Redblacks look to tighten screws on D
Campbell doesn’t want to see repeat of Als’ Week 5 effort
The old bend-don’t-break theory worked OK for the Ottawa Redblacks the last time they played the Montreal Alouettes. A win is a win, right?
They probably shouldn’t count on the same thing happening Thursday night in Montreal.
In a 24-19 Week 5 win, the Redblacks gave up more than 500 yards of offence, 452 of those from the arm of quarterback Darian Durant. The key for them was turnovers — Montreal threw two interceptions, fumbled twice and gave up the ball once on downs. Ottawa, on the other hand, had zero turnovers.
“The ultimate thing is to keep the points down, that’s the No. 1 goal of playing defence in this league,” said Redblacks coach Rick Campbell. “At the same time, you don’t want to give up a ridiculous amount of yardage and have their offence on the field all the time.
“We’ve shown we can play pretty good football in long stretches for most of this football season, but we want to do it for a full 60. That’s what it’s going to take as the games get bigger.
“They have some playmakers on both offence and defence. You need to limit those big plays. At the same time, we need to just do a good job of playing good football — control the ball on offence and get off the field on defence.”
Ottawa goes in looking for its third straight victory, one that would push the team into first place in the CFL East.
“Just because we won two games doesn’t mean we’ve accomplished what we set out to accomplish,” said quarterback Trevor Harris. “We expect to win two games in a row, we expect to win five games in a row. It’s one of those short weeks and you’re playing against a defence that is fast and physical. The challenge will be fun, we’re excited about it.”
“It’s a big game,” Campbell said. “It’s hard to go on the road, but it’s close. We treat this day before kind of like we do at home. We do everything here, then we hop on a bus and head to Montreal.”