Superior Stampeders have tendency to implode
The Calgary Stampeders fold so often that they really should join an origami class.
On paper, they are clearly superior to the Toronto Argonauts and should therefore win Sunday’s Grey Cup game, but there is a tendency toward implosion.
Just last year, for example, the 15-2-1 Stampeders managed to lose 39-33 in overtime to the 8-91 Ottawa Redblacks with CFL supremacy at stake.
It was a classic collapse by Calgary, which has repeatedly succumbed to an underdog in a big game.
Consider the Doug Flutie years. During four seasons in which the premier player in CFL history quarterbacked the Stampeders, they reached two Grey Cup games and won only once.
In Year 1 with Flutie (1992), Calgary posted a league-best 13-5-0 slate and waltzed to a Grey Cup title.
Calgary posted subsequent Grey Cup victories in 1998, 2001, 2008 and 2014. Despite winning as many titles in the last 20 years as the Saskatchewan Roughriders have in their history, the Stampeders have become known as much for letdowns as touchdowns.
To recap …
1993: Calgary went 15-3-0 before losing 29-15 to the Ron Lancaster-coached Edmonton Eskimos (12-6-0) in the West Division final.
1994: Calgary flushed another 15-3-0 season by losing 37-36 to the B.C. Lions (11-6-1) in the division final.
1995: Calgary went 15-3-0 — this is a recording — and reached the first Regina-based Grey Cup game before falling 37-20 to the Baltimore Stallions. (We might grant the Stampeders a mulligan on this one, considering that Baltimore was allowed to field a team consisting entirely of Americans.)
1996: The Stampeders (13-5-0) lost 15-12 to Edmonton (11-7-0) in the West final.
1997: In the West semifinal, the Stampeders (10-8-0) fell 33-30 to Reggie Slack and the 8-10-0 Roughriders. Remember the quarterback-option-based Slack Attack? Reggie was Mr. November … at least until the Flutie-led Argos posted a 47-23 Grey Cup victory. (Over five years, Calgary had a 68-22 regular-season record — good for a .756 winning percentage — and somehow managed not to win a Grey Cup. The Roughriders had a comparable stretch from 1967 to 1970.)
2000: B.C. (8-10-0) defeated the 12-5-1 Stampeders 37-21 in the West final.
2006: Saskatchewan defeated Calgary 30-21 in the West semifinal. Calgary was 10-8-0; Saskatchewan was 9-9-0 once again under Danny Barrett and Roy Shivers. A minor upset, but an upset nonetheless.
2010: Calgary finished first at 13-5-0. Saskatchewan was 10-8-0. Regular-season results mattered not, as the Roughriders won 20-16 in the West final.
2012: In the Grey Cup, the 12-6-0 Stampeders lost 35-22 to Ricky Ray and the 9-9-0 Argonauts. (Ray and friends are coming off another 9-9-0 campaign. Hmmm …)
2013: Calgary ruled the West at 14-4-0, posting three more victories than Saskatchewan. So, of course, the Roughriders won the division final, 35-13, en route to posting a home-field Grey Cup victory.
2016: The Stampeders had a Seattle Seahawks moment late in the fourth quarter of the 104th Grey Cup game. With a secondand-goal situation on Ottawa’s two-yard line, Stampeders head coach and offensive co-ordinator Dave Dickenson kept his superb quarterback (Bo Levi Mitchell) and 254-pound truck of a tailback (Jerome Messam) on the sideline. Andrew Buckley, the short-yardage quarterback, ran the ball and was felled for a one-yard loss. Calgary settled for a chip-shot field goal that forced overtime.
After Ottawa opened OT with a touchdown pass from Henry Burris to Ernest Jackson, Mitchell — the CFL’s most outstanding player in 2016 — threw three consecutive incompletions.
It never should have reached that point. Mitchell, who had quarterbacked Calgary to the title in 2014, should have been in the game for the Stampeders’ final possession of regulation time.
“Ball’s got to be in my hands and (Messam’s),” Mitchell told reporters after the game. “That’s how I feel.
“But it’s not wrong, for what (Dickenson) called it’s a good call. It’s something we’ve seen in film with evidence we thought would work. And they’ve got a solid D -line so it’s not to say even if we would’ve handed off that (Messam) would’ve got in, but at that moment I thought the game was over.”
It should have been over. But the Stampeders clearly needed some Buckley’s after coughing up another one.
The strong suspicion here is that the Stampeders, who have had an entire year to stew over a Grey Cup gag and salivate at the thought of redemption, will take out their frustrations on Sunday in Ottawa and capsize the Boatmen.
But these are the Calgary Stampeders, remember, so you never know.