Adam Gagnon
Bert Faibish
Ticats.ca
Anatomy Of A Play:
As the play begins, defensive end Garrett McIntyre lines up at his traditional left end spot and is actually in a three point stance, which is rare in a pass-rushing situation in Greg Marshall’s defence.
Garrett gets an excellent jump on the snap and instead of utilizing a traditional pass-rush move he uses his speed to beat Argos right tackle Tim St-Pierre to the outside and basically just powers through him. When a defensive lineman can get an O-lineman to stop moving his feet and turn his body, it’s over.
The right tackle is left with no option but to try and grab McIntyre to keep him off of his quarterback but to no avail. McIntyre manages to get around him and still gets to Toronto QB Cleo Lemon with St-Pierre draped all over him.
Bam.
This defensive front features more of a traditional Greg Marshall look. One down lineman and six players giving a blitz look in stand up positions along the line of scrimmage.
Coming from the right end position, Ticats defensive end Justin Hickman actually steps inside of the left tackle and goes right at the left guard, catching him by surprise and actually lifting off his feet with a ferocious bull-rush move.
The left guard actually gets knocked off his block so far that he ends up facing the wrong way. Cleo Lemon feels the pressure and tries to roll out to his left to escape Hickman.
Hickman is just too fast for Lemon and he drags him down for the Ticats third sack of the day.
While any play that does not result in a gain for the offence is a positive, sacks in the CFL completely destroy drives. Any time that you can stop the other team for a loss and a loss of downs, you can bet that any momentum they had is now snuffed out. Both of these sacks came in the fourth quarter and stopped Toronto’s offence from trying to claw their way back into the game.
