Five Eskimos players named CFL all-stars
The Canadian Football League’s top passing connection of 2017 was among five Edmonton Eskimos named leaguewide all-stars Tuesday.
Quarterback Mike Reilly and receiver Brandon Zylstra, who both finished first overall in their respective yardage disciplines this season, made the prestigious list of 27 players from seven of the league’s nine clubs, alongside teammates Almondo Sewell, Matt O’Donnell and Kenny Ladler.
It comes as no surprise to see Reilly’s name included, given he received the CFL’s 2017 most outstanding player honour during Grey Cup week in Ottawa.
Reilly set a franchise record with a league-leading 5,830 passing yards along with 30 touchdowns and 13 interceptions, while completing 68.3 per cent of his passes as the Eskimos reached the divisional final round for the fourth year in a row.
“I tell you guys every year, and it probably holds true this year more than ever: You could put 12, 24, 36, however many people have played on our team, you could put that many names in a hat, pull it out. Whoever you came up with would be equally deserving,” Reilly said back when the divisional all-stars were named during the last week of the regular season. “Our success and failures are as a team, so I’m certainly honoured to represent our team but it’s a combined group effort.
“Really, it’s all of us that are being awarded, in my opinion.” Some more often than others. While it was the first all-star nod at the league level for Reilly, a West Division all-star in 2014, offensive lineman Matt O’Donnell, a twotime U Sports first-team all-star, Zylstra and coverage linebacker Kenny Ladler, veteran defensive tackle Almondo Sewell’s playing resume is littered with them.
The seven-year CFLer out of Akron has been named a league all-star for the fifth straight time.
“This is going to go down as the most challenging year I’ve ever played in any type of sport,” said Sewell, who only missed one game due to injured ribs, but took far longer to return to the level of performance he expects of himself as one of the league’s premier interior linemen. “In any years of football, this was the most challenging year. I was hurting pretty badly for the first nine games I was still out there.
“Coach (Casey) Creehan kept staying on me just saying, ‘The sacks will come, they’ll come. Don’t worry about it, we know what type of player you are.’ I woke up one morning and they felt good and I just took off from there.”
With just one sack to show for his first 10 games, he finished with six in the last seven to push his career total to 45, along with 36 defensive tackles this season to sit at 209 in 103 games.
Across the line of scrimmage, O’Donnell is the lone representative on an Eskimos offensive line that, for just the second time in club history, led the league in sacksallowed with 29 on the season.
They were the transmission churning an offensive powerhouse that cranked out the most offensive points and offensive touchdowns in the league this year.
He was the only starter aside from Reilly to play all 18 games in a season that was plagued by injuries.
“A lot of luck, I’d say,” said the sixfoot-11, 350-pound Queen’s product. “I spend a lot of the off-season doing stuff off the field: Running, weight training, diet, sleeping a lot. But when it comes to a game, all it takes is one bad bounce and someone’s falling on your knee, rolling onto you or you’re at the bottom of a pile.”
Ladler was Edmonton’s top defensive playmaker, earning 86 tackles and 13 special-teams tackles to sit fifth overall on the total-tackles list, along with three interceptions, two forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries and a blocked field goal.
Zylstra led the league with 1,687 receiving yards and was the top receiver in yards-after-catch with 487, to go along with five touchdowns on 100 catches on the way to setting a franchise single-season record of 10 games with at least 100 receiving yards.
The West Division dominated the league all-star list, with 23 to the East’s four. The Calgary Stampeders earned the most all-star nods of all CFL teams, with six. The Eskimos and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers each have five players named all-stars, the Saskatchewan Roughriders four, the B.C. Lions and the Toronto Argonauts three and the Ottawa Redblacks one. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Montreal Alouettes were shut out from the all-star list.
All-star voting is done by the Football Reporters of Canada and the league’s head coaches and has occurred for the past 55 seasons. This year, a total of 71 voters selected 27 all-stars.