“You set out at the beginning of the year, you put a plan together, but you know that all the other teams are putting a plan together too, and they have the same goal as we do,” said Argonauts defender Jordan Younger. “In the end, we wanted it more than everyone else did.”
Some may call it fate, some, a team of destiny. After a victory like the one on Sunday night, it’s hard to argue that the Toronto Argonauts finished the season with a storybook ending in a 35–22 beat down of the Calgary Stampeders in the 100th Grey Cup at the Rogers Centre.
The journey to the podium started just under a year ago when the Argos changed the key faces of their team with the acquisition of a new head coach in Scot Milanovich, a defensive coordinator invited over from Calgary in Chris Jones, and a CFL legend in quarterback Ricky Ray.
“This is awesome,” Ray said after the game, holding his daughter Chloe. “Coming to a whole new situation, I was just trying to come here and do my best to help this team any way I could. It was new for all of us. Coaches, players, all of us were just trying to build something here.
“This is what you play for, to be able to be on a team that gets on a run and wins a championship. It makes you feel that all the hard work and obstacles you’ve overcome just pay off. Everyone on this team has had to overcome something at some point to get here and we’re a family, we just came together and stuck together and played great football.”
The Argos knew what was at stake at the end of the season. They entered the preseason hoping to build something — to build a championship team who could hoist the trophy before a home crowd on the biggest stage in the CFL.
The road to this dream was far from smooth though. Since 1955, only one other CFL team has won the Grey Cup on their own turf. The home team in the Grey Cup faces the distractions of family and friends and the increased attention of the media and city events. The Argos weren’t going to fall to the distractions though, and spent the week largely secluded in a hotel, as though preparing for a road game.
“We had a lot of veterans on the team who understood that if you make it to the Grey Cup and don’t win, you might as well have not even gone, so they we all just concentrating hard on the win,” said Argos head coach Scot Milanovich.
With the Argos victory on Sunday, they became the second team to win it all at home and are now 2–0 in Grey Cups when the NHL is locked out, with their last appearance coming during the 2004 NHL crisis..
Ricky Foley, who played university football at York University, knew that arriving at the Grey Cup was simply destiny. “We have Ricky Ray and we played Edmonton in the first playoff game. We have coach Milanovich and in the second round of the playoffs we faced Montreal. We have coach Jones in from Calgary and we got Calgary. It couldn’t have been a more perfect script.”
In the moments leading up to game, head coach Milanovich had a few final motivational words for his men.
“Remember, protect the football. Find strength in your teammates when things get tough and remember that the only play that matter is the next play. We’ve been in the shadows all season, tonight’s the night we step into the spotlight.”
On the opening play of the game, the Double Blue forgot Milanovich’s first point of advice — protect the football; Ray dropped back looking for York University graduate Andre Durie along the sideline. However, Quincy Butler of the Stampeders was there to steal the ball.
That play was the only time that the Boatmen, who with a 9 –9 regular season record became the first team since 2001 to win the Grey Cup without a winning record, were in trouble all night.
The first half became one of butter fingers and turnovers as the Stamps added two interceptions of their own. The only difference was the Argos capitalized on the Calgary mistakes while the Stampeders were unable to put any points on the scoreboard off the Butler interception.
Calgary’s woes began when Ricky Foley jumped on the ball after a fumble in the handoff between Stampeders quarterback Kevin Glenn and Canadian running back Jon Cornish.
Foley was named the top Canadian in the game after recording four tackles, a sack, and the forced fumble.
Following the forced fumble, Foley jumped up on the Toronto team bench, pounding his chest and yelling into the sold-out crowd, “This is my city.”
The Argos are a team composed of several star athletes hailing from the Toronto area, who indeed were playing for their city and their fans. These players include York graduates Jeff Johnson, Durie, and Foley.
The Rogers Centre isn’t known for strong home-field advantage; the Argonauts entered the championship with a league worst 4–5 home record. The team is lucky if they can draw a crowd of over 20,000 for a home game and, even then, the stagnant atmosphere in the concrete cave is usually more akin to a funeral than football game.
That was not the case on Sunday. Fans from across the country came in strong and provided the Argos with a definitive edge. Milanovich later recalled coming out onto the field during pre game warmups. “Something was different. It was electric in here, I’d never seen the stadium like it before.”
The Double Blue rode the crowd’s enthusiasm after the Foley recovery straight down the field and into the end zone, appropriately, with a five-yard touchdown to Chad Owens, the CFL’s most outstanding player, who was unstoppable in the Eastern final against Montreal.
“That turnover in the first quarter was huge,” said Milanovich. “We got that turnover and took it down and stuffed it in, from then on our confidence was sky high and we played with the lead for the rest of the game.”
Later in the first half, Argonaut cornerback Pacino Horne intercepted Glenn on the 25-yard line and returned the ball for the Argos fifth defensive touchdown of the year. The interception came off a gamble in man-to-man coverage as Horne dropped coverage of his receiver to follow his instincts and go for the ball. The play and his ability to read Glenn showed wisdom well beyond his sole year of experience in the CFL.
