Naylor’s Kickoff: The pressure to avoid an 0-3 start

Dave Naylor

TSN Football Insider

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Football is a sport engineered for overreaction.

A poor performance in baseball, hockey, or basketball – even two or three in a row – can easily be erased by a bounce-back game 24 hours later. But in football losses linger, questions are asked, and sometimes panic can set in.

Which brings us to the 0-2 starts of the Calgary Stampeders, Edmonton Elks and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, three teams expected to compete for playoff spots this season.

Heck, the Ticats were prohibitive Grey Cup favourites at the start of the season.

In a year where we anticipated plenty of surprises, seeing Edmonton, Calgary, and Hamilton at a combined 0-6 ranks at the very top of the list. And in a shortened 14-game season, there is loads of pressure on these teams to avoid an 0-3 start.

Here’s a look at what’s befallen each team so far:

Hamilton

The Tiger-Cats are coming off a 15-3 season in 2019 in which they were the highest-scoring team in the CFL, averaging 30.6 points per game.

Very little of that, however, has translated to 2021, with Hamilton averaging scoring just 14 points through two games.

The reasons are many, starting with running back Sean Thomas-Erlington being limited to just 49 yards through two games. That’s led to too many second-and-long situations where quarterback Jeremiah Masoli has often had to throw while dodging oncoming tacklers.

The offensive line has had struggles both run blocking and protecting against the pass, with right tackle Chris Van Zeyl missing the first game of the season and Kay Okafor moving from a reserve role to starting tackle. The team also lost last season’s starting centre, Mike Filer, to retirement.  

Defensively, the Tiger-Cats haven’t been atrocious, managing to keep the team in both games until the second half while the offence was struggling throughout.

It’s worth noting that football teams can appear much better or much worse than they are early in a season, depending on strength of schedule. Hamilton has played road games at Winnipeg and Saskatchewan to begin the season, which must be factored into the team’s results so far.

Calgary

The Stamps troubles are the easiest to rationalize, given their two losses have come by a combined nine points and quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell has been playing on a broken leg.

Mitchell was injured on a hit by Toronto’s Charleston Hughes in the season opener, but the extent of the injury wasn’t known until after he threw four interceptions in a loss to B.C.

The Stamps are a young team, with a group of receivers who were mostly reserves in 2019, and some changes along the offensive line. Defensively, there are loads of new faces as well.

Essentially, Calgary has played just well enough to get beat two weeks in a row.

We aren’t used to seeing Calgary lose at home and we aren’t used to the team getting off to an 0-2 start. But with Mitchell out a minimum of two games and two inexperience backups behind him in Michael O’Connor and Jake Maier, this is already the most uncertain Stampeders season in a decade.

Edmonton

The Elks have a new name but continue to struggle with the same problem that plagued them under their old moniker in 2019 – they can move the ball up and down the field but struggle to punch it into the end zone.

In 2019, Edmonton performed the difficult trick of having the league’s second highest net offence while scoring the third fewest points.

This season, they’ve upped their conundrum to a whole new level, featuring the league’s leading passer (Trevor Harris) and running back (James Wilder), yet scoring the second fewest points in the CFL after Week 2.

Edmonton’s struggles in the red zone have taken on a life of their own, to the point that there seems a psychological element to playing within the shadows of the opponent’s upright.

Their loss to Ottawa could be rationalized as a fluke, a three-interception game for Harris in which a late-game pass he put on the hands of a receiver bounced right to a Redblacks defender for a pick-six. There was certainly no problem with the way the defence played.

But against Montreal, facing a better offensive line, the Elks defensive line didn’t dominate the way it had against Ottawa. The Als controlled both lines of scrimmage, putting up 23 points on offence and seven on special teams.

Given that Harris was good on 36 of 39 throws the last time these two teams faced each other, the loss to Montreal represented a step back for Edmonton.

Now, losing to Montreal this season may represent no shame. But the Elks will have to play well against what is sure to be an inspired B.C. Lions team and crowd in their first road game of the year.

Lions Ownership

In sporting terminology, new B.C. Lions owner Amar Doman looks great on paper.

And there is a lot of optimism that he can live up to that billing, especially given the way he won the press conference at his introduction on Wednesday.

If you could create a dream Lions owner, he would be youngish, wealthy, a successful entrepreneur and a community leader. That’s Doman.

The fact that he is South Asian, his grandparents having arrived in B.C. from India in 1908, adds an intriguing quality to his ownership.

While “Diversity is Strength” may be a league slogan, the CFL is not so diverse when it comes to the fans it attracts.

If you want to see what Canada looked like in 1955, look at the crowd at a CFL game. That’s in stark contrast to the roughly 200 Canadian players in the league who represent various aspects of the country’s cultural mosaic. It’s just that their friends and families aren’t enough to diversify the CFL’s fan base on their own.

If Doman’s heritage allows the Lions to better engage the South Asian community of British Columbia, that could be a game-changer for the Lions.

And even if it doesn’t, he still looks like a winner for the CFL.

The CFL and the fourth wave

Just a few short weeks ago, Ontario’s three CFL teams were counting the days until the province entered Stage 4 of its reopening and they would be freed from crowd restrictions at their games this summer and fall.

But Stage 4, which could have come as early as Aug. 6, hasn’t arrived yet. And the province’s minister for sport has informed professional teams – including the CFL’s Redblacks, Argonauts and Tiger-Cats – that it won’t be happening anytime soon. Not with the Delta variant in play, vaccination rates slowing and new cases on the upswing.

The financial implications for Ottawa, possibly Toronto, and especially Hamilton, are significant if they can’t put more than 15,000 fans into any of their games this season.

It also raises questions about the Grey Cup, which is scheduled for Hamilton on Dec. 12. Stage 3 includes restrictions on indoor events of 1,000 people, which would but quite a crimp into Grey Cup festivities.

The answer may lie in teams demanding proof of vaccination.

Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment announced this week that all their venues, including the Argos at BMO Field, will require vaccine proof by mid-September.

The Redblacks are expected to soon announce that they will require proof of vaccination, starting with the team’s first home game on Aug. 28.

Meanwhile, Montreal will have a capacity of roughly 13,000 for its home opener on Aug. 27, with vaccine requirements to follow in September.

In Manitoba, the province’s demand that the Blue Bombers require vaccines came with the removal of any restrictions on crowd size. The thinking was simply that if everyone is vaccinated, what’s the need to limit the crowd?

It’s safe to assume that the four CFL teams in the East, along with every other professional sports team in Ontario and Quebec, will lobby for a similar arrangement.

League hopes to clarify game status confusion

The CFL isn’t thrilled that one of the dominant storylines early this season has been the B.C. Lions having the quarterback listed as No. 2 on their depth chart become the actual starter in consecutive games.

The story comes at a time when the league is desperate to make inroads in the sports betting world, where accurate information is considered a prerequisite for doing business.

The CFL introduced NFL-style injury reports this season, specifically to cater to bettors.

But in a league where depth charts have been the only staple of information, fans have come to rely on them as gospel, which is part of the story of the early-season confusion.

The Lions listed Michael Reilly as their starter in Week 1, but Nathan Rourke began the game under centre. The next week they listed Rourke, who took most snaps in preparation for the game, as No. 1 and then started Reilly.

All of which demonstrated the difficulty of dealing with players who are game-time decisions, their availability determined by the way they respond to treatment leading up to the game.

Expect the league to integrate the information in some way on the injury report with the day-before-game depth chart.

In the case of the Lions in Week 2, this might have involved them listing Reilly as the starter (the quarterback they want to start) but including something such as a ‘Q’ by his name to recognize his status as questionable.