Eskimos feeling four-tunate once again
‘Strong tradition’ of winning preserved by qualifying for Sunday’s playoff contest
Make it four straight trips to the divisional final round for the Edmonton Eskimos.
It’s a remarkably consistent run considering they’ve been through a different coaching staff, different general manager and — “different division,” added quarterback Mike Reilly, whose team crossed over to the East last year before falling to the eventual Grey Cup champion Ottawa Redblacks.
But the more things change, the more the results remain the same for a club that has made it into the final four every season since 2014.
“Since basically April, this team and this organization has gone through a lot of transition,” second-year head coach Jason Maas said. “We kept our coaching staff together back in January and that was a big deal, I thought, and then we tried to keep as many veterans around as possible.”
Consistency in the coaching staff and player roster were key, especially considering the upheaval brought about in the Eskimos’ football operations department by the firing of general manager Ed Hervey just two months ahead of training camp.
The Eskimos hit the ground running on their way to a 7-0 start to the season. They have a chance to match that stretch with this Sunday’s West Division final against the Calgary Stampeders. Last Sunday’s 39-32 win over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was their sixth straight win, counting both playoffs and the regular season.
But given that a stretch of six losses broke up those streaks, another run to the division finals looked anything but guaranteed.
“We got hit with an injury bug throughout the entire year and had to dig deep in our roster in finding guys from training camp and bringing guys in,” Maas said.
“But everything we’ve gone through, I think, is the reason you see a result like you did (Sunday).
“No matter what, we ended up coming through with it.”
The Eskimos also came through to reach this round of the playoffs the three previous years, including in 2015, before Maas took over as head coach of a team he helped quarterback to a pair of Grey Cups during his playing days.
“We have a strong tradition in Edmonton. I think everybody’s aware of that,” Maas said. “To keep that going is important to us, and we just want to keep winning.”
It’s all centre Justin Sorensen has known, having reached the final four every season since coming to Edmonton from Winnipeg in 2014, narrowly missing the last time the Eskimos fell short of the playoffs in a four-win season one year earlier.
“A great core group of guys: the quarterback hasn’t changed, the O-line’s pretty much the same, a lot of the defence is the same,” the native of Parksville, B.C., said.
“We mix and match putting people in, but the core of the lockerroom’s been the same for the last four years, and I think there’s a huge thing to be said for having great vets.
“If you’ve got great vets in the locker-room, you’ve got a chance to make the playoffs and go to the division finals every year.”
As bad as things were in Edmonton in 2013, they were worse on a Bombers squad with three wins to its credit during Sorensen’s final year there.
So even when they hit that sixgame skid this year, the 31-yearold and the other veterans of the Eskimos locker-room were able to keep things in perspective.
“We went through a rough patch there for sure, but there were reasons for it too,” Sorensen said.
“But we turned it around — we knew we would. Trust the guy beside you and you can make it through times like that.”
But it was more than just faith in the roster.
“Just the guys believing in the process,” Reilly said. “We’ve got a great locker-room and the core group of guys have played in big games like this, in cold weather in the playoffs, and they know what to do to get the job done. But it’s also buy-in by the younger guys to just come in and work every single day.
“We’re blessed to be one of four teams now still playing, the other five would definitely love to be in that position to still be able to play football, so we don’t take it for granted at any point in time.”