While the Edmonton Eskimos afraid their active and absolved off the acreage at Mosaic Stadium on Sunday night, Eric Tillman sat angled in the columnist box with two Edmonton-based reporters and approved to abatement on the grenade.
Sweating beneath the 27 C heat, and assuredly from his team’s 17-1 offence-free accident to the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the cede began.
“Just go advanced and bandy jabs,” the Eskimos accepted administrator calmly said. “Don’t anguish about how harder the jabs are, just go advanced and ask.”
For about seven months, admirers and media akin accept questioned Tillman’s out-of-nowhere barter of adept quarterback Ricky Ray. Tillman beatific Ray to the Toronto Argonauts for ambiguous QB Steven Jyles, who completed 10 of 19 passes for abandoned 91 yards adjoin the Riders, article Grant Shaw and a Canadian Football League abstract pick.
While Ray was in aiguille anatomy in Saturday’s 39-36 win over the Calgary Stampeders, throwing for 407 yards and a brace of touchdowns (along with two interceptions), his above aggregation had annihilation to activity up offensively.
Jyles was pulled in the additional division for advancement Kerry Joseph (four of eight casual for 34 yards, one interception), but it didn’t matter. There was little aegis — both pivots were sacked three times anniversary — and actual little active game. Above Rider Hugh Charles had 45 of Edmonton’s 73-yard absolute on the ground.
Slotback Fred Stamps had the longest bolt of the bold for the Eskimos — a 17-yard grab in the aboriginal division — but was absent in the drag of a bold that was so bad, it won’t be forgettable. The Eskimos accomplished with 125 yards through the air and no touchdowns.
The Eskimos accept yet to account a accepting touchdown through four amateur this year, including the two pre-season amateur and endure week’s 19-15 achievement over Ray and the Argos.
Tillman accustomed Saskatchewan for arena a able bold in all three phases. The Riders did that, but this snoozer of a bold — it was 6-1 with four account larboard to play — was actual winnable. All the Eskimos had to do was accomplish a play. They couldn’t do it.
Roughriders quarterback Darian Durant eventually broiled up abundant adjoin an Eskimos defence that was closed for 58 account to get a breakthrough. His six-play, 35-yard drive was capped/saved by tailback Kory Sheets’ 34-yard birr into the end zone. Riders article Chris Milo added the catechumen and a 17-yard acreage goal, set up by Joseph’s go-for-broke fourth division canyon that was intercepted.
“To accompaniment the obvious, we were awful on offence,” Tillman said. “Given the circumstances, the albatross avalanche 100 per cent on my shoulders.
“When you attending at the abridgement of assembly we’ve had, decidedly (on Sunday), afresh you don’t accept to attending any added than the guy with the bad hair.”
The comments area on about any adventure accounting about this year’s Eskimos accordingly houses a affront at the aggregation for not accepting a quarterback. Admirers alarm into radio shows to say it, they address it on bulletin boards, they blog it, and they hashtag it on Twitter: #noquarterback.
Without exaggeration, Sunday’s bold was the Eskimos’ fans’ affliction fears realized.
“It’s a continued season,” Tillman said. “Had we begin a way to win, we absolutely wouldn’t accept anticipation that we’d bound our challenges.
“Being 1-1 isn’t the end of the world. But, clearly, we accept to get decidedly bigger in two elements of the game. We played championship-level defence for two weeks in a row and we’ve struggled afresh — that’s getting affectionate — on answerability and on appropriate teams.”
Staring at a austere bearings two weeks into the season, Tillman wouldn’t say he regretted trading Ray.
“I’d say at this point the way we’re playing, the accountability lies with me. That appraisal will yield abode in November,” he said.
“It was my decision. The accountability lies with me in agreement of the Ricky Ray trade. Appropriate now, until we get this affair angry around, all of the pitchforks should be advancing in my direction.
“I’ve done this continued abundant to apperceive that it’s a continued division and … I accept amazing aplomb in the guys in the locker-room, but appropriate now we are what we are.
“You aren’t what you allocution about, you are what you do, and we’re 1-1.”
Tillman paused and stared out into the elimination acreage of the aggregation that he led to a Grey Cup win 5 years ago. Four years ago, he’d traded abroad Joseph, his brilliant quarterback at the time. As he’s quick to say, that Riders won 12 amateur in 2008, but they never had a bold like this.
“To say this was not a Picasso offensively would be the adumbration of a lifetime,” Tillman said.
The endure time Chris Grandal absitively to pay a appointment to the acknowledgment bend at Mosaic Stadium, he didn't apprehend to yield his bench with him.
But that's absolutely what happened to the Saskatchewan Roughriders fan during his team's pre-season challenge on June 22.
"I stood up and acquainted that (the seat) was loose," Grandal explained on Sunday during the aboriginal division of the Riders-Edmonton Eskimos game. "Pretty soon, with a little nudge, it came appropriate off the axle it was absorbed to."
Grandal wasn't abandoned in his acquaintance that night. Dozens of seats in the arctic end airtight off the new structure. Daniel Bell's bench aswell came off that night, as did his wife's seat. It fabricated for an afflictive evening.
"I anticipation it ability accept been a appropriate advance to bang off the division - the aboriginal 100 admirers in the new seats can yield home their seat," Bell said sarcastically. "I had never apparent annihilation like it. There was a row of seats that had collapsed off sitting in the aisle. It was affectionate of embarrassing."
As well, abundant admirers complained that their bend of the activity on the acreage were blocked by railings on the bend of the new bleachers and by the bend of some of the bleacher sections.
Roughriders admiral and CEO Jim Hopson told reporters beforehand in the anniversary the architect went through the north-end bleachers and reinstalled the adulterated seats.
"We feel acceptable about the aegis of those seats now," Hopson said. "(We) aswell fabricated some adjustments to railings and so on."
And the admirers in that area on Sunday noticed the improvements.
"It's a hundred times bigger than it was," insisted Harpreet Sindu. "The seats assume accomplished and we can see the acreage abundant clearer than before. It makes a big difference."
Sindu explained that because of the issues with the seats during the pre-season game, she had her two adolescent accouchement propped on her lap for the majority of the evening. She said it was a abatement to not accept to do that again, abnormally in Sunday's heat.
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