Elks open season with record-setting loss
Newly designed duds couldn't save team from turning in a dud of a performance
Boy, those new EE logo helmets sure looked sharp in their debut game on TV Saturday night didn't they?
And, yes, indeed, the fabled former flagship franchise of the CFL with their newly designed duds couldn't have looked better going into their CFL season lid-lifter in BC Place in Vancouver than they did.
Then the game started.
And then they couldn't have looked worse.
The EE stood for Exceptionally Embarrassing.
It'll probably take until the opening kickoff for their home opener Saturday at Commonwealth Stadium to do an accurate accounting of the extent that the Edmonton Elks stank the joint out for openers of their 73rd season of professional football.
The 59-15 loss to the B.C. Lions broke the EE record for most points against in a game — a record of 56 (final score 56-8) versus Saskatchewan — dating back to 1964. The Roughriders had a 42-6 halftime lead in that one. The loss by 44 was the fifth-highest margin of defeat from that same game (48 points) in 1964. The most points previously scored by the Lions versus Edmonton was 51 on October 1958 (51-16).
By the end of the first half, the Lions had a franchise record 36-point lead.
In the end, Lions former head coach and former EE assistant Vic Rapp finally had revenge for the headlines he created accusing Hugh Campbell of running up the score (48-8) with Edmonton's five-in-a-row Grey Cup dynasty team back on Sept. 16, 1979.
Ironically, the B.C. team to do it was coached by Campbell's son Rick.
Being that this was the season projected for the Atlantic Schooners to become 10th CFL team (until the coronavirus pandemic changed that), I couldn't help but think, watching that game, what the result would have been if it were the Elks versus the Schooners on the other coast.
The Elks went into the lid-lifter with only two players on their depth chart on defence who had played here last year: Jake Ceresna and Thomas Costigan.
But consider what happened here.
This wasn't the same as the mess the Elks made in quite possibly the most pathetic pre-season game ever foisted off on the paying public a week earlier against the Calgary Stampeders. Pre-season games are pre-season games.
Elks head coach Chris Jones said on the 630 CHED postgame show: “We didn't play any defence whatsoever. We couldn't tackle. We couldn't line up. We didn't man cover. We didn't pressure. We didn't peel on the back.
There were so many errors.”
But, boy, those new helmets sure looked good.
Maybe if it had happened against the back-to-back Grey Cup champions you could look the other way. B.C. was favoured by four. Not 44. It was supposed to be a game, not one of the biggest blowouts in history.
The Elks went in as the league's long shot to win the Grey Cup at 16-to-1, behind B.C. at 12-to-1.
The over/under on total wins in the return to a full 18-game schedule this year for both Edmonton and the B.C. Lions was 7.5. Anybody but B.C. Or Ottawa.
Because of the timing involved this was monumental.
After the Elks elected to effectively blow up the entire organization in the off-season, allowing the Leos to basically blow 'em up again to provide a fireworks finale to the Onerepublic concert that provided a crowd of 34,082 to introduce left coast fans to new starting Canadian quarterback Nathan Rourke.
Rourke completed 26 of 29 passes for 282 yards and new star running back James Butler had four touchdowns before the end of the first half. That was no doubt great for the league that desperately requires a bounceback season. But no team needs a bounce-back year more than Edmonton.
This is the week new president Victor Cui was to announce promotional plans for Saturday's home-opener against the Saskatchewan Roughriders that don't involve holding a concert.
But the No. 1 thing to sell in sports is hope and this is a football team that didn't win a single home game last year wouldn't have hurt.
Fifty-nine-15!
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Edmonton played in front of next to no fans in the team's final few home games last season at the same time Edmonton's Alphonso Davies and his Canadian soccer teammates were defeating both Costa Rica and Mexico before 50,000 with snowbanks on the sidelines at Commonwealth Stadium.
That embarrassing exhibition of football was not exactly the way that Jones hoped to return to the city where he won the team's 14th Grey Cup in 2015.
Jones departed within days of winning that Grey Cup to become general manager, president of football operations, head coach, defensive co-ordinator and chief bottle washer of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and then he pulled the plug on them to go to the Cleveland Browns of the NFL.
The Roughriders didn't light up the league Saturday in Regina but while Jones's defence was giving up 59 points in Vancouver, Saskatchewan's defence registered eight sacks and had two interceptions while holding the Tiger-cats to two yards on second down situations in the 30-13 win over the backto-back Grey Cup runners-up.
Again, step right up and get your tickets today.