CALGARY -- It was there.
Just make a play.
And at the end of the day, don't give the game away.
If the Edmonton Eskimos receivers could just have caught the big-play passes from Ricky Ray, it could have turned out a different way.
If they had more than Skyler Green come up and make the big play, they wouldn't be the only Western Conference club watching on TV next weekend.
It's not that the Eskimos should be in the Western final. It's that they so easily could have been.
It's a fitting end to a season that could have been so much more but wasn't -- mostly because of mismanagement with too many changes to start the season on defence and the insane move to change offensive co-ordinators at mid-season, when the team was in first place.
The defending Grey Cup champion and 2009 Grey Cup host Calgary Stampeders out-played the Eskimos in winning 24-21 yesterday, and they deserved the win.
The stats told the story, with a 444-234 margin in net offence.
But the Stampeders, playing with a noose around their necks, let the Eskimos hang in there and hang in there.
But other than Green, who returned a touchdown 93 yards on the heels of a Calgary touchdown to take a 10-point lead, nobody stepped up.
Certainly neither of the trash-talkers -- Mo Lloyd and Byron Parker -- didn't surround themselves in glory, failing to walk the walk after they talked the talk.
Lloyd missed and let Stampeders escape from several tackles and Parker blew coverage and had Stampeders pointing fingers at him every time he messed up.
Kamau Peterson, who was the top Canadian in the league last year, returned to being Kamau Incompleterson this season and in this game. He dropped a big one. So did Mathieu Bertrand.
A Jason Barnes interference penalty nullified a 15-yard reception by Andrew Nowacki and took the Eskimos out of field goal range in the third quarter which would have given them the lead at the time.
"We had opportunities down there but we couldn't haul the ball down," said quarterback Ricky Ray, who lost his first ever Western Conference playoff game.
"We took our chances down field. That was what our game plan was today.
"We had a couple of early drops and we were off a little today. But we did keep hanging around.
"In the end, the offence didn't make the plays we needed to make."
Ray finally set the game up to be won when he moved the team 65 yards on 10 plays and took it in himself from the one-yard line to cut Calgary's lead to three points.
A big-play pass to Fred Stamps on the next possession had the Eskimos on the Calgary 47.
But a holding penalty to Peterson, a holding penalty to Joe McGrath and a sack on Ray put the Eskimos in a second down and 40 yards to go situation back on their own 33.
That sealed their fate.
"We drove the ball down and shot ourselves in the foot with penalties," said head coach Richie Hall, who had tears in his eyes after the game.
"We couldn't make a play in the third quarter. But when all was said and done, we still had a chance at the end. They made some plays and we didn't. We couldn't overcome our shortcomings and they dominated the line of scrimmage."
The Eskimos had dominated that area in the previous two games. But not this time.
"They outplayed us," said all-star offensive lineman Calvin Armstrong.
"We got in a bit of a groove early but we couldn't have stayed there."
On defence, the Esks couldn't stop Joffrey Reynolds who ran for 127 yards and added another 35 in pass receptions. Only Fred Stamps had more than 24 yards receiving for the Eskimos.
That stat says it all.
One receiver with more than two dozen yards!
It's not likely that fired offensive co-ordinator Rick Worman would have done worse than 16 first downs, 72 yards rushing and 162 yards passing in formulating a game plan or doing the play calling.
Reynolds himself almost matched all that.
"I made the wrong choices a couple of times," said rookie Greg Peach.
"That's my job. That's something I need to learn and work on. It's something that next year isn't going to happen."
Next year.
TERRY.JONES@SUNMEDIA.CA
