There’s been an awful lot of pressure on the BC Lions early this season: on head coach Wally Buono, who is in his final season on the sidelines; on quarterback Jonathan Jennings, who was trying to hold on to his starting job; and on so many members of the team who were around for the 1-6 ending to last season and missing the playoffs.
The one person who wasn’t feeling any of it was Travis Lulay, the 34-year-old quarterback who hadn’t played since tearing his ACL last September. Lulay went through an off-season of rehabilitation but wasn’t sure until the spring if he could return. Then he was handed the starting job with just a couple of weeks of practice under his belt.
The Lions needed a win in Week 5 and Lulay needed to stay healthy. But even after his team fell behind 17-0 at the half, the veteran remained relaxed.
“Because I’ve experienced [serious injuries] and the world didn’t end, it allows me to play so freely,” said Lulay this week. “I kind of feel like I’m playing with house money. I’m at the stage where I took some pressure off myself. To play my best I have to rally our guys around me and it allows me to play loose and free and I think some of that rubs off on the other guys.”
Lulay’s return – going 28-of-41 for 326 yards and leading the Lions to a come-from-behind 20-17 win last week – was an uplifting turn of events for any of those who remember his emotion on the sidelines after tearing his ACL last September.
“I could sense the guys were excited for me because most of them were here when I went through the heartbreak of what happened last season,” Lulay said. “…I just told the guys, ‘I’m going to lean heavy on you to make some plays,’ and they were all, ‘We’ve got you.’”
“I knew there would be a little bit of rust, so if I threw a ball high I wasn’t going to let it affect me … I kind of had tunnel vision and made peace with the results before I was even doing it.”
Lulay’s return is all the more impressive because he wasn’t fully convinced he’d be able to play this season until well into the spring. The months of rehabilitation included being treated daily with antibiotics for an infection in his knee through much of last fall.
He decided to not make a final decision until the emotion and disappointment of his 2017 season ending so early had passed.
“I sat down with [new general manager] Ed [Hervey] the week before free agency and he expressed he wanted me to be a part of it but he said, ‘Our timeline for you is your knee’s timeline for you.’ That’s when I said, ‘I’m going to try to see this thing through,’” said Lulay. “As I got into April and May and started to make some progress, that’s when I saw this is going to happen.”
Lulay’s return casts some doubt over the future of Jennings with the Lions, given how quickly the team turned away from him after back-to-back poor performances on the heels of a disappointing 2017 season.
Still just 25 years of age, Jennings is a free agent at the end of this season, which could make him tradeable later this season.
“We’re really close and it goes beyond football,” said Lulay. “I was asked to play because Jonathan didn’t play his best ball. But I genuinely feel for him and I don’t think he got the results he deserves based on how hard he worked and how much he cares. If you didn’t know the situation you wouldn’t have noticed anything different last week. Jonathan has a really good head on his shoulders.
“He’s 25 years old. I had zero passing yards for the BC Lions at his age.”
Year of the Interception
What in the name of Michael Bishop is happening to the CFL’s touchdown-to-interception ratio this season?
Through five weeks last season, CFL quarterbacks had thrown 65 touchdown passes against 33 interceptions, or 1.97 touchdown passes per interception.
This season that ratio is 47 touchdown passes compared to 39 interceptions or 1.21 touchdowns thrown for every interception, a drastic year-over-year change.
Just ask Winnipeg’s Matt Nichols, who threw just 17 interceptions over the past three seasons, but was picked off three times in the Blue Bombers loss to the Lions last week.
“I can’t stand it,” said Nichols. “Honestly, last year I threw more than 600 times and only had eight of them and two were on Hail Marys. For me, it’s something I take pride in, so it was not a game I’m proud of.”
Nichols has a lot of company, including reigning Most Outstanding Player Mike Reilly, who hasn’t exceeded 13 interceptions in any of the past four seasons but is already at six in 2018. Although Hamilton’s Jeremiah Masoli has had four consecutive 300-yard games to start the season, he’s thrown as many interceptions (four) as touchdowns.
“When I came to the league everyone played Cover 3 and man-to-man and now more teams are getting pretty exotic in terms of defensive looks,” Nichols said.
Other theories suggested include the number of teams keeping extra players home to block, which means fewer receivers to throw at; the spread of zone defences across the league; the increasing popularity of progression offences, which rely heavily on quarterback decision-making; and the lack of continuity that comes with so many players changing teams via one-year contracts.
All of those factors may play some small role but most were also present a year ago when the league’s quarterbacks had 251 touchdown passes and 143 interceptions, meaning 1.76 touchdown passes for every interception thrown.
You can call 2018 the year of the interception.
