The Calgary Stampeders went into Montreal with a chance to clinch a playoff spot, with help from elsewhere, but lost their third in a row by a score of 38-20, remaining stuck at eight wins on the season.
Here’s what I saw.
Montreal flu
As a franchise, there is no place the Stampeders enjoy playing less than the city of Montreal.
All time in Le Belle Province, the Stampeders are now 15-28, a .348 winning percentage and their worst record in any away market.
Whether it is the travel or the attractions available to players in the lead-up to the game, the Stampeders rarely play well in Montreal. This game was no exception as they were pummeled by a returning Davis Alexander and the rest of the Alouettes.
This is not a uniquely Calgary problem, either, as not a single CFL member club has a winning record as visitors to the home of Schwartz’s Deli, famous for its smoked meat sandwiches.
The Edmonton Elks are the closest team to even ground; after their win this season, the Elks improved their record to 21-20-2 all-time.
Mixed bag from Adams Jr.
Coming off a back injury suffered last week against the B.C. Lions, Vernon Adams Jr. was limited the first few days in practice before being declared the starter on a short week.
Several instances in the game showed that injury was affecting him, as he was off-target on longer throws and got up slowly after being hit in the backfield. Adams was sacked four times in this contest, throwing for one touchdown and one interception on a day that saw him complete 19-of-28 passes for 238 yards.
Adams also had two brilliant plays that showed why the Stampeders handed him the keys to the kingdom before the season.
The first was a mad scramble for a 21-yard touchdown where he juked two tacklers in the middle of the field before breaking to the sidelines and finding the endzone, with some timely blocks down the field from his receivers.
Later, a snap flew over his head back into the endzone only to see Adams recover the ball, dodge a few more tacklers and launch it downfield to secure a first down.
Adams’ health is the true marker for the Stampeders’ long-term success or failure, and so the “back watch” will once again be in the spotlight at practice this week.
Floodgates stay open
Last weekend, the Lions scored 52 points on the Stampeders. This week could have been worse if not for a rough day for the Alouettes’ field goal kicker, who missed a pair of field goals that translated into just one rouge.
Over the last two games, the Stampeders have allowed 11 touchdowns and six field goal attempts. On the flip side, they have generated zero turnovers and only forced seven punts.
Allowing points — or attempts, as one missed field goal was taken out of the endzone instead of giving up a single — on 17-of-24 drives is not a model for success at any level of football.
What’s going wrong?
When the Stampeders were dominant through the first half of the season, it came with a lot of pressure.
Pressure, specifically from the front four, who were getting to quarterbacks with regularity and forcing opposition players to make mistakes that turned into defensive stoppages, either by incomplete passes or interceptions.
Standout defensive tackle Jaylon Hutchings missed the first game of this three-game losing streak in Edmonton, and Folarin Orimolade got injured that night and will be gone for the rest of the season.
On the back end, head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson told reporters after the game that his DBs are “playing too soft” and that “tackling has been an issue,” while also crediting the Alouettes as a good football team.
With this resurgent season hanging in the balance, and the trade deadline rapidly approaching, one wonders if Dave Dickenson won’t be strapping on this GM hat and seeing if there is a defensive end available from one of the teams on the brink of elimination who could make a difference for his suddenly struggling squad.
Help on the horizon?
Marquel Lee started the season as the middle linebacker for the Stampeders and was making some eyes pop with his tackle numbers before going down with an injury.
It was reported that Lee was taking scout team reps at practice this week, a sure sign that he could be coming back into the fold. He likely takes the place of Adam Bighill, who has nine tackles in his four games since debuting with the Stampeders on Labour Day.
Bighill is a well-respected veteran, but given the results of the last three games, the coaches may decide to try Lee back in the middle to see if the team can recapture the magic of the first half on the defensive side of the ball.
Good for me, but not for thee
I wrote last week about the officiating, and it reared its ugly head again this week in a way that seemed to go against the Stampeders.
All season long, the league and broadcasters have emphasized that making contact with a quarterback’s head will result in a penalty for roughing the passer. This got its most liberal interpretation in the first half, when Bailey Devine-Scott got through the offensive line untouched on a safety blitz and tackled Alouettes’ QB Davis Alexander.
Alexander saw Scott coming at the last second and turtled, causing Scott’s helmet to contact his own and Alexander’s helmet to go flying. While no flag was thrown on the field, the command centre called for a roughing the passer penalty to continue a drive that ended in a field goal.
Credit to the TSN panel, who all roundly and correctly criticized the call, while also pointing out that by ducking as deeply as he did, there was not a legal place for Scott to hit Alexander. You can’t get a quarterback below the knee either, and just like a baseball player not being able to shrink the strike zone by crouching, a QB shouldn’t be able to by ducking.
All of that could have been chalked up to a situation that needed some additional clarity, except that later in the game, Vernon Adams took a forearm to the head, which saw his helmet knocked off, causing a third-down play to be whistled dead as he approached the first-down marker.
Whistling the play dead is the right call for player safety reasons, but there was no good explanation as to why the command centre did not apply a roughing the passer call in this instance, as they had done earlier. For this non-call to result in a turnover that essentially ended any chance of Calgary engineering a late-game comeback was just the salt in the wound.
There have been occasions this season when the CFL has come out to explain the call, and I’ll be curious to see if this is addressed.
Next up
With Toronto and Ottawa now at 10 losses on the season, and Edmonton at nine as of this writing, the Stampeders need either a win to make the playoffs, and another loss by any of the Eastern teams and two by Edmonton, who still have Saskatchewan this weekend before going on a bye.
With both Ottawa and Toronto in action prior to the Stampeders’ game in B.C. next week, they could fulfill a few of those conditions, but would still need a win combined with an Edmonton loss to clinch a spot, as they aren’t yet guaranteed better than fourth place in the West Division standings.
