Gable’s bulldozing ways on offence have Eskimos back on playoff track
To say C.J. Gable has hit the ground running down the playoff stretch would be an understatement.
But the impact the veteran of five Canadian Football League seasons has had since the Edmonton Eskimos traded for him can’t be overstated.
In two games, he’s recorded back-to-back performances of 100 yards rushing. Make that three in a row if you include his final outing with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats before being dealt away for a pair of negotiation list players.
His arrival in Edmonton coincided with the end of a six-game losing skid, as he has played no small part in helping the Eskimos (9-6) to consecutive victories for the first time since starting out the season 7-0.
And he’s now got three regularseason games left to prove there is nothing coincidental about it, beginning in Vancouver against the B.C. Lions today.
“I don’t know, I just do me. Give me the ball and I’m going to run with it,” said Gable, who has 215 yards and two touchdowns on 37 carries in two games with Edmonton. “If you have a balanced attack, you can’t just really key on one thing.”
While quarterback Mike Reilly is leading the league in passing yards, the importance of running the ball isn’t lost on an Eskimos team that is 5-0 this year whenever a running back hits triple digits on the ground. It began with John White in the season opener before suffering a season-ending knee injury. Replacements Travon Van and LaDarius Perkins both followed suit with 100-yard rushing games of their own. With injuries taking their toll in the Eskimos backfield — as well as most other areas of the team this season — Gable came in and reeled off two more.
“Trust me, I’ve said it all along, I think Gable’s one of those guys that can make a difference on your football club,” said head coach Jason Maas. “He’s, to me, one of the premier backs in our league. The way we utilize him on our offence and the way we run our offence, he’s a great compliment to what we do.
“We’re very excited to have him and see his progression in our offence.”
At six feet and right around 220 pounds, the Southern California product is easily the biggest back to carry the ball for Edmonton since the Canuck Truck Jerome Messam in 2012 and is a marked departure from the smaller, sleeker tailbacks who have been through since.
Gable put his size and power on display Oct. 14 in a 30-27 win over the Toronto Argonauts, torquing down to push a massive pile for a 19-yard gain into the red zone early on in a tied fourth quarter.
“That run was crazy,” Reilly said. “I handed that ball off and was watching, like: ‘Oh, we’ve got a good little crease with contact, probably second-and-three. Then, all of a sudden, we’ve got a first down and then it ended up on the left side of the field and I was like: ‘Where is this pile going?’ I just wanted it to keep going.”
Two snaps later, Reilly found himself staring down the barrel of Argos pass-rusher Dylan Wynn and chucked one up for Gable in the end zone, heaving up a high pass that the running back went vertical to haul in, only to lose the handle when he crashed to the ground.
“Even on that scramble play, that would have been an amazing catch by him, but just the fact that he gave me a viable option and knew where to go to try and give me an out, because I wasn’t going to beat that D-lineman around the edge, that was great to see.”
Unless, of course, you happened to be Gable with the image replaying in his sleep that night.
“I should have caught that,” he said. “I didn’t look it all the way in and once I hit the ground, it popped out.”
Granted, it was a lot to ask for a running back to climb the ladder like a receiver after having just been in bulldozer mode.
“Yeah, but it’s what I get paid to do,” said Gable, who was the least surprised person in the stadium with that pile-pushing effort. “I just kept my legs going, I wanted it bad. I was trying to think of how I could get to the end zone.
“I didn’t want to go down. It’s hard for people to tackle me when I don’t want to go down.”