Ticats suffer second-worst defeat in franchise history

Poop emoji.

With common words unable to accurately express the Hamilton Tiger-Cats performance against the Calgary Stampeders on Saturday night, a piece of smiling brown fecal matter can only hope to do it justice.

The Ticats lost 60-1, the second-worst defeat in franchise history and the third-worst in CFL history. The only game on the ledger with a larger margin of defeat for Hamilton: a 82-14 loss to Montreal in 1956.

It was truly a team effort of awfulness. Quarterback Zach Collaros completed just 14 of his 21 passes for 102 yards before being replaced by Jeremiah Masoli in the third quarter. Collaros also threw a pick six.

Meanwhile, Calgary quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell played only the first 30 minutes as the Stamps built a 39-1 lead. Running back Jerome Messam ran for 91 yards and scored three touchdowns. The Ticats gave up touchdowns on the first three drives of the second half and the Stamps put in their third-string quarterback in the game with over nine minutes to go.

Special teams? They gave up a punt return touchdown to Roy Finch, back in the first quarter when the game was actually still kinda close. Punter Sergio Castillo got blown up on an attempted fake – it went incomplete – and shanked a 21 yarder in the third quarter. Maybe he was tired: he punted 10 times.

The Ticats also committed six penalties for 52 yards, a couple of them of the utterly inexcusable variety.

A silver lining? Hamilton won the coin toss. And we’re done.

With the loss, the Ticats fall to 0-5 with a date with the undefeated Edmonton Eskimos coming up next week.

Double poop emoji.