News
July 13, 2012
Chris O’Leary
Edmonton Journal
The adage is that the low moments reveal character. If that’s the case, Edmonton Eskimo Head Coach Kavis Reed has seen a lot of positives over the past six days.
Aside from an inspiring game from his defence, there wasn’t much to celebrate in the Eskimos’ 17-1 loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Sunday.
Special teams couldn’t get the offence good field position and the offence started out slow and faded to irrelevancy shortly after.
Start with the most glaring aspect of the game. Quarterback Steven Jyles completed 10 of 19 passes for 91 yards, has yet to throw a touchdown this season, and was benched twice in favour of Kerry Joseph.
“When I took him out of the game in Saskatchewan, I was going to watch him closely to make certain he wasn’t whining or pouting,” Reed said. “What he did was he picked up his helmet and put it on so that he could still hear all of the calls. He was observing the football game and, when Kerry came off, he gave Kerry positive feedback as to what the defence was doing and what our receivers were doing. That’s the sign of maturity.
“An immature quarterback would have pouted, whined, thrown his helmet, kicked things, but he didn’t do that. After the game, he was very professional.
“He came in the next morning very early and watched the game. Didn’t watch his plays only, he watched the entire game to see what happened in that football game. He’s developed as a pro and his attitude is definitely that of the starting quarterback.”
Reed said the Esks’ approach this week has been similar to when they dropped a 36-1 decision to the B.C. Lions last August.
The situations were different in that loss, though.
The Eskimo receiving corps was racked with injuries, with four imports sidelined and quarterback Ricky Ray played with a ragtag crew of fill-ins.
Still, Reed said that his players have put in a lot of work to try to right the wrongs of Sunday.
“The biggest thing about our football team, the most important thing I take from that game, is the character of the players the next day,” he said. “To a man, they all came in when they had a partial day off (on Monday). They all came in early and watched the film. We had three O-linemen in at three o’clock in the morning watching the film, wanted to know what they did wrong.
“Obviously, they knew they did not have a very good football game and they didn’t do what they needed to do to help us win the football game and that is the similarity, the character of the football team.”
On his end, Reed said he’s keeping things in perspective for his team. That message resonated in the locker-room on Thursday.
“You come into the season and you know you’re not going to go 18-0,” said Eskimo slotback Fred Stamps. “(Saskatchewan) played a good offensive game, a good defensive game, and now we put that behind us.
“The good thing is we get to play them again. We know next time we’ll take care of business, but first of all, we’ve got to take care of Winnipeg.”
“That’s one thing I told the guys all week: ‘Hey this is Week 2,’ ” Jyles said. “We’re 1-1, we’re not out of the race. It’s not like we’re eight games down or anything. It’s not like we had a bad game in Week 10 or Week 14. It’s Week 2. We’re still learning each other as an offence and we’re getting better by the week.”
“We don’t deal in desperation and that’s the one thing I’ve been very vigilant about in preparation. This is not a desperation football game, we’re not going to put that label on this game,” Reed said.
“Our football team is young and it’s a process and my message to them is that if we win more than we lose, we’re going to have an opportunity in the end and it starts with this football game right here.”
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