The Calgary Stampeders take to the field at practice for the 104th Grey Cup in Toronto on Friday, November 25, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
TORONTO – We can frame and hype this any number of ways but, with all due respect, just about every significant and compelling storyline about the 104th Grey Cup revolves around the Calgary Stampeders and their dominance.
Oh sure, the Ottawa REDBLACKS are a heckuva story. They’re in the Grey Cup for consecutive years, having fallen to the Edmonton Eskimos in last year’s championship in Winnipeg. They are three years into a rebirth of football in the nation’s capital that is one of the best tales of a sporting renaissance.
But let’s face it; as far as the Canadian Football League championship game goes, everything about it in the hours, weeks, months leading up to it has been about the Stamps.
Calgary is a nine-point favourite not just because they had almost twice as many wins as the REDBLACKS – the Stamps were 15-2-1; Ottawa was 8-9-1 – but because after a blip in their regular season opener, they essentially spent the rest of the summer and fall speed-bagging their opponents.
They scored more than anybody in the league. And they surrendered fewer points than anybody in the league. They dominated the league’s individual awards, including quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell who was named the Most Outstanding Player.
The only thing missing? A championship.
Interestingly, for all that the Stamps have been playing the ‘no-respect’ card dating back to the start of the season. That came up again this week, with Mitchell declaring:
“We read the newspaper clippings in the beginning of the year, in preseason, and took to heart what people said about us and what we were going to be. We all took it to heart individually, but more as a team. We talked about those things. We said, ‘Man, we know people don’t want us to succeed. We know people want us to fail. Let’s prove them wrong.”
That seems almost laughable now, especially in light of the Stamps’ dominance, but hey, whatever works.
The REDBLACKS have been fuelling the same fire with their own ‘no-respect’ chatter – nobody does that better than QB Henry Burris, after all – and with good reason, given the apparent mismatch.
“The fact is (the naysayers) do provide motivation,” said Burris earlier this week. “If you just keep adding extra layers of icing to the cake, the cake tastes even sweeter. I love it when people do that. We love it when people do that.
“When someone tells you you can’t do something, that only makes you stick your chest out and hold up your chin that much higher.”
So most of the discussion in the days leading up to this one hasn’t been about the matchup but whether the REDBLACKS can make this even remotely interesting. And if they do, well, then we’ll all have a dandy tale of upset to be spinning sometime late Sunday night.
With all that in mind, here’s our handy-dandy guide to the the 104th Grey Cup…
THE 104TH GREY CUP
CALGARY STAMPEDERS (15-2-1) VS OTTAWA REDBLACKS (8-9-1)
When: Sunday, 5:30 p.m. CT
Where: BMO Field, Toronto.
National Anthem: Three Tenors.
Weather Forecast: High of 5C and sunshine.
Halftime: OneRepublic.
Streaks: Cal.: 1W; Ott.: 1W.
Season series: Ottawa was one of the few teams to even take a point from the Stamps this year, tying them 26-26 back on July 8th at TD Place in Ottawa. Calgary won the other meeting, with a 48-23 beatdown in Calgary on September 17th.
CGY/OTT Grey Cup history: These two clubs have met just twice in the league’s championship history, with Ottawa capturing the 1968 Grey Cup with a 24-21 victory – Rough Rider RB Vic Washington was the MVP – and Calgary winning 12-7 in 1948 to cap a perfect (14-0-1) season.
QB COMPARISON
- Calgary’s Bo Levi Mitchell: He’s already being compared to the league’s all-time greats, and little wonder. Mitchell is 43-7-1 in the regular season as a starter and already has a championship ring from 2014. Mitchell completed 68 per cent of his passes this year for 5,385 yards, a league-best 32 TDs against just eight interceptions en route to being named the MOP.
- Ottawa’s Henry Burris, meanwhile, 118-108-3 in his career with a 7-6 playoff record. He was injured early this season and lost his starting gig to Trevor Harris, then won it back. Threw for 2,419 yards with 12 TDs against nine interceptions.
