MISSED CALL IRKS COACH
Playoff hopes in danger
When is roughing the passer not actually a roughing-the-passer penalty?
Jason Maas gets one coach’s challenge per game and if he would have had another one left over following Monday’s 19-12 loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, he might consider stuffing it right down the throats of the Canadian Football League’s command centre.
The Edmonton Eskimos head coach used his challenge in an attempt to draw a roughing-thepasser penalty after witnessing quarterback Mike Reilly take a helmet hit to the head on the defining play at Mosaic Stadium on Thanksgiving Day.
Instead, the official video review resulted in the ruling on the field standing, as did Willie Jefferson’s long, drawn out interception return for the game’s only touchdown.
“I saw the film and I saw the scoreboard, it sure looked like his head got snapped back,” Maas said following the loss that dropped the Eskimos out of a playoff spot and into last place in the West Division. “They took an awful long time to look at it, and in their opinion it wasn’t (roughing the passer).
“I haven’t seen (another replay), I’ll look at the film myself and determine whether I believed it was or not, but Mike felt like his chin got hit. So if your chin’s getting hit, it means the helmet’s hitting it. But if it slid up from the chest, I don’t know, so apparently that must have been the call.”
The replay on the screen in the stadium showed not only Reilly take a hit to his head or neck area from the crown of a defender’s helmet, but also get thrown violently to the ground as part of the same tackle — either of which would be grounds for a roughing-the-passer penalty in and of itself.
But what was the biggest turning point of the game has also had a big impact on Edmonton’s entire season, as their playoff fate is no longer in their hands alone.
They will need outside help over the remaining four regularseason weeks to climb out of last place.
“We have a lead, 12-9, with two minutes to go in the game and you give up a pick-six to get beat,” Maas said. “If that’s not frustrating, I don’t know what else is. You feel like no matter what would have happened there if you hold onto the ball, if you get a first down there, the clock’s on your side and you run the ball out, and you go from there. Kick it off and they’ve got to march the field to tie it, and all that.
“But to give up a pick-six in that situation, that’s the worstcase scenario happening to you. When you have momentum, you have the lead most of the game and it comes down to the last minute and 50 seconds and you lose the game because of it, that sucks. That’s hard to frickin’ deal with.
“So, you can sense my frustration? I’m sure everyone in that locker-room’s frustrated because of that. I give him credit, because Willie Jefferson is an unbelievable athlete and he can make plays like that and he’s proved it this year and he made another big play for them. But the game is there for us to win it and they made a play to steal it from us at the end.”
Needless to say, the interception return was not the toss for a touchdown Reilly was looking for to finally end a stretch that’s seen Edmonton get kept out of the end zone for the past two games. Nine quarters and counting, to be exact.
“It looks like one play at the end, but it’s one play the whole game. Pick one,” said veteran Eskimos fullback Calvin McCarty. “We didn’t do enough, I felt, offensively. The D played well. Special teams played all right. We’ve just got to finish drives and we didn’t, and that’s when the game gets decided by one play like that. How many nonoffensive touchdowns have they scored this year?”
Thirteen. A league-leading seven of which have been provided by the defence.
By contrast, all 42 of Edmonton’s touchdowns have come via the offence, which is what makes their current nine-quarter funk all the more puzzling.
“Yeah, if you add it up like that, I guess, but we play four at a time and those others don’t really carry over,” McCarty said. “Sitting back looking at it like that, yeah, it’s not good at all.
“We’ve still got a chance, man. And that’s really all you ask for. Yeah, it sucks and all of that, but you still have life and showed some fight out there. We are professionals in here, we’ve got to flush that one. We’ve got a short week and get right back to the next one.”
The Eskimos host the Ottawa Redblacks on Saturday (3 p.m., TSN, ESPN+, 630 CHED).