Johany Jutras/CFL.ca
After defeating the Toronto Argonauts for the second time in as many weeks last Friday night, Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea told the media he was “excited about the group of guys we have” and proud that everyone is “playing complementary football.”
Both of these statements of course are at the Mount Everest peak of coach speak, but the second statement caught my ear.
It’s the first time in the CFL season I had heard the term used. A moniker commonly used to define the Kent Austin Hamilton Tiger-Cats in my time covering the team, it’s been a while since the words “complementary football” graced my over-sized Scottish ears.
What does it mean?
In essence, complementary football is everyone on the team, from the superstar quarterback to that weekly no-name special teams free agent pickup hired on a whim to meet roster requirements, pulling their weight and having a positive effect on the outcome
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More specifically, complementary football refers to each of the three predominant units – offence, defence and special teams – helping each other succeed.
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers certainly showed flashes of this type of success over the last two weeks, but if there is one team that appears to have mastered the concept it is – unsurprisingly – also the CFL’s only undefeated team.
The Calgary Stampeders work you over in a multitude of approaches. Their defence creates turnovers, they arguably have the best receiving corps in the league, and their special teams are consistently amongst the most explosive and consistent in returns, kicking, and coverage.
If I blindfolded you and asked you to guess what happened in the first quarter of the Stampeders and Roughriders game from last Saturday with the 24-0 Calgary score as your only information, what would you say?
Likely something along the lines of, “well Don Jackson must have had a heck of a quarter and Bo Levi Mitchell threw for a bunch of yards and a couple of touchdowns.
In reality, the Stampeders’ offence only had 84 yards of total offence despite being up by three touchdowns after only 15 minutes played. Eighty-four yards were all they needed. The rest of the Stampeders stepped up in ways that created positive plays all over the field.
A big punt return touchdown followed by a pick-six interception grabbed all the first quarter headlines, as they should. Those are massive game-changing plays, but complementary football in Calgary is the Chinese water torture of ways to lose a CFL game.
It is the little plays such as linebacker Alex Singleton making an open field tackle by wrapping up a running backs legs or fullback Charlie Power avoiding an illegal block penalty by deciding not to block a potential special teams tackler from behind. It’s even the little things as small as quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell executing a wildly distracting pump fake with an empty hand after gifting the ball to one of his many backfield partners in order to draw the eyes of the defence away from the tackle.
Football coaches are constantly emphasizing “the right way to play the game” and I’m here to say the Calgary Stampeders do all the little things right.
In a season drenched in painful memories of the past two Grey Cup losses in what we could be viewing as one of the CFL’s most dynamic dynasties, the Stampeders are just a team in search of making every snap count.
When you sign the right type of players that buy into a team system not just an offence or a defence, and you give them the right coaching, the sky is the limit. For the 2018 Calgary Stampeders, a group more motivated than ever, that micro mindset could lead to their biggest triumph yet and it will all be thanks to complementary football.
