Als plan to swarm Boyd

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The Alouettes plan to gang up on Cory Boyd on Thursday night.

The Argos running back leads the CFL in rushing, and though Montreal is best at stopping the run, it knows it could be in for a long night.

?One player is not going to take this man down,? Als defensive end John Bowman said. ?We have to gang-tackle him. We have to run to the ball.?

If the Alouettes can stop Boyd, or at least contain him to an extent, their chances of winning rise dramatically. Argos quarterback Cleo Lemon might not have enough juice to solve the Als? tough defence.

?(Boyd) has proven to be one of the forces in the league right now,? Montreal head coach Marc Trestman said. ?Everything we do has to start with stopping him. The first thing you have to do is make the quarterback one-dimensional, and that is not going to stop.?

Overall, the Alouettes are impressed with the Argos? 3-1 start. It has been a long time since these teams had a meaningful game against each other. In their most recent visit to Montreal, the Argos lost 25-0 last August.

?Defensively, they are doing some great things,? quarterback Anthony Calvillo said. ?They are finding ways to win, and that is always the sign of a growing team. It?s not the same team they have had in the past. They have a lot of great coaches who are getting them ready.?

Stopping Calvillo from getting into a groove will be paramount for the Argos defence.

?He is like Damon Allen,? Argos cornerback Byron Parker said. ?It is hard to fool him. These are guys who have seen everything. You have to be patient, because you know he is not going to make mistakes. If he throws one bad ball a game, then that is the ball we have to get. He is a challenge for every defensive back across the league.?

 

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Argos regain their swagger

Toronto comes into town to battle Alouettes for CFL East's top spot




There was no mistaking the good vibrations emanating from the Toronto Argonauts practice on Tuesday.

As rookie kicker Grant Shaw finished practice on a perfect sun-kissed day by booming field goals of 50 yards and more, his teammates laughed, cajoled, teased and jeered in that raucous way generally reserved for winning teams.

Tuesday was the Argos' final full practice before meeting the Alouettes tonight at Molson Stadium. The two 3-1 teams will meet for early bragging rights in the Canadian Football League's East Division.

The joviality in the Argos' camp is in stark contrast to the last two seasons when Toronto won a total of seven games under three head coaches.

"Of course it's a different feeling," said linebacker Kevin Eiben, an Argo since 2001 who has experienced the glories of the 2004 Grey Cup and the despair of more recent vintage. "We haven't won games the last two years. Now that we're winning, we've got that momentum.

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We've got that swagger. You've got to build that swagger, right?"

Swagger seemed in short supply when Toronto went 4-14 when Rich Stubler and Don Matthews shared a season in charge in 2008.

Or during 2009's disappointing and dysfunctional year under Bart Andrus, the CFL neophyte who compiled a 3-15 debacle.

"Right from the hiring in the offseason with the people they brought in and a certain CFL-minded mentality, everybody is just very familiar with the game and knows how to exploit everything, how to utilize all the different rules in this game," veteran fullback Jeff Johnson said. "I haven't seen that, really, for a couple of years."

Toronto's new crew will certainly have a major test against the Alouettes.

The defending Grey Cup champions have not lost a game at home since Oct. 29, 2008.

It was almost a year before that, Oct. 20, 2007, when Toronto last beat Montreal.

Since Toronto squeaked out that 16-9 win to salvage one game in the season series, the Argos have lost six straight games to the Alouettes by an average of a little more than 20 points.

How much it would mean to reverse that sorry record against the team that usually rules the East Division depends on whom you are speaking with.

New head coach Jim Barker pointed to last week's come-from-behind 24-20 victory over the B.C. Lions to illustrate the past's irrelevance to him. It's a common refrain he has maintained since training camp began in an effort to create a fresh atmosphere.

"It had been four since they beat B.C.," said Barker, his choice of pronoun underscoring a separation between those teams and his team.

"We don't worry about any of that stuff. That's all history. We care about where we are and are we going to be better Thursday than we were last Friday night and continuing to grow."

But for some of the longer-serving Argonauts, the memories remain.

"You always go into a game wanting to win, right?" cornerback Byron Parker said.

"But when somebody has had your number for the past three years, you always put a little star by that. It should be a fun game."

Running-back Cory Boyd will be aiming to become the first Argos running back since Bill Symons in 1968 with four consecutive 100-yard games. He seemed to come down somewhere in the middle.

"We can't put that type of emphasis on them, we have to put it on ourselves to become a better team so that the confidence and the belief and the hope and the faith still builds in this organization, because we can be as good as they are as well," he said before adding a caveat.

"It's a tone-setter. We're going to have to see these guys later on down the line, for sure. What we put out there now might be something that we can, foundationally, build off of later."