The Canadian Press
MONCTON — Following his team’s 28-22 loss at the hands of the Montreal Alouettes on Sunday, Toronto Argonauts quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson equated his team’s current situation to that of Sisyphus.
“We never stopped fighting. We’ve just got to find a way to get over that hump; somehow, some way, that boulder keeps rolling back down the hill,” he said post-game. “… We’ve just got to go back to work and there’s no other group I’d rather go to war with.”
In the Greek mythological tale, Sisyphus was forced to push a large boulder up a hill as a punishment, but as he would near the top, the boulder would roll back down, forcing him to start over.
While it’s unclear what the Argos have done to anger the football gods, they’ll be fighting an uphill battle for the remainder of the season.
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At one point on Sunday afternoon, the Boatmen held a 16-0 over their East Division rivals. But a few mistakes allowed the Alouettes to claw back into the game, and before the knew it, the Argos were playing catchup yet again.
With time running down in the second quarter, a botched snap by Bethel-Thompson squandered an opportunity for the double blue to add onto their lead heading into the locker rooms. With Montreal getting the ball first to open the second half, they’d take advantage of the miscue immediately. Vernon Adams Jr. found a streaking Eugene Lewis down the sideline on the first play of the drive for a 65-yard catch and run to make it a 16-13 game following the point after.
“That was a huge 14-point swing. We give up six points going in (to the half) and they come right out and get six. If that 14-point swing doesn’t happen, we run away with this,” Bethel-Thompson said. “That’s the way our whole season has gone. We’ve just been shooting ourselves in the foot at the wrong time.”
The second costly mistake came in the fourth quarter, when Robert Woodson ran into punter Boris Bede, giving the Als a second chance after it looked like their drive had stalled. That led to the eventual game-winning score by Als running back Jeremiah Johnson, who rushed into the end zone from 25 yards out with just over 10 minutes to go.
There were some positives that came out of this game for the Argos. Bethel-Thompson had arguably his best passing performance of the year, throwing for 464 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions on 36 of 47 passing. His top target on the afternoon was Rodney Smith, who finished with a career-high 12 catches and 136 yards — he had just 13 total catches prior to Sunday. S.J. Green also passed Jock Climie for 23rd all-time catches with a 19-yard reception in the fourth quarter.
Toronto had a few chances to answer back and take the lead following the Johnson touchdown in the fourth, but they couldn’t find the end zone to capture the victory. Bethel-Thompson made a frantic push down the field with under a minute to go, completing a pass to Smith for 34 yards that set Toronto up at the 3-yard line with 0.3 seconds on the clock. With one shot to get a walk-off win, Bethel-Thompson would look for Armanti Edwards on a slant route, but the pass would fall incomplete.
“The man’s got great hands. I’m coming to him again and there’s no doubt in my mind that he makes that catch 99 out of 100 (times). The universe had a different path for us,” Bethel-Thompson said of the final play.
With the loss, Toronto now sits at 1-8 on the season. They have two more games against East Division opponents before starting another stretch against the West. They’ll travel to Tim Hortons Field for a Mark’s Labour Day Weekend clash with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Sept. 2.
The Argonauts will arrive back to Toronto and get right back to work on trying to dig themselves out of the hole they’re in. Bethel-Thompson firmly believes that they have the talent in the locker room to turn their luck around.
“I love these guys in the locker room. I’ll go to war with them anytime,” Bethel-Thompson said. “They fight from the beginning of the snap until the end no matter what the record is and what the situation is.
“Why this has to get harder, I don’t know, but the universe can’t throw anything more at us and there’s no way that these men could stand up any taller. It’s a great group of men and that’s all I can say.”
