Classic swing games
Eskies looking to Labour Day showdown with Stampeders to turn season back around
EDMONTON — The word B.C. Lions coach Wally Buono used on Saturday was “discombobulated.”
“We have eight games left,” he said. The West is all discombobulated. We’ve put ourselves in a tough position.”
Three weeks ago the Lions were 5-2 and a top of the tables team in the CFL’s West Division. Now they’re 5-5 and hoping the wheels fall off on, oh say, the Edmonton Eskimos.
Saturday night at McMahon Stadium in Calgary the first half of discombobulation came to a conclusion leaving the Stampeders at 7-1-1 and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Edmonton Eskimos at 7-2.
You can throw a blanket over them. They’re running three-abreast, nose-to-nose-to-nose.
It was something when B.C., Edmonton and Calgary all finished with 11-7 records in 2011. But these top three teams have a combined five losses halfway through the season.
Edmonton and Winnipeg would have to go 4-5 in the second half to finish 11-7.
They’d all been happy with 6-1-1 or 7-2 starts but to one team — the Eskimos — it’s amazing how the storyline has totally changed coming off an ugly loss to Saskatchewan on Friday following their first loss of the season a week earlier in Winnipeg.
Ten days ago, combined with their insane number of injuries, the storyline in Edmonton was the longest winning streak to start a season since 1961. For the Saskatchewan Roughriders, it was a 15-game losing streak on the road against West Division opposition.
Heading to the Labour Day double-header it’s a total flip-flop of that. The Eskimos are headed to Calgary where the Stampeders have won 14 straight at home.
The Western Labour Day Classic has long been the game of the year in the CFL because there has been so much history involved, so many great games to earn the title and so much swing on the games.
I’ve long maintained it’s the one game of the year in the CFL that has the feel of a U.S. college football rivalry game. It’s our Auburn-Alabama, Michigan-Ohio State, Army-Navy, OklahomaTexas, Harvard-Yale etc.
It’s also the traditional start of the “real football season” in Canada ,at the time when the weather turns from summer to fall.
It’s always fun to listen to veterans on both teams explaining to rookies how big this game is. There will be a lot of that happening with the Eskimos this week.
Allow your correspondent to be of service to them here while they wait to get back to practice on Thursday.
This is the 52nd edition of the games and the two teams go into it with 25-25-1 records. Calgary has won its past five in a row to create the tie.
The thing that makes it different from a U.S. college football rivalry game is that there’s another game between them to follow five days later. And seasons really do swing coming off these two games.
Two years ago, in the 50th edition of the Classic, Calgary won it and stretched its regular season win streak over the Eskimos to 12 straight.
But Edmonton won the rematch. Edmonton then won a third regular-season meeting in Calgary to take the season series. And Edmonton won the West final and went on to win the Grey Cup with a 10-game winning streak to end the season.
You could make a case that the Eskimos won a Grey Cup when they won the Labour Day Replay.
That’s the kind of swing that has been involved with these games. And you can make a case that the Eskimos, after riding high in their first seven games, are headed to Calgary in a very similar situation to what they were two years ago.
Last year, the Eskimos gave up a 21-point lead to start the Labour Day game and ended up 45-24 losers. Back in Commonwealth Stadium before 35,278, the largest crowd in the CFL last year, the Eskimos managed to take the Stampeders to overtime before losing 34-28.
Calgary left town 9-1-1 and Edmonton dropped to 5-6 and had to scramble to make it into the playoffs as a crossover club in the East Division semifinal.
Will Calgary sweep the series again this year and once again leave town at 9-1-1 and the Eskimos with a four-game losing streak and scrambling to save a season that began so spectacularly?
Or, will Mike Reilly and the Eskimos make a statement as they did in 2015?
If Edmonton does that in one of these two games, it would get what was looking to be a very special season back on track.