Former Ottawa connection clicks early for Eskimos
It sure didn’t take Greg Ellingson long to catch on with his new team.
The Edmonton Eskimos receiver was named a Canadian Football League top performer of the week on Tuesday after posting 174 yards and two touchdowns on nine catches in a 39-23 win over the visiting B.C. Lions.
The breakout game comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed his career, especially the one throwing him the ball.
“No. Shoot, Greg’s a Tier 1 receiver and he will be for quite a while in this league, and part of the reason why I was harping so much on him to come over here with me,” said Eskimos quarterback Trevor Harris, who came over in free agency with Ellingson from the Ottawa Redblacks, where they played together the past three seasons.
“I think he’s enjoyed being here in terms of the professionalism of this organization, the culture that coach (Jason) Maas is setting for us and the way that we’re all buying in as players has been great.
“And Greg’s been a part of that leadership for us, and then getting the wide receivers to buy in into how we’re practising, how we play and how we prepare.”
One week earlier, it was Ricky Collins Jr. honoured as a top performer, along with Harris, after leading the way with 175 yards on nine receptions, begging the question: Which Eskimos receiver will be the target of choice when they take on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at IG Field on Thursday?
“Draw a name out of a hat, and maybe two,” Harris shrugged. “So that’s kind of how it works, as I told Ricky early on ,‘ You might have a big game on Week 1 and not Week 2. And then you might have one Week 3, maybe Week 7. But they come in bunches and at the end of the year, you look down and see you’re close to 1,000 yards by Week 13-14.
“And that’s kind of the plan, is to just not know who’s going to have that every week. The defence kind of dictates it, but it does end up being quite random.”
At 2-0, the Eskimos head into this week’s game with Harris leading the league with 741 passing yards and six touchdown passes, C.J. Gable leading the league with 265 rushing yards and Ellingson leading the league with 240 receiving yards, while Collins Jr. is tied for second with 186 receiving yards.
“When our offence is clicking it’s both sides working, the running game and the passing game,” said Maas. “And I’m very excited about the way those guys up front are playing right now.”
Winnipeg, meanwhile, is 1-0 and coming off a bye.
And the Bombers defence, co-ordinated by former Eskimos head coach Richie Hall and led by middle linebacker Adam Bighill and defensive end Willie Jefferson, is going to be their biggest challenge to date.
“Multiple looks, multiple fronts, multiple stunts, multiple blitzes, multiple coverages and they mix it up really well,” Harris said. “And not only that, they have great personnel too.
“I mean, you don’t have to look too far across the board to see No. 4 and No. 5 for them. Bighill and Willie Jefferson have been amazing players in this league, along with Jackson Jeffcoat, whom I don’t think a lot of people talk about, but is an amazing player. And their SAM and DBs are very active, as well. So they pose plenty of problems for us that will have us working into the late hours of the night, so we’ll be ready for them.”
And you can bet the same overtime is being put in by the Bombers to prevent another big offensive performance that will lead to more Eskimos representation in the weekly awards.
“It’s not one individual player and that’s one thing I’m trying to learn, is that the Eskimo Way is about every individual doing their job and making it a team effort,” Ellingson said. “That’s what I’m learning here and that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s going to be any given guy any given week. You look at last week, you had Ricky and you had Kenny (Stafford with two touchdown catches and 96 yards). This week, it happened to be me and next week it could be Tevaun (Smith) and Natey (Adjei).”