WELL, THAT SACKS
Lions’ season is over with 35-9 loss to the Stampeders
It’s hard to know what, precisely, the Western semifinal revealed about the B.C. Lions because for much of this season, they were exactly what they appeared to be Sunday.
Were there encouraging moments? Sure. Did they create the impression they’re capable of something better? Maybe. Do better days await this team? Yes, we’ll give them that. But in one nightmarish sequence, which started when the Lions seemed to be in control and ended with their tattered remains scattered over McMahon Stadium, Jeff Tedford’s team demonstrated finally and conclusively they weren’t good enough to compete with the CFL’s elite teams.
Any hope the Leos had of realizing an impossible dream ended just over 13 minutes into the first quarter when Jonathon Jennings — who picked a crummy time to confirm he was, in fact, a rookie quarterback — served up a room-service pick six to the Stamps’ Keon Raymond.
And from that point, the Lions collapsed like a bad souffle. Final score: 35-9. The story of the Leos’ future has yet to be written but, in the here and now, it’s pretty simple. This is a 7-11 team. The defending Grey Cup champs reinforced that point Sunday — and none too subtly.
“We were a better team at the end of the season than we were at the start of the season,” said Travis Lulay, who picked up for Jennings when the Saginaw Valley State product suffered a shoulder injury late in the second quarter. “That gave us some optimism and confidence coming into this game. It’s disappointing.
“We just felt like we matured past a lot of the issues that arose again today.”
It was put to Tedford, the Lions’ first-year head coach, that this was a case of a veteran, championship team exposing a team that’s still trying to find it’s way.
“It kind of looked that way,” he said. “They were the better team.”
The Stamps, in fact, pounded the Lions into submission with an impenetrable defence, an opportunistic offence and a killer field-position game which never let the visitors get untracked. For their third straight meeting this season, Calgary’s D didn’t allow an offensive touchdown while Bo Levi Mitchell threw two touchdown passes operating behind a makeshift offensive line. It was clinical. It was comprehensive. It identified the Stamps as the Grey Cup favourites. But this one didn’t start that way. It was scant consolation for the Lions but, for the first 13 minutes, they seemed to be planting the seed of a monumental upset. With the Stamps moving with a 30 km/h wind at their back, the Lions defence limited Mitchell and Co., to one first down while Jennings moved the ball smartly down the field. But with the Leos leading 3-1 and facing a second-and-eight from their own 32, the young quarterback threw an out pattern a hair late and a hair inside to Bryan Burnham, which Raymond gleefully intercepted and returned 38 yards for a touchdown.
Sometimes, it’s difficult to identify the precise moment a playoff game turns. This Western semifinal wasn’t one of those games.
In rapid succession, the Lions went two-and-out and Mitchell promptly drove his team 64 yards into the wind before hitting Eric Rogers in the end zone. Two possession later, Mitchell mounted a 75-yard drive that culminated in a Jerome Messam TD run.
At that point the score was 24-3, which at least gave the scribes ample time to compose some deathless prose.
“(Raymond) made a good play on the ball,” Jennings said. “He got a hand on it and I thought that was the worst that could happen.”
Which just means that wasn’t his only bad read on that play.
“There are always plays in the game that change the momentum and, obviously, that’s a veteran player making a big play,” Lulay said. “It was huge. I didn’t feel like our energy died, but it felt like their energy went up a notch. That put us behind the eight ball.”
And they stayed there the rest of the evening.
Within the larger collapse, there were Lions failures familiar to everyone who has watched this team this season. They took 15 penalties for 153 yards, five of which came on kick returns, contributing mightily to their putrid field position. Of their 12 possessions after the Raymond interception, seven started inside their own 20 and five inside their 10.
“We weren’t good enough on first down, we couldn’t shift the field and we took too many penalties,” Lulay said, neatly summing up this affair. “Those were the biggest things in the game.”
The Lions had come into the Western semifinal certain in the belief they could write a Cinderella story this playoff season; that their improvement in the second half and the emergence of Jennings gave them a legitimate shot in the Grey Cup tournament.
But to beat the Stampeders, they had to play an almost perfect game and fell substantially short in that regard.
“I’m at a loss for words and I’ll probably say the wrong thing,” Manny Arceneaux said on the field as a jubilant bunch of Stampeders ran to their locker-room.
No, he didn’t have to say much. For this team, hope died in the foothills Sunday.
So did a forgettable Lions season.