The playoffs are coming! The playoffs are coming! The playoffs are coming!
Friday night’s loss by the Tiger-Cats means the Argos will host a playoff game this year, a first for the team at BMO Field.
Tickets for the game will go on sale Monday, October 16th for season-ticket holders, while the general public can begin buying tickets on Friday, October 20th.
The date of the game won’t be known until it’s determined if the Argos clinch the East and get a first-round bye, or host a Western cross-over team in the East Semi-Final.
It’s a chance for Argo fans to show how loud BMO Field can get.
Pro football playbooks are an essential part of the sport. While not every play in the book will be used over the course of the season, players still have to know each play in case it’s installed during the lead up to a game.
Head coach Marc Trestman says with the Argos it’s not a gradual process of adding plays to the book as the season progresses.
“We’ve had the same playbook since day one,” said the coach. “We adjust by team and we have concepts and toolboxes of plays that we utilize against certain teams and certain coverages and styles of defence that we see.”
While a playbook is never stagnant, Trestman says they haven’t gone crazy with the install.
“We relatively haven’t done anything that you’d call new,” added Trestman. “We just don’t believe that you can put in a play on Day One and expect a quarterback to handle with precision on Day Five without having the ability to see all aspects of the play. The concepts we run are very similar each and every week.”
That doesn’t mean the playbook isn’t a work in progress according to offensive coordinator Marcus Brady.
“For the most part it’s all there,” Brady told Argonauts.ca. “But we grow every week. We game plan for Ds to see what they give us and then see how it fits our offence. For the most part, our base stuff is always going to be there, but you always try to find a few plays here and there that could attack a certain defence.”
A lot has been made about the West’s domination of the East in the CFL. Ricky Ray has spent nine seasons in Edmonton and now six in Toronto.
Much is made about the usually colder temperatures out west at this time of the year, or the strong winds, or the time change, or even perhaps snow.
But perhaps the quarterback’s biggest enemy is something the average football fan has in all likelihood never considered.
“The biggest thing, it’s really dry out there,” the QB told Argonauts.ca. “Being a quarterback I like to have a little moisture on my hands. So I’m just trying to do whatever I can to keep the dryness form making the balls a little bit slick.”
Now you know.
Ray is from the Northern California town of Redding. Part of its natural beauty is the large amount of forest in the area, but recently that’s become a major concern.
Forest fires have spread throughout the state resulting in multiple deaths and hundreds of people are still missing. Redding has been spared to date, but there was a problem in a nearby area.
Jones Valley is about 10 kilometres to the northeast of Redding. It’s an area that Ray has visited often to do some fishing. It suffered some fire damage before the blaze was mostly contained.
Ironically, the main area of concern was an area just off Argonaut Trail.
While knowing the area fairly well, the quarterback is not aware of that specific road.