We’re reminded on every CFL broadcast that anything can happen in the final seconds of a CFL game and, on Sunday night in Edmonton, with the winless Elks facing the Ottawa Redblacks, this adage once again rang true.
Everyone in the Elks organization must have felt as though their luck had finally turned. From what initially looked like a dire situation, down seven points with just over two minutes remaining on the clock, McLeod Bethel-Thompson strung together what was at that point a nine-play, 68-yard drive, converting two third downs in the process.
After a pass interference penalty on Ottawa, the Elks had a first down on the Ottawa one-yard-line with 34 seconds left in the game. At worst, it appeared the Elks would send the game into overtime. Instead, in what would be Chris Jones’ final 34 seconds as Edmonton’s head coach and general manager, the Elks unraveled spectacularly, making catastrophic blunders on offence, defence, and special teams in an astonishing display that perfectly encapsulated the disastrous journey the club has been on for over three seasons.
Time management
My coaching rule: Once a team is in a first-and-goal situation on what will be their final drive of regulation time, the objective must shift from saving time to ensuring that, should there be a third down, it will be the final play of the game.
Edmonton’s mistake: They had an opportunity to let the clock run out, but left eight seconds.
The Edmonton Elks did a beautiful job managing the clock for the first nine plays of their final drive, but that all fell apart on their last three plays.
For whatever reason, teams always manage this correctly when setting up a game-winning field goal, but Edmonton isn’t the first team I’ve seen mismanage this situation when needing a touchdown. To be clear, I’m not saying teams shouldn’t try to score a touchdown on the first two plays — they absolutely should — but if those first two attempts fail, as they did for Edmonton, the third attempt must be snapped with zeros on the clock.
On first down, quarterback Dakota Prukop was stuffed trying to execute a quarterback sneak up the middle. This was a blessing in disguise for Edmonton as it kept the clock running. Where the Elks failed, knowing they’d be running another quarterback sneak, is their second down play should have been snapped with about seven seconds left. That way, if they scored a touchdown on second down, there would have been about three seconds remaining in the game for Ottawa and, if they didn’t, they could let the clock run right down to zero before snapping their final attempt.
One of my favourite rules in Canadian football is that as long as there is time remaining on the clock at the conclusion of a play, the ball must be snapped one more time, even if the clock winds down to zero in the process of setting up. That means there’s no reason to run out of bounds in this situation or hurry to get lined up.
Following that second down play, Edmonton rushed to the line, snapping the ball just three seconds into the play clock with 22 seconds remaining on the game clock. Then, on third down, instead of letting the clock fully run out, they snapped the ball four seconds into the play clock with 13 seconds remaining in the game. Prukop ran to the left and scored with eight seconds remaining for the Redblacks.
WITH SECONDS LEFT 🙀
Dakota Prukop plunges into the end zone and the convert ties the game!#CFLGameday on TSN & CBS SN
📲: Stream on CFL+ pic.twitter.com/t4v2BSOTeZ— CFL (@CFL) July 15, 2024
Go for the win
My coaching rule: If you coach scared, your players will play scared. When given the choice between going for the tie or the win, you should always go for the win. I guarantee the other team is praying you go for the tie.
Edmonton’s mistake: They went for the tie.
The Elks absolutely should have tried a two-point conversion after scoring the touchdown to make it 34-33 in favour of the Redblacks. I’m an old-school coach, so I instinctively hate everything about going for two here, but I’ve done it every single time in this exact situation, even in championship games, because all the evidence says your odds are much better of scoring on that one play than they are of winning in overtime.
And if you’re the Edmonton Elks, whose defence hasn’t been able to get off the field all season, you’d be far better off letting your surprisingly efficient offence try to win the game for you against one of the worst statistical defences in the CFL. To that end, both teams had already attempted a two-point conversion in this game and were successful. Additionally, kicker Boris Bede had missed a field goal attempt from a shorter distance than a single-point conversion just minutes ago.
Surely, Edmonton had a two-point play up their sleeve they’d been saving for just such an occasion. Surely, there was a special play on the play sheet just waiting to be called with Tre Ford involved in some way, even as a decoy motioning across the formation at full speed while Bethel-Thompson looked for red-hot Eugene Lewis in single coverage. There had to be, right? Right?
Bede instead drilled the extra point to tie the game 34-34 and, with eight seconds remaining, lined up to kick the ball back to Ottawa.
The kickoff
My coaching rule: If you ask an athlete to throw, kick, or hit a ball as far as they can, you’ll almost certainly be disappointed with the result.
