STAMPS-ARGOS SHOWDOWN

Calgary to face Toronto in Grey Cup

This is what the CFL can still do.

It can make you crazy. It can make you cringe. It can make you freeze your butt off and wonder what you’re doing sitting outside on a frigid windy afternoon.

And it can pull at your heart or make you rise in celebration. Or it can grab you and hold you, stunned in wonderment, like the best of novels always do.

And it did all that in the fateful frantic frenzied final seconds of an East Division championship game that was won, then lost, then won again, barely by the shocking Toronto Argonauts. The Argos were a team that was good on defence until they weren’t, lousy on offence until they weren’t, occasionally undisciplined, and sometimes inept and in the words of coach Marc Trestman “we didn’t do much offensively until the last drive of the game. We did enough to win.”

This has been an impossible season of sorts for the Argos, an impossible story starting with the hiring of Trestman and Jim Popp on the final day of February, with no coaching staff in March, with almost no receivers to bring forward, with no defensive backs of consequence to call their own. They started three months after the rest of the CFL got started.

And here they are, heading to the Grey Cup after a 25-21 win over Saskatchewan, which is nothing new for Trestman and Popp, who have done this together three previous times.

This was the ebb and flow of Canadian football at its best and worst and coldest. The Argos led 17-3 at the half, 18-3 at the end of three quarters and hail was falling from the Toronto skies. The game was in the bag.

This is how bad the Roughriders were on offence, or how great the Argos were on defence. In the first half, the Riders finished the first half by throwing an interception to Cassius Vaughn, which came after an interception by Akwasi Owusu-Ansah, which came after an interception for a touchdown by Terrance Plummer, which came after Saskatchewan and Toronto punted nine times in the first half, 19 in the game. The game was in the bag.

Then the bag broke. The Riders looked to be heading to Ottawa for the Grey Cup when the local kid, quarterback Brandon Bridge, became the first Canadian to throw a touchdown pass in a division title game since Russ Jackson threw one in 1969. That pass to Duron Carter came after he had made a 36-yard run himself and the Canadian was about to become the story of the day. The Riders were coming back. The Canadian quarterback was about to become the theme of Grey Cup Week.

And right after that, Christion Jones ran a punt back for a touchdown and the Riders had come from trailing 18-3 and were ahead 21-18. Everything seemed to be going green.

And then Ricky Ray, not having a great day, not working the wind in his favour, getting hammered more often than he would like, started being vintage Ricky Ray. Bam. A completion. Bam. Another one. And all of a sudden it’s third down and five yards to go and he makes one of those impossible Ray throws to James Wilder Jr. A few plays later, it’s Colin Kaepernick’s old backup, Cody Fajardo on the quarterback sneak and the Argos were going to the Grey Cup.

The Riders were outscoring the Argos 18-0 in the fourth quarter before Fajardo’s score but a Saskatchewan defender “took a peek” in the words of coach Chris Jones and with Ricky Ray “he’s going to stick the ball in on you.”

Saskatchewan winning would have been almost as unlikely as the Argos winning. That was the charm of this crossover matchup. “Nobody gave us a chance (this season),” said Jones. “They were ready to run our coaching staff out of town and we’ve got a great group of guys, a great coaching staff.”

One great group of guys is going to the Grey Cup.

One great group of guys is flying home and wondering why.

“You never lose on one mistake,” said Jones. “We took too many penalties. We were the more undisciplined team today, which cost us four or five times.”

Trestman said almost the identical thing about his team.

He called his offence “anemic.” He told them at halftime their defence was carrying them. And they weren’t any better in the second half, until desperation hit on the final drive. The Argos went ahead with 20 seconds to go.

And the crowd seemed alive at BMO Field for the first time, even when the football didn’t necessarily match the feeling. The final minutes were breathtaking. It was the CFL’s version of 3-on-3, fun and delirious, wild and furious. This is what Canadian football can still do after all these years.

The games don’t have to be great if the endings are.