Juggernaut Tiger-Cats seek seventh straight victory in battle vs. Lions on TSN
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The Hamilton Tiger-Cats and quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell have taken the league by storm, piling up six wins in a row to surge atop the East Division standings.
They look to keep rolling Thursday night against the BC Lions, who they toppled 37-33 in a game two weeks ago.
Mitchell, 35, has had a resurgent season in his third campaign with the Tiger-Cats. The two-time Most Outstanding Player has thrown for 2,551 yards and 18 touchdowns against just three interceptions in eight starts this year.
“He’s doing a great job of moving in the pocket and not taking sacks and making great decisions with the football and making the big plays when they are there," Ticats head coach Scott Milanovich said after Hamilton's 28-24 victory last week against the Edmonton Elks.
Mitchell threw for 350 yards and three touchdowns in their Week 9 victory, marking the third game of the season he's thrown for at least three scores and third straight game with at least 300 passing yards.
"He’s playing the best football I’ve seen him play,” Milanovich said.
Mitchell's 18 touchdowns are five ahead of the next closest passer in the league, and his three interceptions are the fewest by any quarterback who has thrown at least 150 passes this year (Mitchell has a league-high 302 pass attempts).
His play has put the veteran signal caller at the forefront of the MOP conversation, and this game against the Lions provides the 13th-year player a chance to strengthen his resume. Another MOP award would put Mitchell in rare company, joining Doug Flutie, Anthony Calvillo, Jackie Parker and Russ Jackson as the only three-time winners of the award.
"That man is amazing," Ticats wide receiver Kiondre Smith said of Mitchell after the team's Week 8 victory over the Lions. "He's a playmaker. He's a baller. He ages like wine and is continuing to show.”
Canadian quarterback Nathan Rourke leads the Lions opposite Mitchell, and the 27-year-old can boost his team's chances with another strong outing.
Rourke threw for 337 yards and three touchdowns in the loss to Hamilton two weeks ago, and his 316 passing yards per game is just shy of Mitchell's league-leading total of 319.5.
BC has had a lot of time to stew over their loss in Week 8's matchup versus Hamilton with a bye week in Week 9.
“I would definitely say this is a devastating loss," Lions DB Robert Carter Jr. said after the game in which BC led by 10 points with just over three minutes remaining. "Like, you've got fans leaving the game, thinking, like, ‘Oh, this game is over.’ So I definitely thought we should have put that one away.”
Lions coach Buck Pierce echoed the sentiment after the game.
“This is gonna sting for a while, right?" he said. "But they have to move past the emotion of it to grow. And that's the big thing. It’s okay to let it hurt, and it's okay to be a little hard on yourself right now. But you’ve got to move past that. And it's a resilient group, a tough group."
The Lions are drifting out of the West Division picture with two consecutive losses and trail the Saskatchewan Roughriders by four games in the standings entering Week 10. Finding a way to avenge that loss to the Tiger-Cats two weeks ago would be a good start to turning their season around.
"We’ve got to be able to finish football games. We’ve got to be able to get ourselves to a point where we're more consistent and find a way to close games out,” Pierce said.