EDMONTON \u2013 Now THAT, felt like a Labour Day Rematch.<\/p>\n
The Elks came back to Play Alberta Field at Commonwealth Stadium and took care of business on Saturday night in a physical 31-19 victory over the Calgary Stampeders. It was about as throwback of a Battle of Alberta as there can be, with the game\u2019s final whistle still not being enough to break up the two teams. In the end, the Elks showed the response a team on the rise needs to show, overpowering the Stampeders on the ground to the tune of 245 rushing yards and chasing Vernon Adams all over the field for four sacks a lot more pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never going to be about one person. What we\u2019re building here is way bigger than that,\u201d Elks head coach Mark Kilam said. \u201cI\u2019m just really proud of the guys. I mean, we got beat up in Calgary on Monday and we came back and we played a more physical game tonight. It\u2019s just a credit to the men in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Stampeders jumped out to an early lead with quarterback Quincy Vaughn capping off a five play, 69-yard drive with the QB sneak \u2014 giving the Stamps the 9-3 advantage at the 7:45 mark of the first quarter.<\/p>\n
After that, it was the Justin Rankin show.<\/p>\n
Elks running back set the tone for the Elks offence for the remainder of the game. The elusive back brought the Commonwealth faithful to their feet with electric touchdown runs of 31 and 90 yards \u2014 with his 90 yard score being the longest touchdown run by a Double E back since Wall of Honour member Jim Germany accomplished the feat in 1977. For the game, Rankin saw a season-high 16 carries for a career-best 204 yards rushing and two scores.<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
\u201cDude\u2019s a beast, man. The dude is a beast,\u201d Kilam said. \u201cFirst of all, he has the heart of a champion. He elevates his teammates around him. He makes your play calls better, that\u2019s what great players do and that\u2019s what he is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quarterback Cody Fajardo elevated his win-loss record to 4-3 as a starter this season. The Elks pivot let Rankin handle the load with his fewest attempts (21) and completions (16) of the season, but still connected on an efficient 76.2 per cent of his passes. Fajardo made the big throws when it counted, including a 19-yard corner route to Kaion Julien-Grant with 7:35 remining in the fourth quarter to extend the Elks lead to nine late in the contest.<\/p>\n
Edmonton\u2019s defence was just as impressive on the night. After a season-best 106-yard performance in Calgary, Stampeders workhorse back Dedrick Mills was silenced with eight carries for 38 yards. Star Stamps quarterback Vernon Adams was held to arguably his worst performance of the season. The 32-year-old completed just 51.7 per cent of his passes on the evening, and was sat on the bench late in the fourth quarter to free him from the Double E\u2019s relentless pass rush.<\/p>\n
The victory gives the Elks wins in four of their last five games, and pushes their record to 5-7 on the season. The Green and Gold now sit tied with the BC Lions for the CFL East Division cross over spot, and they find themselves a game back of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for third in the West.<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
\u201cTo tell you the truth, we were just pissed off because nobody gave us the chance. Nobody thought that we had a chance in this game,\u201d Fajardo said. \u201cJust the way that things went last week, it was doom and gloom around here, except for that locker room. The guys believed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a 4-1 football team in the last five games. That\u2019s impressive. Even though we lost (the game in Calgary) we showed out and we showed up. We answered the call. I\u2019m just proud of the way this team\u2019s fought and clawed its way back into the standings. We have got a lot of good, meaningful football ahead of us, which is exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Elks will be back in action on Saturday, September 13 when they head to Toronto to take on the Argonauts. Edmonton\u2019s next game at Play Alberta Field at Commonwealth Stadium will be Saturday, September 27 when they host the Saskatchewan Roughriders for their Indigenous Celebration game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2013 Now THAT, felt like a Labour Day Rematch. The Elks came back to Play Alberta Field…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-127381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}