Landry: How can the Argos slow down Andrew Harris?

Don Landry

CFL.ca

@CFLLandry

That rollicking, hell-bent for leather roadshow known as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ running game rolls into Toronto this weekend, looking to continue the early season dominance that has pushed the Bombers offence to the top of the rushing charts.

“It’s fun to watch,” said Winnipeg head coach Mike O’Shea, wryly smiling – at times – while he was being asked about his team’s abilities to bulldoze the opposition in 2018. A lot of the rest of the time, during his mid-week media conference, O’Shea looked less than pleased, his usually displayed discomfort at the podium, no doubt, made more acute by his team’s miserable, come from ahead loss in Vancouver last weekend.

But that’s a story for someone else to write.

This is a story about a battering ram named Andrew Harris, and the guys on the other side of the ball who will to to derail his express, despite absences in their defensive corps, this Saturday afternoon in Toronto.

Winnipeg is well ahead of the CFL pack when it comes to rushing, averaging a knee-buckling 171 yards per game on the ground so far, almost 30 full yards per game ahead of the second place rushers, the Calgary Stampeders. At 6.7 yards per carry, Winnipeg’s offence is beating a path to the end zone, where they lead the league in touchdowns scored, with nine overland majors.

It will not surprise you to hear that the Blue Bombers lead the CFL in rush attempts, with 128. When things are going that well, why wouldn’t you keep it up?

Therein lie the reasons that the Toronto Argonauts – struggling at 1-3 and searching for a forward lurch that could give them some momentum – must be expecting a running game invasion from the visitors this weekend. The Argos may have designs on trying to force their own ground game on those visitors – with James Wilder Jr. dashing for daylight – and if they are successful, we could be in for a marquee running back battle.

For the purposes of this story, however, let’s focus on the Argos’ D trying to be the immovable object against Winnipeg’s unstoppable force.

“When it comes right down to it, our guys like pushing people,” said O’Shea in delightfully bare bones fashion, when asked to sum up the reasons his club is enjoying prosperity in the run game. “And our tailback likes breaking tackles and enjoys gettin’ the ball. Add it all up and we’ve had some success on the ground for sure.”

Andrew Harris, the 31-year-old Swiss army knife running back, is enjoying a superb start to his season, his first five games putting him on pace for a total of more than 1,600 yards rushing, which would surpass his previous best by 500 yards. He’s rushed for over 100 in each of his last two games, with an average of just shy of 10 yards per carry in those two contests.

Harris and the Blue Bombers are, to echo O’Shea’s words, pushing people around.

Coming off the sting of Saturday night’s bitter loss to the BC Lions – and the admission of offensive coordinator Paul LaPolice that there was regret over not using Harris more in some key situations – you would expect the Blue Bombers to get back to the basics of Harris left, Harris right and Harris up the middle, with some Harris out in the flat mixed in for good, tendency-breaking measure.

Enter the Toronto Argonauts’ defence, the men who will try to do what is uncommon but not impossible; slow Andrew Harris and the Winnipeg ground game down.

“They go as far as he goes,” said Toronto linebacker Marcus Ball, when asked about the Harris factor. “He’s obviously the leader of their group.”

“He poses, probably, the biggest challenge yet so far.”

“The kid does it all. He’s fast, he’s physical, he runs, he cuts, he blocks. He checks off every box in the book.”

Marcus Ball on opposing running back Andrew Harris

Marcus Ball and the Argos know the Bombers’ ground game will be a handful (Adam Gagnon/CFL.ca)

The Argos’ defence has been dealing with newness and injury disrturbance through the early part of the 2018 season, but it has been looking incrementally better in the two weeks since being rifled by the Calgary Stampeders back in Week 2. In consecutive games against the Edmonton Eskimos, they held running back C.J. Gable to 39 yards and then 51 yards, though they were taken advantage of by an opportune quarterback, when Mike Reilly scampered for 55 yards in last week’s win at Commonwealth.

“There’s definitely room for improvement,” said Toronto’s dominating defensive tackle, Cleyon Laing. “We’ve had some injuries along the way but guys have really stepped up and adapted to the roles that they need to play.”

