New Season, New Script: Tiger-Cats Look to Flip the Narrative and Start Fast in Calgary
It seems like such a long, almost interminable, time since last season ended but suddenly here it is; the new season is upon us.
If there was a soundtrack it’d be the Hallelujah Chorus.
Saturday night, two teams which missed the playoffs—one for the first time in a couple of decades—meet in Calgary as the Tiger-Cats try to translate 2024’s strong, but ultimately frustrating, finish into 2025 momentum starting against the hometown Stampeders.
“This is the time we get to unleash,” says versatile Ticat defensive back Jonathan Moxey, who spent four years in Calgary before coming to Hamilton last season. “It’s not preseason ball now. It’s live bullets. So now we’re trying to stack those W’s and get that first one in the column. So that’s the main goal.
“Every year is different. This roster is not the same as it was last year. There’s a lot of turn over around the whole league. You’ve got superstars and all-star players going to every single team, so you don’t really know what you’ll be seeing at first.”
The Ticats are coming off a 7-11 season but won six of their last eight and are very confident. That’s been showing all through training camp and the first week of regular-season practices, which have proceeded very crisply. They’ve got an offence that is presumably improved and have assembled a restructured defence which is clearly faster and more aggressive, and special teams which added youth and speed to a core contingent which gelled dramatically in last season’s second half.
But the proof is always in the pudding, and years of experience have cautioned a writer against making too many firm judgments based on a good free-agency bounty, a promising Canadian draft harvest, and strong training camp performances. All of which the Ticats had.
“I think the guys are in a good place,” head coach Scott Milanovich said after the week’s final practice on Thursday. “And now, obviously, the key is can we take it to the game? Can we take the discipline of the game? We had two offsides today, which can’t happen. But like I said, I think they’re in a good place for right now for where we are in the season. And, we need to continue to improve.”
Both teams are adjusting to new personnel on defence, while Hamilton native Brent Monson takes over as Ticats’ defensive coordinator after doing the same job in Calgary his replacement in the foothills was his former linebacking coach, deeply-experienced veteran Bob Slowik. He won a Super Bowl coaching in Dallas, and had a couple of years running Montréal’s defence, and Monson himself had been promoted to Stampeder defensive coordinator from the linebacking-coach position.
As rampant free agency has turned rosters over more vigorously in recent years, the CFL’s Week 1 is like Forrest Gump’s mama’s famous box of chocolates, “you never know what you’re going to get,” and that’s particularly true in this game.
Depending upon the finalized depth chart, Calgary could see as much of a 70 per cent roster turnover. As well as a defensive makeover the Stamps have also seen changes in receiver and quarterback—bringing in mobile, and popular, veteran pivot Vernon Adams—on offence. Overall, about half the active roster is new.
“An extremely talented quarterback,” Milanovich says of Adams. “When he gets hot, he’s as hot as anybody there is in pro football. He’s certainly a concern. His mobility is a concern. The plays that he makes when he’s on the move are a concern. He’s a good football player.
“Dave (Dickenson, Calgary head coach and GM) does a great job scheming on offence. They’ve got talent at receiver (veteran Reggie Beggleton, No. 1 draft choice Damien Alford, fellow Canadian Jalen Philpot, free agents Tevin Jones and Dominique Rhymes) and they’ve got a talented running back (Dedrick Mills).
“Defensively the challenge is that in addition to all the new players we don’t know a lot about, it’s potentially a new scheme and we’re not positive what we’ll see. So we’re just gonna have to do a great job of making adjustments in-game.”
The Ticats have undergone some significant changes too, even on offence where they led the league in most of the important categories last year. Bo Levi Mitchell is coming off one of the best seasons of his career and has noticeably strengthened his legs to pose a better short roll-out threat and has another year of Milanovich’s systemic creativity under his belt. The team is preaching a more balanced attack behind dynamic running back Greg Bell and landed big-time CFL receivers Kenny Lawler and Drew Wolitarsky.
On defence, Monson has introduced a more aggressive tone to his front four and back six, and just under half of the projected starters on defence were not with this team last year.
If Bo Levi Mitchell can return to the site of so many of his triumphs and win his first game at McMahon Stadium in a visitor’s uniform, it will be the 100th victory of his career, making him the fastest to reach that plateau in CFL history. This will be the 141st start of his Hall-of-Fame-bound career and former Ticat coach and GM, the late Ron Lancaster, currently is the quickest, hitting the 100-win mark in his 149th game. He’d also be the 10th quarterback to reach the milestone, tying him with Matt Dunigan, yet another one-time Ticat.
“It means a lot just in general because I’ve always prided myself on winning,” Mitchell said this week. “I’ve never been the most accurate, most efficient, guy every game but for me it’s always been show up in the fourth quarter, show up when it matters when the big throw needs to be made. Help put your team in a position to win.
“The thing I care about the most is starting 1-0.”
Bo Levi Mitchell, Scott Milanovich, and just about everybody on their team, is way beyond tired of constantly hearing about the importance of getting off to a good start, as if they didn’t already know.
History does illustrate, though, that Opening Night has not always—as in, hardly ever in this quarter-century—been kind to the Tiger-Cats, regardless of who’s on the team, managing, or coaching it.
“We started slow last year and the emphasis this year is basically just to start fast,” acknowledges tackle Casey Sayles, the only holdover on the starting defensive line. “We’re trying to change it up this year. But we consider this just one game.”
And Milanovich emphasizes that a victory on opening night is just the same as one at any other juncture of the season. See above: it means you’ve gone 1-0 for that week.
But I’ll also say that it’s better to be the eight-ball than be behind it and getting off to a good start means you’re not always chasing the standings. The Ticats opened 0-5 last year and despite great flashes, could never quite catch up. This year they come home from Calgary to face two tough opponents in Hamilton, first Saskatchewan and then the Alouettes, so a win would be a nice tailwind to help re-establish home field dominance.
The last time they both won their first game of the season and also had a winning record through the first three games was the magical 2019 season when they started with a home win over Saskatchewan then went undefeated in their own stadium the entire year.
But in the 2000’s, the Ticats have been on the right—as in winning—side of the ledger in their first game of the season exactly four times: 2019, 2016, 2004 and 2002. In those 24 seasons, 17 of their openers were on the road and they’ve lost 15 of them including all four in Calgary. Not necessarily a disaster, but nothing to celebrate either.
So this would be a good time, okay a great time, for the current Ticats to draw deeply from what is clearly a well of confidence and self-belief, to spit in the face of history and pronounce themselves as different. It’s not the end of the world to lose Game 1 but can be the start of a new world to win it.
“I can’t speak for the other 18 years or 19 years myself,” Moxey says. “But we’ve got the opportunity to go one and zero. So I can’t really dwell on the past. Every year you get a new script, a blank slate. Nothing (from previous seasons) matters anymore.
“We’ve got to stay together at all moments. And the main goal is just to get that W.”
