Black and Gold Kickoff: It’s a different look when there’s game-type contact
Scott Milanovich saw some of the things that he wanted to see—and some that he didn’t—Sunday night, and that included the weather.
For the second straight spring, the Ticat head coach revived the annual Black and Gold Kickoff, the intra-squad match that divides the training camp roster into opposing teams who are allowed to block and tackle with speed and but absolutely bans any contact on quarterbacks.
It’s partly a quality-control issue; adding another high-intensity game-like-condition competition to the two pre-season matches the Cats will play against the Argos over the next two weekends. Most coaches feel the CFL’s short training camp, with limited hitting, and two exhibition games aren’t really enough to select, and fully prepare, a season-ready team for opening day.
This year’s game, played in front of a few hundred season ticket holders, was transferred from McMaster, where the team holds training camp, to Hamilton Stadium where they’ll hold all their home games, to introduce his newer players to their permanent locker room, the cadence and structure of game day at Hamilton Stadium and unique environmental whims and challenges. Specifically, its capricious wind and post-sundown temperature drop, both of which were on classic display Sunday.
“Yeah, I liked the wind,” Milanovich said after the session, which was staged over four 10-minute quarters, with a half-time break. “But we still need rain and hopefully we get a good rain practice before the season starts.”
With some starting positions on defence still up for grabs, and a slew of backup and special teams jobs fostering intense competition further down the roster, the ferocity of the tackling and blocking was relatively high. While the second half was more about timing and execution, the first was all-out hitting with the quarterback exception.
And since the Ticats want to add more, and unpredictably varied, rushing this season, there were a lot of hard-edged runs in the first half, with the ball carried by several contenders to support starter Greg Bell, who sat this one out with a mild ‘nick’. Canadian Johnny Augustine and Louisiana speedster Chris Smith had the most volume in that phase.
“Part of that is because it’s a short training camp and you don’t go live very much,” Milanovich said of the running and hitting. “It’s hard to do, from a coach’s perspective, because you’re worried about guys getting hurt. But if you want your defence to tackle and your offence to be able to hold on to the ball when they get tackled, you’ve got to practice it.”
In a controlled scrimmage, plays are sometimes repeated to get them right and others are called out of synch with what you’d normally see in the downs and field-position conditions of a regular season game. It all contributes—especially on film review—a bit more specific information on who can do what, when, than coaches see in the mostly non-contact daily training camp.
That helps in correcting individual and team mistakes and, sometimes more importantly, in deciding the final roster. It can also extend, or blunt, momentum players have been building up at McMaster.
An example of the latter is field side cornerback Jonathan Moxey who was at several positions in the secondary last season, including starting in place of shutdown boundary corner Jamal Peters when he was injured.
The last few days at McMaster, Moxey has been very strong in practice and he continued that Sunday night with a pick of an ill-timed Taylor Powell pass, some quick anticipation on running plays and the confident pass coverage that’s so important on the outside lanes of the field.
After four seasons in Calgary, including a West all-star selection in 2022, Moxey came to Hamilton last year and the Cats extended his contract in February to prevent him entering free agency. But as Moxey himself ticked off names of his defensive backfield teammates Sunday night who have significant CFL experience—he, Peters, Destin Talbert, Stavros Katsantonis, DaShaun Amos, Lawrence Woods, Brandon Dozier and the injury-recovering Reggie Stubblefield—he acknowledged that there are more of them than there are starting positions.
And the personnel department has purposefully added promising newcomers to push the vets, and perhaps eventually supplant them.
“I preach ‘touch the ball every day’,” Moxey says, referring to interceptions and knockdowns in drills and games. “Make a play a day that’s keep you from getting cut. So I’ve got to be an example for the young guys. Just keep touching the ball, keep flying around having fun.
“I don’t look at it as pressure because at the end of the day I’m competing against myself. I’ve always got to be better than I was the year before; every day I’m trying to progress. Just trying to be the best version of myself.”
On the other side of the ball, Bo Levi Mitchell said that the Black and Gold game brought a different dimension to his ramp-up to the regular season.
“Honestly, it’s the first time where it feels like live bullets, right?” said Mitchell, who was self-critical of his ‘pitter-patter’ footwork during parts of the scrimmage. “You actually have the refs, you have the 20-second clock going. You have the Hamilton wind.
“And just feeling that pocket actually collapse, because in our practices right now your D-line, is being told ‘Don’t touch the quarterback.’ So they’re going hard for those three or four steps but when they feel like they’ve beat a guy they kind of pull off. It’s just a little bit different when you feel that presence of a guy really trying to throw your left tackle back into you; having to finish a couple of throws that I missed high today.”
Milanovich was, as usual, quite direct in his initial assessment of Mitchell and his primary backup Taylor Powell, who locked into his rhythm in the second half.
“There was good and bad by both guys, really,” he said. “(Moxey’s) pick on Taylor wasn’t very good. There was another one where we got sacked where I thought he had to throw it away. Similar with Bo; I thought he held on to the ball a couple times a little too long.
“But then they heated up a little bit. I thought he did a good job of knowing where his outlets were and, and when he was running out of time, with nowhere to go.
“It was decent for the first time and hopefully we’ll play a little better on Saturday night (against the Argos at Hamilton Stadium).”
And maybe there’ll be some rain that night too, so Milanovich and his staff can gauge players under adverse conditions. The punt returners—with only Woods and, to a limited extent, Isaiah Wooden Sr., having contended with the blustery stadium before—did get plenty of exposure on Sunday to the wind which blew airborne balls from west to east, then suddenly north to south.
“They need to know how to handle the wind,” Milanovich said bluntly. “Like I said, we have not had any wind up to this point. So for those new guys it was good to see who could handle it and who couldn’t. And the more they practice, I think the better they’ll get at it.”
CATS CLAUSES: Wide receiver Kenny Lawler and running back Greg Bell did not take part in the Black and Gold because they were slightly banged up but both will be back on the field Tuesday morning when the Ticats resume practice at McMaster … Isaiah Wooden, who caught one pass and returned three kickoffs, one for 36 yards, in the season finale vs. Ottawa last year, looked good, and very fast, on returns Sunday and as a receiver with the second unit. He’s in a spirited competition with the likes of, among others, veteran Lawrence Woods and rookies Quavian White and Phillip Brooks for the primary kick return roles … WR Odieu Hiliare has been getting stronger as camp progressed and looked good Sunday night. He played three years at Alabama A&M with a no-huddle offence like the Ticats often use before entering the transfer portal to a higher-level conference with Bowling Green …lots of movement as the Ticats get deeper into training camp: OL John Kourtis, the 61st overall 2024 draft choice who returned to the University of Saskatchewan last season was released. RB Treshaun Ward who played college at Florida State, Kansas State and Boston College was signed, as were OL Preston Williams from Oklahoma State and LB Kyler Fisher out of Iowa. DL Marquise Copeland and OL Darren Paulo were placed on the suspended list … Saturday’s pre-season game with the Argos at Hamilton Stadium will be broadcast on TSN2 (7 p.m.) … the official retiring of Cat legend Garney Henley’s No. 26 will take place at the home opener June 14 against Saskatchewan. Bernie Faloney’s No. 10 and Angelo Mosca’s No. 68 are the only other retired numbers.
