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Monday’s O-Line: Hope for the Esks; #FearTheStamps

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As bad as things have gotten for the Edmonton Eskimos this season, Fred Stamps has known that it doesn’t take much to turn it all around.

“It’s the CFL,” he’s said over the last two months, as his team plummeted down the league’s standings to a 1-9 record. He said the same thing again Friday night. “It’s not over till it’s over.”

Now, with a painfully bad eight-game losing streak snapped after Saturday’s 25-7 win over Winnipeg, the Eskimos are on the cusp of a season-altering run. Potentially.

They’re in Winnipeg on Friday to wrap up their home-and-home series with the Bombers. After that, the Toronto Argonauts are in Edmonton on Sept 28. The Montreal Alouettes make their annual trip to Edmonton on Oct. 5.

Thanks to the Argos missing Ricky Ray and the Als missing Anthony Calvillo, these next three games are all very winnable. About three weeks into the season you could see how good and how tight the West would be this year. The Eskimos catching the Lions in the standings, even with their hot-and-cold act over the last few weeks is very unlikely. A crossover berth is the Eskimos’ best hope at the playoffs this year, as slim as they still are for a 2-9 team.

The good news is that the Esks share a 2-9 record with Winnipeg and are just two games behind Montreal. The Als are in Guelph this week and host Saskatchewan before coming to Edmonton. So, despite it feeling as over as it has the last few weeks for the Eskimos, Stamps is right. A lot can still happen. Looking relieved like the rest of his team on Saturday night, Stamps wasn’t interested in looking anywhere but forward.

“I forgot about (the losing streak) last week,” he said. “The first half of the season is over for us. The second half is here and we just have to build off of it.”

“It’s a well-known fact that the season is long in the CFL and things don’t generally get heat up until after Labour Day,” Mike Reilly said to me on Friday night.

“That’s no excuse, you don’t want to come out slow like we did, but in terms of what we could finish at record-wise we could leave ourselves in a pretty good potential opportunity.

“It comes one game at a time. The next three or four weeks are going to be very important but the important one is now Friday at Winnipeg.

“We can’t make the mistake of looking too far ahead. The opponent we played is a good opponent and they’re going to be fired up to play against us at their home stadium and they’re going to be looking for redemption after tonight, so if we look past them we’ll get stung.”

And that’s the thing with this year’s Eskimos. This isn’t their first stretch of winnable games. They’re 2-9 for a reason and faith in that kind of a team is a tough sell. The proof is in the pudding, I believe Bill Cosby once said for money. So over the next three weeks it’s up to the Eskimos to provide the pudding, serve it to the fans, show them that the proof is in it and then eat the pudding.

Or something. You know what I mean.

As you watch the West unfold this year, even with the Riders’ recent troubles and the Lions’ inconsistency, if you’re an Eskimos fan I would think that the crossover is the most appealing option of any for the postseason (if you still have those hopes). Seeing Hamilton or Toronto in the East semifinal is far from a cakewalk, but it’s a much more desirable option to me than any of B.C., Saskatchewan or Calgary. Watching the Stampeders, I’d say especially Calgary.

The Stamps have been an amazing team to watch this season and the main reason for that is below.

Screen grab via Stampeders.com

Screen grab via Stampeders.com

It doesn’t seem to matter who gets hurt with the Stamps, whether it’s Drew Tate, Kevin Glenn, Joe West, Johnny Forzani, Nik Lewis, and on and on and on. Calgary’s depth is the stuff that teams around the league speak optimistically about all winter, only to have reality pull them back to Earth a month or so into the season. Taking their old QB Henry Burris and the Tiger-Cats in Calgary this past week was a very sensible pick, because you think that at some point all of the Stamps’ injuries will catch up with them, but week after week they refuse to let it happen.

As they power their way through the season, now at a league-best 9-2, you wonder what’s next. Does Brad Sinopoli end up switching back from receiver to quarterback if Bo Levi Mitchell gets nicked? Would you be surprised at all if he matched his 286 yards receiving this year with a 286-yard passing game and allowed the Stamps to keep winning?

That’s the story that’d be the cherry on the cake for Calgary: The Canadian born-again-quarterback that resurfaces to take his team to another level. It’s also what makes that crossover so appealing to the Eskimos.

Week-end winners 

Game of the week: Toronto at Saskatchewan – And the mighty have finally fallen this season. After storming out of the gate this year, the Riders have dropped two in a row, including their first at Mosaic Stadium on Saturday, in another big Argos’ comeback win. Toronto scored 19 points in the fourth quarter and hung on for the 31-29 win, gaining some breathing room atop the East Division standings. As the Regina Leader-Post’s Murray McCormick wrote after the game, the Riders have hobbled into a sea of adversity just past the midpoint of the season. There’s time for them to get through it, but with still-to-be-determined injuries to Kory Sheets, Darian Durant and a slew of other players, on top of the legal troubles that Dwight Anderson, Taj Smith and Eron Riley wandered into this past week, the adversity is serious. But still, a great game for the Argos.

Offence: Mike Reilly, Edmonton – Hometown pick? I’ll give you that. But consider that Reilly a) won this week, while Henry Burris (26-for-39 passing, 408 yards, two TDs two INTs) lost and that b) Reilly rushed more than not just any other QB this weekend but any other player in the league and it’s an easy selection. His line: 16-of-25 passing for 196 yards and 3 TDs, nine carries for 113 yards, with his longest a 45-yard burst in the first half. Reilly willed his team to a win that may have saved a job or two this weekend.

Defence: Adam Bighill, B.C. — In need of a strong defensive showing, the Lions got one from their team on Sunday and from the talented linebacker in particular. Bighill’s 44-yard interception return off of Josh Neiswander (his fifth of the year in limited action) set up the Andrew Harris touchdown that took the game from an eight-point B.C. lead to a 15-point game. Bighill had seven tackles to go with his timely pick.

Special teams: Rene Paredes, Calgary – As we’ve seen in Edmonton this year (less so against Winnipeg), a can’t-miss kicker is invaluable. Paredes does it again and again and again for Calgary and has been a big part of their success this year. He made all four of his attempts against Hamilton on Friday and his two extra points gave him 14 of his team’s 26.

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