It’s Bo Levi Mitchell. Has to be. No, wait. It’s Drew Willy. No, no. It’s Zach Collaros. Or maybe it’s still Mike Reilly or Matt Nichols.
Definitely, certainly, it’s one of them, right?
Remember all the way back to six weeks ago when everyone (at least everyone in Edmonton) thought that the Ottawa RedBlacks* would just pluck either Reilly or Nichols off of the Eskimos’ roster when the CFL expansion draft rolls around in December? Remember when the consensus, at least in Edmonton, was that the loser of this year’s quarterback battle would find employment for 2014 by default in the nation’s capital?
If that idea wasn’t squashed already, a marathon of a Week 5 in the CFL whack-a-moled it away. Mitchell filled in for Kevin Glenn, who’s filling in for Drew Tate and made 29 of 33 passes (88 per cent) for 376 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions in Calgary’s win over Winnipeg on Friday. Willy filled in for Darian Durant in Saskatchewan and led the Riders to a win over Hamilton in Guelph on Saturday to make Saskatchewan a league-best 5-0 with 14-of-25 passing for 269 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions. Then tonight, Collaros started for Ricky Ray in Toronto and put together an absurdly efficient 21-of-25 passes for 253 yards and three touchdowns and rushed eight times for 28 yards in the Argos’ at-home win over the B.C. Lions.
Week 5′s games were the RedBlacks’ scouting department’s best-case scenario, over and over and over again, down to the travel-friendly schedule that stretched into the next week.
The look may not have been as impressive for the Eskimos this week, but the QB shuffle that the team went through in the second quarter of their eventual loss to the Montreal Alouettes was a tire kicking session for Ottawa as it got to see all three of the Eskimos’ pivots, in Mike Reilly, Jonathan Crompton and Kerry Joseph (while a Joseph return to Ottawa would be a tremendous story, I don’t see it being a likely one; not with Joseph as a player, anyway).
With a sudden plethora of exposure to what we could dub as backup-and-coming QBs** I had tweeted earlier Tuesday night that a good process of elimination for the RedBlacks would be a reality game show where all of the potential Ottawa quarterbacks live in a house and survive some sort of processes of elimination to see which two stay. The grande finale episode could sync up with the expansion draft and you could even revisit the format when camp opens and the team chooses its starter.
Or all of the quarterbacks could just go on a football-themed episode of Wipeout and the guy who doesn’t get wrapped in a legs-over-head bow is the winner. And seriously, if you’re not cackle-laughing by the 35-second mark of that Wipeout video, we can’t be friends. Sorry.
“We got *tweet*ed over in Montreal”
It’s been a long week for Odell Willis, who posted an emotional, foul-mouthed message on Twitter after the Esks lost in Montreal on a play that they’d hoped would have been reviewed. It wasn’t so much that John White’s drive wasn’t a touchdown; what killed the Eskimos was that there was confusion on the field over whether the game would be stopped and a review done by the on-field officials on the play. When the ball was quickly blown back into play and the 20-second clock started, the Eskimos scrambled to run the same play again, didn’t execute it properly and lost the game.
Willis deleted his post-game f-bomb shortly after he posted it, but the damage was done. It made the Twitter rounds, was screen-grabbed and discussed. Deleted or not, once the message has been retweeted and spread around, you can’t fully take it back.
Really, there are worse messages to leave out there, and if you follow enough CFL players on Twitter or Instagram you’ll see that those messages certainly are out there. As a pro athlete and a representative of the franchise that pays you, you can’t sprinkle four-letter presents all over the Internet. But it was a heat-of-the-moment action that summed up the feeling in the room after the game. Kavis Reed has said it’s been addressed and dealt with and that the team has moved on.
Week-end winners
Game of the week: Edmonton at Montreal — This game had it all. Even though they were both 1-3, the game had intrigue at almost every stop. The Eskimos had their strange second-quarter QB shuffle that saw four changes take place in under eight minutes of game time. The Als took advantage of that for a 20-6 halftime lead, but the Eskimos conjured up an inspired second-half that saw them go in front 27-26 in the fourth quarter. Brandon Whitaker was phenomenal, or the Eskimos’ defence broke down enough to allow Whitaker to go over 140 yards in the final 30 minutes and carried his team into the red zone repeatedly. Reilly may have had his best quarter of the season in the fourth and the Eskimos are hoping it’s a launch pad for the rest of the season. Sean Whyte’s cool foot and the controversial ending had people talking for days after the game and made for a tense finish. This pick wasn’t a tough one for me.
Winning players
Offence: Tie, Bo Levi Mitchell, Calgary and Zach Collaros, Toronto — It’s too hard to take one guy when both were making their first CFL starts and both played so, so well.
Defence: Kyries Hebert, Montreal – A very complete 10-tackle (plus one on special teams), two-QB-sack night in a win that may have saved a coaching job or two in Montreal.
Honourable mentions: Tearrius George, Saskatchewan — Had three of the Riders’ seven sacks against Hamilton; Marcus Ball, Toronto — Had five tackles, intercepted Travis Lulay and forced a fumble in a big win for the Argos, who shut down a lethal Lions’ offence.
Special teams: Cary Koch, Edmonton – It had been almost two full years since the Eskimos had scored a return touchdown (Jason Armstead ran one back in Sept. 23, 2011 in a loss in Edmonton to Montreal) . Koch, who returns punts and then takes his spot in the offence as a slotback, has excelled daily for the Eskimos this year. His 81-yard TD run was a huge spark for the Eskimos and helped them turn their game around.
Retweetable
*I’m sorry, I can’t/won’t use the caps lock version of the name when I talk about this team, even if that’s allegedly what they’re going with. Have you seen how this looks in print yet? Check the Ottawa Citizen’s story on the recently changed date for the expansion draft. The all-caps version is bellowing its way all through that story and to me it’s an eyesore. At some point down the road I might compromise on ALLCAPS but even that, as funny as it is to me when I write it now, is ridiculous for the same reasons; but I digress.
**Could but shouldn’t go with that dubbing, at all.
