Landry: Defence Needs To Pull Its Weight

DON LANDRY – Argonauts.ca Columnist

TORONTO – Interesting study in contrast, this game between the Toronto Argonauts and Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

One team – the Bombers – has a defence playing at a top drawer level and needs its offence to pitch in.

 The Argos, on the other hand, have an offence doing most of the heavy lifting and it needs some help from the defence.

While Toronto’s attack has hit small snags here and there in this young CFL season, it has largely  produced effectively, and leads the league in several categories.

Number one in passing, the Argonaut offence has piled up 1024 aerial yards so far this season, with Ricky Ray accounting for most of that, just a couple of mid-range completions behind Hamilton’s Henry Burris for the league lead. Ray’s quarterback efficiency rating stands at a superb 114.9, second only to Saskatchewan pivot Darian Durant.

Two of the top three in CFL receiving yardage are Argos, in the forms of Chad Owens and Andre Durie.

Red zone efficiency – a lingering problem for most of the 2012 season – is just fine. Six trips to inside the opponents’ 20 yard line, 5 touchdowns produced from that spot.

A little more time for Ray to work would be nice. A little more from the run game would be a decent development. Topics for another day because, by and large, the offence is fine.

The same cannot be said for the Argonauts’ defence at this time and that was expected. However, there is a certain urgency at play here. One that is pressuring Argos defenders to pull together as soon as possible. After all, a prodigious offensive season might not mean so much if the defence doesn’t make the stops it needs when it needs to. Ask the 2012 Hamilton TiCats.

With the amount of turnover experienced after last year’s Grey Cup win, it would have been a minor miracle if defensive coordinator Chris Jones’ unit had come out of the gate with the same efficiency it showed late last season.

“It’s early in the season with a lot of new guys,” explained a calm, cool and collected Marcus Ball, on a day where that was hard to be. Especially the cool part. The thermometer showed a temperature of mid-thirties, with humidex readings of 44 degrees. “So we’re going to go through growing pains,” he continued. “You have to earn trust in the guys next to you.”

The Argos’ sophomore linebacker, who has 15 tackles through 3 games this season, figures it’s just going to take a tweak or two to get the defence humming. “A small bit of adjustments need to be made,” he said.

Still, in giving up a league high 437 net yards a game (by comparison, Winnipeg’s has given up 276 per game), new faces or not, the defence needs to accomplish more in three areas: Pass rush, run defence and eliminating the giving up of the big play. Let’s make that four areas. Because the Argos are last in the CFL in second down defensive efficiency. In other words, they are allowing their opponents more conversions on second down than anyone else. That includes giving up first downs on 40 per cent of the occasions that the opponent has faced second and seven or more.

If those struggles are tearing at Ball’s patience, he will not admit it. “I don’t get frustrated,” he said.

Not that he’s settling for less. The team’s 2012 defensive player of the year gets the feeling that, little by little, as the trust he alluded to becomes more commonplace, the individuals that make up the defence will try less and less to be the hero and bail other guys out.

“It’s not so much freelancing,” he said, careful to dispel the notion that anyone on the Argos’ defence is going selfishly rogue, so to speak. “Everybody knows what they have to do. Everybody’s just trying to make that (extra) play, so you do something out of the ordinary.”

“It comes down to guys understanding their responsibilities and everybody understanding where they fit in,” said defensive lineman Khalif Mitchell. “Not trying to be a superman but just being a teammate and making sure that you execute properly.”

The Argos rebuilt defensive line has 6 sacks  (Mitchell has one) this year and beyond a timely couple in the late stages of the opener against Hamilton, they’ve not been game changers. The front four is still feeling its way and it is showing.

Run defence has had a couple of less than stellar outings in the last two weeks, allowing B.C’s Andrew Harris to gallop for over 100 yards two weeks ago before red hot Saskatchewan tailback Kory Sheets rolled up 178 last week at the dome.

Coverage breaks have led to big plays against the Argos’ secondary in all three games this season, most notably on a couple of bombs from Durant to receiver Taj Smith for Rider touchdowns last Thursday night.

“We’re hurting ourselves, we’re beating ourselves,” Ball insisted. “We weren’t executing our game plan. That (has) beat us more than our opponent.”

As the weeks go on, Ball and the rest of the Argos’ defense will need to learn to trust in each other in order to lift the unit as a whole.

It may be cold comfort, but Mitchell believes the Argos’ defence can overmatch any opponents’ ground game physically in a straight up, take ’em on battle. Trouble is, rarely do teams run that way.

“Teams have to figure out how to run on us, which they’re doing,” big number 96 said. “We just have to figure out how to play it. They can’t run at us straight on, they’ve got to run on us with different angular movements, angle blocks. So, as teams do that, I would like to see us as a defence, when teams can’t do that.”

Ball echoed those statements, saying he believes there’s no doubting his crew’s physical strength and determination.

“We’ve got a group of strong, smart, athletic guys. I don’t think anybody in this league can just line up and come at us,” he said.

So, it’s time to figure the angles out, as Mitchell says.