Over the last 10 years, I’ve seen Labour Day flyovers in Calgary and Hamilton. I’ve seen strange square dancing halftime acts and busloads of fans making the trip to the rival city just to make sure their smack talk finds the right target.
Labour Day is special for a lot of reasons. It’s the midpoint of the football season and most years — at least if your team is a good one — it marks the point that the games really start to matter. It’s also a farewell to summer. I’m pretty sure when I lived in Edmonton it snowed a few days after Labour Day in 2004. School starts up in earnest that following Tuesday and the slow pace of the past couple of months gives way to our routines. Things get busy and back to normal. For those of us that work around the CFL, it’s also the point of the year where things pick up. You take a moment on Labour Day to take everything in, you blink and the next thing you know it’s the end of November in the cold and there are a pair of Mounties presenting the Grey Cup. It goes that fast.
So while we’re standing in the eye of the hurricane of sorts, consider these storylines for the weekend, as three major rivalry games that all have post-season implications are about to go down.
Edmonton could use a win
For all of the warm and fuzzy memories people conjure up about the Labour Day weekend in the CFL, the Esks are, well, lacking in that department. Their last Labour Day win came in 2011, when Ricky Ray was the quarterback. Since arriving in Edmonton in 2013, Mike Reilly has never won on Labour Day in Calgary. If you expand the stats to include the rematch in Edmonton, it’s not much kinder. Calgary owns a 12-2 advantage in the series since 2011. The Esks’ last win in the series came in 2015 — the year they won the Grey Cup — in Edmonton.
Injuries have plagued a true Labour Day matchup of arguably the two best quarterbacks in the league. Finally, it’s here. (Johany Jutras, CFL.ca)
Two best QBs in the league, finally
The scheduling gods (and they are treated as such in the CFL office) have built ample anticipation in pitting the league’s two best quarterbacks against one another. Bo Levi Mitchell and Mike Reilly haven’t faced off since last year’s dramatic West Final, where Calgary erased an early Edmonton lead and held on to punch its ticket to the Grey Cup. Mitchell, 28, is fully healthy and is on pace to match his 2016 MOP-level of production, when he hit 5,385 passing yards. Reilly, 33, is doing everything he can to ensure that he repeats as MOP. He’s on pace for a career-best 6,000-plus-yard season. This will be a battle between two heavyweight QBs.
The Argos are on the ropes
Injuries have picked away at the Argos this season, but seem to have started to snowball on them as they meekly walked away from last week’s loss to Montreal. Cassius Vaughn is out for the season. Qudarius Ford, Abdul Kanneh, Johnny Sears Jr., Nakas Onyeka and Terrance Plummer are all defensive players on the six-game injured list. On offence, Ricky Ray remains on the six-game and likely out for the season as he recovers from the neck injury he suffered in Week 2.
Those defensive injuries could be a factor in why the Argos’ secondary bleeds yards, surrendering 299 passing yards per game (second-worst in the league, in front of Montreal). They head into a back-to-back against a Ticats team that loves to air it out. Jeremiah Masoli and the Ticats put up 326.2 passing yards per game (second-best in the league, behind Edmonton) and its defence is coming off of a win that saw them stymie that juggernaut Esks’ offence. Anything is possible, but it looks like the Argos are in tough at the worst possible time in their season. Sitting at 3-6 and with Hamilton at 4-5, the Argos need a split at the very least or they’ll find themselves in a deep hole for the rest of the season.
A special guest at the Riders game
Mosaic Stadium will be sold out on Sunday, when the Riders host the Bombers for their annual clash. While the tradition is old hat for everyone in the prairies, one fan will be taking it in for the first time.
Truly humbled to say that I'll be at this years Labour Day Classic in Regina! THANK YOU @Safimod & all involved.Not enough characters to express my gratitude.Never thought this would happen.Still holding out hope that I'll be able to bring my entire family to Mosaic next season!! pic.twitter.com/pZKgJvhvJS
— Joe Lozito (@joe_lozito) August 11, 2018
Joe Lozito’s affections for the Riders came about quickly but it’s really a testament to what fandom and community can be about. The New Yorker, who in 2011 took down a man on a killing spree, asked Twitter in January which CFL team he should start cheering for. Over 1,800 Riders fans convinced him to come to the green side. He made the trip up to Hamilton this year to see the Riders play the Ticats (a game Saskatchewan won) and now, thanks to the generosity of Riders fans, he’ll be front and centre this weekend for his first taste of Saskatchewan.
“I think it was just some really, really nice, generous people pulled some money together and ended up getting me a flight and game ticket and the rest is history,” He told Regina’s CJME.
“To me, that’s totally Canadian.”
A big weekend for Nichols
Matt Nichols has faced all kinds of adversity in his CFL career, but he’s never had a two-week stretch like the one he’s coming through right now. He was vocal about fans booing him in Winnipeg during a loss to the REDBLACKS, then (it seems to me, anyway), a week later had his post-game comments about his receivers not being open against Calgary misconstrued to make it sound like he was being critical of everyone around him but himself.
Meanwhile, the high hopes that Winnipeg fans have for their team winning a playoff game (or two or three) this year have been taking a hit with the Bombers’ two-game slide. You can dissect his words all you want, but Nichols’ play this season hasn’t been what it was when the Bombers won 12 games last year. A big day and most important, a win against Chris Jones’ defence in one of the toughest environments in the league is everything that Nichols, the Bombers and all of the wobbly-kneed Winnipeg fans could use right now.
