RedBlacks crushed in Hamilton
Ottawa has a lot to work on following pre-season opener
OTTAWA — Ottawa RedBlacks coach Rick Campbell looked shaken, speaking with intensity and firmness moments after his team had been crushed and perhaps demoralized by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats Monday night at Tim Hortons Field.
Sure, it was only a pre-season game … yadda, yadda, yadda … but the 37-10 loss was a slap in the face and a kick in the gonads. The biggest positives: It wasn’t at home and it wasn’t on TSN — so many fans were spared seeing something that was so painful to watch.
The message is simple: Get better, work harder and listen to the coaches. The fix isn’t quite as simple: Run better, block better, catch better, tackle better, kick better and cut out the boneheaded mistakes. How the RedBlacks attack the next few days, then their second pre-season game — Saturday in Quebec City against Montreal — will determine whether they sink or swim. It will go a long ways toward determining whether they really are a 2-16 team or a rising power in the CFL.
Campbell talks about guys being “good football players.” The problem on Monday night is too many “good football players” were bad.
“We were committed to playing everybody,” said Campbell. “While these guys are good football players, we need to make sure we coach them up right and get them to play hard. We’ll watch (the film), correct things and move on.
“It’ll be a big week for us, we’re going to bounce back, we’re going to be playing all our guys (against Montreal) and make sure we get better. There are a lot of positive things about this football team.”
Hit the rewind button a bit and several of Ottawa’s starters were out of the lineup. The aerial game Monday produced just 200 yards. Maybe it will make a difference when Brad Sinopoli, Maurice Price, Ernest Jackson and Chris Williams join Greg Ellingson at the receiver spots. But the team needs to go vertical more often.
The running game was an afterthought. If Chevon Walker is going to be the featured running back, he needs to lug the ball more than three times (for six yards). The RedBlacks rushed just eight times in the game. The running game has to offset the passing game and vice versa.
Ottawa’s cover units on kickoffs and punts were very shaky, shades of a season ago. Campbell promised he would find “12 good football players” who could do the job.
There were some bright spots. Running back Torrance Hunt had a couple of nice punt returns (winding up with 106 yards on three attempts), rookie Canadian running back Kienan Lafrance didn’t look out of place (two carries for eight yards), Jamill Smith had four catches for 30 yards and played much bigger than his body size, rookie receiver Jake Harty had four catches for 26 yards and Brandon Sermons had a nice interception.
There were too many bystanders on the offensive line. Second-string defensive end Adrian Tracy owned the RedBlacks all night. And it wasn’t much better in the defensive backfield. The lopsided score may have been generous to the RedBlacks. Ticats running back Nic Grigsby dropped a couple of balls that could have been touchdowns. And a 103-yard punt return touchdown was wiped out by a penalty.
OK, enough doom and gloom. I repeat, it did not count in the standings.
“It’s pre-season, bottom line,’ said linebacker Travis Brown, who missed a tackle on Jeff Mathews that allowed the QB to roll outside and find an uncovered Terrence Toliver for a 73-yard TD strike. “We expect to win, we expect to come out and fight better than we did. We’ll look a the film, learn from our mistakes. In my little quarter of play, I made plenty of mistakes. I left the DBs out to dry on one of those blitzes we had. I missed the sack and we gave up a touchdown. I’ll take my blame. We’ve got to move on quickly. We’ve got a game (in four days).”
Brown said the players feel the sting of what happened in Hamilton, but will keep their heads up and continue to prepare for the regular season.
“We’ll iron out the kinks,” said Brown. “We need to move on. The good thing is we have a lot of young guys getting a lot of reps. They’re learning something. We’ve all learned no matter what type of game you’re going to play, you need to fight. They got ahead of us quick and you have to respond to that. We learned that you need to respond in those situations better.”