A Grey Cup tale of two running backs
Rider Sheets wants the ball; Ticat Gable’s ‘unselfish’
during a game in Calgary late in the season, when he didn’t get the ball near the goal-line and the Riders had to settle for a field goal in a game they lost 29-25 — bit his tongue.
“I’m going to stay away from that one,” said the CFL’s second-leading rusher, behind only Calgary’s Jon Cornish. “I don’t want to get into comparing me to (Gable), because that’s not what this game’s about. It’s comparing two teams to each other, not two running backs.
“Of course, if you don’t want the ball, you shouldn’t be on offence. Go play defence if you don’t want the ball. That’s crazy.
“Yes, I want the ball. I want to help my team win. I want to score points and put touchdowns on the board, but if you say this guy never wants the ball, or this guy is happy to block every time you tell him to — I’m cool with that. If they ask me to block, I’m going to try to get my guy on the ground or make sure he doesn’t touch Darian (Durant).”
‘I believe in (Austin’s) game plan and just do what I’m told, and that’s about it.’
chippy. He’s got a little of that “me against the world” attitude, having been born in Hartford, with the feeling that people were saying, “They play football in Connecticut?”
He played college ball at Purdue, not quite the same profile as Gable, who came out of Southern Cal, and admits he felt undervalued.
“You can be the fastest guy, can have all the numbers, but because of where I come from, I’m looked at differently. I don’t like that,” he said Thursday. “I come out here and I play hard just like everybody else, I have the talent just like everybody else and there’s a lot of people I feel like I’m better than.
“And I never get any credit for anything that I do, and anything I help my team do. (People think) I’m a selfish guy and a guy that’s just self-centred and hotheaded, and that’s not me.”
He said the confrontation with Cortez was more out of frustration at the team failing to score a touchdown than the fact he didn’t get the ball, but it looked pretty damning on video.
“It probably happens more than people realize. But it’s kind of like Vegas: what happens on the sidelines stays on the sidelines. It’s an emotional game, people get emotional, and you move on from it,” said Cortez, the longtime CFL offensive guru who was replaced as the Ticats’ head coach by Austin after a 6-12 season last year.
“Kory is a hard runner, a powerful guy, good in the open field, and when he’s running down behind his pads, he’s hard to tackle. He’s like every other skill person I’ve been around: he wants the ball. But you know what? That’s why guys are pros. They have that drive. Same with receivers. You don’t want receivers who don’t want the ball, ’cause they’re not good enough.”
What most everyone acknowledges is that both Sheets and Gable are going to figure prominently in the result Sunday — and that if the forecast is correct and this week’s cold snap gives way to a balmy daytime high of zero degrees Celsius, the football is going to be less like a brick and a lot easier to handle.
The temperature so far has been a considerable shock.
“They told me about it but I was like, ‘OK, it can’t be that bad,’ but I was wrong,” said Gable, who had only seen snow once, in Nebraska, before coming to Canada. “The coldest I ever played in was probably at Notre Dame, but nothing compared to this.”