The Challenge of Back-to-Backs: Redblacks will be improved so Tiger-Cats have to be improved too
It’s kind of like summer school: another week another test.
“Last week is short-lived, right? What you do in the past doesn’t matter,” says Tiger-Cat running back Johnny Augustine, who will again start in the backfield Sunday night when the Cats and Redblacks pick up where they left off, only this time in Ottawa.
“It’s what you do now.”
The Tiger-Cats edged the Redblacks 23-20 on a fourth-quarter rally last Saturday at Hamilton Stadium to win their third in a row and climb to 3-2, with all three wins against Eastern Conference opponents, launching them to just one game back of division-leading Montréal.
That win wasn’t a work of art—but as Lorde sings, even hanging on the back wall of the Louvre, you’re still in the Louvre. All that matters is that it put points in the bank, and now they’ll try to do it again on Bank Street where it crosses the Rideau Canal.
“They’re a good football team,” head coach Scott Milanovich says of the still-heavily-injured Redblacks, who are sitting at 1-5 and tied with the Toronto Argonauts, both of them currently out of a playoff spot because of the CFL’s cross-over structure.
“We know we’re going to have to play better than we played last week to win the game. That’s all we’re focused on.”
This game will complete Hamilton’s opening third of the 18-game season and their first four games through the East before the Cats spend the next month against, and mostly in, the West in the most gruelling part of their schedule. Their only home game before Labour Day is the Wall of Honour Game against the B.C. Lions on August 7. They’ll be in Vancouver next weekend, and also visit Edmonton and Saskatchewan, playing four games and covering 8,103 kilometres in 22 trying days.
The club started with two losses against the West, Calgary and Saskatchewan, before embarking on their current three-game tear.
But that will be then and this is now.
The Redblacks are desperate for wins, playing before a restlessly expectant home crowd and trying to outdistance Toronto and inch toward a playoff spot in the season’s second third. Although there are still nine Canadians on the injured list, down from a dozen two games ago, Ottawa is starting to get some players back: Deandre Lamont at corner and safety Justin Howell will start in the secondary. And first-year American Parker Moorer goes to right guard to provide, the Redblacks hope, quarterback Dru Brown with a little more protection.
They’re bound to be more difficult than they were last week, when it still took a 10-0 fourth quarter surge for the Ticats to finally subdue them. The Redblacks will be better so the Ticats will have to be better just to match it.
The offence needs to get untracked much earlier, continue to not throw interceptions, and, it says here, will require more consistency in some aspects of the run-blocking game. The defence will have to be stiffer at the outset, because it’s a different proposition chasing a scoreboard deficit on the road than at home. Although, one thing the Ticats have shown in every game is that they’re resilient.
They’ve been solid on special teams, gusting up to brilliant, but the one shortcoming has been on kickoffs, where they’ve surrendered too much field to returners such as the one they’ll face on Sunday: Kalil Pimpleton, who can also bust it deep as a receiver.
Overall the defence has been inventive and steadily improving the past three games. They did allow Geno Lewis some greedy yardage and important possession catches last week—everybody does—but after surrendering some second-down conversions they got into knockdown mode. With strong side linebacker Reggie Stubblefield making his Ticat debut last week against Ottawa after 400 days recovering from an ACL injury, the secondary that team officials envisioned since the spring has now played its first game together and can continue to learn about each other.
It’s not a quiet bunch. The best secondaries usually don’t come equipped with a mute button. While some of it is directed across the line of scrimmage, Stubblefield says you can’t get too caught up in chirping opponents because it can cost you focus on your assignments. So the principal target of vocal expression is your own teammates.
“It just helps a defence, especially with the CFL game, because there are so many moving parts to an offence, so many different looks and formation changes that you can get right before the ball is snapped,” Stubblefield says. “So being vocal is one of the most important things you can have as a player on this team.
“We have such a versatile defensive scheme and there are so many guys who can move and change and do different things, that we have to try to make sure we’re vocal with each other; know who is supposed to be where, so we can play fast and our brand of football.”
Even as a rebuilt defence is still acclimatizing to each other, they are putting up some noticeable numbers. Hamilton has knocked down 25 passes, seven more than anyone else in the CFL and after two last week against Brown, shutdown corner Jamal Peters leads the league with three interceptions.
The defence as a whole has limited opposition offences to 5.9 yards on first down, tied for the CFL’s second-lowest yield. They’re mounting decent pressure up front with eight sacks, but can still be vulnerable to a power runner, especially late in the game, and to quarterbacks who are able to buy time with their legs.
