Leos/Stamps Semi-Final - KEYS TO THE GAME

The Place for BC Lion Discussion. A forum for Lions fans to talk and chat about our team.
Discussion, News, Information and Speculation regarding the BC Lions and the CFL.
Prowl, Growl and Roar!

Moderator: Team Captains

User avatar
CardiacKid
Legend
Posts: 1949
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2012 9:46 am
Location: Under Christmas Hill, Saanich

The weather Gods appear to be rooting for the Lions...or at least they are rooting for the fans. The weather network is predicting a high of 11 degrees, with a mainly sunny afternoon and 20% chance of precip and winds of 25k/h with gusts up to 47k/h.
User avatar
Rammer
Team Captain
Posts: 22320
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2002 6:04 pm
Location: Coquitlam, B.C.

CardiacKid wrote:The weather Gods appear to be rooting for the Lions...or at least they are rooting for the fans. The weather network is predicting a high of 11 degrees, with a mainly sunny afternoon and 20% chance of precip and winds of 25k/h with gusts up to 47k/h.
Or the weatherman got a payoff to help increase ticket sales. Hope the forecast is correct, as it is always nice to players who have worked hard all season have the opportunity to display their skillset in a do or die game.
Entertainment value = an all time low
TheLionKing
Hall of Famer
Posts: 25103
Joined: Sat Feb 19, 2005 10:13 pm
Location: Vancouver

David wrote:Oh please. They feel like they don't get any respect??

How about 8 West Division All-Stars, 90% of fans thinking they're going to win Sunday (online vote), and a TSN analyst telling a national television audience they just have to "show up to win?" And then there's the CFL on TSN Top 50 Players ranking this past June in which Bo Levi Mitchell and Jon Cornish were voted #1 and #2 in the league?

Give me a break. Whatever you need for motivation I guess. :dizzy:


DH :cool:
Sounds like a motivational gimmick. It's Us vs. the World
Blitz
Team Captain
Posts: 9094
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:44 am

Bo Levi Mitchell says the Stamps are still a run first team. This game features two tailbacks in Messam and Harris who are double threat tailbacks, who can both run and catch. Messam is a load at 6'3", 245 pounds.

I remember when we had Harris, Messam, and Lee on our roster and we didn't play any of them, preferring to use Jamal Robertson. I remember well many posts on Lionbackers appealing for our Leos to go with an all-Canadian backfield to no avail. Harris got lucky that Robertson got hurt in 2011 and he got a chance to play, Messam was traded and got his opportunity, and Jamal Lee got frustrated playing on special teams and quit football.

The following article by Cam Cole asserts it would have been difficult for Calgary to win a Grey Cup this season if they had not traded for Messam. Now he sees their odds of winning it at 50/50 due to the shrewd trade by Hufnagel.
Cam Cole: Messam may give Harris a run for his money in Sunday showdown

By Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun columnist November 13, 2015

Figuratively speaking, Jon Cornish is the elephant in the Calgary Stampeders’ room. Or not in the room at the moment, to be precise.

The fellow actually in the room, Jerome Messam, may not be elephantine, but he’s at least a woolly mammoth.

At 6-3 and 245 pounds, he’s a strapping broth of a tailback who would bulldoze a tackler as willingly as go around him — and whose trade deadline acquisition has turned a very iffy shot at repeating as Grey Cup champion into no worse than a 50-50 proposition for John Hufnagel’s squad.

At this point, said the coach and GM, “You’d have to say it’s a good thing Jerome Messam’s on this football team,” which is as close as the Stamps’ 64-year-old football boss would come to admitting he’d pulled off a coup.

How smart is Hufnagel? He likes to pretend not smart at all; Messam was insurance, to solidify the Canadian content at the running back position, he says, because the Stamps had to play an import on the offensive line after right tackle Dan Federkeil got hurt.

He didn’t know Cornish would still be fighting his way out of a concussion fog a month later when he got Messam off Saskatchewan’s sinking ship for an excess kicker, Tyler Crapigna, and an exchange of draft picks.

But as this once-in-forever troika of Canadian ball carriers comes together for Sunday’s West semifinal at McMahon Stadium — Andrew Harris, the CFL’s second-leading rusher for the B.C. Lions, league No. 3 rusher Messam for Calgary, the wistful presence of Cornish looking on — the Stamps’ prescient deadline move is looking more and more like genius.

“You always feel like there’s some kind of method behind the madness,” said veteran linebacker Juwan Simpson, who’s returning from injury after six weeks, “but I don’t think anybody ever really knew how Cornish was, how he was feeling.

