Ticats land in win column
Argonauts capsized by stormy night as Masoli steers Hamilton to the fabled W
It took an act of God and then some but finally the Hamilton Tiger-Cats have experienced a win in the 2017 season.
For a quarter and a half, the Ticats looked every bit as unfocused and unproductive as they had for the first 10 weeks of the season in which they compiled an 0-8 record.
But following a two-hour-eightminute delay by a thunderstorm that included a torrential downpour and enough lightning and thunder to jump-start a few hearts, the Ticats returned a team with not just a pulse but a feeling they could win.
Two touchdowns in 25 seconds will do that to a team, as the Ticats finally found the win column, hanging on for an improbable 2422 win.
Crazy things tend to happen on Labour Day when the Ticats and Argos meet, and this certainly qualified.
Consider the period immediately following the storm delay.
When play resumed, new Ticats starting quarterback Jeremiah Masoli looked nothing like the man who stumbled though the 21:45 that preceded the stoppage.
He hit Brandon Banks on Hamilton’s second offensive play after with a 64-yard bomb to get the Ticats right back into a game that they trailed by only four but felt like they had never been in.
On the ensuing kickoff, Martese Jackson coughed up the ball on his own 14-yard line and the ball was scooped up by Felix Faubert-Lussier and returned for the second touchdown in exactly 25 seconds.
The score put Hamilton in front by 10 and suddenly it was the Argos who appeared to be reeling.
Toronto, to its credit, responded with a pair of scores, leaving this one to be decided in the final seconds.
DeVier Posey, who had two touchdowns in the first three games before injury knocked him out for six weeks before returning last week against Calgary, doubled his touchdown output with two in the fourth to put the Argos back in front.
Posey hauled in a 10-yard strike from Ricky Ray with 4:43 to go in the third. He then got another about five minutes into the fourth, this time hauling in a 16-yard pass from Ray to regain the lead for Toronto.
But a trio of challenges all came down on the side of the Ticats, helping Hamilton first avoid what looked to be a turnover and extend a drive on a reception that looked like it skipped off the turf, and then finally put the Tabbies on the Toronto one when a call in the end zone changed from a Hamilton incompletion to Toronto defensive interference.
C.J. Gable, who had not scored a major for Hamilton all year, went over from the one-yard line to put Hamilton ahead to stay.
This was typical Labour Day action where anything and everything seemed to happen.
Lirim Hajrullahu had a chance to send this game into overtime with a 37-yard field goal, but the attempt sailed wide with 38 seconds remaining and Hamilton hung on for dear life.
For about a quarter and a half, it appeared the Masoli era as Ticats starting quarterback wouldn’t last beyond this week. June Jones’s choice to take over at quarterback for incumbent Zach Collaros got off to as inauspicious start.
He was late getting the team to the line on his first play of the night and took a time count violation penalty. The next play, he failed to hit a wide-open Brandon Banks, who was still behind the line of scrimmage waiting for a screen pass. His third pass was picked off by Marcus Ball.
It was the continuation of a week few football teams could imagine, let alone survive. The aborted hiring of disgraced former Baylor coach Art Briles by itself was enough of a PR nightmare for one team. But throw in a change of head coaches just before that, the mid-season change at quarterback and the former head coach — but still the vice-president of football operations — being sued by the college team he left for Hamilton roughly half a decade ago.
Before the rain delay, the only scoring provided by either team were a pair of Hajrullahu field goals. The first of those two was set up by Masoli’s interception on that first drive.
The only other real excitement in that first quarter and half before the skies opened up and the lightning began snapping over Tim Hortons Field was a 101- yard punt return for a touchdown by Argos return man Jackson.
Unfortunately for the game as a whole and Jackson individually, the Argos’ penchant for shooting themselves in the foot with penalties on special teams is a lot more consistent than its offence, and another flag erased the only real early highlight.
The Argos will have to sit on this one for a while. The team has its first of two bye weeks while the Ticats, who have already had both of theirs, head east down the highway to the capital for a game with the Ottawa Redblacks, who have righted the ship after a tough start to the year.