Eskimos know the crossover scenario well
Saturday’s clash with the Argonauts could be a preview of this year’s Eastern Final
Look at it this way. It’s the biggest game of the season in the East Division of the Canadian Football League.
It’s Toronto versus Edmonton in a possible preview of the East Division final.
The Eskimos, to me, appear to be headed for a crossover playoff spot in the East for the third time in the last four years and fourth in the last six.
The Eskimos are the only team west of Winnipeg to make it to an Eastern Final twice. Not once, in nine tries, however, has a West Division team made it to the Grey Cup game via the crossover route.
The only game the Eskimos have lost to an East team this year was to the Argos, 34-26 in Toronto, the fourth loss in their six game-losing streak after starting the season at 7-0. The Eskimos are 23-8 against the East since 2014.
While your correspondent pretty much has Edmonton pencilled in as the crossover club for yet another season, the reality is Edmonton was the one club that went into this weekend with mathematical possibilities of ending up in more positions in the final standings than any other team.
The Eskimos could still finish
■ second. But it would require Edmonton to win out and Winnipeg to lose three out of four.
Edmonton could finish third
■ by winning one more game than Saskatchewan of the remaining four for each team. The Eskimos could also take third with the same number of wins if they defeat the Riders by 24 points to make up for the 54-31 loss to Saskatchewan here in Week 10 to claim the season series. The two teams meet in the final weekend of the regular season in Regina.
The Eskimos would finish
■ fourth and become the crossover team if they failed to finish ahead of Saskatchewan, but managed either two more wins, watched B.C. suffer two more losses or won one and the Lions lost one.
Edmonton could miss the playoffs ■ if the Eskimos lost all four remaining games and the Lions won three of four.
You get the idea. It’s all rather interesting for fans and sports writers, but not necessarily for Jason Maas, who goes into the game (5 p.m.) at Commonwealth Stadium with an 18-14 record as head coach of the Eskimos.
Oh, he’s worked it all out himself and was willing to chew on all aspects of it at the pre-game press gathering Friday. But he’s not going to coach his team so he can go against teams with losing records in the East instead of teams he hasn’t been able to beat in the West.
“You want to be playing the best football at the end. With these last four games, you have to approach it that way,” Maas said of the team that made five more lineup changes going into this one, including putting John Delahunt on the six-game injury list. “We want to make sure we’re playing our best football with the lineup we’re expecting to have for the playoffs.
“As we’re getting healthier with guys coming off the six-game injured list, we’re getting closer to the lineup we hope to have during the playoffs.”
With Odell Willis not listed as a starter, they might be down to three players who have started all 14 games this season.
“I told our guys. Just focus on playing physical, good, disciplined football. That’s what playoff games are like. They’re very physical. Every single play matters. Let’s focus on the details again and just keep it rolling,” said the coach who seems to specialize in being on a streak in one direction or another.
Last year he had a three-game winning streak followed by a three-game losing streak, followed by a three-game winning streak, followed by a loss and another two-game winning streak, three if you count the Eastern Semifinal.
This year, of course, there was a seven-game winning streak followed by a six-game losing streak and Maas would like to make it an eight-game winning streak through to the Grey Cup.
“At the end of the day, momentum is real and you’d like to have as much momentum going forward as you can have,” Maas said.
East or West, it doesn’t matter, he said.
“This year with the teams in the playoffs, you better be playing well no matter who you are playing against. I don’t think there’s an easy road no matter what you do.”
One thing he admits is if it is the East, he’d like to have at least the one win against Toronto going forward.
“We ended up against Ottawa in the Eastern Final after losing both to them in the regular season. If we’d won those, maybe going into a playoff game against us they’d have been the ones doubting if they could beat us or not.”