For an analysis of the crucial game, read Spectator columnist Steve Milton’s take on
OTTAWA — It was wildly watchable, but at this point of the year, the entertainment quotient means virtually nothing to anyone who’s actually in the play. With first place on the line, the reviews are about who wins and who loses and not much else.
So, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who generally forgot their lines in the second half, have to be panned. Unless they thought they were in a Shakespearean play: such as A Comedy of Errors.
The Ticats mounted a decent first act, but then couldn’t make first downs nor stop the Ottawa Redblacks’ offence, led by quarterback Trevor Harris, on the way to a 35-31 loss, virtually ensuring they will have to play a western crossover team in the CFL Eastern semifinal in three weeks.
It began to unravel late in the second quarter and continued most of the rest of the way as the Ticats let Ottawa receivers get open, took a pass interference call to extend a pivotal scoring drive and roughed the kicker to extend a long-possession drive and also allowed the Redblacks to recover the kickoff after they’d gone up, to stay it turned out, in the middle of the fourth quarter.
And perhaps worst of all, they lost their best receiver, Brandon Banks to injury in the third quarter. That hurt any chance of a dramatic comeback when they recovered a fumble deep in their own zone in the final minute.
With the defeat, the Ticats (8-8) drop back to .500 and Ottawa, which has won both head-to-head meetings this season and six of the last eight confrontations, owns the season tiebreaker. So to earn a bye into the Eastern final, the Ticats would have to beat Ottawa next Saturday at Tim Hortons Field and Montreal at home a week later, while counting on the Toronto Argonauts to beat the Redblacks, in Ottawa, next Friday night. Those who think the Argos will do that, please speak up. (Are those crickets we hear?)
Overall Jeremiah Masoli was 19 for 29 for 309 yards and three touchdown passes, two to Luke Tasker and one for Banks. Lirim Hajrullahu kicked three field goals.
For Ottawa, Harris was 24 for 32 for 341 yards and a touchdown pass to Diontae Spencer. Dominique Davis had three short touchdown runs.
The Ticats jumped out to a 22-6 lead through 25 minutes, and still led 25-14 at halftime.
By then, not only had the energetic crowd — spiced by a nice little chunk of Ticat Nation — seen a lot of points, they’d seen two historic achievements. One was obvious, the second more subtle.
Before the Redblacks even scored their first touchdown of the season against Hamilton with a minute to go in the first half, Ottawa’s rookie place-kicker Lewis Ward had kicked his eighth and ninth field goals against them this year to break NFL legend Adam Vinatieri’s pro football record with his 45th straight three-pointer without a miss.
In that same half, Tasker caught his 10th and 11th touchdown passes of the year, and Banks caught his 11th. That gave the Ticats two different players with double-digit touchdown receptions for the first time in their 69 seasons of existence.
But that won’t change the overall reviews. For half the game the Ticats went way off script.
NOTES: Bob Hooper, who worked on Ticats CHML radio broadcasts for decades, died earlier this week at the age of 79. “Hoop” also spent two years as the team’s media relations director before his 2004 retirement. He called all the Ticats’ radio games as play-by-play voice from 19972001.