PAYING THE PRICE
Penalties plague Esks
When a team with reasonable expectations of getting into a home Grey Cup game humiliates itself like the Edmonton Eskimos did Saturday in Toronto, there’s only one thing to do.
You have to use the game as something of an instruction manual to fix what’s wrong.
And clearly, there’s plenty wrong.
That was a game — despite the positive performance of former Eskimo James Franklin in his first start as Argonauts quarterback — you don’t lose.
It should not have been close. The only positive about it is they get a do-over against the Argos on Friday at Commonwealth Stadium.
The Eskimos and the Saskatchewan Roughriders are both 2-2, and there’s no comparison between the two teams at this point. Edmonton should be 3-1 and Saskatchewan 1-3.
At one point of the game before a mere 12,196 at BMO Field, the Eskimos were winning the time of possession battle by more than 10 minutes. And they wasted a 370-yard passing performance by quarterback Mike Reilly.
I mean, where do you start? Well, how about the starts? For the past several seasons, it’s almost predictable that this Eskimos team is going to be down early.
In this one, Mike Benevides’ defence allowed Franklin to pick his way down the field for a nineplay, 76-yard touchdown drive. A fumble by running back C.J. Gable on the Eskimos’ first play from scrimmage, and the visitors were down 12-0 before Reilly had thrown a pass.
Why is that? Coaching game plans? A general feel-them-out philosophy? Not leaving the dressing room dialed up to grab the game by the throat early?
When Reilly threw that 103yard touchdown pass to Derel Walker to open the first game of the season, maybe you figured the Eskimos decided to be a team that would establish their will from the opening kickoff this season. Apparently not.
Reilly specializes in comefrom-behind heroics and put up 17 straight points to put the Eskimos in front. But again, they allowed Franklin to put together a 13-play, 75-yard touchdown drive to get the lead back.
Two coaching decisions came into play in this one.
Head coach Jason Maas threw a challenge flag hoping to reverse a call with 10 minutes to play, effectively trying to draw to an inside straight, and left himself without a timeout he certainly could have used in the last couple of minutes.
And with 2:19 left and facing third and eight, Maas decided to take the ball out of Reilly’s hand and punt, expecting the defence that had just given up all those yards on all those plays to get the ball back. They didn’t. Reilly watched the rest of the game from the bench.
Not to be compared to his brain freeze in last season’s Western final, it worked out about the same.
I believe Maas to be a good head coach and expect him to have a long and exceptional career, but at this stage, he has shown a tendency to out-think himself and maybe he has his own lessons to learn.
But first, he needs to lay down the law with this group, like he’s had to do at some stage of both previous seasons when it comes to penalties, especially the ones of the selfish variety.
Edmonton had 12 penalties for 126 yards. Six of them were listed under the category “preventable.”
One thing about this team is the veteran leadership is exceptional. Both Reilly and middle linebacker J.C. Sherritt didn’t wait until the team returned home, they delivered the message to Eskimos fans on the 630 CHED post-game show.
“The team that played with better discipline won the game and that’s how it usually goes,” said Reilly.
“Offensively, we could not get out of our own way. In the scoring zone, it was bad. It was bad football. There were a lot of penalties, a lot of miscommunication, a lot of poor execution. We got into the end zone and it gets called back on a penalty and we end up not scoring. It was bad discipline.
“We’re not going to sugarcoat it because this is a game we should have won. That’s a game we’ll look back on and say we should have won handily if we had done things the way we’re expected to do them,” added the CFL’s reigning Most Outstanding Player.
“It’s embarrassing. The objectionable conduct penalties and some of the penalties we took in that game were so unnecessary,” Sherritt said of those taken by Chris Edwards (that wiped out a touchdown) and Kenny Stafford in the game that also included a 15-yard rough play penalty to Alexandre Dupuis and three separate penalties to Nate Behar.
“It’ll be fixed. I can promise that. It was made clear last year. It’s just not going to be tolerated. (If ) you continue certain things, you just won’t be on the team. This is professional football. Our jobs depend on certain people. And to take penalties like that just won’t be tolerated.”