The B.C. Lions’ loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats this past weekend will likely have season-altering ramifications for multiple teams.
After a pedantic start to the game, it’s unfortunate that such a highly entertaining finish occurred after half the CFL-watching audience had presumably gone to bed. The final few minutes were as exciting and event-filled as we’ve seen since the circus ending to the Saskatchewan-Ottawa tie at TD Place back in early August. There’s so much to unpack from this game that we’re probably not talking enough about any single element.
I’d love to go through the hot start B.C.’s defence got off to, shutting out Hamilton in the first half while keeping Bo Levi Mitchell to 22 net passing yards, sacking him twice, and intercepting him once. I’d also find it interesting to break down why the Lions were unable to run away with the game. They built up a 16-0 first-half lead but at halftime, there must have been an uneasy feeling at B.C. Place given how thoroughly the Lions dominated what was still a two-score game.
Mitchell’s Lazarus-like comeback that saw him rise from the proverbial dead and post an adjusted completion percentage of 100 percent over his last 30 passes also deserves to be studied, as does B.C.’s offensive collapse which, when paired together, led to the Tiger-Cats outscoring the home side 24-6 in the second half and overtime.
For this article, however, I want to focus on the brilliance of B.C.’s final drive of regulation until their last three plays, during which two completed passes and a field goal were all mistakes that contributed to the Lions’ loss.
Allow me to reset the scene. Up 16 points at the half and up 15 points at the start of the fourth quarter, the B.C. Lions suddenly found themselves trailing 26-23 with 1:01 remaining in regulation time and a timeout in their pocket. Marc Liegghio’s kickoff came down a bit short at the 19-yard line where it was caught by Terry Williams, who took it straight up the right sideline to the B.C. 48 with 55 seconds left to play. This was a huge break for the Lions and likely set in motion a shift in strategy.
On my own 20-yard line, my priority as a coach would have been to set up the game-tying field goal. I wouldn’t have felt great about going into overtime given how the two teams looked in the fourth quarter, but that would have been the reality of the situation. With the ball out to the 48-yard line, however, my priority would have instead been to score the game-winning touchdown, and I suspect that’s how head coach Rick Campbell saw it, too.
Against a three-man rush, with coverage backed well off and all eligible receivers other than Stanley Berryhill running short routes, Nathan Rourke took his time before dishing a ball to Jevon Cottoy for an easy first down on a 12-yard play. Hamilton’s Ray Wilborn went down with an injury just before the next play began, allowing the Lions to think carefully about their next few plays and get lined up correctly with the clock temporarily stopped.
In the CFL, once in stopped time with under three minutes remaining, teams aren’t charged a timeout for injuries since the clock stops after every play anyway, but it starts rolling once the play is blown in. I can’t stress how important it is in these clock-management situations to snap the ball as soon as humanly possible. Every second matters.
When coaching, I like to have my players fully ready for the snap before the whistle is blown, and I use the whistle as the mechanism by which the quarterback starts his cadence and the receivers begin their waggle. At most, three seconds are lost before the snap using this method, and that’s essentially what the Lions did.
Against another three-man rush with tighter coverage across the board than on the previous play, Rourke’s first-down pass fell incomplete, stopping the clock with 41 seconds remaining. On second down, the Tiger-Cats sent a delayed blitz from well off the ball and, with only three men engaging on the snap, Rourke had time to wait for Keon Hatcher to come across the field for a 23-yard gain down to the 27-yard-line with 34 seconds left.
Keon Hatcher keeps this game MOVING!#CFLGameDay@TSN_Sports
📷: Stream on CFL+ pic.twitter.com/v3rU93cOOe— CFL (@CFL) September 28, 2024
This is where the Lions used their last timeout. I’m sure the thought behind calling the timeout here was that they were now in field goal range, so they wanted to regroup and be sure of how they’d attack the end zone over the remaining 34 seconds. This approach goes against my own philosophy, but I have no problem with it.
For me, timeouts are too valuable to use in this situation. On a drive like this, I believe that last timeout should only have been used because a clock stoppage was critical, or because it was a third-down play that needed to be talked through. On this occasion, the sticks had to be run downfield and reset, so there was plenty of time to get set before the play was blown in. Jordan Maksymic and the offensive staff will have had a collection of critical situation plays on their call sheet to choose from and are too good not to have had a play ready to go, so at most, four seconds would have come off the clock.
The play they called was a gorgeous one, with a classic smash concept variation (stop route from the outside receiver and a corner route from the inside receiver) to the boundary side. Hamilton sent an all-out blitz and, in cover zero, Keon Hatcher drew rookie Destin Talbert — who actually had a good game — but that’s a matchup you’ll gladly take in this situation. Smash is a zone-beater, but against man coverage a corner route is a winner, so Hatcher broke it fat and Rourke led him beautifully to the sideline, stopping the clock after a 15-yard gain.
With the ball on the Hamilton 12-yard-line, B.C. had a first down with 28 seconds left. This was a beautifully coached and quarterbacked drive up to this point. The only small issue I had was the timeout, but at least I understand it. I didn’t like or understand what happened next.
B.C.’s first down play was a six-yard pass, which served absolutely no purpose. This wasn’t Rourke checking the ball down, either — five of the six Lions receivers had routes of seven yards or less, with one receiver tagged on a go route. It wasn’t first-and-goal here, but on the 12-yard-line with very little time remaining and no time-outs, it essentially was. Any pass short of the goal line in this situation was pointless.
The play that followed was worse. Facing a second down from the six-yard-line with 18 seconds left on a running clock, B.C. should have been prepared to take their two best shots into the end zone. In the CFL, it’s extremely difficult to stop an outstanding quarterback on consecutive plays from the six-yard line. There’s just so much space to cover, both laterally and into the end zone — over five thousand square feet of real estate.
Instead, the Lions completed a two-yard pass to Stanley Berryhill III. This was a designed pick play with Berryhill cutting inside immediately out of his stance while Jevon Cottoy, who never even looked at the quarterback, had an out route that crossed in front of Berryhill’s coverage. These last two passes were both complete, but they achieved nothing more than taking a knee would have. They should both have been shots into the end zone.
Facing third-and-two from the Hamilton four-yard-line with six seconds remaining and time about to be blown in, the Lions opted to kick a field goal. I strongly believe this was the wrong decision, even though I completely understand why Rick Campbell elected to kick.
Over the past 20-plus years, I’ve been in this exact situation three times that I can recall and I kicked for the tie each time, so it’s pretty rich for me to question him doing the same. With that said, I didn’t have Nathan Rourke at quarterback and I wasn’t going up against this absurd version of Bo Levi Mitchell whose last 30 passes were on the money and who was coming off back-to-back touchdown drives.
This was a situation in which the Lions staff needed to put trust in the man they made the league’s highest-paid player and keep the ball out of the hands of the front-runner for M.O.P. Kicking for the tie did the opposite and Mitchell led the Tiger-Cats to a third-straight touchdown drive and the overtime win.