“But Messam’s a great replacement. I mean, you name the great Canadian running backs and it’s these three: throw Andrew Harris in there, and Cornish and Messam.”

Harris is the youngest of the three at 28. Messam is 30, Cornish 31.

Normally, if you’re lucky enough to find a great Canadian running back, you hang onto him. Messam is with his fifth CFL team in six seasons which is maybe why, when a reporter asked quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell how Messam has been, he said: “As a running back?”

In a purrfect world, the Stamps would never have needed the nomadic Messam, but Cornish has been plagued by concussions, and Hufnagel confirmed this week that last year’s rushing champion and CFL outstanding Canadian is “not feeling well enough to do the cardio part” of the concussion protocol, which is the first step.

Stamps’ offensive coordinator and next year’s head coach, Dave Dickenson, said he is not writing Cornish out of the plans for this season just yet.

“It’s worrisome, no doubt,” said the 42-year-old Hall of Famer who had his own concussion issues as a quarterback in Calgary and especially B.C.

“I saw him today, though, and I’m going to be a positive guy. I feel like sometimes you get so much in your mind, and you have so many people give you advice ... but they really don’t know (what’s going on) with Jon Cornish.


“I’m going to leave him alone. He’s a friend, and a good player, and I’m always going to be supporting him and whatever happens, happens. When we see him, I’m not asking head issues, how you feeling, we need you back, any of that.

“It’s just, ‘Good to see you, join the meeting if you want,’ and we’ll just play it out from there.”

Asked if he had any post-career problems from repeated concussions, Dickenson laughed.

“Not that I can remember,” he said.

“No, I think I’m fine. I mean, listen, I have other areas of my body that hurt a lot worse than my head. You worry about it, there’s no doubt that you do, but that is life. Deal with it. I’d be more than happy to play again if they could get me back out there.

“It’s one of those things. You know the risks, you got good family, good support, we’ve got good trainers here, good doctors, I’m sure they’re making decisions based on what’s best for John.”

If he makes it back, they’ll cross their fingers and hope for the best. If not, they’ve got the next best thing.

Asked how the game plan changes with Messam as opposed to Cornish, Mitchell said: “Same thing. Shoot, they’re running backs.

“We’re always a run-first team,” said last year’s Grey Cup MVP, voted a finalist (with Ottawa’s Henry Burris) for the CFL’s outstanding player award this season.

“We just gotta let people know if you don’t put enough guys in the box, were going to run the ball downhill on you.”

With whomever.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
User avatar
CardiacKid
Legend
Posts: 1949
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2012 9:46 am
Location: Under Christmas Hill, Saanich

TheLionKing wrote:
David wrote:Oh please. They feel like they don't get any respect??

How about 8 West Division All-Stars, 90% of fans thinking they're going to win Sunday (online vote), and a TSN analyst telling a national television audience they just have to "show up to win?" And then there's the CFL on TSN Top 50 Players ranking this past June in which Bo Levi Mitchell and Jon Cornish were voted #1 and #2 in the league?

Give me a break. Whatever you need for motivation I guess. :dizzy:


DH :cool:
Sounds like a motivational gimmick. It's Us vs. the World
Jose Mourinho with Chelsea in the EPL does the same thing and it is annoying as hell. That sort of complaining though does come back to bite you...before you know it neutrals lose whatever respect they may have had for the organization.
Blitz
Team Captain
Posts: 9094
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 8:44 am

More than a third of Jerome Messam’s receptions and reception yardage in his 15 games this season came in his four games against our Leos. Messam averaged an impressive 6.2 yards per carry this year, playing for both Saskatchewan and Calgary.

We'll need to both contain Messam and also put pressure on Bo Levi Mithell if we are going to win this game.

B.C. Lions know what to expect with massive Messam

Stamps big running back began his career in B.C., and has had big games against the Leos this season

By Steve Ewen, The Province November 14, 2015

More than a third of Jerome Messam’s receptions and reception yardage in his 15 games this season came in his four games against the B.C. Lions.

Messam, the running back the Calgary Stampeders landed from the Saskatchewan Roughriders in a trade as an insurance policy for Jon Cornish, had 53 catches for 497 yards on the year, to go with his 1,006 yards rushing. He recorded 20 catches for 193 yards versus B.C. alone.

Is it an indication of something to watch for in Sunday’s West semifinal? Is it meaningless, considering three of those games were when he was with Saskatchewan and the one with Calgary had Stampeders starting pivot Bo Levi Mitchell resting on the bench?

It’s all just guessing now. We do know that Messam, 30, who’s from Brampton, Ont., and began his CFL career with the Lions in 2010, will handle the majority of the running back duties for the Stampeders on Sunday, with Cornish, 31, sidelined while still experiencing concussion symptoms.

