Stampeders roll over Eskimos in West Final, with Bo Levi Mitchell and Jon Cornish starring
Sunday's West Final set up as a potentially close clash, but it wound up as a lopsided blowout, with the Calgary Stampeders picking up their 12th-straight victory over the Edmonton Eskimos by a decisive score of 43-18. Edmonton's defence was great all year, but they couldn't hang with a Stampeders' offence that picked them apart, and did so very strategically. Calgary had been known for their ground game all season, so the Eskimos set up to stop the run, but that allowed Stampeders' quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell to pick them apart with short passes (including several to star running back Jon Cornish), and when Edmonton adjusted to take away the short pass, Mitchell beat them with the deep ball. It was a total demolition by Calgary, and one that illustrates both why this Stampeders' team put up a league-best 15-3 record this season and why they'll now be moving on to the Grey Cup to face East champion Hamilton.
What really stood about Mitchell's performance Sunday was the way he read the Eskimos' defence and adjusted accordingly. His line (which allowed a league-low 26 sacks this season) did a great job of protecting him, but when Edmonton did get pressure, Mitchell was often able to roll away from it and find the open man. When the Eskimos were crashing in against the run, Mitchell exploited the gaps in their coverage with short passes to the flats and up the middle (one particularly notable short shovel pass up the middle led to an 78-yard touchdown for Cornish), and when Edmonton altered course to force Mitchell to throw deep, he took them up on the challenge and did so very successfully. That's incredibly impressive for a 24-year-old quarterback making his first start in the CFL playoffs.
On the day, Mitchell finished with 336 passing yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions on just 14 completions. He also had a remarkable average of 24 yards per completion, and he posted a 63.6 per cent completion percentage. The Stampeders don't always throw the ball a ton, but they did when Edmonton challenged them to Sunday, and Mitchell showed he's got the skills to read defences and make the right calls.
Cornish also deserves a lot of credit for Sunday's result. He finished with just 54 rushing yards and a touchdown on 14 carries, giving him an average of 3.8 yards per carry that's very low by his standards), but he was incredible as a receiver, making four catches for 120 yards and another touchdown. This was a great return for him after missing nearly a month with a concussion, and it illustrated he's still in the form that saw him lead the league in rushing this year despite only playing about half of the regular season thanks to various injuries. He'll be a key part of the Stampeders' Grey Cup hopes.
The Calgary defence was in fine form as well, not just holding Edmonton to 18 points (14 of which came in the third quarter after the game already appeared out of reach), but also limiting what the Eskimos could do. Edmonton's offence last week was primarily ground-based, but the Stampeders shut that down well, limiting John White to 40 yards on eight carries. The Eskimos found some more success through the air, with Mike Reilly throwing for 216 yards and two touchdowns (with an interception) and Matt Nichols adding 92 more in relief, but a lot of Edmonton's offensive numbers came after this one was already in the bag. The Stampeders' defence did a great job of stopping everything the Eskimos tried to do, and they'll have a big role to play next week as well.
We've seen two acts of the Stampeders' 2014 story so far. They were incredibly dominant in the regular season, running up a 15-3 record that no one else was even close to, and this substantial thumping of second-best Edmonton (12-6 in the regular-season, but with three regular-season losses to Calgary plus this playoff loss) illustrates just how far they are from the pack right now. That could all change in the third act, of course, as anything can happen in any given Grey Cup, and the Tiger-Cats will be a tough opponent. Still, if the Stampeders play the way they did during the season and during the playoffs thus far, they'll be incredibly tough to beat.
