence had the rest it needed.
After a short Bombers drive that ended with a punt, Mitchell got the ball back and the Stamps struck again, with Mitchell again finding Rogers for an eight-yard touchdown.
The Stamps could have been even further ahead at halftime, but a Tunde Adeleke punt return touchdown was called back because of a questionable holding call.
Instead, the teams went into the locker-room with the Stamps up 14-6 and a sense that momentum was on their side.
In the third quarter, the Bombers’ defence locked in, while the visitors’ offence finally began to find its feet.
They couldn’t get in the end zone, but they again began dominating possession, and the combination of the Stampeders conceding a safety and another Medlock field goal cut the Stamps’ lead to 14-11.
Offensively, the Calgarians simply couldn’t get going.
“There were a lot of things said. I honestly think we were pressing and trying too hard, we didn’t win a lot of one-on-one matchups,” Dickenson said. “Still got a lot of faith in the guys. It wasn’t our best game offensively, but if we do the right things we can win a lot of games and that’s take care of the football, try to basically not kill ourselves, but we did. We call it keeping on schedule, we got off schedule.”
Rogers leaving the field with a knee injury certainly didn’t help — he would return later — but the issues were bigger than that.
They had only one first down in the third quarter and began hurting themselves with bad penalties.
The defence refused to break, though, and when the offence finally found their mojo, it was enough.
With a little more than seven minutes left, Mitchell began his march downfield.
Canadian rookie Richard Sindani came up with a huge catch for 21 yards. Jackson ran for a big 18-yard gain.
Finally, Mitchell looked to Rogers again and the two connected for a third touchdown. Paredes hit the convert and the Stamps had a 10-point lead with less than three and a half minutes on the clock.
The Bombers would get one more field goal, but that was it. The Stamps defence wasn’t going to let them into the end zone.
They hadn’t allowed that to happen all game, and the Bombers couldn’t find a way to get anywhere close in the dying minutes.
Now, the Stampeders are going to the Grey Cup.
The ghosts of their losses the last two years are waiting for them, but they’ve got a chance to put them to rest once and for all.
Bo knows the game too well, coach (Dave Dickenson) calls great calls. We were excited.