As their head coach was saying today, it’s impossible to know whether the Ticats would have still won Saturday afternoon against Ottawa without Lawrence Woods III’s punt-return touchdown.
But he did add that those kind of massive plays ignite the sideline and the home crowd, and inject the rest of the team with a jolt that would take several cases of energy-boosting drinks to match. For more evidence, go back and watch the replays of Woods’ friends flooding the end zone to mob him.
The same holds true for turnovers, which flip the field and momentum. They unplug one team’s battery charger and plug in the other’s. And the Ticats had six of them —one on downs, two on fumbles, and three on interceptions—in the 37-21 win over Ottawa.
That’s an important plank in their platform of self-belief as the Ticats head to Toronto for the third and final meeting of the season in one of the most ancient arch-rivalries in all of North American pro sport.
The Cats have won both previous Argo games, and know that, at BMO Field, they’re going to need the same kind of takeaway-giveaway ratio (6-2) they had against the Redblacks in Friday’s game, in order to trim the gap between them and the third-place Argos from six points to a more manageable four points. They’ve won two in a row, and with a couple of breaks in Winnipeg could have won three straight.
The Cats had three interceptions against the Redblacks, which gives them seven in the past three games with Chris Jones simplifying their assignments, moving to an aggressive zone coverage and increasing the pressure exerted by the Ticats’ defensive line. That nearly doubles the number of interceptions the Ticats had (four) over the season’s first 10 games.
“I think we’re getting more and more cohesive,” says Destin Talbert, the Ticats’ defensive back who made one of Saturday’s three picks. “Both the D-line and secondary are coming together well, to make each other play. Putting the pressure on the quarterback to make the plays for DBs; the DBs covering well to make plays for the D-line.
“It means a lot for our confidence. I think we’ve been a confident group all along but we hadn’t been making the plays out there that we know we can. We can make more. Three this game, Rich (Leonard) having a couple more the last game. We’re a confident group and we’re growing more and more confident.”
Despite the Ticats taking a big early lead for the second straight game, there was a little local anxiety during the Ottawa game when ex-Tiocat Jeremiah Masoli came in for a couple of quick touchdowns and it became a one-score gap.
It was still a two-score affair with just under three minutes to play and Ottawa just having mounted a good-field-position 29-yard kickoff return. But on the very next play, Talbert stepped in front of his man to pick off Masoli’s underthrown pass.
It was the first interception of Talbert’s pro career and he said he sighed with relief after waiting so long.
He’d had a hugely successful five-year stay at North Dakota State, where his team won three national titles in the second-highest tier of NCAA football but he still went undrafted by the NFL in 2022. He had a couple of looks with Chicago and New Orleans and was drafted by the XFL’s Seattle SeaDragons, but that team wasn’t accepted into the newly merged XFL-USFL which formed the UFL, so he came north to Hamilton.
Talbert plays halfback on the boundary (narrower) side of the field alongside shutdown cornerback Jamal Peters, and the two of them are usually up against the opposition’s best receivers.
Talbert says that having generally the same five starters together –along with safety Stavros Katsantonis and field-side backs Leonard and Will Sunderland –the past three games has provided necessary continuity and the increased number of interceptions adds to the group’s self-belief.
They’ll be up against it again, though, when they face the Argos and a rushing attack that revolves around not only running back Ka’Deem Carey but the spontaneous, and planned, mobility of quarterback Chad Kelly. The Argos rush for the second-most yardage per game in the entire league, just a half-yard shy of Edmonton. And that sets up the Run-Pass-Option —known as RPO in football parlance– well.
“It affects all of us, and definitely it affects me, whether I’m in the bottom of RPO or on the back side,” Talbert says. “It affects my coverage but you just have to be aware that they’re a team that likes to do that. A lot of teams around the league like to do that.
“I just have to keep doing my job. Watching the film, knowing how they play BC differently than they play us. Just make sure I’m in my place and if the ball comes my way, either I make a big hit, catch the ball and make an interception or whatever it has to be to make a play.”
Because when you’re going for a third straight victory, you don’t want to have to find out if you can win without making those plays.
