Season Preview: ‘Cats always land on their feet

CFL.ca Staff
#CFLKickoff

HAMILTON — No matter how many times you knock ‘em down, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats just keep getting back up.

It’s a recurring theme in Hamilton that plays along quite nicely with this city’s blue-collar, Steeltown mentality – one the players and the coaches and seemingly everyone in the organization have taken to heart.

Pull out whatever old cliché you want: The Ticats play their best football when their backs are against the wall. They didn’t give up after slow starts the last two seasons out of the gate just like they didn’t throw in the towel at halftime of the 102nd Grey Cup.

They aren’t letting back-to-back Grey Cup losses faze them and you can bet they won’t be intimidated by a few – OK, several – key injuries as they get set to open their season with a tricky road test in Calgary, a Grey Cup rematch no less.

It’s a mentality Head Coach and General Manager Kent Austin has instilled upon his team from the very first day he arrived in Steeltown: Pay no attention to the depth chart because if your name is on the Ticats’ roster, you better be ready to play.

“We have a depth chart because we have to have one, but philosophically we don’t believe in that,” Austin told Ticats.ca this pre-season as the Ticats’ rash of recent injuries continued.

Nationals Spencer Watt and Linden Gaydosh were lost in the off-season to season-ending Achilles injuries, while Brian Bulcke and Luke Tasker were big names to go down throughout pre-season. Most recently the team announced Eric Norwood was hitting the six-game injured list, while Adrian Tracy, a backup who stood out in his first pre-season game, will also miss time.

But while the Ticats are down to their backups’ backups at some positions, Austin is confident in what he’s preached all along.

“We tell a player that if he finds himself on the football field playing in a real game, he’s expected to play at the same level as a starter,” said Austin. “That’s why he’s on the team – that’s why we chose him to be on our football team, because we believe he can play at that level.”

“We’re not going to create an artificial safety net subconsciously for someone to fail and have an excuse to fail,” he continued. “The expectations are the same if you’re on the football field for everybody.”

If the injury angle fails to rally the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, surely they can channel their inspiration from one of several other potential sources. For one, the team has played in two Grey Cup Championships in a row and feels as though it’s on the cusp of winning its first championship since 1999.

Then there’s the manner in which they lost in the final last year, rallying from a halftime deficit before having what appeared to be a game-winning 90-yard punt return touchdown in the dying seconds called back on a holding penalty.

“It was just so disappointing,” said veteran slotback Andy Fantuz, awarded the game’s Most Valuable Canadian in a somewhat sweet but mostly bitter post-game moment. “I was so upset for my teammates and we had worked so hard. I felt like we deserved it as a team and as an organization, and the community of Hamilton and all of our fans.”

“I thought we played really well and we turned it around from the start of the season,” he added. “I really wanted it so bad and it was disappointing.”

Fantuz returns this season off back-to-back Grey Cup losses for the second time in his career, having previously suffered such a fate with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He did win a Grey Cup with the Riders before relocating closer to home with the Ticats, and since arriving the 31-year-old has witnessed the rapid transformation of an organization into a winner.

Austin arrived in 2013 representing sweeping organizational change, taking over both the football ops department and the coaching staff. Since then he’s acquired and developed one of the league’s top rising star quarterbacks while building an offence that finished second in net yards in 2013 and fourth last season.

Fantuz won a Grey Cup with Austin in 2007 and isn’t surprised by the transformation that’s been witnessed in Hamilton.

“When Kent came he brought a whole different coaching staff and a whole new attitude to our team,” said Fantuz this off-season. “We really took to that and we all bought in. The players want to play for him.”

“I think he’ll be the first to say that it comes down to the coaches and the players and he says ‘it’s your team, you do what you want with it’,” Fantuz continued. “We rally around each other.”

“He has knack for creating a locker-room that goes from having a few leaders to a locker-room that is full of leaders, where everyone has a voice and everyone has a say and everyone can contribute in their own way.”

The Ticats are licking their wounds on defence while Luke Tasker will miss the start of the season at receiver, but one facet of the team you know will be ticking will be an offence led by second-year starting quarterback Zach Collaros.

The success of that unit will play the biggest role in whether or not the Ticats can justify their status as the favourite to win the East Division this season, and more importantly whether they can return to the Grey Cup for a third straight shot at a title.

Facing injuries and the growing pressure to produce this season, 2015 may provide the true test of a Ticat.