3 GREY CUP STORYLINES
DOMINANT WITH A CAPITAL ‘D’:
A number to munch on as the Stampeder franchise attempts to carve out a place in history on Sunday: the Stamps have lost only 13 regular season games in the last four YEARS, with three of those defeats coming after they had clinched a division title.
Calgary has been to the West Final eight times in the last nine years and is seeking its fifth championship since 1996.
WHAT IF…?
Longshots – Cinder-fellas – have won mismatches before, not that Bomber fans need to be reminded: The 8-10 Stamps of 2001 took down a 14-4 Winnipeg squad in 2001. But this year’s REDBLACKS are just the sixth team to reach the Grey Cup final with a losing record, including the ’01 Stamps, the ’81 Rough Riders (5-11, lost to Edmonton); the ’97 Saskatchewan Roughriders (8-10, lost to Toronto); the ’00 B.C. Lions (defeated Montreal) and the ’84 Hamilton Tiger-Cats (6-9-1, lost to Winnipeg).
PARTY? WHAT PARTY?
It’s been a tough week for the Argos and the CFL in the league’s biggest market. Obituaries have been written about the Boatmen’s place in this town and the league’s failures to hold ground while franchises like the Toronto Raptors and Toronto FC have gained a foothold. A late push to the ticket wicket by REDBLACKS fans has helped save a potential attendance nightmare, but there hasn’t exactly been a Grey Cup vibe outside of the staged events downtown. Can a good game help? Wouldn’t hurt.
FYI
- The difference in win totals of seven matches, the second largest in Grey Cup history, behind only the ’81 game which saw the 14-1-1 Eskimos avoid making history for all the wrong reasons with a 26-23 win over the 5-11 Rough Riders.
- Calgary’s turnover ratio of +19 was second to the Bombers; Ottawa was -10, or seventh overall.
- Ottawa has won the time-of-possession battle in eight consecutive games; Calgary is working on a similar streak, having won five TOP battles in a row.
- The Stamps Dave Dickenson is only the second person in CFL history to have won a Most Outstanding Player Award (2000, with Calgary) and be named the league’s Coach of the Year. The other? Ron Lancaster (MOP in 1970 and 1976; Coach of the Year in 1996 and 1998).
REDBLACKS ‘X’ Factor
#86 Josh Criner, WR
Ottawa’s passing game success has been driven primarily through their slotbacks – MOP finalist Ernest Jackson, Brad Sinopoli and Greg Ellingson – and those three will garner a lot of attention from the Stamps. Not having 1,000-yard wide receiver Chris Williams to flank those guys hurts, but Criner has five receptions of 30-plus yards in limited playing time and could be a Burris target if the inside is taken away.
Stamps ‘X’ Factor
#31 Jamar Wall, HB
He’ll be seeing some healthy doses of the Ottawa slotbacks mentioned above and is a dynamite defender. His 17 pass knockdowns this year was tops in the CFL and just one shy of the league record, held by Malcolm Frank and Adrion Smith.
How the Stampeders win:
A common sentiment this week: the only way Calgary drops this thing is if they beat themselves with mental errors and mistakes. The Stamps are dynamite in the early rounds – their 32-0 halftime lead over B.C. last week matched the largest in CFL playoff history – as they lead after the first quarter in 15 of 18 regular season games, out-scoring opponents 138-58.
This is a complete team that can pound it out along the ground with the bulldozing Jerome Messam and their O-line, as banged up as it is this week, or surgically destroy teams through the air with Mitchell pulling the trigger. Oh, and the defence? Only the CFL’s best.
How the REDBLACKS win:
Get 5-10 guys in ski masks and an unmarked van to kidnap Mitchell and hold him hostage until after the game.
Kidding.
Look, Ottawa is a better team than their 8-9-1 record would suggest and is back in the Grey Cup for the second straight year because they’ve got a ton of weapons on offence and an aggressive in-your-face defence. But here’s how Ottawa can win, and it feeds on what was mentioned above: the Stamps had only 14 turnovers in their first 13 games, but have spit it up 14 times in their last six. Capitalizing on those mistakes, if the Stamps make any, will be critical.
OUR CALL: Calgary 36 | Ottawa 20
