This was a game that was at home, that was in their hands, and that was theirs for the taking.
But, in the end, the Ticats did not take it. So — and there is no other honest way to frame this — for the fourth straight year the Cats find themselves at 0-2 to open the season.
You can play well enough to win, and put yourself in a position to win—as the Ticats did in both the season opener last week in Calgary and in last night’s home opener before 22,313 encouraged, then suddenly deflated, fans–and still come up on the short end, which the Ticats did Sunday night 33-30 on a last-second 43-yard field goal by Saskatchewan Roughriders’ veteran kicker Brett Lauther.
In almost the blink of an eye—115 seconds of blinks, actually—the Saskatchewan Roughriders somehow went from a 30-20 deficit, and a 2nd-and-17 at their 15-yard line, to a dramatic and improbable three-point victory.
And after outscoring the Ticats 16-3 in the fourth quarter last night to win and the Elks 21-3 in the fourth quarter last weekend to win, the Riders, feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof, flew home to Regina to prepare for their own home opener next Sunday against these same Tiger-Cats.
Trevor Harris, who has a history of making Ticat lives miserable, picked himself up after the third sack of the game by Ticats’ defensive lineman Brandon Barlow with under two minutes to play and promptly completed a 2nd-and-17 strike to Jerreth Sterns, who made an 18-yard first down despite being slammed by safety Stavros Katsantonis. Harris then completed five of his next six passes including one to Kian Schaffer-Baker for the touchdown that tied the game.
It took him only a minute and 12 seconds to go almost the length of the field, so there was still ample opportunity for the Ticats to win it.
“I was pumped when I saw 43 seconds left,” said Bo Levi Mitchell who had an excellent game, with 380 yards passing for three touchdowns and felt the team had plenty of time to get into the range of Marc Liegghio, who’d made all three of his field goals in the game. “We‘ve got a kicker we can trust. Scott (Milanovich) told me we had to get to the 43-yard line. I liked that Scott trusted us to come out throwing. It’s on us to execute.”
But on the first play from scrimmage after the Riders’ kickoff, Bo Levi Mitchell’s pass to a diving Tim White bounced off the team’s premier receiver and straight up into the hands of Saskatchewan linebacker C.J. Avery. A half-minute later Lauther sent the Riders into ecstasy and the Ticat fans into a dismayed drive home.
“I think that was a bit of an unlucky play but those plays happen and we put ourselves in a position where something like that could happen at the end of the game,” Milanovich said afterward. “I’ve watched that quarterback (Harris) do what he did a number of times in my career. We needed to end the game on offence.”
White, who had four catches for 57 yards, including one for a key first-down in traffic, had dropped a ball in the end zone earlier in the game. He also mishandled a touchdown pass last week but his coach and his quarterback were both quick to support him.
“I think it was 12 trying to be smart,” Mitchell said of White’s dive for that final Ticat pass. “He saw the coverage and he was trying to catch the ball and get down. I’ll never pretend to know what it’s like to be in that position and his natural athlete is taking over.
“First thing I did was walk up to him and say, ’12, you’re the best athlete on the team. I’m coming back to you in that situation every single time, that’s never going to change, never going to falter.’ He’s my guy everybody in that locker room loves him.”
Milanovich added:
“Tim is an elite player. You just keep feeding him the ball and he’s going to come out on the other side. He also had a great catch on 2nd and 7 that was a bang-bang play where he got hit, that allowed us to go for it and kick that final field goal.”
That field goal gave the Ticats a 10-point lead with 5:33 left and it seemed like they were well on the way to squaring their record at 1-1. But, as Mitchell said, this is the CFL and that why he loves it is that so many things can happen in so little time. In this case, the things that happened did not go in the Ticats’ favour. But as their head coach correctly pointed out, they needed to do more to make them go in their favour.
“There’s nothing you can say after a game like that that is going to make it all right,” Milanovich said. “They know that. That’s basically what I said to them. There’s some other things that (were said) as far as sticking together, continuing to improve, all those team-type things, but there’s no magic words you can say to a team after a loss like that.
