CALGARY- With just six games left this season, the Calgary Stampeders face only western opponents. Two games each, against BC, Winnipeg and Saskatchewan. They’re the three teams chasing them in the west, and the three teams they’ve yet to beat.
This crucial stretch begins at home Saturday night, with the stamps hosting the BC Lions for the second time this season at McMahon Stadium.
Both clubs are coming off a loss.
The last time the stampeders lost back-to-back games was July of 2012.
If they hope to avoid that fate, they’ll need a better outing from quarterback Drew Tate, who will make just his 10th career start.
Tate is also up against a guy he watched all of last season, Kevin Glenn. Tate says he’s had a chance to closely observe the way Glenn plays over the years.
“I watched how he is in the pocket and stuff, stepping up in the pocket and letting things develop downfield. He took a lot of shots too but kept getting up,” Tate said. “He’s a good player, he’s doing a great job for them. He did a great job for us.”
“He was only here very briefly and didn’t get a lot of reps in camp and then I went down the second game and he killed it,” Tate said.
John Hufnagel, head coach of the stamps said even though his team has had slow starts lately, it doesn’t decide the game.
“You’re not always going to go out and get off to a good start. I don’t want to put my team in that mindset that if you don’t have a good start that the game’s over,” Hufnagel said. “It’s a 60 minute game. I stress to my football team to play hard for 60 minutes and usually good things happen.”
Stamps running back Jon Cornish is back in the lineup Saturday, after sitting out last week as a precaution after a hit in the game against Toronto and after suffering a concussion earlier in the season. But Cornish said he’s confident he will play in all of the remaining games of the regular season.
Cornish said the loss the team took against Montreal last weekend, really set the tone for the next few games. It pushed the stamps to work that much harder in practice this past week. He said losing helped the team reset and recharge.
“When you lose a game, that’s makes you turn around and say what do we have to do better. What are the things that make us a successful team,” Cornish said. “We haven’t been playing well the last few weeks because we started off slow.”
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