Mental preparation key ahead of shortened week for Eskimos

CFL.ca Staff

EDMONTON — Jason Maas elected to push practice back to give his club the opportunity to maximize their rest time, and perhaps give quarterback Mike Reilly a few extra hours with the latest addition to his family – a baby girl.

“We’re all family people,” said Maas while addressing the media prior to Monday’s practice. “We’re a family, we preach family. You want to accommodate as much as possible and want family around here. It’s a big deal to us and obviously, I’m always happy when we get another one added to the bunch.”

Once practice got underway, Mike Reilly had made his way from the delivery room to the field as the Eskimos make their preparations for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in a shortened week due to their Thursday evening game time.

Despite his 424 passing yards performance against the Als, Mike Reilly had a face full of Montreal defenders most of the first last week. (The Canadian Press)

Coming off a week that saw Reilly join the 25k passing club in a 40-24 triumph against the Montreal Alouettes last week, a game where he threw for 424 yards and three touchdowns, the Eskimos will be hoping to capitalize on a short week and help keep that momentum fresh as they head to the Hammer.

“Coming into a short week like that, you’ve got to mentally prepare yourself for a quick turnaround,” Eskimos offensive lineman Travis Bond told the media on Monday. “We play on Thursday, so with that being said, guys just need to get rest, keep everything within ourselves, just keep everything under control.”

The Tiger-Cats are coming off of a week of rest which could bode well for them as a number of players took the time off to mend to any injuries, including Delvin Breaux, who was instrumental in shadowing Derel Walker when the Eskimos fell to the Ticats in their Week 2 matchup earlier in the season.

A lot has changed since that Week 2 meeting, however.

In fact, Ticats’ head coach June Jones even was quoted saying that Edmonton is a much different team now, and it shows in having two receivers ranking atop the league in receiving yards and practically swapping from week-to-week on who goes off against their opponent. Then you add Kenny Stafford, who also ranks in the leagues top ten and Bryant Mitchell, who had a career game against the Alouettes, having over 100 yards in the first half alone.

Realistically, it was protection on Reilly that was really the only mishap in the Eskimos performance last week, and even that was quickly fixed and wasn’t even a result of the culprit you may think, according to Maas.

“It had nothing to do with the o-line. I think a lot of people believe that whenever quarterbacks get hit, it’s always the o-line and that’s not always the case,” Maas said. “We had some miscommunications between people on our offensive side that weren’t doing their job and our quarterback took the hits because of it.”

The Alouettes finished the game with a total of five quarterback sacks. That’s not to mention the numerous occasions in which Reilly was rushed into making throws.

“We had a few new guys in and things looked a little different from practice than it did in the game,” Bond said on Monday. “Once we came in at halftime, we figured some things out and made sure everyone was on the same page.

“It was a different guy about three different times, and the three or four in a row were three different plays with three different types of protection, but the o-line was solid.”

Looking back at the film of plays in which Reilly took heat from the Alouettes’ pass-rush, the majority of them came as a result of a seven-man rush by Montreal which, upon further review, wouldn’t signify a fault on the Eskimos line.

“I know that comes as disbelief to people who watch the game, but in all reality, when you watch the film, there were other guys who needed to do their jobs better. Ultimately, they did later in the game and that’s why he (Reilly) stayed a little cleaner later.”

“We had a few new guys in and things looked a little different from practice than it did in the game,” Eskimos offensive lineman Travis Bond said on Monday. “Once we came in at halftime, we figured some things out and made sure everyone was on the same page.

“We’ve corrected the things we needed to correct and we’ve moved on,” Maas said.

Which brings the Eskimos well into Week 11 preparations. They’ll fly out to Hamilton in hopes of having another monstrous performance on offence, while their defence hopes to hold Jeremiah Masoli and the rest of the Ticats’ offence. Alex Green, although he was still injured when the Ticats last faced the Eskimos and won, has scored two touchdowns in each of his last two games since returning from injury.

Kick off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET at Tim Hortons Field.

With files from Esks.com

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