WE GOT A GAME!
It’s not the Redblacks, football fans, but it’s still the Grey Cup
It’s the East vs. the West, each of them the Canadian Football League’s regularseason division champions.
It’s Bo Levi Mitchell vs. Ricky Ray — the young gunslinger against the future hall of famer who looks more like an accountant than a professional quarterback.
It’s rookie-of-the-year candidate James Wilder Jr., the son of a former National Football League player vs. the dynamic running back duo of Jerome Messam and Ottawa Redblacks castoff Roy Finch.
It’s Dave Dickenson vs. Marc Trestman, coaches who bring plenty of success to the table.
The Calgary Stampeders and Toronto Argonauts are a study in contrasts, so different, yet so very much the same.
While the local preference would have been heavily weighted toward having the Redblacks try to defend their Grey Cup championship of a year ago, we’re left with two teams with so many storylines within their locker rooms — the Stampeders looking for redemption, the Argos finishing off a season that 10 months ago looked hopeless.
The Stampeders were heavily favoured to win the Grey Cup last November. The oddsmakers said so, pretty well everyone outside of the Nation’s Capital said so. The 39-33 overtime win by the Redblacks, who won the East Division with an unimpressive 8-9-1 record, was a huge slap in the face for the Stampeders, who had lost just twice all season (15-2-1).
Calgary Stampeders’ quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell looks to throw a pass during the second quarter of their CFL West Final football game against the Edmonton Eskimos in Calgary, Sunday.
“We’ve been in this position before,” Stampeders defensive back Brandon Smith said on Sunday after his team hung on to beat the Edmonton Eskimos 32-28. “Last year, we thought we could just run over everybody. We didn’t finish the job, so we don’t want to do that this year.”
“We’ve had 365 days, and we weren’t thinking about the Western Final,” said Stamps linebacker Alex Singleton. “This is the week we’ve been working for. This is the week we’ve been talking about.”
The Argos, fresh off a 25-21 win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the East final, fired their GM, Jim Barker, in January, then coach Scott Milanovich quit. A month later, GM Jim Popp and coach Marc Trestman came aboard.
“These guys are really special,” said Trestman on Sunday. “They’ve developed a brotherhood. A lot of the guys care more about their teammates than they care about themselves.”
It all starts with the 38-year-old Ray, whose 5,546 passing yards in 2017 included a run of 330, 341, 362, 423 and 341 passing yards in the final five games of the regular season. On Sunday, he had 266 yards vs. the Roughriders.
“With everything that was on the line (Sunday), this (win) was pretty special,” Ray said.
The Stampeders have a quarterback stud of their own in the 27-year-old Mitchell. Then they’ve got 255-lb Jerome Messam running over defenders for 1,016 yards and the speedy, elusive Finch, who had 81 yards on four carries Sunday, in the background.
The Argos have Wilder Jr., whose dad played for the Tampa Bay Bucs, and he averaged 7.1 yards per touch in 2017 – running for 872 yards on 122 carries. He also caught 51 passes.
Yep, no Redblacks. But it is the Grey Cup. And that is always special.