C.J. Gable checked off all the boxes the Eskimos were looking for in a running back during his first two games with the CFL team.
He revived the running game with back-to-back 100-yard performances, scored three touchdowns and blocked well for quarterback Mike Reilly after being acquired in a trade with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Oct. 2.
Both Reilly and head coach Jason Maas gave the 30-year-old Gable glowing reviews, talking about the five-year veteran like he’s the piece in the puzzle to have a balanced offensive attack that the Eskimos have been missing since starting running back John White was injured in the second game of the season.
“He’s just a complete back and we’re very fortunate to have him,” said Maas, who called Gable “one of the premier backs in our league.”
Maas pointed out that Gable has “great vision” and “enough speed to do things with it” when he has the ball, can power his way through defenders but also make them miss, and has “great smooth hands” and runs good pass routes out of the backfield.
Maas also said that Gable, at six-foot, 219 pounds, is a physical back who “sets blocks up extremely well,” is smart and already understands the offence despite being in Edmonton for only 3-1/2 weeks.
“As long as I’m still playing, that’s all matters to me,” said Gable, who has a career average of 5.8 yards per carry, but didn’t get enough opportunities to carry the ball with the Ticats during the past five seasons to become a CFL star. “A lot of people in my (college) class coming out are not even playing right now, so I’m happy I can still go.”
Unfortunately, Gable is not perfect. He admitted that he has never won a game against the Calgary Stampeders, the Eskimos provincial arch-rivals who are in town for a 5 p.m. Saturday showdown at The Brick Field at Commonwealth Stadium.
“We got close a couple of time, but haven’t beat them yet,” Gable said about the Stampeders. “It would be nice to beat them for the first time.”
Gable played five games against the Stamps while with the Ticats from 2013-17, losing three times by six points or less, but also getting whalloped 60-1 this year.
Maybe Gable could pretend that he’s playing against Toronto on Saturday because he seems to like the intense rivalry games. Four of his seven 100-yard rushing performances in the CFL were against the Argonauts.
“It’s a rivalry game on the Hamilton side,” he explained. “You’ve got to make sure you get on them.”
Gable, who is currently riding a career-high three-game streak of 100-yard rushing games, hit the century mark against the Argos in his last contest with Hamilton on Sept. 30 and again in his second game with Edmonton on Oct. 14 plus his Esks debut against the Montreal Alouettes on Oct. 9.
“It feels good,” he said about his back-to-back 100-yard outings with the Eskimos. “They trust me in the run game and believe I can do it.
“I’m not going to worry about 100 yards a game. Whatever they give me, I’ll just run hard and that’s it.”
He is the fourth Eskimos running back to record a 100-yard game this season (the other three – White and Travon Van – are on the six-game injured list – while LaDarius Perkins is on the one-game injured list), but no one accomplished the feat after Aug. 4 until Gable arrived.
The Eskimos wouldn’t let Gable run at all last week, benching him for the game with the B.C. Lions in Vancouver because he came up with a minor injury during practice. Mass said it was simply “precautionary” because of all the injuries the Eskimos have suffered this season.
“He wasn’t happy about it,” Maas said. “He was pretty adamant that he could do it and, obviously, proved it this week (in practice). He looks as good as he did when he first got here.”
“It’s going to be good to have him back in the lineup, there’s no doubt,” said Reilly, who will experience the sixth switch involving four different players at the international tailback position this season on Saturday.
“He’s a guy who just does his job well, just never has any busts,” Reilly continued. “If he’s got to be in protection, he does a great job of seeing all the different stuff that goes on in the (defensive) box and knows who to pick up and he meets them at the line of scrimmage. He’s aggressive with it, which maintains the integrity of the pocket, which makes my job a lot easier.
“In the run game, he’s a physical downhill runner. He’s aggressive. He gets us the hard yardage, but he’s also capable of busting out the big ones. And he’s good out of the backfield catching the football.
“He’s definitely got some size and he uses it. … When you hand the ball off on first down, if you don’t have a great look for the run, you know he’s still going to get three or four yards and keep you in second-and-medium, second-and-manageable, instead of second-and-10 or second-and-11. That’s huge. That makes everybody’s day easier offensively.
“He’s been a huge addition for us.”
Reilly is still amazed about Gable’s 19-yard run through the heart of the Toronto defence deep in Argos territory two weeks ago.
“That was as impressive as it gets,” Reilly said. “He had 10 guys in that pile, some on our team pushing, some on their team pushing, but he kept his legs churning. He’s a strong guy and that’s what I’m talking about. He uses his physicality to his advantage very well.”
Gable’s career statistics tell a different story in Hamilton than they do in Edmonton. He totalled 2,372 yards during five years with the Tiger-Cats, yet never had more than 782 yards and 130 carries in a season. He also twice played seven or fewer games because of injuries.
With the Eskimos, he already has 37 carries, including a career-high 22 rushes against Montreal, and 215 yards on the ground after just two games.
“I’m getting more carries than I did when I was in Hamilton,” he said. “Here, they give (the ball) to me early, so that’s kind of different.”
Gable’s career high with the Ticats was only 20 carries and he was in double figures in carries (mostly between 10 and 14) in only 16 of his 51 games.
Getting more carries and yards with the Eskimos has already cost Gable $556, though. He joined the Wilder For A Cure challenge that Argos rookie running back James Wilder Jr. set up for Breast Cancer Awareness Month during October.
Wilder asked CFL running backs to match his donation of $1/yard and $100/touchdown. He also has several NFL running backs (Devonta Freeman, Chris Thompson, Melvin Gordon, Todd Gurley) participating.
“It’s a good cause,” said Gable, who has friends with breast cancer. “I want more people to know that other people care about it.”
SHORT YARDAGE: Gable had back-to-back 2,000-yard rushing seasons in high school at Sylmer, Calif., and then became the first true freshman in USC (University of Southern California) Trojans history to start a season opener at tailback. He finished his college career with 1,549 rushing yards on 308 carries in 41 games and won three consecutive Rose Bowl championships from 2006-08 … Gable is one of only five CFL players to have 100-yard rushing games with two different clubs in the same season … The only other player to do it in consecutive games for different clubs was Troy Davis, who also accomplished the feat with Hamilton and Edmonton in 2005.