A football game usually comes down to four or five key plays over the course of 60 minutes. If those plays go your way, there’s a good chance you’ll win the game. When they don’t, it usually doesn’t end well. On Friday night, the Als made a lot of plays, especially on defence and special teams, but there were critical mistakes that caused them to drop a 23-22 decision to the Edmonton Elks.

Let’s take a deeper look at what happened at Percival Molson Stadium.

Costly turnovers

The turnovers hurt on Friday night. The Elks managed to force two Montreal turnovers, and they scored touchdowns as a result of those giveaways.

Near the end of the first half, Elks corner Tyrell Ford intercepted a McLeod Bethel-Thompson pass and brought it back for a touchdown to cut the Als’ lead to 13-11 at the time.

In the second half, Tyler Snead fumbled on a missed field goal return. The Elks took over at the Montreal eight-yard line, and they eventually scored a touchdown but missed the two-point convert. The Alouettes were ahead by two at that point.

“It feels how loses are supposed to feel,” Snead said after the game. “It stings. It’s not the outcome we wanted. There are a lot of things that I can clean up, personally. I had a big one on the fumble, but we just have to be better and not shoot ourselves in the foot.”

In the end, the Elks won by one point and scored 13 points off turnovers.

The last drive

The Alouettes defence played really well on Friday night. They were able to get after Cody Fajardo regularly, and they even sacked him six times. Give the Elks credit because they capitalized on mistakes and they put together a solid drive when it mattered most.

The Elks had a 1-0 lead early on and then trailed the rest of the way until Fajardo hit Kaion Julien-Grant for his second touchdown of the game with just over 15 seconds remaining.

“It’s not the last drive that won or lost us the game,” defensive end Isaac Adeyemi-Berglund, who was credited with three quarterback sacks in the game, said. “It’s easy to look at the last drive because they scored. That’s the drive that put them over the top. There are a lot of things that happened in the game that led to that. A lot of times, we have a lot of self-inflicted errors, and it’s the way you do everything that matters. These are correctible things.”

Positives

Alouettes fans may have a hard time finding positives in this game, but if we look at it objectively, there were a few.

First, Travis Theis chose an incredible way to score his first career touchdown. With the Als up 3-1 in the first half, Theis returned a punt 80 yards for a touchdown to give his team a 10-1 advantage at the time. It was also the first kick return touchdown of the season for the Alouettes.

Second, Caleb Evans did a nice job of steadying the ship when he came into the game in the second half. The Elks had all the momentum going into the break, and he came out and got the offence on the rails. He helped orchestrate a nine-play drive that ended with a touchdown pass to Cole Spieker, which gave the Als an eight-point lead.

The 27-year-old finished the night 14-for-18 for 113 yards, one touchdown and no interceptions in the second half.

What’s next?

The Alouettes will enjoy a couple of days off before getting back to work on Monday. They’ll travel to Vancouver to take on the B.C. Lions next Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET. The Lions are coming off a thrilling overtime win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Thursday night.