Behind the Cliche: Ferguson breaks down fast starts and strong finishes

From the early days of any football player’s career we are taught two things.

Start fast, finish strong.

These terms can apply to the big picture – a season or a career – but can be applied right down to the smallest of details such as a drill, practice or game.

In analyzing the CFL, its players, coaches and tendencies as a style of football, we often use buzz words that revolve around these teachings.

“The Eskimos really controlled the ball,” or “Montreal’s defence just couldn’t get off the field” are both phrases that could be heard uttered by any post-game show-caller in 2017 across Edmonton and Montreal airwaves.

Maybe it’s my level of interest in the way this game is played, or my university-instilled sense of questioning everything I’m told. Either way, I set out this week to figure out if I could confirm any given team was a fast starter or a strong finisher and everything else in between.

The beautiful part of football is the number of variables that affect successes and failures. Some people hold time of possession as a golden stat and while I know it matters, I prefer to look at the number of offensive snaps run per game. That number tells me how worn down a defence got and the always-important ability of an offence to convert second downs and stay on the field.

First, a team-by-team look at individual games by number of offensive snaps run:

BC Lions

The Lions finished strong by controlling the clock and the ball against Winnipeg in Week 19, while experiencing a period of very mediocre offensive starts right in the three-game middle-of-the-season stretch, during which Wally Buono danced back and forth between veteran Travis Lulay and young gun Jonathon Jennings at quarterback.

Edmonton Eskimos

The Eskimos have a tendency unlike many other CFL teams to put together monster drives, which feel eternal in both number of plays run and time of possession. Edmonton is always good for a 20-play-or-more quarter, including the second quarter of Week 2 against Montreal at home when they ran a CFL-high 27 plays, and the fourth quarter in BC two weeks ago when Mike Reilly stormed back to win in overtime.

Calgary Stampeders

When your team is as well-balanced as the Calgary Stampeders, you really don’t have to dominate a single quarter. The Stamps are all about offensive balance and consistency. Not much fluctuation in their plays per quarter outside of a couple of single-digit performances.

Saskatchewan Roughriders

The Riders ran their highest number of plays in the fourth quarter of Week 1 in a loss on the road to Montreal, but have shown greater balance as of late and fewer quick two-and-outs due to the addition of a trusted running game behind dual threat quarterback Brandon Bridge.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers

The Blue Bomber offensive productivity really lives in three phases. They started slowly several times in the first half of the season but found a penance for fourth quarter explosions, from their stunning Week 6 comeback win against Montreal to the Banjo Bowl. In that seven-game stretch, Winnipeg ran no fewer than 17 plays in the fourth quarter with a peak of 26 on Labour Day.

The third and final phase of the Bombers’ season sees them struggling to maintain their mid-season consistency over the last month of the regular season as injuries ravage both sides of the ball but especially the offensive backfield.

Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Woof. Those early-season first quarters.

I lived them in person and they were as close to non-existent as you could get.

Since June Jones arrived and became head coach on Labour Day, the Ticats’ offence has leveled out with Jeremiah Masoli at the helm featuring a couple of 20-plus play quarters in the last three weeks.

Unthinkable early in the season.

Toronto Argonauts

Remove a couple of ho hum performances against the Alouettes and a tough loss to Calgary when Ricky Ray left the game due to a big hit and you find that Marcus Brady and Marc Trestman really have created something in Toronto, but will it last deep into November?

Ottawa REDBLACKS

Offensive Coordinator Jaime Elizondo loves tempo. The REDBLACKS simply get a lot of snaps off against whoever they’re playing, including a week on the road against the Alouettes without starting quarterback Trevor Harris when the REDBLACKS got off to a CFL 2017 high 77 snaps behind Drew Tate and Ryan Lindley.

Most coaches try to slow down the game with backups managing the game. Not Rick Campbell and the REDBLACKS.

Montreal Alouettes

It’s been a rough year.

Slow starts, inability to stay on the field and a lack of consistency at the quarterback position have all damned the Als in 2017.

Now that we’ve seen the week to week fluctuations in offensive consistency, it’s time to either confirm or put to bed the buzzwords that surround Canadian football. Fast starters, great second-half teams, offences that ‘can’t finish’ when it matters most and more assumptions can be drawn from comparing offensive snaps per quarter for each team.

Not at all surprising to see Edmonton rank at or near the top through all quarters as the Eskimos have been the CFL’s best ball control offence this year when they’re on, while Montreal lingers near the bottom.

The Bombers start halves much better than they finish them and Hamilton can run a lot more plays in the fourth quarter when gunning from behind. How many of these plays are empty though and don’t result in scoring drives?

Despite being at or below the middle of the pack in snaps taken to start a game, Hamilton and Saskatchewan put up the two highest first quarter offensive totals when looking at the whole season.

Edmonton surprisingly doesn’t score much in the middle of games but scores early and late, leading to their current playoff berth, while Calgary just gets the job done as you’d expect from a team good enough to win the West.

With the number of snaps per quarter and points per quarter we can now assess offensive efficiency. How many points are scored per offensive snap each quarter?

BC LOVES the fourth quarter this year. Hamilton does not. Ottawa appears to be one of the best halftime adjustment teams alongside Winnipeg, while the Argos send themselves into the half with more points in the second quarter per snap taken than any other team.

These metrics are for the entire season and while calling Tiger-Cats games for TSN 1150 Hamilton I have experienced first-hand that the 0-8 Ticats are much different offensively than the June Jones Ticats born on Labour Day. As a result of that personal experience and the old wise words that the CFL is about who is peaking in the second half, I took a look at the same stats listed above but only from Labour Day to today.

As expected, Hamilton leapt forward compared to the season-wide stats. What I didn’t expect was to see Toronto improve in every quarter alongside the Riders. BC’s fourth quarter point-scoring plummeted relative to other teams, while Edmonton is scoring in the final quarter above and beyond the rest of the CFL.

Finally, a look at points per offensive snap in the second half of the season.

In the second half, the REDBLACKS have become slow starters but good finishers while Hamilton, Calgary, Saskatchewan and Toronto show the greatest production per snap across all four quarters. Winnipeg and BC both leveled off significantly while Montreal struggled to find production.

As we learn of playoff matchups being set in stone this week, it’s fun to theorize matchups and how the punch-counterpunch nature of playoff football could unfold if a slow-starting Ottawa team hosts a consistent and productive Riders squad in the Eastern Semi-Final; or the CFL’s best-finishing offence in Edmonton travels to play the league’s second-worst closers since Labour Day, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

The fun season is officially upon us.