The red-hot Eskimos continue to find ways to win, despite playing poorly vs. the Argos.
EDMONTON -- The Edmonton Eskimos had trailed for 89 seconds through their first four games of the Canadian Football League season, yet only led the Toronto Argonauts for five minutes and nine seconds Friday night at Commonwealth Stadium.
The Argos controlled the line of scrimmage, won the ground battle, jumped to a 17-1 lead and still held it late in the fourth quarter. Yes, you could say Toronto deserved to fly out of Edmonton with two points in the standings.
"It’s a big what if. You’re always saying ‘What if?’ when the game’s over," said receiver Jeremaine Copeland, alas, of the 1-4 Argos. "We definitely were in the game, and we definitely had a chance to win. We just didn’t close it out."
In fact, it was the other guys who closed it out, as quarterback Ricky Ray hit Fred Stamps -- the Canadian Football League’s hottest receiver -- from 21 yards out for a touchdown with 2:41 to play that gave Edmonton a 26-25 win.
For Edmonton, their 5-0 start is the best this franchise has mustered since 1980 -- right in the middle of the Eskimos Grey Cup dynasty of 1978-82.
For the Argos, this could have been a turning point in a disappointing season. They’d come into the building of the CFL’s top team, and did almost everything necessary to secure the win.
But they couldn’t close the deal.
This one will hurt for a while, two points lost on a night that can only be described with one word: Bizarre.
"Very," said Toronto head coach Jim Barker. "That’s been our season … and we haven’t find ways to come out on top. Last year we found ways to win those bizarre games. This year we haven’t."
It was a bone dry night that featured four fumbles per team, and a punt return for a major by an Argo (Matt Black) who wasn’t even positioned as a return man on the play. There were more reviews than we can address in this space, including a re-setting of the time clock at the end of the first half that bought the Eskimos another chance from the one-yard line, and of course, seven points.
In the end, it all came down to Barker’s call to have sophomore kicker Grant Shaw try a 57-yard, game-winning field goal. He came up well short.
"He had butchered some punts," said Barker, "and I just had a gut feeling that he was going to make the kick."
Fittingly, it was the wrong call on the right night for Edmonton, a team that looks due to have this flawless start come to an end next week in Winnipeg.
"We’re not going to celebrate this one," admitted centre Aaron Fiacconi. "You can call it a character win, whatever. We made it through a lot of adversity. More than need be.
"We’re not going to celebrate this victory. We barely got by here."
In hockey, they say that as a winning streak comes to an end, you usually win a game or two you don’t deserve to. A losing streak, you lose a couple you deserve to win before breaking though.
That theory fits well on a night when the 5-0 Eskimos did barely enough to beat a pretty decent looking Argos team, which has now lost four straight.
"They won, but I think overall we played a better game," Copeland said. "A lot of things can be flipped up in the air, but you can’t make excuses. You’ve got to look in the mirror and say, ‘I gotta get better.’ That’s what we’ve got to do: Get better."
And in Edmonton, for a week at least, they’ll tell themselves they got off lucky. And maybe, just maybe, they can learn a thing or two from a floundering Friday night on which they still picked up two points.
"Sometimes, when you’re not playing your best and you still squeak one out," said Ray, "it can add a lot of confidence to your team."
Sometimes, it can. But not until head coach Kavis Reed gets done with a team that just may have been reading its press clippings leading up to this game.
Will he focus on the positives at practice? Or the negatives?
"We correct the negatives first," he said. "Correct the things we did wrong. Way too many penalties. Way too many unsportsmanlike conducts. We committed turnovers… There are a lot of negatives we need to correct."
Everywhere except on the scoreboard, for Edmonton.
