Maas wants end to costly touchdown celebrations
League not OK with Williams’ creative demonstrations that make use of props
Give him seven for the touchdown and full points for style on the ensuing touchdown.
It’s the 10 penalty yards incurred by the ever-imaginative Duke Williams that his head coach is not all too over the moon with.
Before the CFL’s leading receiver even made it through the sandwich board advertisement in the end zone of Commonwealth Stadium on the way to a 40-24 win over the Montreal Alouettes, head referee Al Bradbury was tossing a flag for objectionable conduct.
It’s the second one this season for Williams, who was deemed to have used his own waist towel as a prop when he sat down in the end zone and tied it around his neck, a la bib, on one of his previous five touchdowns, which had him tied for the league lead with teammate Derel Walker on Saturday.
“All I’ll say is the league has a policy that says you cannot use a prop, and we’ve talked to him about that now after the first game he got called with his towel,” said Eskimos head coach Jason Maas. “I didn’t know the towel could be used as a prop, but he found out the hard way that it is.
“We have pointed out to him that nothing except for celebrating with your teammates is acceptable. He was celebrating with his teammates but you cannot use anything to celebrate, so if our league has the mandate where you can’t use a prop, don’t use a prop. Don’t use that cardboard cut-out. That’s kind of all I’ll say about it.”
Lest the league turn its attention to the wallet of any coach or player who utters remarks about its methods that could be considered disparaging.
“Our defence got put on a short field and it’s unfair to our defence when we put them in bad spots like that,” Maas said. “It’s a big penalty and we’ve addressed it.
“And Duke, if you’re going to learn anything from this game, that’s hopefully what he’s going to learn. He’s going to be in the end zone, we all know that. At some point, he’s going to be in there again. He
Our defence got put on a short field and it’s unfair to our defence when we put them in bad spots like that. It’s a big penalty and we’ve addressed it.
just has to get better and cannot do those types of things to hurt our football team.”
The Labour Day Classic is right around the corner, and the rival Calgary Stampeders have the best record in the league.
“We want to be as good as we can be,” Maas said. “And when we want to be the type of team we think we can be, it’s going to be a team that’s going to be disciplined and not let little things like that happen to them.”
The Eskimos have been anything but disciplined over the first half of the season, amassing league-worsts with 93 penalties for exactly 1,000 yards. That works out to 10 penalties a game that costs them a full Canadian field worth of yards.
But that’s hardly all on Williams, whose creativity hasn’t gone unnoticed by fans across the league who took to social media to point out there is starting to be a new No Fun League in football.
“It’s a penalty, man. That’s the way I look at it,” Maas said. “Once the league looks at it and says, ‘Oh, that’s not so bad. Maybe we should let these guys do some things like that. It didn’t look like it was showing somebody up. You’re right, it was being creative,’ — but until the league says that’s OK, it’s not OK over here.”
At the same time, Winnipeg Blue Bombers receiver Darvin Adams celebrated a touchdown this week by going over and grabbing a TV camera, of all things, without any sort of repercussions.
“Am I all for the league saying that’s OK? Sure, I don’t mind that,” Maas said. “It’s not showing their sideline up, it’s not showing that particular player up. So, I think maybe down the road they will look at it and say that kind of thing isn’t really harmful.
“It may have brought some advertising to that particular Booster Juice. Dale Wishewan is a great guy and great business owner. I’m sure he’s pretty excited to have that play going again.
“(But) as long as it’s going to hurt our football club, Duke will never do this kind of thing again.”