2024 CFL Week 9: BC Lions at Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Steven Chang/BC Lions
A common theme in sports is how a player and a team handle adversity and rightly so.
Veteran CFL offensive lineman Chris Burns – my former co-host on BC Lions broadcasts – would always point out that clichés survive for a reason and that’s because they’re true.
So, we ask your forgiveness if I throw out the old ‘adversity reveals character’ adage.
Yet not much is said about how teams handle success.
Do they rest on their laurels and admire their success, or do they continue to try to improve?
Most people will tell you that part of becoming a professional athlete is learning how to deal with both failure and success.
As the Lions head into Calgary for Friday night’s showdown with the Stampeders, it will be interesting to see how this team performs after a 38-27 win at home last week against the Ottawa RedBlacks.
The much-ridiculed defence drew a lot of praise for its work after poor performances in Toronto and Ottawa the previous two weeks.
Limiting a team to 27 points with eight of those points coming in garbage time and seven quarterback sacks will do that. But it is a unit that still allowed Ottawa quarterback Dustin Crum to go 30 of 35 passing for 307 yards with two receivers in Justin Hardy (100 yards) and Bralon Addison (132 yards), eclipsing the 100-yard plateau.
“Credit to Ottawa’s offence last week, but there are still a lot of things that we have to fix. That’s a great thing about this time of year, is that everybody’s striving for those types of things. But there are still a lot of the same mistakes that are continuing to happen. Our communication needs to continue to improve. Then just the overall execution of four-quarter football – not just defensively – but overall. All three phases need to be able to adjust throughout the game and continue to improve and grow,” explained Lions head coach Buck Pierce.
The question now is, how does the BC defence respond after its success?
Just as an athlete has to flush a loss, the same holds true for a victory.
How players learn that is simply by gaining experience in those situations, according to Pierce.
“You’ve got to be in the fire a little bit to understand how fast things shift and turn. There are highs and lows and peaks and valleys. You can call it what you want but you have to be able to stay poised, stay even keel and play the next play. What happens throughout the course of a game – whether it’s good or it’s bad – can’t roll into the next play. You can’t be feeling too good about yourself onto the next play or too bad about yourself either. You have to be able to flush it,” stated Pierce.
The key to success in most cases is just staying in the moment.
“I think that’s always kind of been my message. As long as there’s time on the clock, we’re playing one down at a time, trying to win that down and play to the best of our ability in that very next play,” said Pierce.
Inexperience is one of the issues that has plagued the Lions secondary. Garry Peters is the old dog of the group with 135 games of CFL experience. After that, you have rookies Robert Carter Jr. (15) and Cam Stone (3), as well as second-year pros in Cristophe Beaulieu (28 games) and Robert Kent Jr. (27), who have combined for 73 games of experience.
The Lions hope that bringing back veteran T.J. Lee, who was just signed last week, will benefit some of the younger players. Lee is a five-time Western Division All-Star with 139 CFL games under his belt. No one expects him to play at that level again but having another veteran to help calm things down will be a bonus.
“I haven’t been around T.J. very long but he seems to communicate very well. Just being around him here the last week or so, you can tell he’s very vocal and that’s what you need in the back. He’s a guy who’s seen a lot of things and played at a high level for a long time. He also leads the right way, too. Part of being a vocal leader is that you have to communicate in the right way. You have to get to know your teammates, the guys you’re working with and how they respond,” noted Pierce.
With five games remaining on the schedule, the team’s fortunes will rest on how the defence – and in particular the secondary – performs.
Although the stats show BC second in the league in terms of pass defence, giving up 267 yards per game with only Calgary performing better (265 yards), other numbers show why BC is seventh in points allowed per game (29.6 points per game) while Calgary is first (20.4 points per game).
The Lions have given up 26 passing plays of over 30 yards, which is dead last in the CFL. Calgary, by comparison, has allowed the least, with only 10 passing plays exceeding 30 yards. B.C has allowed opposing quarterbacks to operate at a 110.6 efficiency rating, which ranks eighth in the league. Meanwhile, Calgary by comparison is at 90.1, which ranks as the second best.
If the group can eliminate the explosion plays that have plagued them at points this season and play more consistent football, then, as linebacker Micah Awe stated last week, the defence can be dangerous all the time – not just for spurts.