Chris O’Leary
Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON – Edmonton Eskimo head coach Kavis Reed sees two evenly matched teams heading into Monday’s Canadian Football League game with the Toronto Argonauts.
“There are a lot of similarities, beside the fact that their head coach is better than me,” Reed said, always eager to throw in a self-deprecating comment.
“They’re a very aggressive football team defensively, they make plays defensively. Offensively, they do a lot of things very well. They use a lot of formations. They’re a team that’s a blue-collar team, as we are a blue-collar team, and they’ve very disciplined in the things they do.”
After swapping quarterbacks in the off-season, both teams have also struggled on offence this year. Edmonton and Toronto are the two lowest-scoring teams in the CFL.
“The thing is we both went through the transition of having different quarterbacks,” Reed said. “We didn’t come in with the continuity on offence and, as the season progresses, you’re starting to see that both offences are starting to take shape.
“We had a setback last week (in losing to the Montreal Alouettes), got on track a bit in the second half, but you see the same kind of progress in Toronto’s offence. Hopefully, this week, they don’t go and put it all tighter, but they’re going to be there.”
No ties for the big guys
At the conclusion of Saturday’s practice, Reed briefed the Eskimos at centre field at Commonwealth Stadium. He told his players that they all needed to wear suits for their flight to Toronto, but said only players under 220 pounds had to wear a necktie.
“The bigger guys, you don’t want them choking on their tie for a 4-1/2-hour flight,” Reed said. “Can you imagine (offensive linemen) Brian Ramsay, Kyle Koch, Devin Tyler, all of those guys wearing a tie for 4-1/2 hours on a plane?”
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