We’ve lost some tight games this year that, in past years, we’ve been winning. So it was kind of uncharted territory when we started losing those games.

In the past three weeks, we’ve been able to finish in the fourth quarter and I think we grew as a team a little bit. We learned how to win games again.

Emotionally, it’s disappointing when you lose games — especially on the last kick of the game like we did last month at BC and at Toronto — but our confidence never wavered. We knew we had the ability to play better.

We’ve been saying it all year — we’ve got the talent, we’ve just got to come together and play as a team. In the past three weeks, we’ve done a better job of doing that.

We haven’t faced the Eskimos since the start of September and every team grows as the season progresses and develops into what they want to be when the playoffs start. So they’ll be a little different — Messam is carrying the ball more than he was when we last saw Edmonton — but at the end of the day, they’re still the same team with a lot of the same players and the same philosophies, so we’ve just got to prepare for them.

On one hand, we’re facing a veteran quarterback we’ve seen many times before in Ricky Ray while the Eskimos are going up against Drew Tate for the first time. I don’t know who has the advantage there because Ricky Ray is a heck of a football player.

I guess we have a little more game film on him and on what they’ve been doing with their offence, so it definitely helps a little bit in terms of game-planning.

Personally, this is the best my body has felt in my five years here at playoff time, so that’s good. The feeling that we had last year after we lost to Saskatchewan in the West final . . . now it’s almost a feeling like we can redeem ourselves this year if we have a strong playoff performance.

It was very disappointing last year and I know no one wants to go into the off-season feeling like that again.

Justin Philllips, #44
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