Difficult for Edmonton Eskimos to watch CFL Playoffs
Last weekend was the first time in five years the Edmonton Eskimos weren’t involved in the divisional-final round of the Canadian Football League playoffs.
And for Jason Maas, it is the first time in his three years as head coach that his team is missing out on the post-season.
It won’t get any easier for Maas & Co. with the national spotlight set squarely on Commonwealth Stadium in the week to come, either.
Never mind the fact that the Eskimos aren’t playing in a Grey Cup final being hosted in their hometown. They are far from being the first ones ever to experience that.
But missing out on the playoffs entirely has been less of a sore spot and more of an allout embarrassment.
“It’s brutally hard,” said Eskimos assistant head coach Mike Benevides, who has coordinated Edmonton’s defence for the past three seasons under Maas. “Because at the end of the day, everything funnels up to that position and the people above him, so it’s extremely hard and disappointing.
“It’s killing all of us.” After all, this ending wasn’t even close to the script they wrote for themselves coming into a season that could only be described as promising.
Their season wasn’t all bad, of course. The Eskimos finished with the league’s passing-yards leader in Mike Reilly, who was coming off a CFL most outstanding player award from 2017; the league’s receivingyards leader in all-star standout Duke Williams; a top-three running back in C.J. Gable; the division’s top net-offence and time of possession; and tied for the league’s top sack attack and tied for best home record at 7-2.
But the whole turned out to be worth much more than just the sum of those parts, and the Eskimos were left on the outside looking in on a postseason that will culminate in another team taking over their dressing room on Sunday.
But they fully realize they have no one to blame but themselves after failing to even earn the right to compete for the Cup.
“I was talking to Mercy (Maston) and I said, ‘How old are you?’ Benevides asked the 23-year-old Eskimos defensive back after having been eliminated from post-season contention with one regularseason game still to play. “I said, ‘I’ve been coaching in this league since you were three and this is only the second time I’ve missed the playoffs.
“The last time I missed the playoffs was with Wally (Buono) in Calgary, and that was our last year in Calgary in ’02.”
Benevides pointed out it happened to Buono again last season, when the B.C. Lions saw an end to a consecutive playoff streak that began back in 1997.
Edmonton, meanwhile, has now missed the playoffs for the fifth time in the 13 years that followed a North American pro sports record of 34 consecutive post-season appearances, which came to an end in 2006.
Maas and Benevides both share a commonality in that they have both head coached in the CFL for three seasons, and their worst record was a 9-9 finish in each of their third years.
The difference was Benevides’ Lions earned a playoff crossover with a fourth-place finish in 2014, while this year’s Eskimos were bumped down to fifth place via a tiebreaker to a B.C. squad that also finished 9-9, making Edmonton the first CFL team to win nine games and miss playoffs.
“And that’s the thing that bothered us, we had the same record as B.C. and didn’t get in, and 9-9 now is a different deal,” Benevides said. “It’s just the division, it’s the year. Everything’s a little different and I think it adds a lot of fodder to the discussion of changing things (to one division) in 2019. You make it one big swoop and let all nine (teams) compete. There’s validity to both arguments, but it’s a different deal.”
While the Eskimos brass has felt nothing but heat from a fan base puzzled by having all the right pieces, but still no playoff picture this year, it’s already been announced Maas will return as head coach again the next.
And you can bet the bar will be set higher than simply avoiding missing playoffs.
“It happens to everybody, nobody’s immune to it,” Benevides said. “You learn from these things and that’s the opportunity to learn and keep continuity going.”