Redblacks beat themselves via penalties
20 penalties cost team 228 yards and loss has Argos tied with Tiger-Cats
The Toronto Argonauts didn’t need to beat the Ottawa Redblacks on Sunday.
The Redblacks did that themselves.
Twenty penalties — 20!!! — cost them 228 yards and more than enough points to make the difference in a 30-24 loss at Rogers Centre.
That result lifted the Argonauts (6-2) back into a tie with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for first place in the Canadian Football League’s East Division, while the Redblacks (4-4) have to be looking over their shoulders at the Montreal Alouettes (3-5) as they prepare to play host to the Saskatchewan Roughriders next Sunday.
The Roughriders are the only winless team in the CFL, 0-8, but with a handful of narrow defeats, and that contest will be followed immediately by the Redblacks’ second and final bye week of the 2015 schedule. Does that sound like trouble? There was plenty of that to go around against the Argonauts, and the poster boy for all the troublemaking, unfairly or not, was Redblacks cornerback Brandon McDonald.
With his team leading 24-17 in the fourth quarter, McDonald was flagged for objectionable conduct for swearing at Argonauts receiver Vidal Hazelton, extending an offensive drive that would otherwise have ended and leading eventually to a 15-yard touchdown pass from Trevor Harris to — who else? — Hazelton.
Two subsequent failed offensive possessions for the Redblacks were followed by short kicks by new punter Andy Wilder, no-yards penalties on both of them and the margin of victory for the Argos, thanks to a pair of field goals by Swayze Waters.
McDonald said he and Hazelton had been jawing at each other all game, and an official on the sideline warned them to stop.
“I said some things I shouldn’t have said and the ref called a penalty on that,” McDonald said. “Look, I can control that. If I keep my mouth shut, don’t say anything, that doesn’t happen, we get off the field, they punt the ball and we’re not in that (tied-score) position.”
The Redblacks’ final drive reached the Argos’ 25-yard line, but an illegal-procedure penalty on second down preceded an incomplete pass and a sack of quarterback Henry Burris by the Argos’ Cleyon Laing.
That spoiled an otherwise great performance by Burris, who completed 26 of 32 passes for a franchise-record 426 yards. Ernest Jackson caught six balls for 114 yards, Greg Ellingson caught four for 110 — Burris should buy him lunch for a couple of them — and Brad Sinopoli latched onto seven for 85 yards.
“We did the little things it takes to win this game, but penalties hurt us in the end, and we can’t have those if we expect to be a good team in this league,” Burris said. “They’re always going to hurt you and make winning a lot tougher.”
There was more to it than just McDonald’s objectionable conduct penalty, of course. There were also two infractions for unnecessary roughness, four for no-yards on punt coverage, and one each for an illegal kickoff, illegal substitution and too many men on the field.
Head coach Rick Campbell’s post-game speech to Redblacks players lasted longer than normal. When he emerged form the locker-room, Campbell was able to restrain himself from publicly criticizing any individuals, but just barely if you read between these lines:
“I’m not going to berate people in public. That’s not what this is about,” Campbell said. “All our guys want to win the game, but we have to be smart enough to know how to go about it.
“If you’re doing stuff that’s not helping us win the football game, then I think you’re being selfish and not putting the team first.”
Jeremiah Johnson ran for just 40 yards on 12 attempts, but he twice punched the ball over the goal-line for Redblacks touchdowns, and the visitors added a third major on a 29yard interception return by Jerrell Gavins early in the fourth quarter.
There might have been another interception TD in the first quarter, too, by Jovon Johnson, but that one was erased by an offside penalty. Sigh....
Harris also threw first-half touchdown passes to Kevin Elliott and Tori Gurley, who couldn’t possibly have been more open than they were. Blame defensive breakdowns by the Redblacks for those touchdowns.
The Argonauts ran for just 44 yards, but Harris passed for 266. The hosts also enjoyed a huge advantage in the kicking game.
Waters was 3-for-3 on field goals, 3-for-3 on converts and averaged a spectacular 50.6 yards on his seven punts in his first game since the season opener in June. The CFL’s special-teams player of the year in 2014 had missed six games because of a quadriceps injury.
Wilder’s first game with the Redblacks was much, much less than the team expected after signing the American punter at the start of last week. He managed just 35.0 yards per punt, and a respectable 68.3-yard average on kickoffs was spoiled by the penalty for booting one out of bounds.
The return of Chris Williams from a two-game injury absence did nothing to spark the punt-return game, either. The 2012 special-teams player of the year had just 21 yards on five returns, and his longest was just nine yards.
“We are going to keep working at it,” Campbell said. “We are losing the field position battle badly on the kicking front, and we also need to block better, tackle better, cover better … all those things.
“If we get some of those things squared away, it’s going to help our football team.”
That much is true.