Bailey McLean/CFL.ca
Sometimes simple is best.
After Bo Levi Mitchell opened the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ OK Tire Labour Day Weekend game with a pair of touchdown passes to Tim White, racking up 127 passing yards on just those two plays, White said he saw what the 25,291 fans at Tim Hortons Field saw, as well.
“Bo was balling,” White said through a big grin, their team on the right side of a 31-28 win over the visiting Toronto Argonauts.
The win snapped a four-game losing streak for the Ticats and pushed their record up to 3-9. It was a much-needed win and bright spot in what’s been a difficult season for anyone tied to the team.
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Mitchell improved to 7-0 in Labour Day games and finished making 20-30 passes for 347 yards, a pair of touchdowns and zero interceptions. In the 12 games he’s played this season, Monday’s performance marked just the second time that he’s gone back-to-back games without throwing an interception. He’s had bigger games, productivity-wise this year, but this one stood above the rest.
“I felt like he played really good,” Tiger-Cats’ head coach Scott Milanovich said. “I thought he missed two throws in the fourth quarter on the one drive. But other than that, I thought probably his best game of the year.”
There’s no question Mitchell was on his game on Monday. After the Ticats’ defence snagged an interception on the first drive of the game, Mitchell found White for that 57-yard touchdown connection on just his second pass of the day. He was poised in the pocket, ran when he saw opportunities and had no problem fitting the ball into tight windows. While the bulk of the offence came in that dominant first half showing, Mitchell found first-year Ticat Brendan O’Leary Orange in the game’s final minute for a 48-yard gain, setting the team up at the Argos’ five-yard line and squashing any last-minute heroism hopes that the Argos may have had.
“He was balling,” White said again, asked if there was something different in his quarterback’s makeup.
“He was just putting the ball up there, letting us go get it. It’s extremely fun to play like that. We just executed the plays that came our way. It made it fun.” White finished with six catches for a season-high 180 yards and a pair of touchdowns. That worked out to 36 points in CFL Fantasy, for those who were wise enough to add him to their roster this weekend.
“They made it a tight game right away, so we had to respond,” Mitchell said of his team’s performance. “I think we had a lull there in between the third and fourth. But just to show the resiliency, something I don’t think we’ve shown a lot this season there in the fourth quarter, making plays defensively, special teams and offensively there to end it. That’s what you’ve got to do to win.”
Mitchell and White will likely run on loop over the next 12 hours on Sportscentre, but as Mitchell said, all three phases made the win possible. Jamal Peters had eight tackles — one of which was a hit on Argos’ QB Chad Kelly that sent him head-over-heels on a two-point convert attempt where Kelly broke the plane but the ball did not — and a late knockdown that was almost an interception.
Ticats’ punter Nik Constantinu had a 74-yard single that tied the game at 28 with 8:37 left in the fourth quarter. Kicker Marc Liegghio sent what turned out to be the game-winning 55-yard field goal home after the offence took back-to-back procedure calls, seemingly pushing the team out of field goal range.
“All those things added up, right?” Milanovich said, before focusing his praise on Liegghio.
“What a big kick, right?” he said. “Fifty-five-yarder with the game on the line with an elite returner (in the Argos’ Janarion Grant) back there. That was a big-time kick. All those little things obviously contributed.”
Sitting at fourth place in the East, the Ticats gained a game on third-place Toronto, but still sit six points behind them in the standings. They’d have to go on a monstrous run over their final eight games to close that gap and push their playoff appearance streak to six years. But anything is possible in the CFL. For this week, the Ticats did what they needed to do. They’ll head into a bye before they host the REDBLACKS on Saturday, Sept. 14.