Now, about those injuries.

During the winter, the Argos signed free agent middle linebacker Taylor Reed, soon after they’d re-signed their own middle man, Bear Woods. They also re-signed Khalil Bass and kept Terrance Plummer and Akeem Jordan on the roster. The question was asked: How many middle linebackers does one team need?

All of them, it turns out, as each and every one of those potential middle linebackers (outside of Bass, who was released) was on the injured list last week when Justin Tuggle, primarily a rush end who drops back into pass coverage now and then, was pressed into action at Mike.

“That many changes, it affects the chemistry of a defence,” said Laing. “The middle linebacker, you kind of look at that as a bit of a foundation of the defence. Yeah, to get used to different players has been a challenge but at the same time, I have to give full credit to the players that have stepped up. I think they’ve done an amazing job with what they’ve been asked to do.”

While LaPolice uses Harris in a variety of ways in the offence he schemes for the Bombers, you could easily conclude that he might try to take advantage of the middle against Toronto, partly because of the lack of consistency at linebacker, but also because Laing’s partner in the interior of the Argos’ defensive line, Dylan Wynn, will miss this affair after being suspended for a spear on Gable during the late stages of last Saturday’s game in Edmonton.

Laing and Wynn have been a formidable pair for Toronto dating back to Wynn’s impressive emergence as a rookie last season.

Could the Argonauts be susceptible through the middle?

“Dylan Wynn is a baller,” said Laing, when asked that question. “He’s an All-Star. Yeah, we’ve had great chemistry so far this season. But, at the same time, it’s a great opportunity for Ken Bishop, who was a starter last year and was kinda held back through some injuries, to come back and step up and show what he has. He has great talent, he’s a great player.

If the Bombers believe they can take advantage of Bishop being in for Wynn, Laing has a message for them.

“If that’s what they’re expecting, they’re expecting wrong,” he said.

Not that Laing doesn’t know that he and the Argos have their work cut out for them.

Of Harris, he says “he has the respect of pretty much every player across the league.” Of the beef up front, he says “it’s a pretty physical offensive line. They work pretty well together.”

“They” are: Stanley Bryant, Patrick Neufeld, Matthias Goossen, Sukh Chungh and Jermarcus Hardrick. They’re the guys that O’Shea says like to push people around and they do it as well or better than any unit in the CFL.

That showed again last week when receiver Nic Demski was used effectively as a runner out of the backfield, giving the Bombers yet another way to take pressure of Harris if they line him up as a receiver instead of a back, with teams needing to continue to respect the run.

Speaking of that, Winnipeg got good news this week, when running back Timothy Flanders came off the injured list and began practicing, although whether he’ll be in the line-up against Toronto seems uncertain.

Harris will be there, with the Argos’ defence trying to put the clamps on him, they way they did in a win last October (9 rushes for 32 yards).

It’s not impossible. The Ticats locked him down pretty good during Week 3 (66 yards) and the Alouettes even better the week previous (58), except that they couldn’t also stop Harris from catching passes (6 for 68, 1 TD).

“The kid does it all,” said Ball, sizing up the challenge of trying to put the kibosh on one of the CFL’s best players. “He’s fast, he’s physical, he runs, he cuts, he blocks. He checks off every box in the book.”

Ball then cautioned against getting too carried away, too focused on one guy. “They have a lot of guys outside of 33. The list goes on and on and on.”

For his part, O’Shea will enjoy the show, provided things go as planned. He summed up the reasons why Winnipeg’s ground game is the toast of the league so far in 2018.

“Commitment to it,” he said. “The players, the way they believe in it and how hard they work at it. And then the talent we have. Our O-line is very good.”

“And Andrew Harris might be pretty good,” said O’Shea, as a smile crept onto his face.

On track for a sensational season of carving trails, you can rely on the Blue Bombers to run at the Argos this weekend, with Andrew Harris as the usual focal point.

Toronto’s improving but absentee-weakened defence is hoping to be up to the task when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers try pushing them around.

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