The 1,000/1,000 club
Winnipeg running back Andrew Harris and Toronto’s James Wilder Jr. both stated their intent in the off-season to hit the 1,000-yard mark in both rushing and receiving in 2018 – a feat that has never been accomplished in CFL history.
So as they get set for their first face-to-face meeting this Saturday in Toronto, let’s see how they are doing.
Wilder is averaging just 42.5 yards rushing through four games which puts him on pace for 765 yards for the season, fewer than the 872 he amassed last season as the CFL’s Most Outstanding Rookie when he averaged 7.15 yards per carry.
Wilder’s per carry average dropping to 4.63 has a lot to do with defences keying on him this season, some modest play from the quarterback position in Toronto and, as my TSN colleague Davis Sanchez suggests, the loss of receiver DeVier Posey to the NFL. Posey’s ability to go deep forced more defenders to turn their backs on the line of scrimmage.
In fact, Wilder is averaging more yards receiving the football (46.75) through four games, which projects to 841.5 yards for the season.
So while the 750/750 club would be nothing to sneeze at, Wilder will have to improve his pace considerably to get to 1,000/1,000.
Harris is off to a brilliant start to the season and may in fact be the early leading candidate for Most Outstanding Player, averaging 112.25 yards rushing per game and 6.6 yards per carry, for a projected season total of 2,020 yards. That would be the most ever by a Canadian and the second-highest single-season total all-time.
But after amassing 857 receiving yards last season at an average of 47.6 per game, Harris is averaging just 35.5 yards per game receiving this season, which projects to a season total of 639.
That decline is perhaps partly due to the fact that Winnipeg’s starting quarterback, Matt Nichols, has missed three of his team’s first five games.
Based on early returns, it’s quite possible that an untouched CFL mark may remain that way.
T.O. in the CFL?
There is still much debate about what to make of the dynamics around soon-to-be Pro Football Hall of Fame member Terrell Owens and the Edmonton Eskimos, but it’s impossible to dismiss the possibility of the 44-year-old playing in the CFL this season for two reasons.
The first is that Eskimos general manager Brock Sunderland would not have added Owens’ name to Edmonton’s negotiation list if he didn’t at least think it was at least worth exploring the idea of signing him. The second is that Owens wouldn’t have approved his representative activating the 10-day window during which the Eskimos must make a minimum contract offer to Owens before July 24 if he wasn’t interested in playing in Edmonton.
But there are some elements to this story that are confusing at best.
Edmonton currently has three of the top four receivers in the CFL, based on statistics, in Derel Walker, Duke Williams and Kenny Stafford. Another import receiver, Bryant Mitchell, is considered a future star. Are the Eskimos really going to bench one of those four players in favour of a 44-year-old who hasn’t played pro football in nearly eight years?
Owens is two years older than Jerry Rice was when he became the oldest receiver in pro football history at age 42 and is already older than any position player ever to play in a CFL game.
Age aside, it’s worth noting the history of once-great NFL players coming to the CFL once they’ve run out of opportunities south of the border is horrible.
The rule seems to be that when a once-great player can’t play in the NFL anymore, he can’t play in the CFL either. The list includes Dexter Manley, Andre Rison, Mark Gastineau and Chad Johnson – who came to the CFL in 2014 at age 36, started 12 games and had just seven catches for 151 yards and one touchdown.
Curiously, as of Wednesday night there had been no communication between the Esks and Owens’ representative, with five days of the 10-day window still to go.
The Eskimos need only offer him a minimum-salary contract to retain his rights for another 365 days. If they don’t, he would be a CFL free agent.
Halifax clears small hurdle
Halifax Regional Council voted 16-0 Tuesday in favour of a motion to assign its staff to “pursue discussions with Maritime Football Limited Partnership and the Province of Nova Scotia to explore opportunities and risks related to establishing a mixed-use development … and return … with recommendations.”
It means council is intrigued enough by the idea of becoming partners in a stadium that it has asked its staff to meet with the province and the prospective owners to find out exactly what the commitments and benefits might be.
So it’s hard to read anything into the 16-0 vote since the question being asked was essentially, “Do you want to have a closer look at this?”
“This is simply to come back with information,” said councillor Steve Adams. “This is us saying we’re interested in how this is going to pan out. This will at least give us the information we need to make an informed decision.”
Staff is expected to take at least two months to report back and make recommendations to council.
Saluting Fantuz
Longtime CFL receiver Andy Fantuz will make his retirement announcement this week, ending a brilliant 12-year career split evenly between the team that drafted him, Saskatchewan, and Hamilton.
Fantuz was a star at Western University who had his best CFL season in 2010 with the Roughriders when he averaged 15.9 yards per catch and led the entire CFL with 1,380 receiving yards.
Any list of the best receivers of his era or the best Canadian receivers of all-time has to include Fantuz who won the only Grey Cup of his career with Saskatchewan in his second season.