David Moll
By Geoff Crane
Stampeders.com
After sitting on the sidelines in Week 10 due to injury, Calgary sackmaster Charleston Hughes was glad to get back on the field and make his presence known in the 2015 Labour Day Classic.
Right from the Edmonton Eskimos’ opening drive, he was pretty hard to ignore. As rookie quarterback James Franklin took his first snap of the first quarter, Hughes burst through the offensive line to drop the pivot for a nine-yard loss, complete with celebration.
“I’m just doing what the team pays me to do, which is rush the passer,” says Hughes when asked why he seemed to be giving Edmonton’s front five such a hard time. “It was just one of those situations where I was just hitting on all cylinders.”
Hughes found himself in the backfield quite often making life for Franklin, and later for Mike Reilly, miserable. In fact, Hughes’ performance tonight saw him reach a milestone as he was credited with his 69th and 70th career sacks.
He becomes only the third Stampeder to have 70 or more sacks in his career, joining Stamps greats Will Johnson (99) and Stu Laird (72).
Credited with five tackles and two quarterback sacks – a near third before a panicked Franklin intentionally grounded the ball – Hughes led his defence in what was an unusually defence-heavy Battle of Alberta.
With Bo Levi Mitchell and the Calgary offence struggling to find much room to operate against a stingy Eskimos defence, Hughes and company stepped up to ensure they returned the favour.
“We don’t feel too pressured because we have their back and we know the offence has our back,” says Hughes. “When we’re having a not-so-good game, we expect the offence to have our back just as much as we have theirs when they are having a not-so-good game. We just have to keep giving them as many opportunities to score as we can.”
Turns out, thanks to an impressive performance by the defence, Calgary didn’t need too many points to come away with the win.
Now the focus shifts to Saturday as the rematch gets under way at Commonwealth Stadium. Having seen what the Green and Gold is capable of, and vice versa, will it make this week’s preparations any easier?
Not really, says Hughes. In fact, it’s going to be business as usual.
“At this point, the only thing you can do is just prepare as we would prepare for any other team and to just worry about what we do on the defence the best and go into this game and execute,” says Hughes.
For now, he prefers to just enjoy Monday’s victory and especially the raucous Calgary fans.
“It was a sold-out event tonight,” says Hughes. “The fans were really into the game, I could feel their energy and I just love playing games like that.”