Yes, ‘daddy’ got his first touchdown
GAME BALL FOR HIS SON
The only messed-up part of Mike Jones’s first CFL touchdown was the celebration.
The second-year Hamilton Tiger-Cats receiver make a spectacular diving catch late in the second quarter of Sunday’s 43-16 win over the Montreal Alouettes and, while there was an intricate plan in place to give the moment its due, things quickly fell apart.
“I was talking to the receivers and we were going to do duckduck-goose and they were all like ‘Yeah, yeah let’s do it,’ ” Jones said in the jubilant Hamilton locker-room after the game.
“Then we get the touchdown and only three of us run over there and I’m like ‘Where are the rest of the guys?’ Luke was like ‘Nah, that’s not my style’ and Speedy said he was going to do it but I don’t know where he was at,” Jones said. “It’s probably going to be on nottop-10. It was still fun.”
The play was further complicated by the fact officials initially ruled Jones had landed out of bounds and the pass was incomplete. Head coach June Jones was forced to challenge the call, which was overturned by the CFL command centre in Toronto.
“I had a corner route and I had man-to-man coverage so I flattened it off and, when I broke, I looked back and saw the ball and got excited. I dove for it and caught it,” he said. “It was a tough catch and I was going to be mad if it wasn’t a touchdown because I felt like I was clearly in.”
Jones’s season has followed much the same trajectory as the team’s. With high expectations coming out of training camp, he started the first 11 games of the season but had trouble with drops and ball security.
Then, in mid-September, he tested positive for the performance-enhancing drugdehy drochlormethyl testosterone, which is sold under the brand name Oral Turinabol, or Oral-T.
He was suspended two games by the Canadian Football League, then found he’d been replaced in the starting lineup by the recently acquired Shamawd Chambers and the newly healthy Andy Fantuz.
Jones has maintained his innocence, despite not appealing the positive test.
He’s spoken to former Toronto Blue Jays player Chris Colabello, one of a number of pro athletes who have been flagged for Oral-T but maintain they have no idea how it got into their systems.
“Gotta bounce back. It’s not the adversity you go through, it’s how you come back from that and how you work through it,” Jones said. “Everybody goes through tough times.”
Even after the delay, the ball from Jones’s first career score ended up in the hands of Ticats equipment manager Drew Strochein, who made sure it got safely back to Hamilton. Jones already has a plan for it. “I’m going to give it to my son,” Jones said of 19-month-old Mike Jones Jr. “My fiancée told me they were watching the game and, as soon as I scored, he was yelling, ‘Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!’ So that’s pretty cool.” NOTES: Ottawa’s Brad Sinopoli won’t play Friday against Hamilton and is out for the season, according to reports. The 29-year-old is the top Canadian receiver in the CFL (seventh overall) with 1,035 yards.