Twenty-four hours.
That’s the standard coach/athlete spiel after a game, where you either enjoy the moment or wallow in defeat before you get back to work and start preparing for the next game.
Watching Saturday turn into Sunday will be two very different things for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts.
On Hamilton’s side, the party started in the third quarter at BMO Field, when they blew the game open against the Argos and didn’t look back. As they rolled to a history-making 64-14 win, they racked up yards (604 of them), touchdowns (eight of them), sacks (four) and defensive stops (too many to count).
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After eking out a Week 1 win over Saskatchewan, the Ticats made up for their miscues with one of those days where everything came together for them in every phase of the game. They probably won’t crack the 60-point barrier again this season, but in routing the Argos the way they did, the Ticats sent a message to the rest of the league about their potential this year.
“Sky’s the limit,” said Brandon Banks, who had seven catches for 105 yards. He added a 113-yard missed field goal return touchdown on the second play of the fourth quarter that made it a 47-6 Hamilton advantage.
“I think we can be real good. I still think we left a lot of plays out there. We had a lot of mistakes in the first half. Sky’s the limit. We could average 500 (yards) a game.”
There were beneficiaries in white and black all over the field on Saturday. Banks’ big night was second to receiver Bralon Addison, who pulled in a game-high 107 yards and had three touchdowns. Running back Sean Thomas Erlington trucked all over the Argos for 109 yards and made an incredible 37-yard catch. Doing his best Daenerys Targaryen, Masoli ruled by fire and blood, leading Hamilton’s beast of an offence over BMO Field and laying waste to it. He turned a 20-6 halftime game into a blowout in the third quarter, connecting on three TDs.
Even in the odd moment where the pressure came to Masoli and he looked beaten, he’d find a way to move the ball. With a pair of Argos defenders zeroed in on him, Masoli’s toss to the sideline looked like a play-it-safe throwaway. It turned into a 31-yard touchdown pass to Nikola Kolinic. Once they got through some first-half hiccups, when the ball was in Masoli’s hands, no wrong could be done.
“That was the feeling all week (in practice),” Masoli said. “If we execute, if we do the little things right — the coaches are preaching and teaching us that — we’ll be fine.”
As much as the offence shined, so did Hamilton’s defence. James Franklin’s line — 16-26 passing for 211 yards and one interception through three quarters — isn’t great, but not the anemic, error-riddled outing that you’d think would go with this kind of loss. Whenever he did find a target in the second half, the Ticats were there waiting for them, two, three or four steps ahead, stopping anything before it could get started.
Of course, Ticats head coach Orlondo Steinauer played it cool about the margin of victory — he actually declined to kick the convert on Rico Murray’s pick six, inadvertently tying a team record instead of setting it — and focused on the end result. He’ll hope that his players follow that lead.
“I know how our coaching staff is, we’re pretty even keeled,” he said.
“We’re not going to get too high on a win or too low on a loss. We’re going to keep it in perspective. Keep the main thing the main thing.
“What we did last week doesn’t have any bearing moving forward. I want them to enjoy this because they earned it. They bust their tail in practice and the coaches earned it too. For the organization and for Hamilton too, it’s important to enjoy it but then it’s time to go to work.”
The Argos will feel the extreme opposite end of the spectrum. Teams lose lopsided games every year, but Saturday’s season-opener was a faceplant, unfortunate on many levels. The team will have to assess everything, from Franklin’s play to the game plan, to what felt like dozens of missed tackles and what they got out of their players as the game got away from them. The Argos lost to their arch-rivals in front of a good crowd (16,734). It’s the only time the Ticats will play in Toronto this season. This will sting.
Banks said during that third quarter offensive explosion, he saw it in his opponents’ faces. They’d been broken.
“You could feel it,” he said. “One play, nobody even guarded me. I knew.”
“Everything we have has been exposed. That’s the positive in it,” Argos head coach Corey Chamblin told the Canadian Press after his debut game.
“We know exactly where it is in our schematics, individual play and coaching. We’re fortunate to have another game next week and that this wasn’t the championship game.”
Twenty-four hours couldn’t feel more different for each team. It’s a party for the Ticats and sifting through ashes for the Argos.