Edmonton’s mistake: They told Boris Bede to kick the ball as hard as he could. They were disappointed with the result.
If you’ve ever tried to whale away on a tee shot or attempted an extremely long field goal in Madden, you know the consequences of overhitting. In trying to blast the ball with 100 percent of his power, Bede’s strike-point accuracy failed him.
Boris Bede’s kickoff corkscrewed left, bouncing at the 24 and again at the 16 before skidding out of bounds at the 13-yard-line. This resulted in an unforgivable penalty that set up Ottawa at their own 50. Worse still was that the clock didn’t move since no one touched the ball, leaving Ottawa enough time to run pretty much any play they wanted.
I initially thought Boris Bede was instructed to squib the kickoff, which, with only eight seconds left, wouldn’t have been a terrible idea as long as it was relatively deep and in the middle of the field. I don’t love squib kicks but, in this case, it would have left Ottawa with time for just one play from inside their own end, and they’d have taken a knee.
I later learned that Bede hadn’t been told to squib it, but rather to kick it as hard as he could in an attempt to score a game-winning rouge. This was a terrible idea. Boris Bede is the best kickoff artist in CFL history and I get that he had already notched a rouge earlier in the game, but there was zero chance of this happening here.
On the earlier rouge, DeVonte Dedmon allowed it to go over his head and willingly gave up the rouge. In this situation, knowing that a rouge would end the game, the Redblacks had both their returners extremely deep, anticipating a booming kick, and there’s no chance they’d have given up the single point. With the flags hanging limp at the top of the uprights, this was a bad plan.
The defence
My coaching rule: If the opposition needs a big play in a tie game, expect them to repeat a play that worked well for them earlier in the game. Conversely, if the opposition is trailing, look for misdirection of a play that has been working for them.
Edmonton’s mistake: Execution. They were perfectly set up for the play Ottawa ran.
In fairness to Edmonton’s defence, they shouldn’t have been in this situation. This game should have been over, in overtime, or at the very least, Ottawa should have been taking a knee at their own 32-yard-line to send it to overtime. Instead, Ottawa was at their own 50 with enough time to run two plays, or a play and a field goal attempt. Edmonton needed to hold Dru Brown to ten yards or less on this snap, which may sound simple enough, but he averaged 12.6 yards per pass attempt on Sunday night.
The advantage Edmonton had was they knew what was coming. There was one concept Ottawa had gone to again and again when they needed a big play and they went to it once more in this situation. Chris Jones called it a cutter route in his postgame interview, but that route was part of a larger concept Ottawa had been running. It combined a clear-out corner route from the slot receiver with a delayed post from the outside receiver. Without the delay, and with traditional spacing, this would simply have been a Scissor concept, but Ottawa was running this with their receivers stacked one in front of the other like a Snag concept variation I know as “shave.”
The Redblacks ran variations of this look seven times on the night and ran this exact half-field concept three times with Kalil Pimpleton trailing Justin Hardy. The ball went to Pimpleton all three times, once for 28 yards, once for 26 yards, and once for 29 yards. In this instance, they paired Shave with a China concept running on the trips side with Jaelon Acklin running a deep corner from the inside slot while Dominique Rhymes and Nick Mardner ran five-yard in-breaking routes.
The Elks had the perfect play called, rushing just three with both Hardy and Pimpleton in tight coverage and help overtop, but they couldn’t make a play. Pimpleton had Kai Gray and Nick Anderson draped all over him with Loucheiz Purifoy closing from the middle of the field. Dru Brown initially looked away from Pimpleton, which caused Purifoy to take a few steps in the opposite direction, then delivered a bullet that got to his receiver a split second before Purifoy did.
NO OVERTIME NEEDED.
With just two seconds remaining, a catch from rookie Kalil Pimpleton gives the Redblacks the opportunity to win it with a Field Goal.
AND THEY GET THE JOB DONE! #CFLGameday pic.twitter.com/9cHCg6XEV5
— TSN (@TSN_Sports) July 15, 2024
Such has been life for fans of the Edmonton Elks over the past few seasons, though it’s been especially concentrated this year. One can argue the Elks could be 5-0, having had a chance to win every single game this season. Hopefully, the changes that have been made in moving on from Chris Jones will serve to change the fortunes of the organization as well.
The Edmonton Elks (0-5) travel to the nation’s capital Friday night to take on the Ottawa Redblacks (3-2) in a rematch of yet another game Elks fans wish they could forget.
