Slaying The Dragon

It’s one of those streaks that is perhaps a little misleading. Yes, Emmanuel Arceneaux and the B.C. Lions have lost five straight games at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium. Yet, one of them was decided in overtime and you can make the case all but one of them was right there for the taking in the fourth quarter. They got unlucky with replay challenges. Injuries have played a role. Regular occurrences perhaps, but you almost get the sense they have been cursed in the Alberta capital. As he and his teammates were back at work ahead of their first divisional game of the season, the charismatic slotback acknowledged he is ready to change that this Friday and finally show the rest of the league what they are capable of.

“Yeah man. It’s all about alignment, assignment and execution,” began Arceneaux.

“I was telling the young guys, Burnham and all those boys that you’re not always going to come out throwing for 400 or 500 yards. It’s just all about getting a win and when it’s your time it’s your time. They’re going to come in bundles. When it’s time for us to start rolling, we’ll be rolling.”

Arceneaux and Andrew Harris caught touchdown passes from Travis Lulay in the most recent triumph there on July 13th, 2013.

More important than ending a streak that dates back to the middle of Barack Obama’s second term in office, Arceneaux and company are looking to make a statement that they belong in the wild wild West.

“Every week we have to do that and if you look at the recent trend, all of these teams seem to elevate their game when they play the BC Lions,” explained Arceneaux.

“It’s just time for us to get back out there. It will be good to send a statement. It’s a Western Division team and you want to jump on these teams early because on the back end it will help you if you can take care of everyone at the beginning of the season. If you look at this upcoming stretch we have this Edmonton team, a back-to-back with Winnipeg and then we have to go into Ottawa, a team that looks like they’re making noise in the east. We just know we need to come to play. Watching some games over the weekend, teams are busting coverages or dropping balls yet when they play the BC Lions they seem to play some of their best football. That’s what we like.”

Emmanuel Arceneaux covered in the end zone by former teammate Anthony Gaitor in a pre-season win over Winnipeg on June 8th/2018. Photo: David Friederich.

Wally Buono has seen just about everything in his lengthy career as a player and the CFL’s all-time winningest head coach. He agrees that bumping the Edmonton slump would be beneficial for multiple reasons.

“Anytime you’re playing interlocking (division) games, they’re always four-pointers,” said Buono.

“We haven’t had a lot of success in Alberta the last couple of years and as I said today let’s focus on ourselves, let’s worry about ourselves and we know what we have to do to win football games. We’ve done okay the last game, but against a good opponent I’m not sure you’re going to be able to win that way.”

It would indeed be an ideal time for the offence to play a full four quarters and sustain more of those drives in hostile territory.

“This is the week. Last game should have been the week,” added Arceneaux.

“It’s up to the players in that huddle. I feel we’re going to get the job done and handle that task.  The first game, everything was done on the ground and sometimes you need to rely on that run game to get victories. We’re going to show up. It’s about keeping our defence on the bench and their defence on the field because Mike Reilly can’t score no points watching from the sidelines.”

Keeping the Eskimos defence on the field was the perfect roadmap to success for Hamilton in their 38-21 win at Commonwealth last week, as was finishing drives. Jeremiah Masoli and the Tiger-Cats scored five offensive touchdowns and the quarterback finished with 332 passing yards. Watching that film gives Arceneaux and company the mindset of ‘why not us?’

“Look, the opportunities are there, but it’s up to us to take advantage of those,” said the Alcorn State legend.

“I stressed to the group we need to be in attack mode and have them on their heels. That’s going to be the message all year as we look to establish our identity.”

Streaks were meant to be broken. Why not start this week on Friday Night Football?

Respecting Ray

All hands were on deck as the squad focused mostly on special teams on their first official practice day of week three. Afterwards, plenty of conversation centred around Toronto Argonauts quarterback and future Canadian Football League Hall of Famer Ricky Ray after he was carted off with what looked to be a serious neck injury in Toronto’s loss to Calgary on Saturday night.

“Obviously you have a concern,” said Buono of Ray’s unlucky break.

“From my understanding, he’s doing well. I reached out to Marc Trestman just on behalf of the BC Lions so I’m glad to hear that Ricky’s doing well and glad to hear that it’s hopefully nothing too serious. I know when I played so you saw your buddies get hurt and some of them were quite severe. You know that when the whistle blows you have to go again. I think as a coach you have a lot more compassion because maybe you’re older and you look at players in a different light. The athlete understands the risk. When he becomes a professional athlete he assumes that risk and he also knows that when the whistle blows he has to play.”

The good news is Ray was moving all of his extremities and was held overnight in the hospital only as a precaution. The Lions will not see the defending Grey Cup champions until an August 18th trip to BMO Field. Let’s hope Ray is recovered and back in uniform by then. He is truly one of the great ones this league has ever seen, both on and off the field.

Matt Baker: mbaker@bclions.com