EDMONTON \u2013 The Hamilton Tiger-Cats can do no wrong. They emerge from Week 9 with a sixth straight win, holding off the Edmonton Elks in a 28-24 thriller on Saturday at Commonwealth Stadium.<\/p>\n
After starting the season 0-2, the Ticats have rolled to an East Division-leading 6-2 record and \u2014 behind the MOP-level play from Bo Levi Mitchell<\/a> \u2014 show no signs of slowing down.<\/p>\n The Elks kept pace with the Tabbies throughout the game until a third-quarter weather delay disrupted their rhythm. For a second straight week, they fell heartbreakingly short of an upset despite looking much better under new starter Cody Fajardo<\/a> than their 1-6 record suggests.<\/p>\n CFL.ca brings you three key stats from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats\u2019 win over the Edmonton Elks.<\/p>\n RELATED 3 \u2013 BO LEVI MITCHELL PASSING TOUCHDOWNS<\/p>\n Another week, another surgical performance from Mitchell. The Ticats pivot completed 30 of 42 passes for 350 yards and three touchdowns en route to passing Doug Flutie (41,355) for ninth on the CFL\u2019s all-time passing list. Mitchell wasted no time getting on the board, capitalising on a strong opening kickoff return by threading his first pass of the game 29 yards to Kiondr\u00e9 Smith for the score. He struck next in the second quarter, dancing around pressure in the pocket to deliver a dime to Tim White<\/a> at the sidelines of the end zone.<\/p>\n Mitchell saved his best for last, coming through in the clutch with a 27-yard strike to White with the game on the line. In his last two outings, the veteran has thrown for 739 yards and six touchdowns, adding to his league-leading figure of 18 passing majors.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 9 \u2013 REGGIE STUBBLEFIELD DEFENSIVE PLAYS<\/p>\n The Elks\u2019 offensive line struggled to handle the Ticats\u2019 creative blitz packages \u2014 none more disruptive than linebacker Reggie Stubblefield. The 26-year-old racked up nine defensive plays, including a sack and two tackles for loss. While his was the only sack on Fajardo, his constant presence in the pocket pestered the Elks\u2019 rhythm throughout. Stubblefield made his biggest impact on Edmonton\u2019s final drive, meeting Justin Rankin in the backfield twice for losses as the Elks searched for the equaliser or go-ahead score.<\/p>\n 38.9 \u2013 EDMONTON SECOND-DOWN CONVERSION RATE<\/p>\n A major issue holding Edmonton back this season has been its league-worst second-down success rate, converting only 41.9 per cent of attempts entering Week 9. That number dipped again Saturday against a stingy Hamilton defence that\u2019s allowed the third-fewest yards per game.<\/p>\n The mismatch materialised in the second quarter, when the Ticats stuffed short-yardage quarterback Cole Snyder twice at the goal line to force a turnover on downs and halt the Elks\u2019 first-half momentum.<\/p>\n While Fajardo was highly efficient \u2014 completing his first 16 passes \u2014 the Ticats\u2019 defence stepped up in key moments to get the ball back to their offence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2013 The Hamilton Tiger-Cats can do no wrong. They emerge from Week 9 with a sixth straight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-44380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44380","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=44380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u00bb Ticats hold off Elks behind Bo Levi Mitchell\u2019s three TDs<\/a>
\u00bb\u00a0Depth Charts:\u00a0HAM<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0EDM<\/a>
\u00bb Hamilton at Edmonton by the numbers<\/a>
\u00bb\u00a0Game Notes: Tiger-Cats at Elks<\/a>
\u00bb\u00a0Injury Reports: Stay up to date<\/a>
\u00bb\u00a0Sign up and watch CFL games on CFL+ in the U.S. and Internationally<\/a><\/p>\n