Kyle Myers
Ticats.ca
Don’t call it a must-win. At least not in front of Ticats Head Coach Kent Austin, whose team travels to Edmonton Friday night for a game against the Eskimos.
“We don’t ever look at must-wins,” he said after the team’s final practice Wednesday. “That’s playing from the point of view of desperation. You prepare the same way, focus on improving. The wins and losses always take care of themselves if you’re constantly improving as a football team.”
The Tiger-Cats have been affected by an unreasonable amount of injuries, resulting in a revolving door of starters at nearly every position. Rookie linebacker Nate Bussey will make his second straight start on Friday.
“We know what the scheme is, what we’re supposed to do… we just have to go out and execute,” said Bussey.
Bussey was a big part of a Ticats defence that held the Roughriders to only six points in the second half during last weekend’s rematch. He stepped in as the starting weak-side linebacker after the release of Markeith Knowlton, and responded with a team-high six tackles in his first CFL start.
Now the rookie is looking forward: towards the Edmonton Eskimos and the challenges they pose.
“They have a dynamic offence with the run game and the passing game,” he said. “If we can stop Mike Reilly and shut him down early, get after the quarterback and the running back, we have a pretty good game plan.”
On the offensive side, The Ticats’ lost two running backs to injury last weekend, effectively shutting down half of the playbook. But Austin won’t make excuses for the loss, and is instead focusing on what his team did well against the Riders.
“We try to find the positives in what’s going on. It’s easy to make excuses, which creates an atmosphere for a potential excuse for failure,” he said. “The second half defensively we played pretty well last week. We tackled better, we defended the pass better. I thought the offence dug in and played pretty well too.”
“The only thing relevant in previous games is what we’ve learned from them. We believe in focusing on the things that are important to build confidence,” he said.
Hoping for better weather conditions this week is quarterback Henry Burris, who was forced to deal with horrendous conditions the last time these two teams met, back in week two.
“Conditions weren’t favourable for any offence on that day,” Burris said, referring to the monsoon-like conditions which made even holding onto the football difficult. Luckily for Burris, the forecast in Edmonton this weekend isn’t calling for any rain, and the Ticats offence can focus solely on getting a very important win against the Eskimos.
“We know we’re going to see a lot of the same fronts, a lot of the same coverages, but definitely a lot more intensity due to the fact that they haven’t had a lot of success at home,” he continued. “Right now it’s very important that we go into this bye by doing what we can to get a victory.”
