REDBLACKS IN THE ZONE
Ward’s field goal streak a team effort
Lewis Ward made himself one of the stories of this past year in the CFL by making 51 of 52 field-goal attempts in 18 regular-season games, including a record streak of 48 in a row. The 26-year-old Ottawa Redblacks rookie didn’t do it alone, though. Every time Ward succeeded, so did long-snapper Louis-Philippe Bourassa and holder Richie Leone, as well as nine other teammates blocking at or near the line of scrimmage. They call it poetry in motion, but it has to happen quickly — in 1.3 seconds, in fact. Pressure? Definitely. Coaches, teammates and fans are counting on them to split the uprights and add three points to the Redblacks’ side of the scoreboard, continuing with the CFL’s East Division final against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at TD Place stadium on Sunday. Considering the following numbers, kicking sounds simple. The goalposts looming over each goal-line of a CFL field have crossbars 10 feet above the playing surface and two uprights 18½ feet apart extending 30 feet skyward, for a total height of 40 feet. The target is 555 square feet, or 51.5 square metres. Even with a combination of specialized skills, practice and a certain degree of trust, success isn’t guaranteed. Ward’s only missed field-goal attempt was from a distance of 47 yards in the Redblacks’ first regular-season contest against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on June 21, but he was wide on three of 19 one-point convert attempts from 33 yards. Here, according to Leone, is how it’s supposed to work: “(Bourassa) is snapping the ball, I’m catching it, I’m putting it (on the kicking tee). (Ward) doesn’t even see the ball until he’s almost halfway to the tee, per se. “He’s got to trust that I’m going to put it down. We call it poetry in motion. It really is, too, because there’s a lot of things that have to go right. There’s a lot of little details that go into it.”
CALL TO DUTY
CFL rules give offences three plays to advance the ball 10 yards to earn a new set of downs, so coaches of teams that don’t gain 10 yards on the first two plays must decide whether to gamble with another offensive play on third down — the risk is relinquishing possession to the opponent if it fails — or to send in the punt or field-goal units. As long-snapper and kicker on the punt team, Bourassa and Leone are on alert with virtually every second-down play. Ward enters that zone when the Redblacks offence advances into scoring position on the opponent’s side of midfield. While waiting for field-goal attempts, Bourassa fires practice snaps to Leone, who mimics placing the ball on the tee. Ward boots footballs into netting on a metal frame. After Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell signals to special-teams co-ordinator Bob Dyce, Dyce orders Ward, Leone, Bourassa and nine others into action.
12-SECOND LEAD-UP
Bourassa identifies the yard marker where the football lies and tells Ward. The kicker places his tee, slightly less than an inch high in conformance with CFL rules, 7½ yards behind that. “Then Richie and the whole (kicking) squad will kind of come in,” Ward says, “and we’ll go from there.” Except for Bourassa and Ward, kick-unit members huddle briefly, partly to count heads and ensure that all required personnel are in place. Twelve seconds elapse, Leone says, from the start of the huddle to when he drops to his left knee beside the tee and Ward steps back to his start point. “Once he’s down and I’m in my spot, everyone should be ready,” Ward says. “Richie looks back at me and asks if I’ll be ready. I’ll give him a little, ‘Yeah, we’re ready,’ and then he turns back and we do our thing.”
SNAPPY STUFF
Bourassa, a Université de Montréal product who turns 27 one day before the Nov. 25 Grey Cup championship game in Edmonton, places his feet behind the ball and looks at the defensive front, assessing the likely pressure points. He also checks with blockers to his right and left. “There’s a lot of things that have to come into play,” he says. “I have to look everywhere but, when I snap the ball, when I finish (gripping it) with my hands, I have to look where I’m aiming, and I’m looking at Richie.” Once Ward indicates he’s ready, Leone signals to Bourassa, who snaps the ball. According to Leone, it should rotate 3½ times during that 7½-yard arc, which if true will leave the laces of the football under the fingers on Leone’s right hand.
SETTING UP A WALL
Under CFL rules, no defender can line up directly opposite the snapper, who is in a vulnerable head-down position, but defenders nearest the middle of the formation still start play just 8.5 yards from the kick point — the one-yard line-of-scrimmage buffer plus the 7.5-yard mark spotted by Ward. Assuming blockers take stances as wide as possible — those beside Bourassa station one foot behind each of his to narrow those gaps — defenders at the end of the line would still be five yards or so from centre. Believe it or not, this is the time to trust in geometry, specifically Pythagoras’s theorem for the right triangle: A squared plus B squared equals C squared. Here, 8.5 squared plus 5 squared equals 97.25, producing a square root that rounds down to 9.86, meaning a defender rushing from the far edge must cover 16 per cent more ground than one coming up the middle. Even then, an athlete capable of running a 40-yard sprint in 4.5 seconds could take a straight path to the tee in 1.11 seconds. Thus, standard practice is for all blockers to prioritize the inside gaps, but those on the edges must also deliver one-handed shoves — or what longtime Ottawa Rough Riders kicker Gerry Organ referred to as “flipper” elbows — to force outside rushers onto longer, slower curved routes. After all, snapper, holder and kicker need 1.3 seconds.
SPOT-ON STUFF
Leone, a 26-year-old from Georgia, focuses on the ball after Bourassa’s snap. He catches it — like a receiver, he says — and lowers his hands, with that bent knee as a backstop for his left elbow. His trust is that the ball will be sitting on Ward’s tee. Because a kicker wants the laces facing away due to their potential negative impact on the accuracy of the boot, the laces must be facing out or the holder will have to try to spin the ball in the right direction while the kicker approaches. “We have it dialed in to the fact it will always be seven and a half yards, and the laces (on the football) should be out, so I don’t have to move it,” Leone says. “(Bourassa) has it dialed in like that. … He makes my life easier. “All I have to do is catch it and put it down.”
BEST FOOT FORWARD
Ward starts striding forward with the football yet to reach Leone. Only as Ward plants his left foot, adjacent to the tee, does he finally see the ball. “I’m already there,” he says. The target, or sweet spot, on the ball is just above the white stripe nearest the tee. After Ward makes contact with his right foot, the football flies end over end toward that 555-squarefoot space. “All that happens during camp, during the season, during every practice,” says Chris Milo, a kicker for three teams over seven seasons, including the 2015-16 Redblacks. “It’s not something you take for granted.”