Montreal Alouettes defeated Edmonton Elks 21-17

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We’d like to say it was a halftime speech, but Alouettes head coach Jason Maas swears he doesn’t have any words of wisdom for his struggling team. At least not that he’s willing to share.

“We never give up, we just learn,” Maas said. “I thought our guys did a great job staying calm and level-headed at halftime and allowing us to coach. Our guys absorbed that information. We just went out and kept playing. We knew it was a 60-minute game, no matter what the score was at halftime. You have to play 60 minutes in this league and finish the game. We did a great job of doing that.”

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That night, the organization 1974 Grey Cup Championsit looked like — at least for 30 minutes — those 70-somethings at Molson Stadium.

Despite trailing Edmonton 17-6 at halftime, the Als rallied after the break and held on for a 21-17 win over the Edmonton Elks in front of 19,048 fans on Sunday night. Montreal improved its Eastern Conference-leading record to 10-1 and has won 18 of 19 games, including the playoffs and Grey Cup, dating back to last September. The Elks (3-8) remain last in the Western Conference, while Edmonton enters the game with three straight wins.

How bad was Montreal in 30 minutes? The Als were limited to seven first downs, 129 net yards of offense, and ran just 23 plays while controlling the ball for just 12 minutes and 36 seconds. Recovering from a hamstring injury That sidelined him for six weeks, and he threw for 109 yards and one interception. Tailback Walter Fletcher had 21 yards on six carries, and the Als’ top receiver was a Canadian. Nate Beharan unlikely source.

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Defensively, the Als weren’t much better, especially their run defense. Their secondary seemed overwhelmed by quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson, who threw two touchdown passes — one to former Als player Eugene Lewis, who was playing in his first game in Montreal after signing with the Elks as a free agent last season.

Everything changed in the second half.

The Als scored two touchdowns in their opening three possessions, on passes of 33 and 22 yards, both by Cole Speake. That gave Montreal an 18-17 lead that would have been larger if the team hadn’t failed twice on two two-point conversion attempts.

Defensively, the Als began to put more pressure on Bethel-Thompson, controlling the offense better and stopping the opponent’s offense. Edmonton was unable to get a first down in the third period.

“I thought we made a lot of adjustments at halftime,” said Fajardo, who completed 22 of 34 passes for 336 yards. “I felt like it gave me time to recover. I was a little rusty at the beginning of the game. I felt more confident in the second half.”

Not only did Fajardo operate behind a makeshift attacking line missing starting guards Philippe Gagnon and Pierre-Olivier Lestage — Gagnon sat out with an injury during pre-match warm-ups and Lestage suffered a shoulder injury in the opener — but Als were without iPads for much of the game after the visitors lost their wifi connection early in the contest, so the two teams were forced to play on even ground.

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“Halftime allowed us to take a deep breath and understand what was going on,” Fajardo said. “I’m hurting right now, but I’m really proud of this team: We’re resilient and we find ways to win even when things aren’t always going great. That’s what good teams do.”

“I need to do better. I need to be more confident offensively, but I wanted to use my legs because they gave us a lot of space. So I was able to extend the play.”

If the Als did enough offensively to salvage the win, Montreal’s defense was outstanding in the final 30 minutes. Not only did the Als hold Edmonton scoreless, they also stopped the Elks twice from deep in Montreal late in the fourth quarter. The Elks’ longest pass was 25 yards to Tevin Jones, a free agent the Als signed last winter who was released in training camp and replaced by Charleston Rambo.

With 89 seconds left in the game, Montreal faced a third-and-10 offense at the 12th. Therese Benfrett Limiting Lewis to 6 yards, the Elks lost a fumble on offense. Bevrett is arguably the top defensive player in the CFL, with a team-high 10 defensive tackles.

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The Elks had one more possession, launching an attack from the Montreal 46-yard line with 47.1 seconds left. The visitors advanced to the Montreal 19-yard line, but Bethel Thompson threw two incomplete passes as time expired. Safety Marc-Antoine Degui was the closest defender to Cooley Gittens II on the final play, and he caught the pass with his fingers.

“We had a timing advantage,” DeQue said. “We knew if we played good defense … just gave up the short pass, we knew we had a win. We just had to execute. Make big moves in the clutch, and we did. Right before the last play, I said in my mind, ‘We’re going to win this.’

The Als are now enjoying a second-week bye in the regular season before hosting BC on Sept. 6. Incredibly, Edmonton is 0-7 in one-point games — the margin between victory and defeat is that small in the Canadian Football League. But Montreal is a good team, and good teams always find a way to win.

hzurkowsky@postmedia.com

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