Front Five (and Six and Seven) stepping up
One thing about Big Beef’s local branch office: they audit their own books and quickly correct the mistakes.
Whenever the Hamilton TigerCats are hit by a noticeable number of quarterback sacks, the starting five (and six and seven, with tight end Landon Rice and running back Alex Green) plus their backups go to work dissecting film like it’s a lab specimen.
They don’t avoid the mea culpas — even when the fault is not theirs, as it often isn’t — and then accept, and contribute to, line coach Dennis McKnight’s remedial measures.
“I just think the guys we have take that stuff personally,” says right tackle Ryker Mathews. “We’re not the kind of guys who say, ‘Aw, we just gave up four sacks.’ We’re the types who say, ‘#$% guys, we gave up four, we better change something up so it doesn’t happen any more.’”
Most recent case in point: in the first of two back-to-back games against B.C. in late September — only a week after Jeremiah Masoli had been sacked four times by Calgary — the Lions were credited with five sacks, three of them in the first quarter.
But in the next seven quarters he played against the Lions, including the three in the semifinal blowout last Sunday, Masoli was sacked just once.
Another more-this-weekend case in point: In late July, the Ottawa Redblacks had five sacks against Hamilton. In their next two meetings with the Ticats, they had zero.
As Masoli and his head coach/ offensive guru June Jones both say, sack stats are full of extenuating circumstances: the receivers are covered; the quarterback makes the wrong read on where to move; communication breakdowns between thrower and catcher; and so on and so on.
The protective front, at every level of football, rarely gets credit for what it’s done, but always gets debited for what it’s perceived not to have done.
If the quarterback — the line’s equivalent of the Queen Bee — spends all day on his feet, with time to be effective, then maybe, just maybe, a couple of fans and scribes will praise the men in front of him. But if he is taken to the turf, then it’s loudly the line’s fault, no questions asked, no subtleties examined.
Centres, guards and tackles learn this when they are still in high school and if they had not accepted it way back then, they would not be playing professional football today.
Coming into training camp there were some public concerns about the Ticats’ offensive line, after the off-season trade of three-time all-star Ryan Bomben to Montreal. But, third-year guard Brandon Revenberg has evolved rapidly into the East’s top offensive lineman, right guard Darius Ciraco was the only CFL draftee to start every game, centre and leader Mike Filer was his usual, effectively aggressive self, Mathews was strong again
and, first Avery Jordan, and now Kelvin Palmer, have been unanticipated upgrades from traded Tony Washington at left tackle.
With support from Rice and Mathieu Girard, that group ended up third in the CFL, and first in the East, in fewest sacks allowed, fronted a strong running game and allowed Masoli to set a club record for most 300-yard games.
More than one-third of their total sacks were permitted in just three games and over the past six games the Ticat quarterback has been dropped just four times.
“I’m a protection guy before anything else,” Jones says. “Even those four and five earlier in the year, six of them were called running plays that shouldn’t have been sacks. I’d say anywhere from six to 10 (of the opposition’s 36 sacks) the receiver didn’t run the right route and Jeremiah held the ball instead of throwing it. Those are coverage sacks.”
The Ticats know that the Redblacks’ creative defensive co-ordinator, Noel Thorpe, will have some new looks and blitz packages in store for them Sunday afternoon, and their rush, led by “Minister of Defence” A.C. Leonard
can be formidable.
But the B.C. defensive line was more formidable, with the best sack numbers in the league, yet in the East semifinal they took until deep into garbage time to record their one sack: against
Masoli’s backup, Dane Evans. Jones explains it simply: “We do a good job.”