Two games into Week 9 of the CFL season and it appears to be the weekend of the upset. Montreal snuck away from their battle against the B.C. Lions with a win, thanks to a last-second field goal from kicker Sean White on Thursday and on Friday, the banged up Calgary Stampeders took advantage of a Toronto team that sorely missed Ricky Ray in a 35-14 win.
That leaves the league’s two most beleaguered teams, in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the Edmonton Eskimos — both 1-6 — hopeful that the trend can continue on Saturday. The Bomber are in Guelph to face the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, while the Eskimos host the 6-1 Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Going into this week, a handful of people in CFL media circles picked the Eskimos to pull this win out. TSN’s Chris Schultz was one of those people. After we talked about the Purolator Tackle Hunger program on Friday, the longtime CFL analyst explained what he liked about Edmonton in their pairing with the Riders this week and went into what the second half of the season could hold for the team.
On picking the Eskimos to win this week:
“As crazy as it sounds, because their record is 1-6 right now, you can see the improvement. The game in Toronto, they came back in the second half and they played with pretty good heart and Mike Reilly threw for 500 yards, that’s no fluke. That’s him improving as a quarterback. You see Freddy stamps a little bit more and you get the feeling that one of these days Hugh Charles is going to have a 100-yard rushing game.
“The immensity and physicality of the offensive line, eventually that’s got to turn around for them. Defensively, Greg Marshall knows what he’s doing, he’s run defences in this league for many, many years and he’s had success. It’s just illogical to think that they’re going to regress. Now, that’s up to the coaches and that’s up to the players, but a lot of their losses have been by close scores. The problem a lot of times is that they play from these deficits and trying to play comeback football is tough because that defence knows you’re playing comeback football and they’re not going to let you make big plays. They’re going to play softer zones and use the clock to their advantage.
“It’s more a feeling than any intelligent analytical thought. Edmonton’s time is coming, they’re due. I think Saskatchewan, if they come up there and play their B-game, I don’t think they’re going to win. The Riders will play well because they’re coming off of a pretty flat performance previously and Coach Chamblin, he only usually lets that happen one time a season.”
On the Eskimos being a better team in the second-half of the season:
“Logic says yes (they will), but football sometimes is an illogical sport. They’ve got to stay healthy. Like every team, they can’t afford Mike Reilly to miss games, because he is progressing as a quarterback. They have to have some continuity up front. Pick your five (offensive line) guys and outside of injury let’s go with them because the more they all play together the better they’ll play.
“The pass rush, Marcus Howard has to continue to play well, Odell WIllis has to continue to play well and it’d be nice if you could get J.C. Sherritt back ASAP because he’s just everywhere and his ability to go sideline-to-sideline and tackle efficiently, he’s just about the best middle linebacker in the league. You could make the argument that Solomon Elimimiam is or Adam Bighill but he’s up there, there’s no doubt about it.
“It’s a combination of things but when you look at the previous games and where they started this season, they did not look good. They did not look efficient, but we’re now talking about the end of August heading into September so they should be improving. Reality is everything. They have to play well and put some wins together and with wins comes that confidence.”
Live chat at 1:30 p.m.
After a couple weeks of flying solo on the pre-game live chat I’ll be joined this afternoon by the Regina Leader-Post’s Murray McCormick. Come join in on the chat and share your thoughts on how you think things will go down today. The chat will run 30 minutes and will take you right into kickoff. You can find the chat here.
