MONTREAL — Nearly a week after the nightmare in Regina, the Montreal Alouettes’ defence was ready to put it to rest and start worrying about Ricky Ray and the Edmonton Eskimos.
The opening game of the Canadian Football League season on Canada Day was a thriller for everyone except the defending Grey Cup champions, who squandered a 21-point lead in the second half and lost 54-51 in double overtime to the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Their lead was erased on three consecutive Saskatchewan possessions as quarterback Darian Durant shredded the defence with long plays while piling up a large part of his 478 passing yards.
In the game, Wes Cates ran for 112 yards, Weston Dressler had 154 receiving yards and Rob Bagg had 121.
Safety Mathieu Proulx knows what went wrong.
“After thinking about it, looking at it a lot, what happened is we got comfortable,” Proulx said Wednesday after the team sweated out practice in a heat wave. “We relied on our reputation and on the guy next to us instead of relying on our keys and our assignments.
”We kind of let go of the game and each did our own thing. To be a great defence, you have to trust the integrity of the defence and not compromise it by doing something you’re not told to do. If you have the A-gap, you’ve got the A-gap. If you’re told to be 12 yards deep, be 12 yards deep. Don’t try to outplay the system.”
The presumably chastened Alouettes will give it another try on Sunday when they travel to Edmonton to face what may be an even more formidable passer in Ray.
Proulx rejects the argument that the Montreal defence is adjusting to the off-season loss of tackle Keron Williams and cornerback Davis Sanchez, who both signed with British Columbia. The Lions opened the season with a 25-10 win over Edmonton.
Experienced players Jermain McElveen on the line and Stanford Samuels in the backfield have taken over from Williams and Sanchez.
Montreal will be missing another piece after linebacker Diamond Ferri went down with a knee injury, but his spot will be taken by Ramon Guzman, who plays enough to be just like a starter. Jon Banks is likely to move in as the backup.
“That’s the most obvious and easy thing to blame,” added Proulx. “Our defence has a great group of football players — it’s not one or two guys that make the difference. It’s no excuse.”
It was a wake-up call for the team that opened last season by beating the then-defending champion Stampeders in Calgary and went on to a 15-3 season and a Grey Cup.
With few off-season changes, the Alouettes were favoured to win again, although the opening game debacle has raised doubts.
“It’s better to get the wake-up call in Week 1 than Week 18,” Proulx added. “When we came to camp last year one of the things we worked on was to finish teams. When we had the lead, to step on them and finish the game. That’s something we obviously weren’t able to do.”
It wasn’t just the defence.
There was also the play late in the first half when the Alouettes forgot what down it was and, thinking it was second instead of third, gave up the ball on downs instead of kicking a short field goal.
Saskatchewan then scored a touchdown when Montreal had only 11 men on the field.
So it seemed that everyone was daydreaming.
“We didn’t play well enough to win that game,” said Als coach Marc Trestman. “We had mistakes on all sides of the ball that went into the loss.
”We spent a few minutes being complacent, we lost our focus and they were right back in the game. I’m hoping to turn a negative into a positive by learning that we now know the score means nothing in the CFL, that no score is enough and you have to play a complete game. We didn’t do that.”
Middle linebacker Shea Emry said the defence got the message.
“It’s something that’s in the past — as a team we’re all moving on to the next game,” he said. “We definitely got our mental mistakes corrected.”
The Alouettes hope to have defensive back Mark Estelle back from injury, which would help their pass coverage. De’Audra Dix started in Estelle’s spot last week. Fullback Dahrran Diedrick may also return, likely to play on special teams.
The Alouettes picked up former Eskimos receiver Kevin Challenger this week for their practice roster, but Trestman said the Montreal native would not dress against his former team. He said that for now, the 28-year-old needs to learn the offensive system and may eventually get playing time if he impresses in practice.