Steve Milton: Ticats put the ‘W’ in ‘Phew’ in win over Alouettes
They always downplay it, but, for at least a week, every football team is defined and judged by its most recent performance.
So there's a big difference - as great as the distance from L to W - between ripping a game-plan checklist into angry little bits and happily checking off a majority of its boxes.
Check, check, check and just like that the Hamilton Tiger-Cats are no longer winless.
When they deservedly defeated the Montreal Alouettes 27-10 in Montreal Friday night the Ticats accomplished what they could not in Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, albeit against a more self-destructive opponent than either the Blue Bombers or Roughriders.
Like the Als, the Ticats have had only one win in three games, but you get the distinct impression that both teams would rather be wearing Hamilton's shoes. Now Labour Day, the first home game in 22 months, no longer looks like a faint light at the end of a very long tunnel.
As the blueprint dictated, but wasn't followed, in the previous two games, the Ticats limited the damage of a creatively scrambling quarterback, in this case Vernon Adams Jr.; muzzled a punishing running back (William Stanback with only 40 yards on 12 carries); didn't commit any turnovers; won nearly every jump ball in the secondary; came up with defensive plays on key second downs; put together some solid rushing of their own, and found a new receiving threat in 6-foot-3 Steven Dunbar, who was cut in training camp but returned to catch six Dane Evans passes for 95 yards and the game-opening touchdown.
True, there's still a plethora of things to attack when the Ticats get back to work preparing for a home-and-home with the Toronto Argonauts over a five-day span that kicks off with the Labour Day Classic. Notably, Evans was sacked six times and the offensive play execution, or design, isn't freeing up Brandon Banks nearly enough.
But this was a significant step forward, especially with five potential starters out of the lineup, with positives in all three phases of the game.
We played complementary football," said Evans, who went 15-for-22 for a conservative 183 yards and threw touchdown passes to Dunbar and sophomore tight end Nikola Kalinic.
They also played complimentary football, the compliments going to Frankie Williams, the reigning CFL special teams player of the year, who was pretty special on this night.
Hamilton's shortcomings in their first two games included a lack of big plays, chronically sad-sack field position and having many of their leading lights injured or much less effective than in 2019. Then up stepped Williams.
On three plays, totalling 155 yards in the right direction, Williams provided the field position that inarguably led to 17 game-deciding points.
He ran the opening kickoff 49 yards and into the opposition's side of the field. Three plays later, Evans tossed a perfect arc 30 yards into Dunbar's hands just inside the sideline and just inside the end zone. Halfway through the first quarter, Williams' 67-yard punt return to the red zone resulted in Michael Domagala's short field goal and a 10-0 jump start.
Early in the fourth quarter, his 39-yard interception return, the Ticats' first pick of the season, as the Alouettes appeared to be wrenching the game in their favour, led directly to Evans' short toss to Kalinic and the 20-10 lead that visibly drained the Als' spirit.
If we have a short porch," Evans said in basic footballese, we know we can get points. When he busts those big runs and we have the short fields, he's pumping us up as he's coming off the field and we're going on."
Steinauer said Williams' play speaks for itself. I couldn't do it justice," but also pointed out, as did Evans and Williams himself, that there were a lot of good, and clean, blocks in front of Williams on his returns.
It was a triumphant return to his hometown for Montreal native Sean Thomas Erlington who, in the game's dying moments, carried the ball three straight times, including a dynamic hurdling of a would-be tackler, for 40 yards and a five-yard touchdown. He rushed for 73 yards overall while big newcomer Wes Hills added another hard-scrabble 20 yards on four tries.
The last time Thomas Erlington was on the field at Molson Stadium, in the fourth game of the 2019 season, he was quickly carried off it with the knee injury which kept him out of action until this season.
To get that (no-win) monkey off our backs feels pretty amazing," he said.
And Ticat Nation nods in agreement. They know you can't spell Phew!' without the W.
Steve Milton is a Hamilton-based sports columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: smilton@thespec.com