BLACK SUNDAY WILL HAUNT STAMPEDERS’ HOPE FOR CUP
Calgary join Roughriders in teams that represent CFL championship futility
Err Jorden.
One mistake — rivalling any miscue in Grey Cup history, save for the 13th-man implosion of 2009 — turned Sunday’s CFL championship game upside down.
Calgary Stampeders receiver Kamar Jorden fumbled on the Toronto Argonauts’ five-yard line. Cassius Vaughn scooped up the ball and waltzed 109 yards to pay dirt. Ricky Ray then found Declan Cross for a two-point convert.
Suddenly, shockingly, the 105th Grey Cup game was tied.
Eventually, Stampeders fans were fit to be tied.
A subsequent, 32-yard field goal by Lirim Hajrullahu gave Toronto a 27-24 lead that would endure for the final 53 seconds at a snow-swept TD Place in Ottawa.
Calgary proceeded to march into range for a game-tying field goal — thanks in large part to a spectacular, 37-yard catch by Jorden — before Bo Levi Mitchell threw into double coverage and someone in double blue intervened.
Matt Black, who had been released by Toronto in August before rejoining the team one week later, intercepted Mitchell’s throw in the end zone with eight seconds remaining.
Two kneel-downs later, the Argonauts were champions. But it felt more like a Calgary loss than a Toronto victory
“Calgary gave this game away,” CFL legend Henry Burris, who must become a fixture on TSN’s football panel, told the audience.
With a first down on Toronto’s eight-yard line and leading 24-16, Calgary needed only a chip-shot field goal to effectively settle matters.
A three-pointer would have given the Stampeders, owner of the league’s best record (13-4-1) and top defence, a two-possession lead with fewer than five minutes remaining.
Instead, the Stampeders blew another one.
A year earlier, Calgary had mismanaged its vaunted offence on the Ottawa Redblacks’ two-yard line late in the fourth quarter and ended up settling for a game-tying field goal instead of a go-ahead touchdown. Burris and the Redblacks proceeded to win 39-33 in overtime.
Surely, history could not be repeated ... right?
The Stampeders, a perennial powerhouse during the regular season, were thirsting for redemption leading up to and throughout the 2017 campaign. They were tantalizingly close to attaining that goal.
Then the Argos’ Jermaine Gabriel forced a fumble, Vaughn capitalized on the ultimate Argo Bounce, and it was a different game — one from which the Stampeders emerged with an eerily familiar feeling.
The 38-year-old Ray, meanwhile, savoured a league-record fourth Grey Cup victory as a starting quarterback.
Ray, by himself, has celebrated as many championships as the Saskatchewan Roughriders have won in more than a century.
Over the past 25 years, the Stampeders have also won four titles, having prevailed in 1992, 1998, 2008 and 2014. Nonetheless, they are becoming known as a tremendously talented team that is chronically unable to seal the deal after assuming the pole position.
Thanks to Calgary, the Roughriders are no longer the only team that is instantly identifiable with Grey Cup misery.
During a period of 10 calendar years that began in 1966, when Saskatchewan captured its first Grey Cup, the Roughriders paced the CFL in regular season success. Once the playoffs arrived, though, the Roughriders tended to emerge with that empty feeling.
That was especially true in 1972 and 1976.
In 1972, Ian Sunter kicked a 34-yard field goal as time expired to give the Hamilton Tiger-Cats a 13-10 victory over Saskatchewan.
Four years later, Tony Gabriel — who had made three key receptions on the Tiger-Cats’ gamewinning drive in 1972 — caught a 26-yard touchdown pass with 20 seconds left to give the Ottawa Rough Riders a 23-20 victory over the Ron Lancaster-quarterbacked Roughriders.
“They said there were all these seasons in Saskatchewan — the wind blew in the winter, the spring and the summer, and Lancaster would blow playoff games in the fall,” The Little General quipped in 2006.
Nothing, one had presumed, could be more painful than 1976. Cue the 13th-man unravelling of 2009, followed by Saskatchewan’s second successive nail-biting loss to the Montreal Alouettes.
Having swallowed back-toback shockers, the Stampeders and their fans can now relate to the excruciating pain Rider Nation has experienced.
For the Stampeders, images of Gabriel’s forced fumble — what is it about Gabriels and Grey Cups anyway? — and Vaughn’s 109yard return and Black’s interception will forever be haunting.
Two days after Black Friday, there was Black Sunday.
And, once again, the Stampeders’ Grey Cup hopes faded to black.