Season pain, November reign?
History suggests what matters is when you play your best, not if you are the best
More than anyone, Wally Buono is familiar with the wild and unpredictable forces that are set loose in the CFL at playoff time.
Buono has coached four teams that finished with at least 14 wins in the regular season.
None of those teams won a Grey Cup.
In 2000, his 12-5-1 Stampeders lost the West final to the 8-10 B.C. Lions. The next year, his 8-10 Stampeders won the Cup. His 2005 Lions team started the season 11-0 and lost in the West final. His 2011 Lions’ team started the season 1-6 and rolled to the Dominion championship.
So Buono knows there’s a strange alchemy that can take over a team in November and he knows the form chart is an unreliable document at this time of year. In the runup to Sunday’s West final in Calgary he said: “At some point the players decide they’re going to take you where you want to go.”
He was asked if that’s the case with the 2016 Lions.
“Look at the second half (when the Lions erased a 25-12 Winnipeg lead in their 32-31 win in the West semifinal last Sunday),” he answered. “It’s the same team. We can only give the game plan and make minor adjustments. But we can’t do the rest for them. Now it’s on them. Is it the best team that wins the Grey Cup? I think everyone knows the answer to that.”
As he speaks, he reaches for a picture that’s been given to him by his players, a shot of a joyous group of Lions, crammed together in the team’s locker-room after the win over Winnipeg.
“When you look at that, what do you see?” Buono said. “You see a team. And that team has belief.”
Which might not be enough to beat the Calgary Stampeders, but it’s not a bad place to start.
The Lions, of course, have chosen this narrative as the theme to their post-season, but as veteran defensive back Ryan Phillips says, it also happens to fit in this case. In the 15-2-1 Stamps, the Lions are facing a super team which lost their first game of the regular season to the Lions, their last to Montreal, and went undefeated for 16 games in between. They have the CFL’s best player in quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell, the league’s leading rusher in Jerome Messam, a dazzling assortment of offensive weapons, and the league’s top defence.
The Lions, in short, are prohibitive underdogs, and if you doubt that for a minute, they’re only too happy to remind you.
“It’s the truth,” Phillips says. “It’s one thing to play the us-againstthe-world thing, but if it’s the reality, it’s the reality. Calgary had a phenomenal regular season. Give them credit for that.
“But the playoffs are a clean slate. I don’t care what they did in the regular season. They aren’t entitled to this game any more than we are. We’re peaking at the right time. That’s why everyone is confident in the room right now.”
Like Buono, Phillips has experienced the complete spectrum of November’s capriciousness in his 12 years with the Lions. In 2006, his second year with the team, the Lions rolled to the Grey Cup. The next year they went 14-3-1 and were drilled by Saskatchewan at home in the West final. Four years later, they started off abysmally, losing their first four games and five of their first six before they caught fire.
As you might have guessed, a lot of the Lions’ veterans are referencing that 2011 team when they talk about the current squad.
“There are some parallels there,” said quarterback Travis Lulay, who then described those parallels.
The 2011 team was bolstered by veterans Arland Bruce, Tad Kornegay and Khreem Smith. The 2016 team has running back Jeremiah Johnson, defensive tackle Bryant Turner and backup offensive lineman Tim O’Neill.
In 2010, the Lions showed improvement when Lulay took over as the starting quarterback late in the season, before they caught fire in 2011.
Last year, the Lions showed improvement when Jonathon Jennings took over as the starting quarterback, before they took off under Jennings this season.
And one other thing. Both teams shared that belief.
“The Edmonton game (a win at home on Oct. 22 which started the Lions’ four-game winning streak) was a turning point for us,” said Lulay. “That was a make-or-break point for us. Are we going to be contenders or pretenders? We made a choice.”
Their coach has also been pushing them toward that decision. Buono rode this team hard down the stretch, partly because that’s his way, but also because he can see what they could be. Before the Western semi, he let it be known he’d already made dinner reservations at his favourite Calgary restaurant for the week of the West final.
Didn’t seem like it at halftime against the Bombers, but it’s a pretty good story now.
“I was saying, ‘I believe in you, now you have to believe in yourself,’” Buono said.
After all, he wants another picture for his collection.