So, about that whole, ‘The Canadian Football League season doesn’t even really start until Labour Day’ idea?
Yeah. Teams aren’t supposed to take that saying literally.
Yet, here the Edmonton Elks are, unable to make up any ground after scraping together just three wins throughout the first half of the schedule.
And the ones that come from now on are quite likely too little, too late, as the Elks entered the Labour Day Rematch with half the points necessary to be involved in any sort of playoff hunt in the West Division.
Even over in the perennially weaker East, where all three of those wins have come — on the road, of course — they’d be doing just well enough to get leapfrogged by a crossover team.
And with a handful of games still to play, the biggest question facing the Elks locker-room is how to keep the mounting frustration on the outside, given they have been on the cusp of success more often than not, but with little to show for it.
The issue, said head coach and general manager Chris Jones, isn’t a physical one.
“Yeah, we’ve had that discussion just now,” Jones said ahead of Saturday’s kickoff, which marked the fourth and final meeting of the regular season against Calgary. “I would venture to say that we have worked out in the weight-room more than any team in this league. We work out three days a week in the weight-room, mandatory, and build it into our four-and-a-half (work-hour days).
“These kids have really worked and, unfortunately, between the ears, between giving up big plays, missed assignments, those three things have really cost us in some football games.”
Part of it, of course, can be chalked up to inexperience on a 45-man roster that features 15 CFL rookies — one-full-third — and eight more in just their second season. As for any semblance of team continuity, only 13 have carried over from a season ago under an almost entirely different coaching staff.
“We’ve got some young players, we’ve got some first-year players,” Jones said. “And we’ve just got to work through those kinks and hopefully continue to build and become a positive football team.”
TAPERING OFF
One thing Jones wanted to avoid in his return to the helm in Edmonton this year was having a drop-off in physicality, which he has seen happen to teams over his career.
“When we were in Montreal years ago, I felt like that as the year went on, we got weaker because we weren’t in the weight-room, mandatory,” he said. “And a lot of the guys, they would choose not to.
“And we’d start out and jump out of the gate and win a whole bunch of games and look like a really strong team. Then at the end of the year, we weren’t quite as good.
“So, I started incorporating that in Saskatchewan, so it’s just something that we brought over.”
Interestingly enough, Jones didn’t make any mention of employing mandatory resistance training during his first time in Edmonton on the way to the 2015 Grey Cup, prior to jumping to Regina.
INJURY BUG
Unfortunately, all the weight-room work doesn’t seem to have stemmed the tide of injury for the club this year or make them more resilient.
“We’ve got 13 guys on six-game injured right now, and a lot of guys that could help this football team,” Jones said. “But it’s almost monotonous to sit there and talk about it. I mean, we’ve had it since Day 1. I think Day 3 was our first six-game injury.”
As cornerback Duron Carter’s ankle can attest.
“And it’s just been something that’s killed us this year, in that aspect,” Jones said. “But we’ve got a lot of good, young guys in that locker-room that are hungry to show what they can do. And not just young guys, I mean, we’ve got guys that have changed position that are veterans and that are willing to do whatever we need to do to try to write the ship.”
CROWD COUNT
Jones paused at the suggestion Saturday’s crowd for the annual Labour Day Rematch could mean a renewed interest in the Elks within the city.
“Renewed interest? I didn’t know that interest had waned,” said the head coach and GM, who obviously only has this year to compare attendance figures to, having been away from Edmonton for the past five seasons. “I mean, we’ve had great crowds all year long, I thought the energy at the stadium here has been good.
“The one thing missing is us doing enough to win the football games. We’ve played sporadic and played good in spurts, but certainly not good enough to win a game. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
E-mail: gmoddejonge@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge
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