The Montreal Alouettes had a bad start to their 2014 CFL campaign, to say the least. A win in week 2 signalled a bright future thanks to their exciting defence but their hype was short lived as the team lost the next six games. Heading into Labour Day Weekend, they were 1-7, at the bottom of the league’s barrel, and were set to play to play the 1-7 Ottawa Redblacks. The Als’ third-string quarterback, the fourth to play in Montreal so far in the season, got the start: Jonathan Crompton.
A 20-10 win in the first meeting between Montreal and the expansion Ottawa team was the point where the Alouettes’ season turned around. It wasn’t solely because Crompton was playing cool, calm and collected football, but because the defence is looking like the ball-hawking birds that Montreal used to be known for.
The beautiful-mind genius behind this turnover-creating defence is their coordinator Noel Thorpe, who was the team’s special teams coordinator from 2002-07. He did such a great job last year – his first year back in the organization – that his middle linebacker Chip Cox was named the league’s Most Outstanding Defensive Player.
With last year’s star, Shea Emry, having migrated west to Toronto, young players are filling his role perfectly. Bear Woods, Gabriel Knapton, Aaron Lavarias, and Winston Venable have all been instrumental to the team along with their perennial defensive stars like Cox, Geoff Tisdale and John Bowman.
Woods as been the brightest star on Thorpe’s side of the team. With 60 tackles, Woods is one behind team-leading Cox and sits in 12th in the league in that category. One of the most energetic players in the 4-3 system, Woods is all over the field, getting right up in the quarterback’s face, with a total of six sacks this year, four behind defensive end Bowman. Named defensive player of the week in weeks 11 and 15, Woods is finally getting the recognition he deserves from fans, the coaching staff, and the rest of the league alike after being in Shea Emry’s shadow for the past few years.
Rush-end Bowman has already earned a lot of respect from around the league. In his ninth season, all in Montreal, Bowman has showed his veteran presence on and off the field as the team went through the early season difficulties. That includes blowing a lead to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in Week 3 after a strong performance in week 2 – a game in which Bowman sacked Kevin Glenn four times. At 10 sacks and 38 tackles on the season so far, Bowman is a force to be reckoned with. With just three games left this year, Bowman is just two sacks shy of tying his career high of 12, set in 2009, 2010 and 2011; he missed that plateau by only one sack last season.
Kyries Hebert (56 tackles), Tisdale (4 interceptions, fourth in the CFL), Veable (41 tackles, 3 fumble recoveries), Knapton (34 tackles, 9 sacks), and Cox (61 tackles, 3 sacks, 3 forced fumbles & and 2 touchdowns) make up the core of a unit that has blended into one the past couple of weeks. Apparently the group is so well blended that Knapton and Lavarias have each recovered fumbles, with a clear avenue to the end zone but chose to hand the ball off to the much faster Cox, who would then go in and score six points for the team.
Homegrown products like Marc-Olivier Brouillette, Nicolas Boulay and Mike Edem have made quieter impacts for the team but are still extremely valuable to the squad. Bouillette still is in the upper echelon of defensive players in Montreal with 36 tackles while Boulay and Edem are continuing to grow and learn every game. These players might just be stars in the years to come.
Heading into the final stretch of the season, with only East opponents left to play, the defence is looking like the defence of the old when they won Grey Cups in 2009 and 2010 with names like Etienne Boulay, Matthieu Proulx, Diamond Ferri, Davis Sanchez, and Anwar Stewart on the Alouettes roster. Now, a new generation of a Montreal defence comes in and seems to be poised to lead this team to a championship.
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