It’s not often that one play can sum up a team’s situation, but that’s what James Wilder Jr.’s 76-yard touchdown run did for the Argos on Saturday.
With a truck-sized hole punched for him by his offensive line, Wilder did his best Andre DeGrasse and exploded through the gap, running untouched for his first-ever CFL touchdown. The journey was simple enough. He out-ran a few Esks players on his way to the end zone, but there was no contact, no bodies flying at him, or hands reaching for a leg, an ankle or a shoestring.
It’s eerily similar to how things stand in the East right now for Wilder and the Argos. The lay of the land is getting littered with rubble. The Tiger-Cats came up short at the one-yard line last week and fell to 2-9; the Alouettes watched Darian Durant have one of his most challenging outings of his CFL career on Sunday, as they fell to 3-9. Ottawa is one point ahead of the Argos in the standings but the REDBLACKS still have Trevor Harris on the six-game injured list and are unlikely to use Drew Tate this week, with good-but-not-great news on his shoulder and ribs. In place of Harris and Tate, Ryan Lindley (career stats: 7-14 passing, 76 yards, one interception) will get the start on Friday in Winnipeg.
All of that to say that with their first win over a West opponent to their name, a newly-discovered run game and a d-line bolstered by the return of Victor Butler and Cleyon Laing, the Argos have a chance to grab firm control of the East. These aren’t the kinds of things that Argos’ coach Marc Trestman thinks about. We know that because he specifically said it ahead of the Eskimos’ game last week.
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Ricky Ray and the Argos have a golden opportunity to take control of the East Division with a win over Montreal on Saturday Chris O’Leary explains (Johany Jutras/Argos).
Dave Campbell, the colour analyst for Edmonton’s 630 CHED, posed all of those scenarios to Trestman after the team had completed its walkthrough on Friday.
“That’s you telling yourself a story on which you think we should be thinking,” Trestman said, playfully. “I say that respectfully.
“We’ve got to become a better football team and honestly that’s the focus. It’s not on what’s happening in the division and what’s happening in Ottawa, which guy’s injured. We need to become a better football team.”
Beating the Eskimos — a team that Trestman called a legitimate Grey Cup contender upwards of five times before they played last week — was a step toward his goal. The next step will be for them to blow the Alouettes over when they come to BMO Field on Saturday. The Argos haven’t won back-to-back games yet this season.
“We’re involved in a major transformation of trying to find out who we are as a team,” Trestman told reporters after the win. “We found out a little bit more [with the win] and if that’s who we’ll be Monday when we go back to work. We’ll see if we can utilize the plusses and the minuses from the game to be a better football team next week here against the Alouettes.”
“We haven’t had back-to-back wins and that’s the main focus. We just have to handle success the right way,” Wilder told TSN’s Matt Scianitti after his 190-yard day on the ground.
Despite being up-and-down in 2017, Argos head coach Marc Trestman insists that his team is preparing the right way and can prove it again on Saturday (Johany Jutras/Argos).
Anything can happen in these last seven weeks of the season, but with a mostly healthy roster (knock on wood), the Argos are in prime position to make a move to get to the top of the standings. They get Montreal this week and are in Hamilton the next. They finish off their schedule against four West teams (hosting Saskatchewan, traveling to Edmonton, hosting Winnipeg and closing out the regular-season in BC), where some momentum would help their cause substantially.
“You never know, you really don’t,” Trestman said.
“You hope it leads to something good and something better. The guys will go back to work and do what they did all year.
“Win or lose, they come into the room first thing in the morning. You can’t even hear yourself think. There’s a big buzz, a big energy, the guys are extremely positive. They go to work and prepare. They’re in early and stay late, they stay after practice working on their individual craft. I couldn’t be prouder of our team the way they worked.
“They say you get what you deserve and this week, the work we put in, we got something we deserved.”
If they can find some consistency at this crucial point in the season, they could all be channeling their inner-Wilder, running away with the Division with little challenge from those around them.