CFL Football Preview: Hamilton Tiger Cats at Edmonton Eskimos
Short slate of CFL action on tap for this weekend as half of the league is enjoying a much needed bye. One of the two games on the docket will take place tonight at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton, Alberta as the hometown Eskimos host the Hamilton Tiger Cats in a battle of 1-3 teams. Hamilton will be glad to be done with the CFL’s best team-the Saskatchewan Roughriders-for a while. The TiCats played the Riders in a home and home series over the past two weeks and lost both games in fairly emphatic fashion. Hamilton is still looking for their first road win of the year while Edmonton is looking for their first home win in their usually tough venue.
The Eskimos are a very enigmatic team-they’ve got an emotional head coach in Kavis Reed that is capable of pushing the right buttons for strong performances but it seems like it takes the adversity of a loss or a bad performance to get any intensity of this team. They’ve got a lot of talent that underachieves and have hurt themselves with penalties and undisciplined play. Having said all of that, we expect the Eskimos to improve after their bye week. Part of their slow start is a function of scheduling-they’ve played the league’s best team (Saskatchewan) once, the league’s second or third best team (BC) twice and caught a desperate Montreal team last week that put up their best offensive effort of the season but couldn’t shake a furious Edmonton rally in the second half. Their win came earlier this season at Hamilton and at worst the Eskimos have ‘treaded water’ since then while Edmonton has deteriorated.
TiCats coach Kent Austin will likely survive this season though his performance has been uninspired in our estimation. We’re not sure that he’s the right choice for the job but given the logistical challenges of this season with the team forced to play home games at Guelph University while work is completed on Tim Horton’s Stadium and a slew of injuries he’ll probably get a ‘mulligan’ for this season. Credit to QB Henry Burris for continuing to play with consummate professionalism despite getting no help on either side of the ball. Not that it’ll matter much this week-Edmonton doesn’t want to deal with another home loss heading in to a bye week and they’re simply the better team.
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