Short week could be a blessing for Eskimos
Eskimos using memory of Labour Day win over Stamps as confidence-builder
It’s an annual routine for the Edmonton Eskimos to pick themselves up and dust themselves off and start over again after losing a tough, physical football game on the road on a Monday only to be forced to play again at home on the subsequent Saturday.
It’s called the Labour Day Double, the home-and-home series with the Calgary Stampeders that traditionally highlights the regular season in the province and this year, as usual, drew a league-high attendance of 38,611.
It’s exceptionally rare, however, to be required to do the despicable double twice in the same season.
But ready or not — and all evidence suggests NOT judging by their current three-game losing streak and five losses in their last six games — Jason Maas’ flailing, failing football team is faced with that agonizing assignment coming on the heels of last Monday’s Thanksgiving Day loss to Saskatchewan and Saturday’s tilt coming against the Ottawa Redblacks.
There’s not much for the Grey Cup game host franchise to hang their helmets on right now, but the fact that this team did pick themselves up off the ground after losing the Labour Day Classic 23-20 to the Stamps in McMahon Stadium and bounced back with a 48-42 win at Commonwealth Stadium.
On that night, it was an outstanding offensive effort from the Esks that sealed the deal against Calgary. Quarterback Mike Reilly passed for 397-yards and three touchdowns and also ran for 43 more yards and three more TDs. It was Edmonton’s only win since Aug. 18.
But can they repeat the feat?
This is now a team that has given up a plethora of interceptions and sacks, hasn’t scored a touchdown in the last two games or produced a point in the fourth quarter in four straight games.
And how do you fix all of that in four days?
“As much as it looks like there was tons to fix, there really wasn’t that much to fix,” said head coach Maas. “It wasn’t like that (Monday’s 19-12 loss to the Riders in Regina) was a game that we didn’t play well in any parts of it. A lot of people want to look at the negatives of it, but we’re looking at the positives.
“You do it with all the little details. You do it with everybody hitting their marks, with blocking, catching and throwing it more accurately.”
Maas said it’s been 12 guys on offence all taking turns messing up. One play it’ll be an offensive lineman, the next play it’s a receiver, the next play it’s the quarterback, the next play it’s a blocking back. It’s a lot of little things, not big things.”
How does Maas, the offensive co-ordinator, explain putting up 48 points and having the most productive performance in more than two months on the short week against the Stampeders after losing on Labour Day?
You do it with all the little details. You do it with everybody hitting their marks, with blocking, catching and throwing it more accurately.
“Our defence got us some help. We got us some turnovers. And we capitalized on it. In that game we didn’t mess up too much on offence. We had a game plan. We stuck to it. The guys understood it. They executed it.
“I think when you’re on a long week sometimes you relax a bit and think you have time to learn this. You don’t. You have to stick your nose in the book and how every detail of what you do is important. I think on a short week it’s all thrown at you so quickly, you have no choice but to learn it and understand it and get ready.
“The short week comes at a great time for us.”
It seems sort of silly to even suggest it, but the biggest positive going into Saturday’s 3 p.m. fixture in Commonwealth Stadium might very well be the memory of that Labour Day rematch game.
“It might be that you stop thinking about stuff because you don’t have enough time to think about it. On short weeks you come out and you get one day out on the field like we are today,” said Reilly after Day 1-2-3 wrapped into one Thursday.
“You don’t have any choice but to be locked in mentally because there’s just not enough time. Sometimes when you have long weeks, you go over the information so many times that collectively you might become too overconfident in your understanding of it. When you have a short week, there’s no time to screw around, you have to spent just about every moment from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed studying and preparing.”
But fixed in four days? “Yeah. It’s not like it has been a terrible season, in my opinion. We’ve done some really great things. We haven’t put it together last 10 quarters offensively. I’m not going to flush down the 12 games before that of good offensive football. In this system, there were 40 games before that.
“It doesn’t all get flushed down the toilet.
“At the same time we have to fix what’s been wrong or we’re going to continue to have quarters like that. We have to get back to how we’ve been playing 95 per cent of the time and learn from the bad five per cent. We’re know about Ottawa and I want our guys to be back to playing with the same kind of swagger we’d been playing.”
From getting beat by a pick six Monday in Saskatchewan to climbing back in the race with a quick fix Saturday against Ottawa is the only storyline they have.
The Eskimos have 24 more hours to sell it to themselves.