The Boatmen continued to pile on the touchdowns, while Calgary relied on the boot of kicker Rene Parades who sent two first-quarter kicks through the uprights. But the first rule of football is to not rely on your kicker — field goals will never win games.
With just over two minutes left in the first half, the Argos offense took to the field. Ray found Durie for a first down and then Chad Kackert carried the team for 29 yards, finding holes in open space. Ray then found Dontrel Inman at the one-yard line for a 32-yard completion. The Argos, who were stopped three times at the one yard line by Montreal in the East final, then faced the longest yard on the field. On second from the one, backup quarterback Jarious Jackson came in behind centre, but rather than jumping over the tackles as he had all season on goal line plays, Jackson dropped back to pass and found Inman for the score.
“We hadn’t run a pass play in that formation all year long,” explained Ray. “He’s been waiting all year to run that play and it was just great execution by Jarious. We’ve had it in (the game plan) every game and it finally got called tonight.”
The Argos went into the half up 24–6, helped by two defensive turnovers and outstanding stops by Jon Cornish, who was the runner-up to Owens for the CFL’s most outstanding player recognition. Cornish established a new record for Canadian running backs with 1,457 yards this the season, and became the first Canadian to lead the league in rushing since 1988.
In the playoffs, Cornish hit 100 yards rushing in each outing. However, the Argos, who had held Cornish to 39 and 43 yards in their two meetings this season, were not going to let him run on them. The Boatmen entered the game knowing that in order to win they would need to stop the run and force Glenn to beat them through the air.
“We executed,” Jordon Younger explained. “We had a game plan and they tried to come out and do what they wanted to do but we wouldn’t let them. We had a good understanding of how they were going to attack us and how Jon Cornish runs the ball, he’s a great running back, but we just stopped them.”
The stellar first half and the 11 points the Double Blue added to their lead in the second came from unexpected sources. Owens, who tore through the Allouettes defense last week and received MOP honours in the days before the Grey Cup, was quiet with only two receptions for 14 yards, one of which went for the opening touchdown. The Argos offensive fire ultimately came from a stocky running back who wasn’t even in the starting lineup for most of the first half of the season.
That running back, Chad Kackert, plowed through the Calgary defense for 133 yards on 20 carried, and was the second Argos leading receiver with an additional 62-yards on eight catches. Kackert was rightfully named Grey Cup MVP.
“It was just a coincidence that MVP came my way because everyone did their part and I’m sure there are a lot of guys out there who did a way better job at their position than I did,” said a humble Kackert.
Times were not always so happy for Kackert, who started the year as the number-two running back behind Cory Boyd, the league’s top rusher. Kackert didn’t get his opportunity until week eight of the season, after Boyd was released amid a sea of controversy.
“It got tough in the beginning of the season I thought I was going to be more of a part of this team when I got to dress for the first game in Edmonton, but then after the game it was straight back to the reserve,” Kackert said. “When weeks go by you think, ‘Well I played well last year so I guess no one really trusts that I can do my job or just that the guys ahead of me are better,’ but I got an opportunity to do what I’ve been working hard to do since I was a kid and I’ve had everybody’s support.”
On the biggest stage, Kackert proved that he deserved that starting role on the Argos offense.
“I’m still taking it all in,” said a wide-eyed, beaming Kackert. “I got a chance to get to the locker room and do the champagne bottle shake. You’ve seen that you’re whole life growing up. I was asking Jeff Johnson yesterday, ‘If we win this game will we have champagne in here?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, let’s win’.”
Johnson is a 13-year CFL veteran who was on the Argos squad that won in 2004. But the reality of the inevitable is upon him — this Grey Cup may mark the end of his run with the Double Blue.
If Johnson does choose to hang up his helmet, he will do so as a champion.
“The fact that it was a storybook finish, that was the biggest difference (from the 2004 victory). It’s the 100th Grey Cup and it was in Toronto. It’s a fairy tale come true with the right team winning it. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
It was most certainly a storybook ending with a team who, as Younger describes it, spent the year, “Bouncing around a college campus and fitting in where we could.”
Ray praised the defense for its part in the victory. “We didn’t really have to play with that much pressure on us all night. They came out at the start and gave us the lead and they were holding these guys to field goals, so offensively we could just stick to our game plan and not feel any pressure so the defense was really huge.
The defense held Cornish, the league’s leading rusher in check all night, allowing him only 57yards, and kept the Stampeders out of the end zone until the dying minutes of the fourth quarter when the game was already out of reach.
The victory came as a full team effort, as any championship victory must. The Argos entered the season with a dream and, in the words of Johnson, “chemistry” on the field and in the locker room saw them achieve that dream.
“We carried the weight of three million people on our backs and we carried it strong, all the way to that podium,” said Younger. “When all the lights were brightest and all the eyes were on us we answered the call and we made Toronto a city of champions.”
