As Buck Pierce came into Friday’s game for his kind-of-new, kind-of-old team, those who had been championing his cause over the past few weeks were about to embark on a smug, rewarding night.
You’ve seen it by now, how Pierce was at his retrofit do-a-bit-of-everything best against the Eskimos, turning a 12-1 deficit into a runaway 43-19 B.C. Lions win. You saw him throw a clean 11-of-14 passes for 141 yards through the better part of three quarters for three touchdowns. You saw him picking his spots and running when he needed to (three carries for 18 yards and one TD) and you saw him bolster his team’s running game with key blocks. Sure, the win came against the most generous team in the CFL, but if you’re the Lions you know what you saw and you know what kind of position you’re in as you try to stretch your season three more games beyond this week’s regular season finale.
The Lions are OK at quarterback for the playoffs. Yeah, Travis Lulay is back in practice and will back up Pierce this week against Calgary, but if he can’t start in the West semi-final next week, or if he gets in and is re-injured, the Lions have a solid backup QB and that’s something that more and more we weren’t seeing in Thomas DeMarco. Not yet.
A late-season playoff push is not the time to try to develop a young quarterback. To me, it’s no coincidence that as the intensity ramped up over the last few weeks that the Lions went on a three-game slide with DeMarco starting. When we were in Vancouver on Thursday, I asked Lulay if it were harder for a young QB to take that kind of responsibility late in a season.
“Potentially,” he said. “I think either way, especially your first go-round playing, regardless of the situation you’re going to have some nerves and anxiety about playing.
“Thomas is a pretty cool customer and I think that’s part of the reason why he’s had some success playing for us is that he’s got a pretty good head on his shoulders. His first start ever was in Regina and to me, putting a drive together at the end of that football game, maybe it’s a blessing that it was his first and he’s not thinking about the fact that he’s in Regina on the road and playoff positioning and all that.
“He’s just trying to execute the play the best he can and I think he’s done a petty good job of that. You do know every single week we’re lining up and saying ‘This is the biggest game of the year’ because it’s that time of year and we’re fighting for spots. Now it’s settled in a little bit more and the fact remains that we’re battling to be giving ourselves an opportunity to go into the playoffs (with momentum) so every week’s got great importance. As a pro that’s something you deal with.”
As the losses mounted, especially after DeMarco’s four-interception showing in Regina two weeks ago, the rumbling for Pierce grew. When DeMarco struggled against the Esks on Friday, he was finally pulled and the veteran was able to show exactly what Doug Brown would say about his former teammate a few days later: Buck Pierce is in the perfect situation right now. The question that floated around the press box last Thursday in Vancouver and especially after Friday night’s win was what took the Lions so long?
Pierce is the vet a playoff team needs for short-term gain, without the long-term consequences that come from his playing style. It’s not too much to ask to get that out of him for the next few weeks, if needed. To ask for it on a full-time basis, as we saw in Winnipeg and in Pierce’s previous stop in B.C., is as reckless as Pierce can be on the field, a head-first plunge into the unknown.
As Mike Beamish of the Vancouver Sun wrote on Monday, Pierce is the X factor of the CFL playoffs. They’re still in deep against the Riders next week, but Pierce adds an assuredness to the Lions that’s been missing since Lulay was injured.
Social media no friend of the Eskimos this year
When you’re a 3-14 team, everything is magnified. News that the organization hired the Disney Institute in late September to evaluate the fan’s game day experience was met with its share of predictable Mickey Mouse jokes on Twitter this morning. This comes on the heels of season ticket holders sending out angry tweets about renewal requests that the team sent out this past week.
It doesn’t stop there. The fan responses to the Eskimos’ Twitter and Facebook accounts have been especially harsh latey, if that kind of rabbit hole interests you.
