Ticats slip past Esks thanks to crucial late rouge

The single point from a rouge in the CFL can often matter, and Saturday night's Edmonton Eskimos-Hamilton Tiger-Cats' clash was certainly an example of that. The game swung back and forth all night, with Edmonton leading 15-3 at halftime and Hamilton storming back, but with just under two minutes left, the Eskimos were set to get the ball back down only eight points. That's a one-score game, with only a touchdown with a two-point conversion needed to tie the game. The Tiger-Cats' Justin Medlock drilled the punt deep into the end zone, though, and the Hamilton cover team did an excellent job of pinning Edmonton's returner there, giving the Tiger-Cats one more vital point. Mike Reilly led the Eskimos down the field for a subsequent touchdown with just six seconds left, but that was no longer enough, and the failure of the subsequent onside kick meant that Hamilton both hung on for a 25-23 win and proved the value of the rouge. It also led to a great Canadian officiating call (of a subsequent penalty):

Oddly enough, scoring off a punt is usually seen as a bad thing, as teams would usually prefer to down the ball inside the 10 and give the opponent worse field position. (After a single, teams start on their own 25.) That's not always the case in late-game situations, though, and that's led to crazy endings before with teams trying to clear a potential game-winning rouge. Other teams have attempted to punt for the win. The Tiger-Cats' win suggests how a rouge can also be valuable to a team already in the lead, though. When a late-game rouge changes how many possessions a team needs to tie or win, that's almost certainly more valuable than pinning them inside the 10.

On the day, this win was about much more than just the final possessions, of course. Hamilton's victory also had a lot to do with the play of quarterback Zach Collaros, who completed 25 of 35 passes (71.4 per cent) for 318 yards with a touchdown and an interception and ran for 35 more yards on eight carries. That was despite adversity, too, as running back C.J. Gable left this one early on with an injury, forcing Hamilton to almost completely abandon the run thanks to the lack of a dressed replacement. (Fullback Carl-Olivier Primé filled in, but only collected 17 yards on five rushing attempts, and wide receiver Brandon Banks had just four yards on his two carries.)

Collaros was able to persevere, though, and in the second half in particular, he was able to get the Tiger-Cats' offence into rhythm. Combine that with a defence that held Reilly to a 54.8 per cent completion rate and kept Edmonton to less than 50 rushing yards, plus Medlock going three-for-three on field goal attempts and averaging 44.3 yards on 10 punts, and you have a pretty good team. There are still holes in this Hamilton team, as the first half showed, and they're only 4-7 after the win (with all four victories coming at home). Still, this is a team that can be pretty good at times, especially when it gets a crucial rouge.