The Canadian Press
HAMILTON – When the Tiger-Cats scored a touchdown with just a minute and a half left in Friday night’s contest, cutting Edmonton’s lead to 29-26, it was the Esks’ pivot who settled his team down to make sure that it was his club that walked away with the victory.
“When they (Hamilton) were driving down trying to punch their last touchdown in,” quarterback Mike Reilly said after the contest. “I went around and told all of the offensive guys, I basically just said, ‘when we get the ball back, we’re not coming off the field.’”
And they didn’t.
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Mike Reilly hands off to John White during Friday night’s contest (The Canadian Press)
The Esks held the ball their hands as the clock winded down to grab the win – their fourth in their last five contests. Forgetting about the loss last week to the BC Lions was the main message from head coach Jason Maas this week as his team prepared for the trip to Hamilton.
“I was extremely impressed with their resiliency that they showed, mentally through the week, just being locked into this game,” Maas said of his team’s bounce-back win. “We talked about it during the week. Everybody wanted to say, ‘your seeding in the playoffs, your seeding in the playoffs’ and all we talked about was that we wanted to win this game.”
While they did leave the Hammer with a victory, where Edmonton ends the regular season is still unknown. For the team to avoid the crossover spot – where they currently sit – the Esks will need to win next week against Toronto and have both Ottawa and Saskatchewan to beat Winnipeg and BC respectively.
“Well I’m a CFL fan so I like watching the football games,” Maas said when asked if he’d be watching Saturday’s contest between the Bombers and REDBLACKS. “It just so happens that it means a little bit to us if Ottawa can pull it out. Obviously, we’ll be rooting for that to happen but I’m a CFL fan so I enjoy watching every game.”
Before the club can worry about playoffs, they have just one more regular season game to play. Toronto heads to Edmonton in Week 20, where the Esks will be hoping to finish off with a bang.
“When we play Toronto next week at home, this game won’t mean anything in regards to that (winning every game). We have to start all over and figure out a way to get another win,” said Reilly. “We’ve had our moments where we’ve played great and we’ve had our moment where we had to battle through some difficult stuff and may not played so well. We have to figure out a way to make it all come together.”
The contest on Friday night was a great start of things coming together for Edmonton.
The Esks battled back from a 10-0 Tiger-Cats’ lead early in the first quarter and were able to stay ahead for the majority of the remainder of the contest. Running back John White, who finished with 132 yard on 15 carries, had his most impressive run (19 yards) come in the fourth quarter on the Esks’ final drive.
“I know our run game can be very explosive but it’s tough when a team knows that you’re going to run the ball but John made a great run,” Reilly said of his running back. “I don’t know how he powered through three or four guys. I was trying to mirror him to make sure that if the ball ended up on the ground I could pick it up and I couldn’t even find him. He was weaving in and out of everybody.”
“Well I’m a CFL fan so I like watching the football games. It just so happens that it means a little bit to us if Ottawa can pull it out.”
Jason Maas
In the midst of the playoff-like atmosphere, both teams were brought back down to Earth when Ticat Derrius Brooks was hit by his own player and had to leave the game on a stretcher. While Brooks has since been confirmed that he will be released from a hospital in Hamilton later Friday night, it was still a scary scene that neither team wanted to see.
“Bottom line is that was a long delay for us to have to deal with but at the end of the day they’re professionals, they’re paid to play football,” Maas said of the delay while Brooks was being tended to. “They understand the risks that come with that and the best thing that we saw was that he was moving his hands and he was going to be okay.
“Once you can settle that in your mind then you just have to go out and do what’s asked of you and that’s to finish. I think our guys did a good job of putting that on the back burner and thinking about the next play and about the game of football rather than what can happen to you.”
Both Andy Fantuz and Johnny Adams left the game with lower body injuries for Hamilton while the Eskimos had a few pieces missing from their lineup when the game started. But as Reilly said, it didn’t matter who wasn’t playing, it mattered who was.
“It was a game that meant a lot for both teams,” Reilly said of the playoff implications of the contest. “They were still in the race for first place. I’m not sure where this game lands them now, I haven’t paid attention to that. I know that this was an important game for them and for us, we needed to get back on track and back to playing good football.
“It’s tough to win in this place (Tim Hortons Field), it’s a great football team that we just played against and they made it tough all night. They battled through some injuries and we had some new guys starting because of injuries but this late in the season, nobody’s going to feel bad for you, nobody cares. You have to put the next guy up and play and both teams were able to do that and it was an exciting game that game down to the end.”
