Eskimos have to guard against self-destructing

Avoiding penalties and turnovers are keys to knocking off Stampeders in West final

Five penalties.

No turnovers.

Of all the statistics the Edmonton Eskimos put together during their 39-32 West Division semifinal win in Winnipeg, those are the ones their head coach believes put them in Sunday’s West Final.

Those were the two areas Jason Maas begged and pleaded his 12-6 team to take care of ahead of all others against the Blue Bombers, a team that owed much of its regular season success to discipline and protecting the football.

And now, as the Eskimos prepare to head to Calgary to play a Stampeders team that has long prided itself on leading the league in those two categories, Maas is asking them to do it again, and is essentially guaranteeing them a trip to the 105th Grey Cup if they do.

The Eskimos restricted themselves to five penalties — four on defence, none on offence and one on special teams.

The team accomplished the same thing as the crossover team in last year’s impressive East semifinal victory against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Maas’ first year as a head coach.

The two totals were the lowest Eskimos playoff penalty totals since the 2001 West final, when Edmonton drew just four flags. Unfortunately, last year in the East final in Ottawa, Edmonton was flagged 10 times.

The Eskimos, against Winnipeg, also responded to Maas’s plea to protect the football and went turnover-free for just the second time in the playoffs in seven years and scored 14 points off their three take-aways.

The last time, you should know, was in the 2015 Grey Cup year, in the West final against Calgary.

“We had five penalties, which matched Winnipeg, and were plus-three on turnovers. I think any time you can do that, you have the better chance to win a game,” said Maas.

“Calgary is plus-20 on the year with turnovers. A lot of those are on downs with teams trying to come from behind, but at the same time, they’ve done their part.

“They’re good at taking care of the ball. They’re good at taking it away. You have to beat them at that part of the game. That’s first and foremost on our minds — to win the ball security battle in this game.

They’re good at taking care of the ball. They’re good at taking it away. You have to beat them at that part of the game.

“And discipline … you have to be disciplined when you play against them. They don’t generally hurt themselves.

“Now, as of late, they have. They have turned the ball over and had a lot of penalties when you look at their last six games. That’s uncharacteristic of their football club and it’s nice to see their team is not impervious to that.

“If football, when you don’t protect the quarterback and you turn over the ball, and you have penalties, you don’t win all of those games, and they’ve lost the last three games by losing some of those battles.”

In their last three games, Calgary had 10 turnovers and 29 penalties for 296 yards.

Meanwhile, Edmonton, a team that had taken more penalties than any other team over the course of the season, finally began to buy in to Maas’s message during the final third of the schedule.

“We’ve tried everything over the last two years,” said Maas. “We have a penalty board in the dressing room. We talk about penalties all the time. We do pushups after every penalty. We run guys.

“We watch every single penalty in the games to learn from them. We have a ‘Keys To Victory’ board where everybody has a key on the board with their number on it, and when they screw up, it gets moved to a discipline part.”

The coach was being accused of not helping the situation with his own lack-of-discipline displays in destroying a headset and dressing down his special teams co-ordinator on the sidelines.

Whatever, they have managed to get with a game of the Grey Cup.

“Coaches can spew all they want, but at the end of the day, it’s accountability on the players’ part,” said Maas. “Until the players all buy in and all hold themselves accountable, you don’t get anything done.

“Finally, our guys said ‘Enough is enough. We’re fed up with this crap!’

“And in our last six games, I’m pretty sure we’re No. 1 or No. 2 in penalties in our league.”

Now Maas is looking at Calgary with interest.

“When you look at teams, you want to find out why they’re losing. We looked at things that we feel are important to us, that we know can help you lose games,” he said.

“We looked at things like losing the turnover battle and having too many penalties. And particularly with Calgary — Calgary just isn’t used to that. I’ve watched them for many a year, and they don’t generally hurt themselves.”