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Justin Dunk
Ticats.ca
Dewit Gets Second Straight Starting Nod
Veteran centre Marwan Hage will mist his second straight game due to injury, although he has found a way to help his team to a victory without being on the field.
“Marwan’s been great, we’ve talked every day before and after practice. We’ve watched film together, he’s been a good mentor for me,” centre Mark Dewit said.
After getting his first start as a Ticat under his belt in Montreal, Dewit feels he can use that experience to make himself better for Friday night.
“I was just ok, I thought I could have done a lot better but I learned a lot from my performance last week,” he said.
Assisted by Hage, Dewit has studied the Edmonton 3-4 defensive front and he feels his unit is ready for whatever the Green and Gold might throw at them.
“They’ve got some different looks they’re going to show us, but we just have to make sure that the five of us are sharing one brain,” Dewit said.
“I feel very comfortable with Mark in the game,” offensive coordinator Khari Jones said. “He’s a smart player.”
Dewit will put those smarts to the test making sure he has the right protection schemes called against an Eskimos defensive unit that likes to move around.
Stopping Stamps’ Stampede
In the first meeting between Hamilton and Edmonton this season, Fred Stamps popped off for 178 yards receiving which started a four game 100-yard streak for the dangerous slotback.
Slowing Stamps is certainly a point of emphasis heading into Friday night’s tilt and the Ticats improvement in the secondary has them feeling they are better suited to face Stamps and co. this time around.
“Coach Chamblin has been helping me a lot and I’m just trying to apply it on the field, and it’s working,” defensive halfback Carlos Thomas said.
Stamps possess blazing speed and he uses it to create separation as well as make plays after the catch, but Thomas feels his unit can match Edmonton in that department.
“They have decent speed, but for the most part our secondary has speed too,” he said. “We haven’t seen any speed that would scare us or put us on the ropes.”
Cracking the Stubler Code
“They’re playing a lot of match coverage,” Jones said.
The type of cover scheme Jones is talking about is ever changing.
“Once teams know how to play it they’re confident with it because it never looks the same,” he said.
After 10 games in Stubler’s scheme the defenders executing the match coverage have become more comfortable with the nuances that go along with it’s concepts. However, Jones has a good idea after seeing the defence, many times as a player and coach, of how to throw with success against it.
“The biggest thing is to have route combinations that are specific for it,” Jones explained. “Flooding certain areas will help defeat it.”
Stubler does a good job coaching up his unit to make whatever coverage he has called look the same pre-snap. That places the importance on Kevin Glenn to decipher what the secondary is doing post-snap and get the ball out on rhythm to his stable of pass catchers.
Silver Anniversary for ’86 Cats
With the Eskimos in town it is only appropriate to honour the Tiger-Cats 1986 Grey Cup championship team who, as underdogs defeated Edmonton 39-15, 25 years ago.
In ’86 a young man followed the team very closely.
“I was a huge fan of that team. For the record I was in grade 10 and I watched that team and I loved that team,” head coach Marcel Bellefeuille said.
Bellefeuille vividly remembers coming down to Ivor Wynne, during the summer of grade 10, to watch the eventual Grey Cup champs play.
“I loved the moxie and the grit of that team — the defence and how physical that team was,” he said. “That was a great team to watch.”
“A lot of those guys were guys that I looked up to when I was a young man.”
Hamilton’s record at the end of the regular season that year was 9-8-1 and Bellefeuille drew a few parallels between that team and his current one. Most importantly of all, “they found a way to win.”
Further Investigation
Ticats head coach Marcel Bellefeuille on the man that drives the Eskimo offence:
“No question, it starts and finishes with Ricky Ray. The last time we played them Ricky had a great game throwing the football, he stood in when we blitzed him and hung onto the football and made some great throws. He took off and broke down the pocket and ran. He scrambled and made some plays down the field. When we really looked back and dissected that game defensively a lot of their drives came off explosions that he created, either standing in the pocket hanging onto that ball and making a throw late or scrambled around and made plays to keep drives alive with his legs, running or throwing the ball down the field after the protection broke down. Our number one goal is to keep him in the pocket and try to eliminate those type of plays, and eliminate the explosions on offence.”
Notes: Eskimos starting defensive back Jykine Bradley, defensive lineman Jermaine Reid and receiver Chris Bauman will all make their first visits back to Hamilton after departing Steeltown before the beginning of the 2011 CFL season.
