TORONTO — The Montreal Alouettes knew that any chance they had of beating the Toronto Argonauts was going to come from their defence.
Once again, they delivered and pulled off an unlikely upset with a 38-17 victory in the CFL’s East Final.
While the result was surprising to many, head coach Jason Maas believes it shouldn’t considering how his defence has been playing each and every week.
“I’ve been saying it all year, they play at an extremely high level each and every week,” Maas said after the game. “The moniker of a great defence is being able to stop people when you need them. Take the ball away, and not only take it away but score. They’ve done that better than anybody has all year, and they’ve consistently done it.”
Look no further than Marc-Antoine Dequoy, the one who set the tone early.
With the Argonauts driving down the field and looking like they were going to score on their first possession of the game, the Canadian intercepted a pass by Chad Kelly on the goal line and returned it 101 yards to give Montreal a 7-0 lead.
It was the first of many mistakes the Alouettes forced Kelly to make that left the 26,620 fans at BMO Field stunned.
The Argonauts quarterback threw four interceptions including a pair of pick-sixes as Montreal’s defence made life miserable for the MOP nominee.
In the CFL, self-inflicted mistakes are tough to overcome especially in a game where you committed nine turnovers.
The Argonauts had never experienced a game like this all season as they were first in the league in allowing just 27 turnovers and had a +27 differential. Montreal was second though at +14 and were confident they could force mistakes from Kelly.
“We’ve been doing a good job not turning the football over and one thing I was trying to tell Chad going into the game that he didn’t have to be a superhero and sometimes you have to let plays die,” Argonauts head coach Ryan Dinwiddie said after the game.
Dinwiddie noticed that his quarterback was out of sorts especially after committing the turnovers and felt that he could’ve helped his quarterback more than he did.
Kelly was quick to put the loss on his shoulders knowing that his play was the difference in the end.
“You can’t turn the ball over as many times as we did on offence. Obviously I made it a lot harder on the defence than it should have been,” Kelly said. “This loss is on me, throwing those mistakes out there and playing careless with football and trying to do too much.”
It was an uncharacteristic performance from Kelly who put together one of the more impressive seasons as a starter going 15-1 and earned a three-year contract extension in August.
Teammate Wynton McManis wasn’t prepared to let his quarterback take the all the blame for the loss shaking his head in disagreement to Kelly’s statement.
“We’re a team honestly. You can’t separate who played well and who played bad” McManis said. “We all lost collectively as a group. Together we got to this point and together we’ll get through it and past it. You learn more from losses than you do from wins. This is an opportunity for us to take a step back and understand where we started slipping.”
Despite Kelly’s rough performance, the Argonauts defence that did their best to give the offence a chance.
Toronto finished the game with seven sacks, including five in the first half alone, that kept the game close but they couldn’t sustain it in the second half.
It was not an easy game for Alouettes quarterback Cody Fajardo, who finished with 175 yards, a touchdown and an interception but knew his team was still in a good spot.
“They put us in a lot of second long situations and it’s difficult for offensive line when you have guys pinning their ears back knowing you’re in a drop back situation,” Fajardo said after the game. “But here’s the thing, I am so proud of this team because we did not waiver one bit. When things happen and broke down we did not waiver one bit and we believed in each other. That’s what we’ve done all year.”
As deflating as the turnovers were for Toronto, it wasn’t just the Argonauts offence that made critical errors in this game.
With the team trying to mount a comeback in the fourth quarter after a touchdown by Cameron Dukes that cut the lead to 24-10, returner James Letcher Jr. took the ensuing kickoff 105 yards to the endzone to make it 31-10.
While the Argonauts will now be forced to reflect on seeing a record-setting season end with a crushing loss, the Alouettes get another chance to try and prove people wrong.
This was a franchise in dissary after the league was forced to take over operations and search for a new owner back February just as free agency was set to begin.
At that time, players weren’t sure if they wanted to deal with the uncertainty with the ownership situation and it led to some of their top pending free agents to go to other teams.
Fajardo wasn’t even sure if he was going to be playing in the league again with the way things ended with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He mulled offers from Toronto and Montreal but ultimately decided to go to the Alouettes as he got the chance to stick with Maas (who was hired after getting fired by the Alouettes) and the team showing belief in him by offering a two-year deal.
Now he will get his chance to go to a Grey Cup as a starter after winning with Toronto as their third-stringer.
“We’re a band of misfit toys. There’s a lot of guys on this team that that including myself that were kind of exiled from their own team. …We have a lot of first and second year players,” Fajardo explained. I was telling a lot of the young guys on the sideline that getting to the Grey Cup in your first year in the league is pretty special, right.
“There’s been some older guys on the team that haven’t been to Grey Cups, myself included as a starter. There was a lot of signs throughout the year that proved that we just had a chance of going to the Grey Cup if we did our job. I’m extremely excited to have another week with this team, another week to bond and that Grey Cup week is so special for bonding and when you win a championship, those bonds go to the next level.”
The Alouettes have embraced their identity as the underdogs that are now riding seven-straight wins to a Grey Cup appearance in Hamilton.