The Canadian Press
EDMONTON — Short-term memory is a common phrase thrown around sports.
It refers to the ability to quickly forget and move on from perhaps a disappointing play, attempt, or in the case of the Edmonton Eskimos, a disappointing loss, which came to the hands of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats who blanked the Green and Gold in the second half of their Week 12 meeting, eventually coming back and winning, thanks to a walk-off field goal by Lirim Hajrullahu to clinch the victory.
But that’s where the short-term memory comes into play. Despite the loss, the Eskimos quickly gathered themselves and turned their focus to the game ahead – the Labour Day Classic versus the Calgary Stampeders.
“I think we’ve gone through a lot of battles in 10 games, learned a lot of lessons,” Edmonton’s head coach Jason Maas said on Wednesday. “I’d like to believe that not succeeding in that moment is going to help us succeed in another.”
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Maas, who knows a thing or two when it comes to Labour Day and the rises and falls when it comes to playing through a CFL schedule put it quite blunt, yet also motivating in saying, “you don’t win Grey Cups in August. What you do is you learn. Learn how to win and learn from your mistakes.”
Maas was very persistent in ensuring that his team is focused solely on the game ahead and refused to even go as far as acknowledging the rematch game against Calgary on Sept. 8.
Although the Eskimos currently sit in second place in the West Division, the team is well aware that they’ve yet to really hit their stride.
“We’ve had a lot of games where we’ve had stretches where we’ve played really good football,” said Eskimos’ quarterback Mike Reilly on Friday. “But we’ve played not good football in the same games, so consistency is certainly the key when you’re playing against good football teams like Calgary. That’s the way that you’re going to win, is you go out and you play well and you do it consistently throughout the entire game.”
Edmonton’s inability to be consistent was especially evident in their game against Hamilton, a game in which Reilly threw for three touchdowns prior to halftime, only to be blanked in the second half.
“If you’re going to beat them, you’ve got to play four quarters of good football,” Reilly said. “It’s not just against them. As you get later in the season, you start getting into playoff football and that’s how it is too. That’s why Labour Day is always where you mark on your calendar that you want your team to really make that push, so that you start to get that feeling of playing good consistent four quarters of football so that by the time the playoffs hit, you’re in a position to be in the playoffs.”
Reilly, who’s been around this rivalry since joining the Eskimos in 2013, has learned the weight that the meetings against Calgary holds.
“I think both teams look at it to measure where it is they’re at during the season because there’s a lot of pride on the line, but it’s also at the point where again, I’ve said it all week, playoff seeding is starting to kind of develop a little bit and you can set yourself up well or you can put yourself behind the eight ball.”
That being said though, Reilly maintains his approach in treating each and every game the same, stating that if he were to approach Labour Day’s game against Calgary differently, then he’d feel he didn’t perform as well in previous games.
“I don’t really think there’s ever really any need for extra motivation regardless of who you’re playing, what week it is,” he says. “You’re playing pro football. There’s motivation to win.”
Labour Day does provide a matchup of two of the strongest, most dynamic offences in the league, which has remained consistent year after year with both Reilly and Bo Levi Mitchell anchoring the two offences. Calgary enters the game averaging just over 30 points per game, good for second in the league behind Winnipeg. Meanwhile, Edmonton isn’t too far behind them in averaging 28.5 points per game.
“We’ve got faith in our defence and that they’re going to hold up their end of the bargain,” Reilly states. “But we can make it easier by being on the field longer, certainly more than we were last game. We always try to win time of possession, we try to be good on second down, and we weren’t nearly good enough last week. We need to do a better job of that this week because when you’re playing against Bo (Levi Mitchell) and his offence, Dickenson game plans really well too, if you give them enough opportunities, success is going to happen.”
Since arriving in Edmonton, Reilly has faced a number of injuries that have limited his presence on Labour Day. In fact, since 2013, Reilly has only started in three Labour Day Classics. Yet regardless of all that, Reilly believes he has Calgary figured out and is set to bring an end to Edmonton’s Labour Day drought, which goes back to 2011.
“It’s going to be about controlling the ball and making sure that you’re staying on the field,” the Eskimos quarterback said. “But also, once you get down into the red zone, you want to be getting touchdowns. That’s our goal every single week, but against this defence it’s going to be a challenge and I think we’re up to it.”
