Geoff Robins/CFL.ca
Let’s face it, almost all of the marbles in Week 21 of the CFL season are being played for in the West, where home field for both the semi and the final have yet to be determined.
There are a few marbles left in the East, though, as the Toronto Argonauts take on the Ticats in Hamilton.
Well, one marble, really. Just the one. And on that marble is the inscription: “perfect home record.”
RELATED:
» CFL announced 2019 team award winners
» MOP Watch: The buzz is real for Speedy B
» The Weekly Say: Who’s the front-runner for coach of the year?
It doesn’t mean a thing to the Ticats when it comes to ultimate outcomes — unless you’re the superstitious type, but I think you’d be kidding yourself if you thought that winning this game and becoming the first Hamilton team to finish a modern-day home schedule in perfect fashion didn’t register with Ticat players. And with the team’s hierarchy and marketers.
If you’re a Ticats fan, a perfect home record could be seen as a good omen, portending a Grey Cup appearance, which would be the team’s first since 2014.
Because in an 18-game season, seven teams have run the table in the nine games they played at home, over the years. Three of those teams went on to win the Grey Cup during those perfect homestand seasons and all of them came from the East.
Toronto turned the trick twice, in 1991 and 1997, although it did take a late Pinball Clemons touchdown in the 1997 Eastern Final in order for the Argos to step ahead to Grey Cup Week that year.
The Montreal Alouettes did it in 2009, having their own close-to-a loss moment when placekicker Damon Duval missed the game-winning field goal on the last play of the game, only to get a second, successful chance, the Saskatchewan Roughriders being flagged for having too many men on the field.
Four other teams have come through an 18-game season with a perfect home record, and only once did they go on to win the Western Final (Calgary in 2016). The Stamps did it on two other occasions (1993, 1994) only to lose to Edmonton and then BC, and the Eskimos were bested by the Roughriders in the 1989 Western Final.
But, judging by the way the ‘Cats will go into this game, an unblemished home record is not something that is top of mind when it comes to head coach Orlondo Steinauer. The bigger picture is, as it should be.
While we wait to see a full depth chart for Saturday’s game, it has become quite apparent that Steinauer will be resting a few of his key starters including quarterback Dane Evans, the 25-year-old who has risen from hopeful back-up to dependable game-winning star.
In giving game reps to back-ups David Watford and Hayden Moore, the sense that there is any underlining urgency to putting the finishing touches on a 9-0 run at Tim Hortons Field is dashed in the interests of making sure that these Ticats are ready for the one and possibly two gargantuan games that await in the post-season.
Lifting the big, silver mug is the ultimate way to put a stamp on a great season, after all.
But players have always cared about this sort of thing and in a season when the franchise is celebrating its 150th year, having not lost one single, solitary home game would make for some pretty nice frosting on an anniversary cake that would still have room for candles and maybe some piping that spells out “Grey Cup champs” on it.
The Ticats’ Twitter account, this week, spelled out the special attractions of Saturday night’s game in a pinned Tweet. It’s fan appreciation night. A cool vintage-feel bobblehead for the first 5,000 through the gates. And “a chance to go undefeated at home.”
So there is a desire to claim that no one could vanquish them on home turf at all in 2019, but the Ticats won’t put that cart ahead of the Eastern Final horse.
“I think those are notable things,” Steinauer said of a celebration of the team’s 150th, a perfect home record and the fact that the age-old rivalry provides the opposition in Week 21. “But if you’re asking is that gonna get us any more fired up, are we gonna prepare any harder, I would hope the answer would be no.”
That’s because Steinauer has instilled an expectation with these Tiger-Cats, that they will compete no matter who is on the field and no matter the stakes. That they will prepare thoroughly for the task at hand.
And it’s worked. Recall that when starter Jeremiah Masoli went down with a season-ending injury, league-wide howls that the Ticats were about to go splat prevailed.
Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach Orlondo Steinauer hugs receiver Brandon Banks during the team’s game against the Toronto Argonauts. (Shannon Vizniowski/CFL.ca)
All the ‘Cats did was put their heads down and set about proving that to be untrue.
“I think what really matters is it’s the next game,” said Steinauer, continuing a theme that he has been relentless about, throughout 2019. “We’re always challenging ourselves and trying to play to our standards. And we know what those are defined as. We show them repeatedly and it’s about playing up to them.”
Steinauer won’t make any lineup decisions based on a desire to hang an unblemished record on Hamilton’s season-in-review scorecard, at least not at the expense of what he is aiming to do in the post-season.
But his displayed way of doing things dovetails nicely with what Ticat marketers would like to see unfold, anyway, when those damn Argos come in looking to spoil the perfection. And you can be certain that the coach wouldn’t do anything to give away a game – any game – no matter who he has on the field.
“We will rest a couple of players,” said Steinauer. “I think it’ll be a different look but I don’t think it’ll be an overhaul.”
In other words, with a bye in mind and with momentum to keep, and with a few things to tinker with — there are always things to tinker with when it comes to the management of even a highly-functioning football team — Steinauer won’t be treating this game as some throw-away, or even as some anachronic pre-season game where he can observe and evaluate lightly-played hopefuls. The heck with 2020. the Ticats are two wins away from their first championship in twenty years.
“This isn’t a (glorified) pre-season game by any means,” said Steinauer. “They’re gonna come out here and try to win. They’re puttin’ together a game plan together. Every time we take the field, we’re gonna expect to win. It doesn’t matter who plays.”
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are the class of the CFL at the present, and while the only true way to cement that as historical fact is with a win on November 24th, taking care of the Argos on Saturday night can act as both sesquicentennial fireworks and another building block on the way to the ultimate goal.
Sure, “perfect at home” looks nice at the top of season-ticket sales packages. “Grey Cup Champions,” though, looks a lot better.
