Yardsticks used, but game measured in inches

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/10/2011 (5096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has been 12 years since the movie Any Given Sunday came out, but I assure you that professional football players on both sides of the border still get asked on occasion about its accuracy and validity.

So to hopefully set the record straight once and for all, in 15 seasons I’ve never seen an eyeball pop out of someone’s head and lie on the turf during a game, and no, players don’t bring alligators into the shower and let them rinse off, and no, most of the head coaches I’ve had don’t date escorts on a regular basis and their speeches are nowhere near as dramatic, moving, or as scripted as Al Pacino’s was in the movie.

listBut after Friday’s loss to the Montreal Alouettes at home, I will concede this to you: The one accurate portrayal in that movie is when Pacino speaks about how important and precious the inches in the game of football are and how they impact everything around us and the outcome of every game. His movie pre-game talk goes something like this:

“Life’s a game of inches and so is football. In either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small, one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it, one half second too slow or too fast and you don’t quite catch it, the inches we need are everywhere around us…”

You get the point. This column is not about assessing blame or pointing fingers. All parties contribute to wins and losses in the construct of a team. When forces are colliding in opposite directions at full speed in a crock pot of chaos, all it takes is an inch to miss a tackle, to be blocked, to break free from a run, or win or lose a football game. In Friday’s game, the difference between winning and losing literally came down to an inch or two. The smallest unit of additional forward progress… one referee’s hands goes up instead of staying down and your entire environment changes dramatically.

Instead of suffering one of the most deflating losses you will ever see, you are now part of a team that came back from a 23-point deficit in the third quarter against the two-time defending Grey Cup Champions. Instead of listlessly strolling into the locker-room and burying your head in your hands, you celebrate winning the season series against the Alouettes and the four-point cushion you have on them in first place in the East Division. These two hemispheres all happen or don’t happen because of an inch or two won or lost in the ebb and flow of tangled bodies pitching and heaving a yard away from accomplishment or failure.

I’ve been through my fair share of agonizing defeats and uplifting victories, but the only thing that keeps our last game from being the worst of the worst is the fact that we live to play another day and still control our fate.

As a guy who likes to keep and make lists, in the annals of my pro-football experiences, losing by six points on the one-yard line with time expiring comes in as the fifth-most heart wrenching defeat of my career, as I said, only because there is no finality as a consequence of the defeat.

No. 4 has to be in 2002, where we travelled to Edmonton for the Western final, and lost on a half-frozen, half-muddy footing catastrophe on their extinct and fabled grass field, where the Eskimos surprised the No. 1 overall defence in the CFL with an unorthodox and unrelenting ground game.

The third-worst loss I have endured was definitely in the 1999 NFC semifinal against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL. With seconds left in the game we were down two points and lined up a 49-yard field goal with the wind at our backs. The snap was a few inches too low and hobbled its way back to our holder and QB Brad Johnson, who could not corral it in time and threw a desperate, incomplete pass which sealed our fate.

The second-worst defeat in my career was the 2007 Grey Cup, where missing the Eastern Division nominee for Most Outstanding Player of the year — Kevin Glenn — we hung tough with first-time starter Ryan Dinwiddie and lost by only four points.

Which leaves us at the top of the list, the David and Goliath matchup of 2001, where the 8 -10 Calgary Stampeders, only in the playoffs because we dressed our backups in the final regular-season game and lost to them, beat the 14-4 Blue Bombers by eight points, largely stemming from a blocked punt and our apparent desire to send Marc Boerighter to the NFL after he caught two touchdown passes on us.

Four of these games had their outcomes determined on the final drive or series of the contest, but only one on the list had it settled with time expiring, and the smallest of measurements away from potentially changing the entire dynamic and makeup of a football season.

A game of inches it is indeed.

Doug Brown, a hard-hitting defensive tackle with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and even harder-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Winnipeg Free Press.