November 8, 2017

Landry: REDBLACKS defence looks to mimic 2016’s playoff success

The Ottawa REDBLACKS will be trying to pull off a neat little trick this post-season, one that they managed nicely on the way to a Grey Cup championship in 2016.

They’ll try to turn a sub .500 regular season record into playoff gold.

Last year a strong defence, trending upwards at exactly the right time, was a big reason why the REDBLACKS held Ottawa’s first Grey Cup parade in 40 years. They’ll need to do it again in 2017 if a repeat is to be in the cards.

One problem – so many of the guys who were part of that defence are no longer with the team for one reason or another and a key holdover will miss the playoffs due to injury.

This is not the same group that so brilliantly colluded with quarterback Henry Burris and the offence to stymie the Calgary Stampeders’ hopes of capping a near-perfect season with a win on the final Sunday of the season.

Yes, Burris is gone, and having Trevor Harris make the first post-season start of his career is the main storyline of this Sunday’s Eastern Semi-Final, to be sure. However, there is another certainty at play here. In order for the REDBLACKS to be successful, they’ll need a repeat performance from defensive coordinator Mark Nelson’s crew. They need to mimic the splendid November the defence displayed a year ago.

Antoine Pruneau has taken his game to another level in 2017 and was nominated as the REDBLACKS Most Outstanding Defensive Player (Johany Jutras/CFL.ca)

“That was last year and this is this year,” says a gravelly-voiced Nelson over the phone, no doubt feeling the wear and tear of hours and hours of work as well as the effects of the colder weather that’s been set upon us.

He’s optimistic, but cautiously so.

“We have the kids here, that we can win it all,” he says. “Now, we gotta go do it.”

“The neat thing about this team this year, we played eighteen games. Fourteen of them were decided on the last drive or the last play of the game. So, we’ve been in the frying pan a bunch. And in the last three weeks, we were in the frying pan, knee-deep in grease, and we found a way to win.”

Finding a way to win is every football team’s mantra. For Nelson, it was mission accomplished a year ago and now he’s trying to do it again with a defence spearheaded by a trio of accomplished veterans surrounded by a large group of relative newcomers.

When you look at the REDBLACKS position chart for the 2016 Grey Cup game and then compare it to the chart for the team’s final regular season game of 2017, you see that many of the names have changed. There are eight starters that differ from last year’s post-season defensive crew.

Six of those spots are manned by first-year players, the other two by second-year vets and one of those, defensive end Jonathan Newsome, joined the club after the regular season had already started.

Nelson had work to do. Veteran stalwarts like defensive lineman Moton Hopkins and linebacker Damaso Munoz ended their careers after the Grey Cup win and defensive backfield stars Forrest Hightower, Abdul Kanneh and Mitchell White hit the free agency trail. The biggest loss, arguably, came with the recent news that Jerrell Gavins, perhaps the league’s most adaptable defensive back/linebacker, was lost for the season after suffering a knee injury during practice two weeks ago.

That one in particular stings.

“The last three or four games it was like the light had just shot on and he was playing unbelievable football,” says Nelson of Gavins, the 29-year-old veteran who would make any team’s defence better. “He was flying around making tackles, being in the right place at the right time. Anticipating. It was clicking.”

Once Gavins had moved up and into the weak side linebacker position last year, the Ottawa defence really started to hum. As good as he was in that spot, the REDBLACKS moved him back to the secondary in 2017, partly because he’s equally as good there. As well, they were facing a personnel crunch with the departures of Hightower, White and Kanneh.

“We have the kids that we can win it all. Now, we gotta do it.”

REDBLACKS defensive coordinator Mark Nelson

Sherrod Baltimore is one among several new faces contributing to Ottawa’s defence this season (Johany Jutras/CFL.ca)

With the loss of Gavins, it’s a good thing that Nelson has a core of other excellent veterans that he can rely on, depending on them to help coalesce the defence into one that is championship worthy. Veteran Zack Evans still anchors the defensive line, in his fourth season as a REDBLACK. Linebacker Taylor “Tank” Reed is money in the middle. He was, like Gavins, a big reason why the Ottawa defence stepped up in the late going a year ago, arriving mid-season as a free agent. Antoine Pruneau, the fourth-year vet, is having an all-star season at safety, He is the team’s nominee for Most Outstanding Defensive Player.

