Cornish and Co. give Ticats the runaround
Stamps shrug off Lions defeat with dominant display
For an offensive lineman, there’s no sweeter sight than seeing the back of a teammate’s jersey as he sprints down field with the football.
J’Micheal Deane and his fellow Calgary Stampeder linemen savoured that view an awful lot on Thursday night at Ivor Wynne Stadium.
Just 12 days after a miserable few hours against the B.C. Lions followed by some much-discussed post-game comments from Jon Cornish about the state of the Stamps’ running game, the turnaround couldn’t have been more dramatic in Calgary’s 31-20 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
“It was definitely our focus,” nodded Deane. “We wanted to come out and run the ball, and we put in a good game plan to run the ball. We just came out and executed.”
No kidding. Against the Lions, Cornish finished in the hole, minus-one yards in rushing while the Stamps managed just 29 yards in total on the ground.
On Thursday, Cornish exploded for a career-high 170 yards on 20 carries while the Stamps piled up 233 yards in total, going to some new pages in the playbooks with a series of direct snaps and using Romby Bryant on three end-around runs.
“I was looking forward to trying to come out and be really prepared,” said Cornish. “I put more time in the locker-room, the weight room, the video room than I’ve ever done before. I guess it paid off a little bit.”
Even more impressive than the numbers was the way the Stampeders did it. They had two relative youngsters starting up front, with Deane making his first start at right tackle and Henry Wise Wood grad Spencer Wilson getting his first pro start, filling in at left guard. Both were impressive. “I was real anxious, no question about it,” admitted Stamps coach and GM John Hufnagel. “But I also thought that it was their time to show up. It’s a 50-50 deal — I’m pleased, but I expected it, also.”
“We had a couple new faces on the offensive line, but they brought it together,” added quarterback Kevin Glenn, who wasn’t sacked but was subjected to a cheap-shot late hit for the second straight game, this one from Brandon Boudreaux. “They (offensive line) got the game ball because they did a hell of a job of blocking in the pass game and blocking in the run game. That’s what you ask for. And I think all that scrutiny on them, I think they got fed up with it. And they came out tonight and showed that they’re a good offensive line.”
Right guard Dimitri Tsoumpas has been the constant up front since he broke in as a rookie in 2008, so he had some empathy for what Deane and Wilson were facing on Thursday.
“I’m proud of what they did,” he said. “I was a rookie once and I was in that position once, so I know what they had to go through and how tough it can be. Part of it is on me trying to help these guys go in the right direction. But I didn’t have to do that too much tonight. They really stepped it up.” Well, in fact the entire line did. “Obviously, with the way we’ve been scrutinized the past week, I told the guys before the game that I don’t feel we have a monkey on our back; we have a gorilla on our back, and we have to get that thing off,” said Tsoumpas. “I felt like we rallied and we understood what was at stake. We worked all week to get better, and luckily we made the improvements sooner instead of later.”