McCallum knows what it takes to recover from bad start
TORONTO — Paul McCallum has been here before — and we’re not just talking about Hogtown.
In 2011, McCallum was the punter/kicker for a B.C. Lions team that started the CFL regular season with five straight losses. That squad righted the ship and eventually won the Grey Cup.
Now, McCallum’s current team — the Saskatchewan Roughriders — has a lot of work to do if it’s going to recover from an 0-6 start to win the CFL title. But the 23year veteran sees something in the Roughriders that the Lions had.
“One parallel is the attitude,” McCallum, 45, said Friday, one day before Saskatchewan is to face the Toronto Argonauts at Rogers Centre.
“It’s not so much a sense of urgency — we always want to win — but there’s sort of a demeanour. We never go out feeling we’re already beaten. Every game we go out feeling we can win. From that perspective, there’s a similarity.
“There isn’t a bad vibe because of our record. There’s a positive vibe that we’re going to perform well, do the things we worked on in practice and execute them.”
There obviously are differences between the 2011 Lions and 2015 Roughriders.
B.C. was a veteran-laden squad, with quarterback Travis Lulay — who went on to be named the CFL’s most outstanding player and the Grey Cup MVP that season — leading the offence.
The Roughriders’ offence currently is in the hands of rookie pivot Brett Smith, who’s to make his second career CFL start today. He’s under centre because of injuries to starter Darian Durant and backup Kevin Glenn.
Saskatchewan’s lineup has been decimated by injuries — 15 players are on injured lists for today’s game, including 13 on the six-game list — and the roster has been in a state of flux as a result.
In McCallum’s eyes, another key difference between the teams is the number of mental mistakes they committed. B.C. was the CFL’s least-penalized squad in 2011, whereas Saskatchewan went into Week 7 of this season having taken the most penalties in the league for the most yards.
If the Roughriders are to rally, McCallum thinks they have to be tough enough mentally to avoid penalties and breakdowns on their assignments.
The question, then, is this: Do the 2015 Roughriders have the same ingredients that the 2011 Lions had?
“I haven’t been around the team long enough to assess that,” replied McCallum, whom the Roughriders signed July 1. “That was a veteran team we had in 2011. I wouldn’t say it’s fair to even compare.
“We just have to work with what we’ve got because we have some young players on this team. The older ones — myself included — have to show what we’ve done in the past to be successful and hopefully the young guys can follow along.”
McCallum has done his part since replacing Chris Milo as Saskatchewan’s kicker.
McCallum enters today’s game with 11 field goals in 12 attempts this season, including a pair of 50-yarders against the Lions on July 17. He’s also 7-for-7 on the new 32-yard converts.
“Anytime you know that a guy’s been doing this for a long time and he’s been consistent for a long time, you know what you’re going to get,” coach Corey Chamblin said.
“That’s what we’re trying to do is get to the point where we have Paul McCallum-type consistency.”