Blues Monday

Ok, this blog entry has nothing to do with Blues legend BB King nor does it have anything to do with the British New Wave pop band New Order. Yesterday was quite a remarkable day for Toronto football. For the first time in I don't know how long both the UofT Varsity Blues and the Double Blues, the Toronto Argonauts, pulled off Labour Day Monday victories.

The Varsity Blues victory is perhaps more significant and more of a notable accomplishment. The Blues ended a 49 game losing streak that dated back to October 2001. I did not actually see any of the game, the accounts I've read, it was a pretty dramatic victory. The Blues, losing 17-8 with under 3 minutes remaining scored a TD to pull within 2 points, then stopped the visiting Waterloo Warriors with enough time to drive down the field and kick a game winning field goal. For many years, it has been a very popular trend around the city for people to take shots at the football program, for the Blues to pull off a win just a few short months after the resignation of their head coach has got to be seen as a remarkable accomplishment. Congratulations to the Blues.

Toronto's Professional football team pulled out a much needed win last night in a highly entertaining 'Labour Day Classic'. Going into the game the Argos were 3-5, in 2nd place in the East division but only 2 pts ahead of Hamilton who were 2-6. Both of Hamilton's wins this season had come against the Argos so a win would have meant a season series sweep. Winning in Hamilton had always been a tough task for the Argos until recently, having surprisingly lost their home opener to Hamilton and blown an early lead in their previous encounter in early August their was much speculation in the Toronto media that another loss to the Ticats might have cost Argos head coach Rich Stubler his job. Speculation was that Argos ownership would have brought back Mike 'Pinball' Clemons. Again I missed bits and pieces of this game flipping back and forth from Prison Break but I saw a few very interesting things:

The Argos got a great kickoff return to start the game from Domique Dorsey to start the game, they proceeded to march down the field and score, much of that coming on the ground with Kerry Joseph taking off for a big first down run. Dorsey went onto have a monstrous game picking up over 250 total yards. Joseph's running was especially impressive and early on made the move made during the Argos bye week of trading away competitor Michael Bishop to Saskatchewan a good one.

On Hamilton's first possession TSN cut to an inspiring pre-game speech made by running back Jesse Lumsden. It was all very 'Friday Night Lights', the youngish Lumsden is very much like the Garret Hedlund's portrayal of Don Billingsley. Hamilton answered with a TD drive of their own, but Lumsden was notably absent for the most part. Rod Black and Duane Forde noted that the Ticats had dressed 3 tailbacks for the game, which was unusual, perhaps indicative that Lumsden was not yet fully recovered from a high ankle sprain

In the 3rd quarter Hamilton used it's 2nd replay challenge to reverse a short completion Kerry Joseph had made to the former QB Reggie Neal. A quick look at the replay revealed that the ball had hopped up before it was caught by Neal. Rod Black quickly called it a one-hopper and the pair took this chance to tell us all about how Neal was a standout college QB. While TSN was airing multiple angle replays of the replay of the catch under review Black and Forde continued to babble. Neither offered the possibility that the ball might have bounced up off Neal's hands first which is why the replay took so long to be resolved. Black and Forde have very little chemistry together and I was shocked that neither offered this possibilty. The Argos ended up settling for a field goal. To me at least it looked like Joseph was having a problem making some throws, either off target or a little short.

Going into the 4th quarter the Argos trailed 26-24. The season premiere of Prison Break completed so I watched most of the 4th quarter, which is where things got interesting. The Argos took the lead 27-26 on Mike Vanderjagt's 4th field goal of the game.

The Argos went ahead 34-26, some big completions got them to first and goal inside the 10. Dominique Dorsey used his speed to turn what looked like a loss in the backfield into a decent gain setting up a 2nd and goal from the 2 yard line. 2 yards in the CFL is tricky, although you have the 1 yard gap between the offensive and defensive line, a 2 yard plunge is kind of risky. Fortunately for the Argos, the Ticats linebacker insisted on getting the officials attention to the fact that their sideline had thrown a challenge flag, challenging where Dorsey had stepped out of bounds on the previous play. Unfortunately for the Ticats they had already used their two challenges and trying to use a 3rd is a delay of game penalty and an automatic first down. The Argos set up first and goal from the 1. The Argos ran a nifty little piece of trickery and Brian Crawfords 1 yard run put them ahead.

The Ticats got the ball back and moved it downfield but settled for a field goal. With plenty of time left they kicked the ball back to the Argos. TSN showed the Pinball on the Argo sidelines and commented that he had been in the news recently, Pinball somewhat angrily turned to the camera man and told them to focus on the guys on the field "they're the stars". Deep in their own end Joseph threw a floater to Bethel Johnson. Badly underthrown the Hamilton DB jumped up and looked like he may have caught it, but when he hit the ground the ball popped free. On field the play was at first ruled an incompletion, but then it was ruled a catch. Now standing next to Stubler it looked like the Pinball was urging Stubler to throw the Challenge flag. Stubler did and the Argos won the challenge. Pinball received high fives all around from Argo people on the sidelines. It was an awkward moment, for someone trying to play down rumours of his desire to return to coaching it was almost like he was still in control of the team. Rather than giving the Ticats ball deep in Argos territory the Argos could now punt. Still pinned in deep the Argos opted to concede a safety. The Argos 'drunken idiot kicker' ran around the back of the endzone for a good 10 seconds before stepping out.

The Ticats got the ball back and moved it downfield before settling for a field goal with under 3 minutes remaining the score was now 34-31. After forcing the Argos to punt the Ticats were now faced with needing to drive the length of the field to win the game or kick a game tying field goal. In the final minute after a few completions and first downs the Ticats were still out of field goal range. On 2nd down and long Casey Printers completed to Jesse Lumsden who looked like he had plenty of space in the open field to pick up the first down instead he tried to juke out the smaller defender who did a great job at wrapping him up short of the first down. Lumsden lunged but much like Garret Hedlund in Friday night lights- or Kevin Dyson for the Titans in Superbowl 34 he was just short. Now facing 3rd down and a long 1, and being still out of Nick Setta's field goal range the Ticats were forced to go for the 3rd down conversion. Instead of handing the ball again to Lumsden or keeping the ball himself, Printers handed the ball off to Piercey the fullback as he attempted to go around the left side. Piercey was stopped short and the Argos took over on downs and proceeded to run out the clock for the win. The Ticat play call was curious in that it was not given to their star running back or QB. A similar play had worked earlier, perhaps hoping to catch the Argos off guard again or inspired by Crawford's TD run earlier, it seemed to go against all the principles of working class ticat football of just ramming it up in there.

Curiously the Ticats who had led the league in rushing seemed to abandon the running game in the latter half even when they had the lead and Lumsden was not used much down the stretch. It looked to me like he lacked the explosiveness he had earlier in the season. Perhaps the Argos 4 and 5 man fronts and recognition that Lumsden was not fully healed led to the change in strategy. Printers has to take some blame his completion numbers were not great, the Argos brought a lot of pressure the Ticats looked sharper under Richie Williams in their August victory. There will be lots of Hamilton fans calling for the firing of Charlie Taafe or the benching of Casey Printers.

The Argos who started 1-6 last season and went on to host the East final could certainly use this as inspiration for the remainder of their season. At 4-5 the Argos look to be in good shape in the East to at the very least host a 1st round playoff matchup, the last three times the Argos were involved in Eastern Finals the road team has been victorious so just peaking come October/November could be enough to put them back in contention for the Grey Cup.