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Comeback the turning point in Edmonton?
Courtesy Edmonton Journal:
Jason Maas stood in a victorious visitors’ locker-room, buttoning up his crisp shirt.
Not having played a second of the game, he still had this look of tremendous satisfaction on his face.
Why not, really? The backup quarterback had just witnessed as wild a comeback as he admittedly has ever seen as the Edmonton Eskimos rallied from a 22-0 deficit for a 38-33 win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Regina on Saturday.
“Unbelievable character,” said Maas, who is his 10th season in the Canadian Football League and eighth with the Eskimos.
“It was an incredible gut check and it had everything in that game.”
Down three scores early in the second quarter, the Esks staged a tremendous, unexpected rally, considering their struggles early in the year.
“It’s almost better to win a game like that than blow a team out, because it shows you the kind of character we have in this room,” Maas said. “That was the hottest day I ever played in Canada and for us to watch the guys on the field not give up, battle hard and overcome a 22-point deficit is tremendous.
“I think we all felt we have a pretty good team in here, we just haven’t shown it for 60 minutes. Maybe we only showed it (Saturday) for just 48, but it was a great 48 if you ask me.”
More like 40, but who is going to quibble, especially with Maas.
“I like the way the outcome came. I think this could be one of the defining moments of our football season. It’s a good starting point,” said head coach Richie Hall.
“Things couldn’t get any worse.
“We stink out the joint two weeks in a row. We fall behind by 20-something points, but they still remain confident and to me that’s so important.”
It was critical that the result ended that way for the now 2-2 Eskimos, especially with the 4-0 Montreal Alouettes here on Thursday.
It didn’t start out so well on Saturday, which obviously cast some doubt.
“It was hard not to think, ‘Here we go again,’ because it’s happened to us a lot in Saskatchewan. It was early in the game,” admitted Maas.
“Our whole belief going into this game was we needed to play each play. Those plays being done, we had to carry on. Coach (Richie) Hall talked about it all week, ‘Just play each play.’ That’s what we did for the rest of the game and we came out on top.”
There was a sense of urgency, but no sense of panic and the coaching staff relayed that message onto the players. They stuck with the game plan, despite being down.
“The run game was huge, we also didn’t force things downfield this game,” said Maas, who always has a strong perspective on what’s going on with the team.
“We took what they gave us. We were very productive on first down, which got us to a lot of second-and-mediums and second-and-shorts, which opens up the entire playbook at that point.
“The O-line did a hell of a job up front with protection. There weren’t a lot of free guys coming at Ricky, so he could make decisions back there, our running backs did a great job in blocking and our receivers made plays. Nothing was downfield, but everything that was underneath they made plays on.”
Now those positives need to carry over into a tough test against Montreal on Thursday. For 60 minutes.
“It was huge, especially the way we lost the last two games–being close, then just throwing our hat in the ring at the end,” Esks kicker Noel Prefontaine said of battling back.
“For us to be down so much, so early, we had every opportunity to make excuses and say, ‘Here we go again.’ We didn’t do that, we tried to stay even keel regardless of what the score was or where it was in the game. Just make sure we do our job and I think you saw a lot of guys doing their job on the field.”
