EDMONTON \u2013 The Double E are looking for a little revenge on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
When the Elks head to Hamilton to faceoff against Bo Levi Mitchell and the Tiger-Cats at Hamilton Stadium (5:00 pm MT kickoff), the Green and Gold are going face-to-face with the one that got away. The previous matchup at Play Alberta Field at Commonwealth Stadium on August 2 saw the two teams deadlocked at 21-21 late in the third quarter, with Hamilton on the ropes having lost several key players in the game.<\/p>\n
However, an hour-long lightning delay gave the Ti-Cats the chance to recover and escape with a 28-24 victory on the day. The result is just added motivation for the Elks heading into a must-win game in Steel Town.<\/p>\n
\ufeff<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt like we gifted them one last time we played here (at Commonwealth), so let\u2019s go on the road and try and steal one,\u201d Elks quarterback Cody Fajardo said. \u201cWe know they\u2019re a great football team, but we know we match up well against them and we know that we were playing good football against them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tiger-Cats victory would end up being their sixth consecutive win, but since then the Elks have arguably been the better squad. Edmonton has gone 4-2 down the stretch while Hamilton is 2-3 over the same time frame.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Elks have been able to add up some wins despite adding star talent to the six-game injured list every week. The latest member of the infirmed is veteran safety Royce Metchie, who has been the glue for the Elks young secondary. Without him, it will be second year starter Kordell Jackson who will be responsible for being the last line of defence against a dangerous Ti-Cats offence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this team has become light years better since the first time we played Hamilton,\u201d Fajardo said. \u201cI know we\u2019re banged up right now, because we\u2019re going into game nine of a 10 game stretch. It\u2019s pretty brutal for the guys, but our depth has been tested all year and guys have just continued to show up to work and continue to make big plays in roles that they\u2019re not used to. I\u2019m excited to see who the guy is this week who\u2019s going to step up because it seems like every week we have a new guy stepping up into a major role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with the continual adversity, there is still hope in the Elks locker room.<\/p>\n
Despite the setback last week in Toronto, with a little luck on the weekend the Elks could find themselves right back in the CFL playoff mix. A Zach Collaros-less Winnipeg Blue Bombers loss and a BC Lions defeat to the Calgary Stampeders \u2013 alongside an Elks victory in Hamilton \u2013 would see all three teams enter next week tied at 6-8.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we make things harder on ourselves? Absolutely,\u201d Fajardo said. \u201cBut our season is by no means over. We have everything we want in front of us, but we\u2019re going to have to earn that opportunity to be in the playoffs. The way we earn it is by playing the best teams in the league moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first step along the way is Saturday night\u2019s matchup against the Tiger-Cats.<\/p>\n
\u201cHamilton\u2019s a good football team. They\u2019re well coached. The offense has a ton of weapons,\u201d Elks head coach Mark Kilam said. On defense, they\u2019re plus nine, top of the league and takeaways, and they made plays on us on special teams last time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it\u2019s always a hard place to play out there. We\u2019re going to have to bring our A game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2013 The Double E are looking for a little revenge on Saturday night. When the Elks head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-155550","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\/155550","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=155550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}