2025 Edmonton Elks, game 4: The hard first step is complete.

Week 5: Ottawa Redblacks 33 @ Edmonton Elks 39

Edmonton wins a game! The Elks are better than a bad team. Progress.

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What an odd game. Effective on offence, yet simultaneously underwhelming. Effective on defence, yet no sacks and no turnovers. Awesome special teams, yet allowed a punt return touchdown. Blowing a massive lead, but bouncing back.

I’m most curious to review just how conservative Ottawa’s offensive approach was, playing heavily underneath rather than downfield. All three Elks opponents this year had thrown for 330 yards and three touchdowns against them; I predicted Dru Brown would do the same, but the Elks would win 28-25. He had 316 yards and two touchdowns – almost had it, outside of the mutual return touchdowns.

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316 yards allowed on 43 attempts amounts to 7.3 yards per pass attempt. That’s a great defensive day. Visibly they only gave up a lot at the end of the first half and at the end of the game, whether that’s coincidental or psychological softening given the scoreboard.

To nobody’s surprise, Geno Lewis caught a touchdown in his return to Commonwealth. He ended as the game leader with 8 catches and 75 yards.

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Offensively, the Elks picked up on last week, starting with a ton of motion, misdirection, and mad scientist plays. It worked great, producing two touchdown drives to jump out to a lead. Then they had three first downs total over their next five drives, one of those by penalty. By then it was the mid third quarter; a 46 yard connection to Leake was the only first down in setting up a field goal, followed by Rankin’s touchdown burst.

The next two first downs were by penalty, and finally one more while running out clock. So if it seems weird to be dissatisfied about Ford being 15/17, 212 yards, two touchdowns passing (plus Fajardo 4/4 for 29 yards), that’s why – lengthy stretches of doing nothing. Pause for realism that they’re not going to score on every drive, but I think ‘consistency’ requires more than three or four decent drives.

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Ford was only 4/5 in the second half, and Fajardo 2/2. Bizarre. Funny game that I don’t think Ford completed more than two passes beyond ten yards downfield, plus drawing one pass interference. All seven first down plays in the fourth quarter were run plays. Their run game was bad, too – outside of a 74-yard touchdown, Rankin had 11 carries for 31 yards, and Leake had 5 carries for 10 yards. That would be a 2.6-yard average between them.

Good thing, then, they both contributed with a big play in the pass game, and that Rankin took one carry long-distance. That run is not something that happens often in the CFL. There was nobody left to tackle him, and there’s where I’ll give Jordan Maksymic a little extra credit: remember all the misdirection they built in? The broadcast highlighted the Elks front setting up perfectly, but did not mention the motion paying off with Ottawa’s defensive backs chasing the receivers across.

The generic run blocking struggles were drastic – including short yardage, which failed three times (with one friendly spot) and scared the coach off a fourth – except for that play, which was perfect.

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Finally a game to talk about third downs. I picked out five, and there arguably could have been a couple more.

1. (2nd Q, 14:55, EDM 50, 15-3) 3rd and 6 for Ottawa. This might sound radical, but down 15-3 was enough to be tempting to go offence. Any less than 3rd and 6... The punt netted 3 yards with a nice return. You love to see it.

2. (2nd Q, 12:43, EDM 54, 15-3) 3rd and 3 for Edmonton. I regret waffling over this one because of the lead. Playing it safe up 15-3? Well, pretty quick it was almost a tie game. You can always use more points. Nothing more prototypical for this conversation than 3rd and 3 at midfield.

Derek Taylor re-shared for Ottawa’s late-game attempt that 3rd and 3 is converted about 60% of the time. It’s 52% success for 3rd and 5, and 55% if you include 2nd and 5 data.

3. (2nd Q, 0:50, OTT 52, 22-17) 3rd and 2 for Edmonton. As the one before... except that the low time brings up a new question. You aren’t likely to reap the full benefits of a conversion, needing about 50 more yards for a touchdown within that timespan. Though I’m not sure how that balances with the same effect on Ottawa if you fail.

4. (4th Q, 14:57, EDM 48, 32-23) 3rd and 2.5 for Edmonton. Here we are again, up 32-23. Run offence, and more than 60% of the time, you would ramp the pressure up that much more and not have Ottawa drive for points the other way. The rest of the time, Ottawa would start just across midfield.

5. (4th Q, 4:31, EDM 25, 35-26) 3rd and 1 for Edmonton. If you weren’t just doing your best to waste the last four minutes up nine points, having failed miserably on three short yardage attempts already...

Congratulations all the same to Mark Kilam on his first head coaching win.

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The Elks host the Lions next Sunday for their first rematch of the season. Theoretically they’re in better shape than they were a month ago. This is a big one to stake out a claim in the West Division and pick up real steam.

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All-24 review takes for the curious:

- When the defence drops into zone they really do not care about the first 10 yards. It’s always wide open, and they trust they can rally up to any short completions. I don’t think it’s necessarily uncommon in the CFL, it’s just really jarring on a full-field view. That’s where you’d rather give up yards, though they weren’t great at closing the gaps this week. Against Winnipeg was the opposite, great at rallying up but got beat deep multiple times.

- Review lets me give the D-line credit despite another game with no sacks. (They’re last in the league with two.) Ottawa was heavy on screens and otherwise Brown was all too happy to take the space they were giving him underneath, which doesn’t allow a lot of opportunities for sacks. Four- and five-man pressure disrupted his rhythm with decent frequency. One play to end the third quarter, Ceresna bullied the left guard a full five yards back into Brown, causing him to sail a pass high over Hardy in a gap downfield. Those are impacts that are hard to register. I hope they do start turning into sacks soon, because those are the really big plays.

- Makes it harder to judge defensive backs when they weren’t tested. I don’t think they did overly well when Brown actually made an attempt to beat them. Williams was the most visible-bad, including getting juked hard by Lewis for the touchdown, and it could’ve been a second over top of him early in the fourth quarter if Brown hadn’t underthrown it badly, just enough to be in his range.

- Pimpleton’s return TD started with a Redblack pushing one Elk into another (fringe between shoulder and in the back) causing both Elks to fall down and opening the initial lane. Probably a block in the back when he was at the 15 yard line.

- I think Ford made a pair of bad or unfortunate reads on either side of that punt return, once not taking on a throw to Julien-Grant between linebackers, once handing off instead of pulling and flipping it to Julien-Grant in the flat with no one around him.

- Mid fourth quarter, the Elks had a called screen to the right, which included two receivers deep left against one defensive back. Things you would never notice on the broadcast.

- My only guess on Ford getting two series off is that he was under the weather in some way and they wanted to ease the load on him where they could. Kilam casually said post-game that guys were throwing up at half time, and Leake had to go to the locker room after his return TD, so it would not be surprising if something were affecting the team. Pro sports is not kind about rest and recovery, unfortunately.

- Ford referenced the Leake deep pass after the game – Leake released inside/middle because his defender had outside leverage, which brought him closer to a deep route on the other side of the field and the second defender who made it look scary.

- Rankin’s TD run. The two defensive backs who might’ve had a chance to stop him communicated a coverage switch on Gittens and Julien-Grant artistically looping around in the backfield, only for Julien-Grant to cross underneath post-snap with all the defenders following in that direction. Nobody left on the left half of the field.