August 10, 2018

O’Leary: Win vs. Esks puts Lions in conversation in the West

Johany Jutras/CFL.ca

Travis Lulay stood in the middle of the BC Lions’ locker room and told the men around him that this is what a team win feels like.

While the Lions handed out game balls and celebrated their 31-23 win over the Edmonton Eskimos, they could have very easily slipped out of the room and stuck a note to the front door.

The West is now a five-team race.

With their win over the Esks, the Lions are out of the cellar, matching Saskatchewan’s 3-4 record and climbing above them in the standings. Winning against a Grey Cup contending team like Edmonton should give the Lions all the confidence they need to keep things moving for them.

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“I feel like this is going to be the start of something great for us,” BC defensive back Garry Peters said on the field after the game, still huffing and puffing after he’d pulled in the win-preserving end zone interception on Mike Reilly with under 10 seconds to play.

“We needed this, especially for a top team in our division,” he said. “To get a win at home, to be undefeated at home feels amazing.”

For the first third of this season, the Lions had been an afterthought while the teams above them in the standings — Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg — all have had their names thrown about as contenders. Their impressive takedown of second-place Edmonton — a game no one here thought they could win — is the kind of win that can fuel a team.

“I think all week long the thing we talked about was there’s an urgency not a panic,” Lions coach Wally Buono said.

“It’s up to us what we do from here but you would hope you would look back at this date and say this is where we start to get it going,” Lulay told 3DownNation’s Lowell Ullrich.

“It wasn’t the cleanest game, but a real gritty effort. An all-around team win; exactly what this team needed.”

In the locker room, Lulay dove in on the complete effort his team gave. How he turned the ball over and the defence went out and got it back for them. How when the offence was slow in the first half, Chris Rainey and special teams got them a touchdown. How his offensive line stepped up in the second half and how Travon Van, filling in for Jeremiah Johnson at running back, got them the go-ahead touchdown early in the fourth quarter.

The Lions still have major steps to take. They’re 3-0 at home, beating Montreal, Winnipeg and now Edmonton, but they’re 0-4 on the road. They’re in Toronto next week and will face a desperate Argos team that’s trying to right the many wrongs that riddled the first third of their season. But BC is headed in the right direction, hanging around when few thought they would this season. The players counting out their points scored, dancing and cheering in their locker room showed just how big their Thursday night win was and what could be in front of them over the next 12 games. The toughest division in the league just got tougher.