“He’s a football player,” says Nelson of Pruneau, then says it again with greater emphasis. “A football player. I love that kid.”

With 65 tackles, four interceptions and four knockdowns to his credit, Pruneau has gone from being a player who was benched part way through the 2016 season, to being one of the unit’s leaders in 2017. Nelson will count on him to use his deceptive speed this post-season, as well as his rock solid fundamentals.

“He’s an outstanding tackler,” says Nelson.

With three first-year players in the secondary, Pruneau and second-year corner Jonathan Rose are relied upon to provide leadership. Like Pruneau, Rose has stepped up, tallying 53 tackles and picking off two passes while forcing two fumbles. He ended the regular season among the league leaders in pass knockdowns with ten.

Halfbacks Winston Rose and Sherrod Baltimore, as well as corner Corey Tindal, are all rookies with big shoes to fill and the challenge of their first post-season ahead of them. Baltimore has emerged after an open tryout earned him a shot at training camp and he has impressed, being named Ottawa’s Rookie of the Year. “He’s a smart, very competitive young man,” says Nelson.

Reed is the main holdover in the linebacking corps, piling up 94 tackles and ranking seventh in the CFL in defensive plays made with 112.

“I think Tank has done a great job for us,” says Nelson. “He’s played hard all year.”

In 2016, Reed had Gavins lining up on one side of him and Munoz on the other. Munoz, the six-year veteran, had ten tackles in the Grey Cup game. Tough to replace. The REDBLACKS thought they had their man for the job in Khalil Bass when he was signed away from Winnipeg in free agency.

But Bass was demoted on the depth chart midway through the season and then granted his release back in September.

Now, second-year man Nick Taylor is largely responsible for the job Gavins did last season at WILL and Nelson has a couple of linebackers filling the spot that Munoz held down.

Serderius Bryant, a second-year man who rotated in during last year’s Grey Cup game, was originally the man who took Bass’ spot. However, rookie Kevin Brown has been impressive, Nelson says, and is seeing more and more time at the position. He was bumped up to the top of the depth chart for the REDBLACKS’ final game of the regular season.

“It wasn’t that he was playing bad,” says Nelson of Bryant. “It was just, to be honest with you, Brown was really playing good. It’s kind of a good problem to have. If a guy’s in there and he’s hot, we’re gonna just keep on playing him there.”

“We can play both those guys at WILL,” Nelson explains, adding that Bryant will jump in at middle linebacker every now and again to give Reed a break.

Veteran defensive lineman Zack Evans helped the REDBLACKS win the Grey Cup in 2016 (Johany Jutras/CFL.ca)

On the defensive line, Evans and Newsome provide the main veteran presence with a quartet of Canadians adding rotational depth. Tackle Jake Ceresna and end Avery Ellis are rookies, each staring down their first tango with the post-season. It’s a unit that is getting better and better, Nelson says, bolstered by the return of defensive line coach Leroy Blugh, who rejoined the team in late September after being sidelined for weeks with pneumonia.

“It was good to have Coach Blugh come back and kinda get those guys going,” Nelson says.

Is the REDBLACKS defence, once again, rising at precisely the correct time?

“They moved the ball quite a bit against us in Regina,” says Nelson of this weekend’s opponents, the Saskatchewan Roughriders. “But our kids did not give up.”

He’ll count on that again, on Sunday, when once again it is up to Nelson to scheme the schemes that will help the Ottawa defence hit its peak when it matters most. He’s done it before. Will it happen again?

“We may not have the biggest, fastest D line,” Nelson says, coyly. “We may not be the biggest, fastest linebackers or the fastest DBs. But this group, when we are locked in and loaded and ready to go, we can create some confusion and some havoc.”

“And that’s what I expect them to do.”