When talking about a high-powered offence taking on a formidable defence, the phrase “unstoppable force versus immovable object” often comes up.
But when that offence belongs to the Ottawa REDBLACKS and that defence belongs to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, you might call it the “unstoppable force versus the unstoppable force.”
At least that’s how it’s gone for a good portion of this season, in Hamilton. While quarterback Zach Collaros was marching the offence through opponents with great ease, the defence was chipping in with turnovers and points of its own, often dictating the play with buzzing blitzers who crashed the line of scrimmage, it seemed, most every play.
It’s a style of defence that set up the Hamilton pass defence to become the ball-hawkiest of them all.
We have, then, in this Sunday’s Eastern Final, a dream match-up for football observers; Ottawa’s elite fleet of play-making receivers versus Hamilton’s elite fleet of play-busting defensive backs.
It’s a match-up that was no contest back on November 6th, with Ottawa quarterback Henry Burris ransacking the Ticats’ pass defences for 368 yards and six touchdown passes on the way to sewing up first place in the division with a 44-28 win on the final weekend of the regular season.
There’s the proverbial bad taste lingering in the mouths of the Ticats’ defensive backs and they aim to rinse it with a dominating effort on Sunday.
“We’ve been blessed with another opportunity to see ‘em again and hopefully, the chips fall our way,” said Brandon Stewart, a veteran of nine CFL seasons, this being his third in Hamilton. “If we do what we’re supposed to do, we get lined up, we play fast, we play hard, I think the outcome will be good for us.”
“I just feel like they kinda caught us off guard with that the first time,” said Emanuel Davis, referring to the different offensive looks the REDBLACKS gave the Ticats in that game on November 6th. “This time, it’s a mentality of, you know, who ever lines up against you, get the job done.”
That Hamilton secondary had gotten used to having things its way through most of the season. Regularly on the scene when balls were arriving in the vicinity of intended targets, the Ticats’ pass defence led the league in interception returns for touchdowns, with six. Davis personally provided three of those and Stewart should have had one himself. His fourth quarter pick in the November 1st game, against Ottawa, saw him race to the end zone to give Hamilton life late in a game they eventually lost. That interception was called back when two flags flew, incorrectly, with the league admitting as much in the days that followed.
Water under the bridge now, though, and Davis and Stewart are looking forward to the challenge of slowing down a team with the East’s Most outstanding Player, Burris, at the controls and a receiving corps that boasts four 1,000 yard receivers in Chris Williams, Brad Sinopoli, Greg Ellingson and Ernest Jackson.
“They’re a solid corps, just because all of them can hurt you,” said Stewart, who finished the regular season with four interceptions. “There’s no letdown in their whole corps.”
“They’ve got a good receiving corps over there. I feel like we’ve got a good secondary over here so when they roll the ball out we’ll see who the best is,” offered Davis, who ended a drought of six games without an interception when he plucked away a Ricky Ray long bomb against the Argos in the Eastern Semi-Final.
Of the regular season finale, in Ottawa, Davis shrugs.
“That’s gonna happen. That’s football. Can’t really worry about the past, we’ve got one more shot at ‘em. It’s just about right now.”
On a bright and windy day in Hamilton, back on November 1st, the Ticats did a smother job on Burris, holding him to just 187 yards, no touchdown passes and that Stewart pick. Conditions were tough but they weren’t the only reason the Ticats stopped the vaunted Ottawa attack. After the REDBLACKS squeaked out a 12-6 win, their offensive coordinator, Jason Maas, a man Davis and Stewart spoke of with great respect, went about changing things up for the rematch.
The following Saturday, Maas flipped the switch even more than usual on moving receivers around so that Ticat half backs like Stewart and Davis – who rarely do any switching to keep match-ups intact – were faced with a wide variety of challenges. Stewart, who figures he saw Ernest Jackson more than the rest of the receivers, recounted that he did see pretty much all of the rest, too, with the exception of Chris Williams.
“They do a real good job of moving guys into different spots when they wanna get them the ball,” said Davis. “They do a good job of finding match-ups that they would like to take advantage of.”
That’s alright, said Davis, he and Stewart and everyone else have been working overtime in darkened rooms, watching plays over and over and over again. He believes they’re ready for whatever the REDBLACKS present.
“We’ve been watching a lot of film. We pretty much know what they’re gonna do, or what they wanna do and it’s just up to us to stop it and execute it.”
Execution. We hear players and coaches say that time and again, so there really must be something to it, right? Stewart agrees that, especially at this time of year, remaining teams all have good schemes, good game plans. So that is rarely a factor, while the scales of success and failure are balanced by the players’ performances.
“Make sure we get lined up, make sure we’re communicating with each other,” he says when asked about having Sunday look more like November 1st than November 6th. “It’s really crucial for us on the back end that we don’t give up any explosive plays. Last time we played ‘em they hit us with multiple explosions. Credit them, they did good things. Also, on our side, we weren’t communicating at a high enough level that day.”
That Ticats pass defence faces pressure form a couple of angles, really. The obvious one pits them against Henry Burris and his merry band of airspace intruders. As well, they face the task of needing to match the play of the Ottawa secondary, no slouch itself in defending the pass. Like Hamilton, Ottawa defenders picked of 26 passes this season. Just like Hamilton, the REDBLACKS held opponents to an average of 252 passing yards per game, just behind the league leaders in Edmonton and Calgary.
With quarterback Jeremiah Masoli leading the Hamilton offence instead of the injured Zach Collaros, odds are that the Ottawa defence is not going to be torn to shreds. Hamilton’s defence aims to keep pace, with a more difficult case of control and contain facing them.
“When Zach got hurt, everybody counted us out. But we’re still here,” said Stewart.
“My confidence is through the roof,” said Davis, when asked about the load the secondary will need to shoulder in the Eastern Final. “Just like, I think, everybody else’s confidence is through the roof. As a team, as a defence as an offence.”
They know it won’t be easy, and both Stewart and Davis took turns showing Burris and the Ottawa offence ample respect. “He can put it everywhere on the field,” said Stewart of Burris. “Forty yards down the field, outside, inside. He locates the ball well.”
“They got hot at the right time,” he added. “Hats off to those guys, I respect what they do but we’ve gotta shut ‘em down.”
That they do. If the Ticats have designs on a third straight trip to the Grey Cup Game, their own unstoppable force needs to outperform Ottawa’s.
