Two stunning third-quarter touchdowns, followed by a stubborn fourth-quarter defence, carried the Elks to a critical 25-20 victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Saturday night, keeping Edmonton’s slim CFL playoff hopes alive.<\/p>\n
Elks running back Justin Rankin\u2019s 64-yard touchdown run on a third-down gamble, followed by Kordell Jackson\u2019s 47-yard touchdown after recovering a teammate\u2019s fumble, powered the team to the win in front of 15,013 shivering fans on a wet 4 C evening in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot the prettiest at times but finding a way, all three phases finding a way against a good football team,\u201d Elks coach Mark Kalim said. \u201cKeeping the hopes alive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fighting to overcome a 1-6 start to the regular season, the Elks still need to win their final two games, including a final weekend matchup with the Calgary Stampeders, to make the playoffs for the first time since 2019 when they qualified as the crossover team.<\/p>\n
The win was Edmonton\u2019s third in five games \u2014 the two losses were by a combined three points \u2014 and improved their record to 7-9 overall. <\/p>\n
They remain last in the West Division but are just two points back of the 8-8 Bombers. <\/p>\n
However, Winnipeg holds a possible tiebreaker because they beat the Elks 36-23 in their previous game. <\/p>\n
If Edmonton beats Calgary in their final meeting the Elks would hold the tiebreaker there as well.<\/p>\n
The Elks turned a one-point game into a 14-point lead with the two huge plays. Rankin, who has more big plays than anyone in the CFL this season, turned a third-down gamble into a 64-yard touchdown run two minutes in.<\/p>\n
Eight minutes later, after Edmonton\u2019s Javon Leake fumbled a punt, teammate Jackson picked up the loose ball and ran it 47 yards to the end zone for a 25-10 Elks lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of those oh no, oh no, oh yes,\u201d Kalim said of the play. <\/p>\n
\u201cShout out to KJ. Guy\u2019s a defensive starter who puts his body on the line and now he\u2019s playing special teams. Sometimes you have to be doing the right things to be around the ball to get the breaks like that.”<\/p>\n
Jackson said the play just showed his love of the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just in the right place at the right time,\u201d he said of recovering the fumble. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt goes back to when you\u2019re younger just being around the ball all the time. They say the closer you are to the ball it shows how much you love the team and love the game. The ball was right there and I just picked it up and scored,” Jackson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt amazing. I haven\u2019t scored in a long time.”<\/p>\n
But the Bombers cut into the lead with a field goal in the final seconds of the quarter and then took advantage of a series of costly Edmonton penalties to pull into a five-point deficit with six minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
Ontaria Wilson made a one-handed catch of a deflected ball in the end zone for a 35-yard touchdown reception.<\/p>\n
Edmonton\u2019s defence took over from there, three times forcing Winnipeg to turn over the ball on unsuccessful third-down gambles.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig time execution,\u201d Jackson said of the defensive play. \u201cCoach Kilam puts us in those situations in practice so it\u2019s doing what you do in practice. We all want to get to the playoffs but we\u2019re just following coach Kilam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kalim said he has total confidence in his defence, adding \u201cwhen the defence took the field late I said to JC (defensive coordinator JJ Sherritt), go win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Winnipeg running back Brady Oliveira, who went over the 1,000-yard rushing mark for the fourth straight season, said the Bombers \u201cdidn\u2019t play enough team football. We made too many mistakes. Edmonton made more plays than us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Plus, he added, the Elks had some luck on their side, pointing to Jackson\u2019s fumble recovery touchdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously they made some incredible plays throughout the game,\u201d Oliveira said. \u201cBut sometimes you have luck on your side and they had it tonight, we didn\u2019t. That said we didn\u2019t play clean enough to win that game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edmonton quarterback Cody Fajardo completed 13 of 14 passes for 142 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions. Rankin carried 18 times for 138 yards. <\/p>\n
For Winnipeg Zach Collaros completed 22 of 34 passes for 202 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions.<\/p>\n
The Blue Bombers will host the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Friday, Oct. 17, the same day the Elks will visit the B.C. Lions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two stunning third-quarter touchdowns, followed by a stubborn fourth-quarter defence, carried the Elks to a critical 25-20 victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-206970","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\/206970","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=206970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}