Steve Milton: Hamilton Tiger-Cats Grey Cup win hopes just ran into a roadblock
They're professional athletes - play on, regardless" - so the Hamilton Tiger-Cats describe what looks to everyone else like a giant meteor crater as just another small pothole in the ragged road that has been their 2021 season.
Already facing the difficult task of trying to stop Andrew Harris, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers' punishing running back for the ages, the Tiger-Cats's job has become immeasurably harder.
Their veteran and stalwart defensive tackle, Ted Laurent has been lost for Sunday's 108th Grey Cup game to what head coach Orlondo Steinauer would only describe Friday as an illness" but has been reported as acute appendicitis.
The Ticats and Bombers don't have to finalize their final Grey Cup rosters until Saturday and Steinauer said, We're totally waiting on the reports. We're going to exhaust everything we can to let Teddy play, but we're prepared if he can't."
He can't. And that could be trouble for the hometown heroes. The talented Laurent, who often occupies two blockers on the opposing line, freeing up other Ticats to rush the quarterback and make tackles behind the line of scrimmage, was the pilot light of Hamilton's contain-Harris stove.
Harris owned the Tiger-Cats defence in the 2019 Grey Cup, running for 134 yards and a touchdown and accepting five Zach Collaros passes for another 30 yards. And in the West Final win over Saskatchewan last weekend, with his start in doubt because of injury, he brutalized the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Laurent's absence will also necessitate adjustments in the secondary in order to start another Canadian (safety Stavros Katsantonis) on defence to satisfy the league's Canadian/American ratio requirements. That in turn forces three other position shifts in the secondary, the same shuffling the Ticats had to do for much of their East final win over Toronto.
Collaros will be tempted to test the communications of that redesigned secondary. Although probably not as much as he's tempted to test how Lee Autry, a first-year Ticat, fares as Laurent's replacement against the best offensive line in the league and the future Hall of Famer who runs the ball behind its massive wall.
They have a high-power run offence," says Ticats' middle linebacker Jovan Santos-Knox, who's going to be a busy man. They have a very good offensive line and they're very disciplined. I know Andrew from playing with him and I know his competitive nature. We're excited for the challenge."
The Ticat defence led the CFL in restraining the rush and have been dominant for most portions of the past couple of months. But they have shown a disturbing tendency recently to allow long possession marches by the opposition in the first quarter before settling into mostly-impenetrable mode. Winnipeg, the league scoring leader, tends not to go easy on such lapses.
The Ticats defence is tough, especially up front with Dylan Wynn at tackle, Julian Howsare at one end and Ja'Gared Davis playing by far his best football of the year at the other. He's made four sacks in the two post-season games against Montreal and Toronto, tipped passes and executed some timely stops against good running backs. With Laurent out, he'll need to bring all of that, and probably more, against Harris and Collaros. Wynn, who's as aggressive as it gets, says Autry can hold his own and feels confident playing beside him. Expect linebackers Santos-Knox and Simoni Lawrence to keep Harris on their radar to help out the defensive front.
If a football team wants to run keep running the ball, like Montreal did, they're going to get yards, you're not going to stop that," said Steinauer. It's when do they get those runs, how is the game set up at the time? There are a lot of other factors, but I'd say if you don't stop the run, it's hard to stop the pass. They've been very effective all year and we'll have our hands full."
With an important pair of those hands missing. That doesn't mean the Ticats can't, or won't, win their first Grey Cup in 20 years, it just makes it much harder.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com