Receivers’ YAC attack key to Redblacks rising offence
Henry Burris has been widely acclaimed for his work as Ottawa Redblacks quarterback in recent weeks, but even Smilin’ Hank would admit he couldn’t have done it without a lot of help from his friends.
Burris’s 504 passing yards against the Montreal Alouettes, on a leaguerecord 45 completions, included 206 yards racked up by receivers after the catches were made. Two games earlier, when Burris threw for 477 yards against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, his footballcatching buddies contributed 226.
Those are the top two totals of what the Canadian Football League calls “yards after catch” or YAC in the 60 games played so far this season.
“I always think about it as however bad you want it,” said Brad Sinopoli, the CFL leader with 373 YAC, or slightly less than half of his 828 total yards on 65 receptions, and one of three Redblacks in the top 10 in that category. Chris Williams ranks sixth with 313 (out of a total of 884) and Ernest Jackson is 10th at 251 (out of 788).
Sinopoli had 63 YAC against the Alouettes, including 26 of 27 yards on a single third-quarter play. Other contributions included 35 YAC from Maurice Price, 27 from Patrick Lavoie, 25 from Jeremiah Johnson, 22 from Williams, 21 from Greg Ellingson and 13 from Jackson.
“As soon as you get the ball in your hands, it’s just kind of inside you to fight for every yard, in a smart way,” Sinopoli added following Sunday’s 80-minute practice at Gatineau’s Mont-Bleu sports complex. “You don’t want to put yourself at risk for fumbles or do anything stupid like that. We only have two downs (in the CFL). Every time you get the ball, you have to try to get as many (yards) as you can.”
Price says YAC comes more naturally for some receivers than others, but working hard helps. Weight training can assist in shedding potential tacklers and agility drills might help make them miss entirely.
Before YAC, of course, a receiver must run his assigned route well enough to get open and then must catch the football.
“Then that switch comes on immediately. It’s like second nature. It’s muscle memory,” said Price, who on Thursday established personal season bests with nine catches and 104 yards. “You work on it so much.
“To the average fan, it looks natural, and it is natural because you do it over and over again.”
It wasn’t always natural for Sinopoli, for one, but has become much more because of the experience he has gained as a receiver at the pro level after being a star university quarterback for the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees and then a third-string QB for the Calgary Stampeders for two CFL seasons.
“As you go along, you gain confidence in doing it,” he said. “It helped, obviously, being a running quarterback. You have a little bit more space to run as a quarterback, so it becomes innate, the little moves that you do, that you don’t really think about.
“It’s (important) to get to the point that you feel really comfortable in doing that on the field time after time. When I started (as receiver), the main thing was just catching the ball and protecting it. It’s a growth thing.”
Yards after catch was one thing Redblacks coaches and management had in mind when they went shopping for “playmakers” and rebuilt the pass-receiving corps between the franchise’s first and second seasons: Price was acquired in trade from the Stampeders, while Sinopoli, Ellingson, Jackson and Williams were signed as free agents.
The dividends from those investments include league-best rankings of passing yards by Burris and his team — beating 2014 season totals — completions, first downs, plays from scrimmage and net offence.
“An example would be a receiver making a tough catch, not just a routine catch, but also all those yards (after catch), those are extra yards that you want,” head coach Rick Campbell said.
“They are all proven CFL players, so we had a pretty good idea what we were getting. The key was just getting the chemistry, to get them all to play together.”
The next opportunity for that comes Tuesday against the Toronto Argonauts in the game shifted to TD Place stadium from Rogers Centre because of a potential conflict with Blue Jays playoff baseball.
A victory would not only keep the Redblacks (8-5) at least tied with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for first in the East Division by week’s end, but would also keep them ahead of the third-place Argos (7-5) and reduce to one their “magic number” for clinching a playoff spot.