TORONTO – Andrew Buckley stood facing his locker, wearing only grey sweat pants, his head leaned up against his wooden stall.
The Calgary Stampeders‘ back-up quarterback stood like this for 30 seconds, staring at nothing, and then the 23-year-old born-and-raised Calgarian banged his head off that stall. He rested it there afterwards and resumed staring at the floor.
This was not supposed to be the ending for the best team in the CFL. No, the heavily favoured Stampeders—who finished with a 15-2-1 regular-season record that nearly matches the best in league history—were supposed to finish their season with a Grey Cup, up against an Ottawa team that lost more games (nine) than it won (eight) in the regular season.
But the one that really mattered saw Ottawa come out of the gates and storm to a 20–7 lead through the first half, then just barely hold off a comeback to earn a 39–33 overtime win Sunday night at BMO Field.
“We were right there, knocking,” said Stampeders head coach, Dave Dickenson. “Couldn’t get it done.”
After the game, the Stampeders’ dressing room looked like the saddest pizza party ever.
There were at least a dozen discarded Pizza Pizza boxes on the floor, along with gloves and shoes and socks and other equipment strewn about. Team staff lifted up the red rugs with the Stampeders horse on them and dragged them out of the room. Calgarian Anthony Parker sat at his stall wearing a towel and stared ahead while he ate Hawaiian pizza.
Offensive lineman Derek Dennis had a six-pack of Coors Light in his stall, which you have to figure he planned to drink in celebration. Those cans stayed sealed.
The Most Outstanding Canadian in the league this year, Jerome Messam—who, in the first quarter, scored a touchdown to tie the game at 7—7 and then walked out of the end zone doing the billionaire strut, all 250-lbs., six-foot-three of him—was nowhere to be found post-game.
But he was the guy everyone was talking about.
With seconds to go, Calgary was at second and goal on the one-yard line. They were down by three points, having recovered the ball on an on-side kick just seconds earlier. A touchdown would have won the game, and finished off an epic comeback.
Early in the third quarter Calgary trailed by 20 points, and now they were on the cusp of victory. It made sense, really: This team hadn’t lost a game that mattered since late June. That’s five months.
“I was about to celebrate—thought the game was over,” said Stampeders quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell, the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player, who was on the sidelines for the final play of regulation. “We had the ball on the one- or two-yard line. I don’t know, I thought it was gonna be in Messam’s and my hands. But either way, whatever the call is we gotta execute the call. That’s a fact.”
Buckley, who earlier in the game scored a touchdown in the red zone, was given the ball on that play. As Buckley ran wide, he was tripped up by the hands of Ottawa defensive back Abdul Kanneh. That forced Calgary to kick a field goal, which forced overtime.
Ottawa converted with a touchdown in overtime. Calgary didn’t. And that was the ballgame.
Asked if he would have done anything differently on that final play of regulation, Mitchell said: “I think you know the answer to that question. The ball’s gotta be in my hands and Messam’s, and that’s how I feel.”
Slotback Marquay McDaniel, who was forced to leave the game in the first quarter due to injury—a huge loss for Calgary as he averaged 12.9 yards per catch in the regular season—had a short answer when asked about that play: “No comment.”
Told of Mitchell’s comments, he added, “Hey, I’ll go with what Bo said.”
Coach Dickenson said he was either going to throw the ball or work a play they’d drawn up, one that had worked in the past. “I regret that call, even though we practised it and had chances,” he said.
“I felt very confident, even if we went to overtime, I thought we had the momentum. So I felt OK with that—kicking a field goal and going to overtime. It just didn’t work out.”
But to blame the loss on that one play would be a massive oversight. The Stampeders did not look like the best team in the league in the first half. Mitchell had three interceptions Sunday—he threw just eight in the regular season.
“They came out desperate. Motivated,” Mitchell said. “Came out with more energy than we had, and they were competing more. We just didn’t execute. There was too many times when I could have taken something shorter and easier, something I’ve always done the entire year.”
Ultimately, their start cost them the game. As Dickenson put it: “We found our groove, found our rhythm, but the mountain was too hard to climb.”
In the first half, the Redblacks scored on four of six drives.
“We just didn’t look like us,” McDaniel said. “I just don’t understand it. I understand it’s the Grey Cup, but I felt like last week was just as important as this week. I felt like it was harder to get here.
“I didn’t understand why we looked like that in the first. We looked bad. If we would have played half as good as we did in the second half, I think we would have been okay.”
Every Stampeders player said he’d use this loss as motivation. That it’ll keep them hungry.
And how about that great run in the regular season?
“Pfff,” said McDaniel. “We did nothing. Honestly, we did nothing.”