Kevin Sousa/CFL.ca
Ottawa is weird. I’m not talking about the city. It’s an excellent place for a three day weekend with a wildly underrated restaurant scene and Soif Bar à vin is a must visit not only because of their wine selection but also because you get to sound classy when you say, “what you mean you haven’t been to Soif Bar à vin?”
No, I’m talking about the football team. The Ottawa REDBLACKS are this weird/unpredictable football team that I cannot figure out, yet they are fun to watch. I would compare them to that young band that is somewhere between consistently selling out your favourite bar but is yet to play at those 5,000+ music venues. You can see there is plenty of young talent throughout the roster but they just haven’t put the pieces together yet.
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This is a group that can’t get all their different parts working together simultaneously for four quarters. You could see it in their 44-31 loss to the Toronto Argonauts, the offence was humming in the first three quarters but their efforts were undone by a secondary plagued with missed assignments and a special teams coverage unit who had no answers for Javon Leake, whose punt return touchdown gave Toronto a 34-24 third quarter lead. Most of the time I would expect the REDBLACKS to win when generating 31 points and 345 yards of offence.
Let’s count the ways Ottawa is having a particularly weird season so far.
The 2023 season kicked off with Ottawa’s defence holding Montreal to 265 yards and 19 points then at the end of July, Barron Mile’s crew limited Hamilton to 16 points, the team lost both games.
This football squad just loves to keep us all guessing about what to expect on any given week. They have five games where they scored 24 points or more yet in four other contests they couldn’t put more than 15 points on the board.
This is a defence with Lorenzo Mauldin IV, Bryce Carter, Michael Wakefield and Brandin Dandridge and yet, five times this unit allowed at least 26 points. However, we’ve also seen that group shine by holding their opponent to under 20 points on three occasions. Continuing this seesaw theme, Dustin Crum and the offence has generated at least 345 yards four times while in four other games they couldn’t even get to 270 yards. They are last defensively in so many important pass defence statistic so of course that means they allow the fewest yards on the ground.
Sure.
You want strange? How about the fact that they’re coming off that 13-point loss to Toronto, yet moved up to fifth in the official Power Rankings and you know what, that feels right.
I believe their spot in the rankings after this last hat trick of losses is the result of every game falling in the category of “oh, so close” games that could have gone either way.
Let’s look back.
Week 8: 16-12 loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Ottawa’s defence picks off Bo Levi Mitchell five times and they still lose, baffling!
Week 9: 26-24 loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders. This one really hurt as the team elected to kick the rare eight-yard field goal at the one-yard line only to lose a minute later on a 54-yard boot by Brett Lauther.
Week 10: Toronto pulled away and got that double digit win but this was a one score game late into the third quarter.
Kudos to this Ottawa team for not just limiting their “bizarre” to on the field. Check out this rather odd halftime interview by Jaelon Acklin.
I would pay good money to obtain a transcript of what the heckler was yelling at Ottawa’s top receiver who finally broke out last week in a big way.
Taking a quick detour from the thrust of this column you had to be impressed with how Dustin Crum looked as a passer against the Argonauts defence. Beyond the numbers (26-21-292-3 TD and an additional 42 yards on the ground) Crum just looked more comfortable operating within Khari Jones’ system.
You saw quick decisive throws on the first possession that ended in a field goal, a perfectly delivered deep shot to Acklin for the 55-yard touchdown bomb to hitting all his receivers in stride on the final touchdown drive that tripped the Argos lead to 34-31. He went through his progressions and kept drives alive with his feet when called upon. This was the most confident I’ve seen Crum from inside the pocket in his very short career.
I will tell you that with the growth of Crum, the return of Acklin, and stars on defence Ottawa could become your “Hipster” team to cheer for. They are that band with plenty of potential but they’re young so they get in their own way ever so often but their live album is solid.
Hopefully the REDBLACKS can make it big so when/if they make the playoffs you can be that person at the party that says, “yeah I remember when they were just playing in small dive bars.”
Yeah, that line can be annoying but it beats shaming people for not going to that out of the way French restaurant.
