Saturday’s fan day marked the fourth one I’ve covered on the Eskimos beat and I can easily say I’ve never covered one like this. Truthfully, I’ve never seen a week like the one this team has had.
Everything these guys have done has felt like it’s been with an asterisk attached to it. A work stoppage has loomed over this camp and the league for the last week and if the players actually have been able to separate what’s coming from what they’re doing on the field, full credit to them. Now, pending a last-minute save from the CFL and the CFLPA, you start to wonder how much of the work done and progress made in the past week holds up in player-run practices, with no coaches present.
Those are problems for another day, though. Like Tuesday. For now, assuming they voted in favour of a strike, the Eskimos have 72 hours to try to cram in as much as they can before flying solo. And as many of the players said today after their loose scrimmage — there was no scoreboard, no real game flow to it — they have tape and they have some situational experience to go off of.
Fans had been wondering about QB Pat White and how he’s done this week. The 28-year-old had a strong showing on Saturday, while absorbing a new league, new teammates and a new offence for the lot of them. His highlight of the day came on a perfectly placed heave to Fred Stamps that allowed the star slotback to do what he does best: rattle off some high-difficulty acrobatics while staying entirely focused on the ball and making a sensational play for a touchdown. At one point, Stamps had his back arched, his eyes never off the ball, while running for the end zone. These kinds of plays never get old, no matter how many times you see Stamps find a way to haul them in.
“He just made a great catch,” White said of the play. “I put the ball in a spot where he could get it and the offensive line did an excellent job of protecting, first of all. He ran and grabbed it, went and got the ball.”
According to Stamps, the credit should go to new receivers coach Kez McCorvey and head coach Chris Jones.
“It was kind of weird. It was in the air for a long time but it was a good throw by Pat White. He made a good corner ball. He just put it in a good place and I just kind of stuck my hands out there and it came in,” he said.
As for the acrobatics?
“That’s ccoach Kez, coach Jones,” Stamps said, grinning. “They’ve got us working on these awkward catches, stuff like that. It’s just something that we do, all our receivers make those type of catches.”
As nice as that thought is, it’s a well-intentioned lie. There are very few people in the league who could have made that play. It’s been nice to watch Stamps do this through training camp, after a foot injury had derailed him at this time a year ago.
The day was sprinkled with its odd pretty moment, but overall, it was a true showing of a new team working under a new coaching staff. There’s a lot of work to be done, both on offence and defence. Jones acknowledged that right away when he met with a few reporters.
“Offensively it was real touch and go early,” he said. “I thought they gained momentum as the day went on. Defensively it started off pretty sharp and then kind of faded so unfortunately,” he said, laughing, “it was kind of hit or miss either way.
“We got in and out of the huddle, we got enough plays run and fortunately we didn’t have a lot of casualties so we got through the scrimmage.”
As you’d expect on a day like this, Mike Reilly stepped back and shared first-team reps with the rest of the quarterbacks on Saturday. He knew better than to expect a Picasso when he stepped on the field.
“This day (scrimmage) is always like that. It’s always nice to come out here and see the fans and do the autograph session afterwards but you also know coming out here on this field that you want to be crisp.
“You hope everybody is on the same page and has done their studying but when there’s no coaches out there and there’s no way to stop the play and ask a bunch of questions, you’ve just got to roll with whatever you have in your mind, there’s going to be mistakes early on. We’re six or seven days into this thing.”
You take what you can from that first day, Reilly said, and move on.
“To sit here and say I really expected us to be perfect today would be a lie,” he said. “But we do have to improve quite a bit before game day hits and that’s what training camp is for.”
That is what training camp is for. Now we wait and see just how much of training camp is left across the league.
