Isaac Owusu
Ticats.ca Staff
There are a couple of defenders that refuse to buy into the hype heading into Sunday’s season opener.
Eric Norwood and Brandon Stewart have a calm outlook on how their Hamilton Tiger Cats are prepared to deal with the raucous crowd inside Regina’s Mosaic Stadium when they take on the defending Grey Cup champions, the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
“Win,” Norwood stated plainly.
“It’s as simple as that. If you win that game, you’ll see everybody walking down the streets. A sea of green walking home with a loss,” he added.
Norwood, a defensive end, is going into his second CFL season with the Ticats and played in last year;s Grey Cup loss to the Riders. He insists the week one contest is not the spectacle that many in the media are making it out to be.
“We’re not worried about it. We’ll play them this time and we’ll play them again sometime throughout the season. So it is really no big deal, we just don’t want history to repeat itself,” he said.
Norwood made in impact in his rookie season with 45 tackles in addition to four sacks. He states that a win on Sunday would simply be the “first win of the season”, meanwhile a loss wouldn’t set the team back, but “losing is not an option.”
The Riders’ offence will have a different look than what the Ticats last remember seeing last November in the Grey Cup. Notably, receivers Geroy Simon, Weston Dressler and running back Kory Sheets are no longer on the team, as Simon’s retirement and NFL deals for Dressler and Sheets have removed them from the Ticats gameplan.
Stewart, a Ticats newcomer will not allow his opponent’s loss of playmakers to take them lightly.
“It’s their coaches and their GM’s jobs are to bring in talent, and they’ve done it, year in and year out,” he said.
“They’re a very well coached football team with a good defence and special teams. So we know that playing Saskatchewan is always going to be a fight,” Stewart added.
Stewart, a free agent pick up for the Ticats, joined the team after spending his first seven seasons with the Calgary Stampeders and then the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He can identify the pieces of the Riders offence that have to be accounted for on Sunday.
“Taj Smith has been making a lot of big plays early in the preseason, but it all starts with the quarterback and offensive line. They’re really solid and they work well together. They have a lot of veterans and (Darian) Durant is Durant, he does his thing,” he stated.
Norwood is confident about how his team will go out and try to set a tone.
“We’ll play our same game. The same way we’ll have to adjust to them, they’ll have to adjust to us. So it’s going out there and seeing who’s going to execute the most consistently,” he said.
