CALGARY -- The moment was there to seize.
Instead, the Edmonton Eskimos had a collective seizure.
There have been a great many embarrassing losses by the Eskimos in Danny Maciocia's reign as coach and/or GM, but last night's "ranked" right down there.
Despite everything wrong with the team Richie Hall was hired to coach this year, the Eskimos came here with a chance to make up for it all if they could play one, just one, complete game.
Offence, defence and special teams all failed.
With a chance to take a two touchdown lead early, quarterback Ricky Ray couldn't get the ball into the end zone.
After that, everything just slowly unravelled because of bad tackling and a body language that says they aren't anywhere near being a team -- much less one with any real belief in themselves.
These Eskimos have now been beaten 32-8 and 30-7 here this season, and those two scores and the fact they've lost six of their last eight games is an indictment.
In a year that started with hope, the Esks appear to have turned into "nope" -- if not "dope" -- yet again.
They were a fun team to watch for a while. Now it hurts your eyes to watch them, especially if you can read body language and see what looks from the press box to be a lack of enthusiasm and emotion.
While the inquiry light has been flashing since the Eskimos brain trust decided to gas Rick Worman as offensive co-ordinator and replace him with Kevin Strasser, what's happened to the offence on the way to this game and in this game is going to have fans demanding investigation.
Who fired Worman? Was it Maciocia or Hall?
"This was brought to the forefront by Richie Hall and the organization stepped in," Maciocia repeated last night after the loss that effectively ended any chance of the Eskimos playing their first home playoff game since 2004.
Maciocia stood in front of the visitors dressing room as the players trooped in.
"We've got to put the ball in the end zone," he said.
"We've got to deliver the attitude. It's certainly not there. We need a way to sustain drives."
Hall, as was the case here after the Labour Day loss, came out of the dressing room with his eyes very red.
"It was very disappointing, that performance," he said. "We looked at that as a playoff game and the offence, defence and special teams didn't do enough today.
"We had a lack of production, missed a lot of tackles and had a lot of players nottaking care of their responsibilities."
For only the fifth time this season the Eskimos managed to score first as Ray ran 12 plays over 69 yards of real estate only to have Noel Prefontaine finish it off with an 18-yard field goal.
It was the eighth time the Eskimos failed to score at TD in the first quarter.
After sacks by Justin Brown and Kai Ellis pushed the Stampeders out of field goal range, Ray marched the team 57 more yards only to end up with another field goal, this one from 25 yards.
To that point Edmonton was dominating the game, but led only 6-1.
Major defensive blunders by Kelly Malveaux and Randee Drew resulted in Henry Burris taking the Stampeders 77 yards for a touchdown and what would be a 9-6 lead at the half.
That turned into a 16-6 lead early in the third because Burris put the ball in the end zone when he reached the red zone and Ray, who has struggled since Strasser replaced Worman, failed to find pay dirt from the shadow of the goal posts.
Asked about the Strasser situation, Hall said he doesn't look at it from that perspective.
"I look at it from the football team perspective. The bottom line is that we couldn't put the ball in the end zone. We didn't do it."
Ray said it was pretty obvious.
"We had two good drives early and came away with field goals.
"Other than that, we had nothing."
TERRY.JONES@SUNMEDIA.CA