“I think the sky’s the limit on defence,” says short side linebacker (WILL) Ray Wilborn, who’s been very strong during the winning streak. “I feel like we can turn it up. I feel like I haven’t scratched the surface and I feel the defence hasn’t scratched the surface of what we can do.”
On special teams, punter Nik Constantinou has been mostly excellent, field goal kicker Marc Liegghio hasn’t missed all year and his consecutive-make streak, dating to last season, is now the 10th longest of all time. And returner Isaiah Wooden has half the league’s four kickoff returns for touchdowns and seems always a step or two away from a punt return major. All of this has amalgamated with good downfield tackling (some kickoffs aside), to furnish the Ticats with the best average field position in the league. They are the only team which has averaged a starting point of their own 40 yard line or beyond for every drive, more than three yards ahead of any other club, and over a full game that can add up to points.
And they’re prevailing in the turnover battles, the most indicative stat in the sport other than wins and losses. At plus-five they’re ranked second in the CFL.
Bo Levi Mitchell leads the league in fewest interceptions, most touchdowns, converting red zone possession into touchdowns and, until Vernon Adams Jr. and Nick Arbuckle played earlier this week, passing yardage. By taking the short passes defences have given him, he’s rarely forcing the issue. And when he does, Milanovich lets him know, Mitchell acknowledges it, and their symbiotic relationship strengthens.
The Cats offence has a lot of weapons—Lawler leads the league in yardage and nine other Ticats caught passes last week—but for the second straight game running back Greg Bell won’t play, with Johnny Augustine starting again and Treshaun Ward also in uniform and expected to share some of the overland load. The only other roster changes see rookie defensive end Isaiah Bagnah out with injury, so the Cats will use just six defensive linemen, and 6-foot-7 quarterback Jake Dolegala stepping in for Harrison Frost as No. 3 behind Mitchell and Taylor Powell.
The offence is up against a Redblack defence which has a new coordinator in former Ticat coach Will Fields, who threw some unexpected packages at them last week. Milanovich says that it’s harder for coaches to plot for a second successive game against the same team but probably better for the players, who now have had some experience against the men across the line from them.
“We know how good they are,” says Ticat right tackle Quinton Barrow, who has started every game. “So, going off the first game and it’s about us just tweaking what we did well in the first game to be great at it and what we didn’t do well, do better, to hopefully be great at that too. So, it’s just the adjustment, seeing how they rush, how they play certain blocks.”
Stubblefield adds, “When you play against a team twice, some of the things that they may have felt that they left out on the field offensively, that try to attack and come back to. You just have to prepare yourself and continue to play your game, do the right things on the field.”
Augustine says back-to-backs usually involve “more the mental side of things. When you face a new team, there’s that excitement, whereas you face the same team again, you could mentally clock out. So for me, it’s more how can I still bring the same energy or better, facing the same team?”
That’s exactly the question that both sides will be trying to answer on Sunday night.
CATS CLAUSES: Cats returner Isaiah Wooden leads the CFL with an average of 170.2 combined yards per game, 12 yards more than runner-up Mario Alford of Saskatchewan … Since 2017 Ottawa and Hamilton have played 20 times with Hamilton winning 13. Eight of the games, including last week’s, have been decided by four points or fewer … The Ticats lead the all-time series against Ottawa with 112 wins and 79 losses. They are 50-44 in Ottawa … Ticats shutdown cornerback Jamal Peters has 3 interceptions, including two last game, to lead the CFL and was named to the week 10 Honour Roll on defence to and also graded out the highest among DBs for Week 6, along with Ticat DE Julian Howsare, who was top defensive lineman and Kenny Lawler, who led the receivers’ PPF ratings… Bo Levi Mitchell needs 27 yards passing to move past Tracy Ham and into 10th place on the league’s all-time list. He should easily catch Doug Flutie for 9th this season … Marc Liegghio’s 27 straight successful field goals across the past two seasons—including 9-for-9 this season—is a Ticats’ record and the 10th longest in CFL history … a stunning 14 per cent of all TDs in the CFL this year have not been scored by the offences, double last season’s rate .. over the next two games the Ticats will be playing the two receivers who are tied for the most targets in the league with 52 each: Ottawa’s Geno Lewis and B.C.’s Keon Hatcher … Ottawa returner Kalil Pimpleton is on pace to set a new CFL record for punt return average. He’s at 18.0 and the record for a full season was BC’s Leon Bright’s 16.8 in 1980 … Ottawa’s average of just over 31 minutes of possession time for game is second in the CFL but they also have the second-highest percentage of two-and-out possessions … Ottawa DL Michael Wakefield was fined an undisclosed amount for a low hit on Bo Levi Mitchell in last week’s game.
