Three. Straight. Games.
The Edmonton Elks have now lost on a last-second field goal in back-to-back-to-back games, finding a new way to get there each week.
This time, it was the Ottawa Redblacks taking advantage with a 37-34 win. Here are my thoughts on the game.
Elks-plosion plays
Three Ottawa receivers — Dominique Rhymes, Justin Hardy, and rookie breakout Kalil Pimpleton — finished Sunday’s game with over 100 yards, including at least one catch of 66 yards or more. First-year starter Dru Brown had the fourth-best passing game in Ottawa team history, throwing for 480 yards.
A lot of that production came on explosion plays during which the receiver was wide open and had room to run as defensive players took questionable angles of pursuit. It’s safe to say Brown likes to play Edmonton as he put up 307 yards for Winnipeg during an infamous comeback in Week 10 last year. He has 780 total yards in seven quarters at Commonwealth Stadium so far in his career.
Head coach and general manager Chris Jones has talked about explosion plays all year, so I have taken the liberty to dub them “Elks-plosion” plays, being that the team so consistently provides them for the opposition.
The secondary struggled to keep Ottawa’s receivers in check whether in man coverage or zone, which they seemed to play most of the night, while Brown had a field day finding open targets. The worst breakdown came with just seven seconds left in the game as Brown found Pimpleton for 29 yards to set-up up the game-winning field goal.
“That’s called a cutter route,” Jones said. “We got beat by the cutter route for about 200 yards of offence. We got beat in man. We got beat in zone. Unfortunately, defensively we certainly didn’t show up today.”
It seemed the cutter route was used well against Darius Bratton and Loucheiz Purifoy as they seemed to be around a lot of those bigger open plays.
It didn’t help that there was very little pressure from the front seven, giving Brown the time to look downfield. The additions of Shawn Oakman and Derrick Moncrief seemed to help with stopping the run, but not much for added pressure in the Ottawa backfield.
Edmonton’s front seemed to pick it up in the fourth quarter but it was too little, too late. The team will look for a speedy recovery for Robert Nkemdiche, or the possible return of J-Min Pelly, to help with pushing the pocket.
The latest way to lose
It has to be a CFL record for one team to lose three games in a row to a walk-off field goal and Edmonton has found multiple ways to get there.
Two games ago against the Argonauts, the Elks couldn’t connect on two passes from their own five-yard line, which turned into a punt to their own 45-yard line, a 15-yard run by Ka’Deem Carey, and a 37-yard field goal from Lirim Hajrullahu.
The next game against B.C., it was a 13-yard pass from Vernon Adams Jr. to Ayden Eberhardt. Nyles Morgan got his hands in the facemask on the tackle, which moved the Lions into Edmonton territory. Two runs for another 10 yards later, Sean Whyte came in to continue his magic and kicked a 42-yard field goal to win.
This week was the same story but with a new twist. McLeod Bethel-Thompson made a beautiful pass to Eugene Lewis in the end zone with 40 seconds left, which was flagged for pass interference, giving Edmonton possession at the one-yard line with 34 seconds left.
Dakota Prukop was held up on his first two tries to score the game-tying touchdown, leaving a third and final attempt. Rather than running out the final 11 seconds to not leave any time for Ottawa to respond in regulation, Prukop left eight seconds when he punched the ball in off the left side.
After kicking the game-tying convert, Boris Bede, who missed a 31-yard field goal earlier in the quarter, inexplicably tried a low and long kick, drilling it out of bounds, giving Ottawa possession at their 50-yard line. Brown completed one pass to Pimpleton and Lewis Ward nailed a 38-yard field goal to seal the third straight walk-off loss for the Elks.
“Boris tried to over-kick the ball,” Jones said. “We wanted to try and kick it as deep as we could, try to kick it through the end zone and get the single point. He over-kicked it and gave them the ball at midfield, which gave them the opportunity to try and win the game.”
The little things like the clock management and poor kicking decisions are the type of execution mistakes that has cost Edmonton so many games the past few seasons.
Not all bad
Edmonton started the game reasonably well with touchdowns in both the first and second quarter. Hergy Mayala continued his bounce-back season with an excellent 39-yard grab for the second score, bringing his total to five touchdowns in five games, much more than anyone expected when Edmonton signed him in the off-season.
McLeod Bethel-Thompson threw for 272 yards, completing 74 percent of his passes. He added two touchdowns to bring his total to nine on the season and had no interceptions. Edmonton rushed for 86 yards, which is 25 yards above average their season average, and took only took seven penalties, most of which weren’t in critical moments.
The Elks also deserve some credit for rallying to find their way back late in the fourth quarter after trailing by 12 points.
“Certainly, you like the fact that they won’t quit,” Jones said. “It’s something you can be proud of but we create ways to not win games and we need to fix that.”
With yet another tough loss, however, it’ll be tough for fans to get excited about silver linings after this one.
Off the field, the Dino Day events at the stadium were great. Giving each player a dinosaur-related school in the introductions was funny. The baby dinosaur race, where toddlers raced in dino outifts, was cute. The cheerleaders did a whole routine in inflatable T-rex costumes and there was a T-rex combine at halftime, which was hilarious.
I like the themed games and Edmonton really leaned into this one.
Back where Geno belongs
Eugene Lewis led the green and gold in receiving yards, which is something I’ve long awaited to write in an article this year.
He had six catches on six targets for 89 yards and, with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, we were treated to a vintage Geno catch: a one-handed grab in between two defenders to generate a 34-yard gain.
“Me and (Bethel-Thompson) are really good,” said Lewis of their connection. “It’s just about getting the opportunities. I feel like some people need to realize for me, when they see people getting double covered, they kind X it out, but I feel as though I am an outlier. I’ve been double-teamed, I’ve been triple-teamed, even this year I have been. I need people to understand, just because you see a double team, that doesn’t mean it’s over for me.”
Lewis has long said that there are no 50/50 balls for him, just 90/10 for him to catch it. He proved that again on Sunday and I hope he continues to get the opportunities to show it.
The chants rained down
During the third and fourth quarter, many fans joined in the chants of “We want Ford” or “Let Tre play.”
I understand the frustration fans feel seeing Ford on the bench when the offence seems to not be clicking. The Canadian QB has accounted for five of the eight wins Jones has recorded during his current tenure in Edmonton with the club’s other starters over that span — Bethel-Thompson, Taylor Cornelius, and Nick Arbuckle — going a combined 3-24.
I’m simply not sure that Ford would make such an impact to turn these games around. He doesn’t play along the offensive line, which had Bethel-Thompson under a lot of pressure this game. He doesn’t play special teams or defence, both of which had huge issues against the Redblacks.
Bethel-Thompson has played respectably in every game. Not perfect, as I’m sure he would tell you, but well. Edmonton’s quarterbacking is not the main issue.
“You hear it,” Jones said of the fan chants. “They pay for the tickets to get in the games and it’s their prerogative. It doesn’t help. (McLeod) works very hard, is here without his family and he lives right over here and he’s in here until eight or nine at night, so it certainly doesn’t help.
“That’s just part of football. Tre is a good player and he’s our backup quarterback for a reason. The numbers tell us who to play. McLeod struggled for us early but came back and made some plays for us in the end.”
Back to back
These same two teams will meet in the nation’s capital next week as the Elks will have their shot at revenge. Now that Edmonton has demonstrated essentially every way to lose, maybe they’ll find a way to win.