“There were several key plays that win or lose it. All three phases have to do better in the fourth quarter to put a game away. Give (the Riders) credit; they came back and did what they had to do.”
Down 7-3 after the first quarter, Mitchell and the offence exploded in the second quarter for 17 points, and the defence shut out the Riders, for a 20-7 lead going into the intermission. Mitchell completed 16 of his 23 throws for 248 yards in the opening 30 minutes, with TD passes to Kiondré Smith and a 60-yarder to a wide-open Steven Dunbar Jr., who blew past a confused defender and was as wide-open as a Saskatchewan wheat field.
Smith had six catches for 119 yards and Dunbar three for 73, and rookie Shemar Bridges continued to impress with six grabs for 72 yards and a touchdown. Power back James Butler caught five passes but was restricted to 27 yards in a dozen carries as the Ticats had trouble establishing the kind of attack by the power back that he had in amassing a league-high 119 yards last week. That had a subtle, negative, effect late in the game when the offence needed to control the ball, and the clock, more than they did.
They also needed to make a stop at some point in the Riders’ long, and quick, drive in the final couple of minutes. The defence looked improved in several areas, with the first appearance in a Ticat uniform of boundary corner Jamal Peters, who was tested early as he knew he would be, but stepped up to the challenge, and was largely responsible for a “coverage sack” by Ray Wilborn.
“I definitely think (the Ticat defence) took a step forward but it wasn’t enough,” said Barlow who had the other three sacks. “But none of us in the locker room are fans of moral victories. The job’s got to get done, it didn’t get done so we’ve got to evaluate what we have to do to get it done next week. Go 1-0 next week, learn from the mistakes.
“Our focus is to keep getting better because if you’re not getting better you’re getting worse. Next week you’re going to see a better Hamilton team.”
There were many things to build on, one of which was Mitchell building off last week’s strong second half and looking more and more like the Mitchell of his Calgary heyday, particularly in using his legs, and his game knowledge, to extend plays, with help from the offensive line. There was the work of the receiving corps, two special teams tackles apiece from Peters, Tyler Ternowski and Robert Panabaker, Liegghio’s accuracy and 178 combined punt and kickoff return yards from Lawrence Woods III.
“There was pressure on the quarterback and I don’t think Bo got sacked and there were some explosive plays,” Milanovich added. “We didn’t run the football well enough obviously. We had a lead in the fourth quarter. That’s where we would really like to take the ball and run it. I need to do a better job getting us a run-game plan that we can execute.”
Both Milanovich and Mitchell addressed whether teams, especially ones with so many new players, have to learn how to win.
“Learn how to win, learn how to finish, learn how to be great,” the quarterback answered. “I think sometimes some of those big plays can happen and everybody goes, ‘All right, cool, we can coast and hey I’ll wait on the next guy to make a play’ rather than thinking ‘It’s my job to be locked in on my detail on the play that I have and make sure I’m ready on the call.’”
He said every player, including himself, would critique their performance on film, then signalled with his hand moving upwards, “We are going this way. We are a good team.”
The head coach said that probably any team has to learn how to win and that this was a game, “When you walk out of it, you feel we should have had.”
No disagreement on that one.
CATS CLAUSES: Kenneth George Jr. had 9 defensive tackles, Kyle Wilson 6 and Stavros Katsantonis 5 … Trevor Harris was 32 for 45 for 390 yards and two TDs for the visitors…the Ticats held power back A.J. Ouellette to 32 yards on 11 carries … Jerreth Sterns led the Riders with 67 catches for 112 yards with Kian Schaffer-Baker also going over the century mark with 109 yards and a pair of majors … in the second quarter there was a touching video tribute on the scoreboard to the retired Simoni Lawrence, now in the Hamilton Sports Group’s front office … the 20 members of the Ticats 1999 Grey Cup team who were led onto the field before the opening kickoff were given a standing ovation
