August 30, 2018

Landry: Identity at stake for Argos, Ticats on Labour Day

It’s potentially the best of times. It’s potentially the worst, too.

For both the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts, a Mark’s Labour Day Weekend showdown usually comes complete with plenty of drama, no matter the teams’ respective stations in the standings. That’s the nature of the Labour Day game: Big crowd, lots of emotion and no shortage of backers on each side who proclaim that they don’t care what else happens during the season, so long as they do not lose this particular game (Always found that proclamation to be curious and a bit disingenuous, actually. Would you really trade a Grey Cup win in November for a win in September?)

This time around, the Ticats/Argos clash at Tim Hortons Field will carry a whole lot more than just bragging rights for the mid-season classic. It – along with the second game in a home and home set in Toronto the following Saturday – can harden the fortunes of each of these teams, particularly if Toronto loses them both.


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For the defending champions, who have only occasionally looked the part so far in 2018, a split in these two games is imperative.

A sweep by Hamilton would mean the Argos would fall to six points of the pace of the Ticats – who would then also hold the tie-breaker by virtue of taking two of the three regular season meetings on the schedule – and realistically out of contention for second place in the East.

In a year when the probability of a West crossover looms as a real possibility, that could spell doom for the Argos as far as a shot at the post-season goes. You could always, I suppose, hope for a standings spiral for a couple of the West Division teams to keep a third place berth in the East alive, but is that really something you’d want to count on?

A sweep by the Argos wouldn’t be nearly so devastating for the Ticats, standings-wise, but it would subject them to a great deal of self-doubt at a time when they’re expected to finally put together a string of seriously impressive outings. For them, it is high time to fulfill the promise of what so optimistically was put in place last year at this juncture, when Head Coach June Jones took over the controls of a lost franchise, steering them to a 6-4 finish after an 0-8 start.

The Ticats are 10-9 under Jones a year into his leadership and if the promise is to be met, they need to start putting more space between themselves and the .500 level. It’s go time for them. Right now.

Impressive offensive numbers accompanied Hamilton’s 2017 spurt and many of those characteristics have carried over into 2018, even if the Ticats have found their production to be cold comfort too many times this season, struggling to a record of 4-5.

The Ticats lead the CFL in offensive output, at 420 yards per game, gobbling up vast swaths of yardage on the way down the field, time and again. But with quarterback Jeremiah Masoli throwing only nine touchdown passes in comparison to 10 interceptions, finishing things off has been problematic, especially recently, with Hamilton’s red zone production becoming a thing of concern (There were no such problems earlier in the season, and Hamilton’s productivity inside the opponent’s 20-yard line remains, overall, a reasonable 60 per cent, and that stands fourth in the CFL. As well, they are the only team that has not committed a turnover inside their opponent’s 20).

The importance of this Labour Day game, for Hamilton, lies in what they call “consolidating a break” in the game of tennis. Winning the game is nice if you do it while your opponent is serving. It means nothing, however, if you give up the next game while you, yourself, are serving.

And that is where the Ticats are at this point. A gutsy, gritty, come-from-behind win over the Edmonton Eskimos needs to be consolidated with a confident-looking victory over their hated rivals, a team that just so happens to have been struggling for most of the season. If that win over Edmonton is to become the jumping off point of a team about to roll, it cannot be wasted with a dud on Monday.

For the Argos, the light that began filtering through following wins over Ottawa and BC became dimmed once again with last week’s loss in Montreal. That was a game they were supposed to win and needed to win in order to consolidate their own break.

Had they done so, this game and its follow-up would have looked big at any rate. As it stands now, they are huge as a win in one of them would keep Toronto within striking distance of Hamilton, two points in arrears with the tie-breaker coming, in Toronto, on Oct. 12.

If the Argonauts are searching for a positive identity – and it appears as if they’re in need of that – these games provide them with outstanding opportunities in which to construct it. Do they have the materials?

They have no wiggle room here, no comfort. Might as well be playoff games for them so they can conduct themselves accordingly.

It will be, on paper, a big task for Toronto.

The Argos’ defence, at or near the bottom of the CFL in a number of categories (8th in passing yards per game given up at 299, last in sacks with 12, last in takeaways with 15) is in need of a bold step forward.

So what we have here is a defence that has struggled against an offence that has had a propensity to dry up at inopportune times. One of these units is about to get precisely what it needs to cure its ailments and that is a very intriguing undercurrent leading into these two games.

Offensively, the Argos have struggled in moving the ball downfield through the air and you wouldn’t expect that to get a lot better for them in this game, what with the Ticats being ranked number one in the league in pass defence, and with big play, field-stretching wildcard receiver Duron Carter not slated to suit up for the Argonauts in either of these games, according to Head Coach Marc Trestman.

 

If you’re wondering why the Argos could fancy themselves as winners based on the numbers, there is a little something that plays into their favour and that is the fact that the Hamilton defence ranks dead last in the Canadian Football League in rushing yards given up per game (126.6).

You would expect that Ticats’ defence to get a steady dose of James Wilder Jr., whose skills make him a candidate to potentially take over a game’s pulse when given the chance. If he’s a star, the Argos could win.

Desperation is a subjective, malleable concept but it is an applicable one for both of these teams going into Labour Day.

The Hamilton Ticats are desperate to do something they were supposed to do from the starting gun in 2018 and that is win more than they lose on the way to serious contender’s status. It’s what they promised after last fall’s sprint to the finish and it is what they have not delivered consistently.

The Toronto Argonauts are desperate in another way. They started the 2018 season with expectations that they would carry on from their startling Grey Cup win in 2017, only to muddle about with uneven performances and a Week 11 disappointment that has observers wondering if they have the stuff of turnaround in them. They’re desperate to show they do and to keep their season afloat.

For one, it’s a challenge to show that they are, indeed, headed for the best of times.

For the other, it’s to show they aren’t headed for the worst.