“Messam’s a good back as well,” said Lions coach Jeff Tedford. “They’re very similar, as far as being physical, big runners that you have to put multiple bodies on to get them on the ground.”

Messam ran for 248 yards on 39 carries in the four games versus the Lions, including 59 yards on 13 carries in that 28-7 Calgary win last Saturday at B.C. Place that featured second stringers galore on both sides.

That’s 6.4 yards per carry. On the season, he averaged 6.2 yards per carry.

The Lions allowed 116.2 yards rushing per game on the year, which was the second-worst mark in the league, ahead of only the 117.5 put forward by the Roughriders.

Is that foreshadowing? It’s debatable yet again.

Cornish was limited to nine games this season with his injury trouble, and that included going for 41 yards on the ground on 12 carries versus B.C. in a 35-23 Stampeder win in Calgary on Sept. 18.

The New Westminster native, a high school star at Burnaby’s St. Thomas More, has had some monster efforts against B.C. in the past, including when he ran for 156 yards on 20 carries in a 14-7 Stampeder victory at home on Sept. 27, 2014.

“They have the same running style and the same mentality,” Lions linebacker Adam Bighill said of the 6-foot, 219-pound Cornish and the 6-foot-3, 245-pound Messam.

“They’re both downhill, slashers, cutters. Obviously both run physically.

“Their style of play is very, very similar.”

Cornish would have extra motivation to face the Lions, being his hometown team. Messam is sounding especially primed, too.

He didn’t have a single carry in the Roughriders’ 18-10 loss to the Edmonton Eskimos in last year’s West Division semifinal. He had apparently fallen out of favour with Saskatchewan’s offensive co-ordinator at the time, George Cortez. Cortez, of course, has taken over the same duties with the Lions this season.

On Saturday, Messam tweeted that in the 2014 playoffs, “the OC just didn’t use me. It’s gonna be a great day tomorrow! #motivation #CFLPlayoffs.”

sewen@theprovince.com

twitter.com/steveewen

© Copyright (c) The Province
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
User avatar
SammyGreene
Team Captain
Posts: 8079
Joined: Sun Oct 06, 2002 11:52 am

Some great insight here as always Blitz.
At last game day.

As David said in the Game Day thread, my heart says Lions but my head says Stamps. Sure wish they would have played Calgary straight up last week, for at least most of the game, rather than rest key players. It's one thing doing it as a 13-4 team, another when you are 7-10 and putting a pretty bad product in front of your hometown fans for the better part of 2 seasons. Do you really have that many "key" players when you are 7-10 anyways or is it a case 6 of the 9 teams happen to make the playoffs?

Now, there is somewhat pressure on the Lions today not to get embarrassed to justify what they did and, more importantly provide hope for the 2016 season for a very fickle casual fan base that has already made a big statement by not buying tickets of late. I would be more than happy if they are within 7 or less and having a 23 year old QB with huge upside leading the charge into the future.

What would a blowout loss mean today? Further coaching changes? More pending FAs not coming back?

This is another pivotal day for the franchise.
User avatar
David
Team Captain
Posts: 9364
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2002 10:23 am
Location: Vancouver (Kitsilano)

SammyGreene wrote: Sure wish they would have played Calgary straight up last week, for at least most of the game, rather than rest key players. It's one thing doing it as a 13-4 team, another when you are 7-10 and putting a pretty bad product in front of your hometown fans for the better part of 2 seasons. Do you really have that many "key" players when you are 7-10 anyways or is it a case 6 of the 9 teams happen to make the playoffs?
I was a little surprised that there wasn't more pushback from fans and media last week regarding resting all those players and the vanilla playbook given the fragile state of the team in this market (no one saw as big an attendance drop this year than we did). As mentioned, it would really suck to go 0 for 2 vs the Stamps (and "oh for 4" this season, including preseason against them) by employing that strategy.
SammyGreene wrote: What would a blowout loss mean today? Further coaching changes? More pending FAs not coming back?
Thankfully, no one is talking the "B" word and I don't sense the walls caving in like last year's East Semi in Montreal. I think there's too much talent and character with this year's Leos team. Columnist Cam Cole is reporting that the team is very "loosey goosey." That confidence is healthy as long as they have respect for their opponent and the occasion. We have a lot of first year players - they're going to figure out really quickly that CFL games are played at a much faster, more hard-hitting level than the regular season.

Our Leos believe they're a team that no one wants to face in the playoffs. Now's the time to back up those words with actions.


DH :cool:
Roar, You Lions, Roar
Post Reply