Redblacks flag hoisted as city prepares for playoff football
As an Ottawa Redblacks flag was hoisted outside Ottawa City Hall shortly after noon Monday, gusty winds added a bit of bite to air that seemed cooler than 5C: football weather this time of year in these parts.
The unpredictability of the weather come November — remember the snow-covered field when the Redblacks dusted off the Edmonton Eskimos a year ago? — is always in the conversation, though the forecast for Sunday’s CFL Eastern Conference semifinal playoff game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders calls for cloudy with sunny periods and a high of 3C.
“You can tell by the weather, It’s feeling like playoff football,” said Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell, who on Monday was at city hall with players Diontae Spencer, Patrick Lavoie, Ryan Lindley, Zack Evans and J.P. Bolduc, joined by several politicians, including Mayor Jim Watson.
“It’s the Canadian Football League and it’s November. You never know what’s going to happen. The biggest factor in games is, No. 1, wind … or if it’s wet snow or rain. I remember walking to the (Eastern final) last year. There was no snow on the ground, then all of a sudden it started snowing. You never know what’s going to happen.”
It was another roller-coaster season for the Redblacks, who finished with the same 8-9-1 regular-season record they compiled a year ago. As in 2016, when they beat the Eskimos, then the Calgary Stampeders in the Grey Cup game at Toronto, the Redblacks head into the playoffs with momentum, in this case a three-game winning streak. Still fresh in their memory is their last loss, 18-17 on Sept. 29, to the Roughriders. It could have been crushing — Ottawa had led that game 17-0 — but the Redblacks subsequently beat the B.C. Lions (30-25), Roughriders (33-32) and Hamilton Tiger-Cats (41-36) down the stretch.
“It’s playoff time,” said Spencer, the record-setting receiver/ returner. “This is what you work for when you start playing at the beginning of the year.”
“We’re feeling good right now. We had a strong finish,” said fullback Lavoie, who compared what lay ahead for the Redblacks to what the Toronto Argonauts had to pull off in 2012. The Argos beat the West crossover team, Edmonton (42-26), then beat the first-place Montreal Alouettes (Lavoie’s team at the time, 27-20) in the division final. Hosting the Grey Cup, the Argonauts beat the Stampeders to win it all.
“We’ve got momentum. Everybody in the locker-room is feeling that,” Lavoie said. “We didn’t play bad at the beginning of the season, when we were losing close games. Now, no matter where we are in the game, we feel like we can come back and win.”
“It’s a new season for us. You reset your motor and get back to it,” defensive lineman Evans said. “We beat (the Roughriders) by one, they beat us by one.”
It came right down to the final game of the regular season, with the Argonauts beating the Lions 40-13 on Saturday night to wrap up first place in the East, before the Redblacks learned their playoff destiny. A B.C. win would have given Ottawa top spot in the East and a bye to the division final.
Evans said he prefers the way it worked out. Another bye would have been the Redblacks’ third in a month as a result of a bizarre CFL schedule.
“I prefer to win, go into the East final, win again, then go into the Grey Cup and not have all that time off,” Evans said. “Having two bye weeks near the end of the season is tough.”
How does Ottawa stack up against Saskatchewan?
“We’ve played these guys so recently,” Campbell said. “We didn’t see them until late in the season, then we played them twice. They have some opportunistic playmakers. One of the keys against them is keep the turnovers down and not let them make those momentum-changing plays.”
“On paper, it’s a good matchup,” Spencer said. “We’re going to be ready. The first time we played them, we took our foot off the gas and let them back in the game with mistakes. This is the game that counts. We have to be sharp. We have to take all our tools out of the tool box.
“We have lots of confidence going into the playoffs. Belief is everything. If you don’t believe in something, it’s not going to happen.”