The Ottawa Redblacks dropped to 0-7 on the season after another loss, this time to Montreal, and the story wasn't a lack of yards or first downs. It was what happened every time Ottawa got close to the end zone. Head coach Ryan Dinwiddie didn't sugarcoat it after the game, calling his team's execution inside the 5-yard line "embarrassing."
"The story of it for me was really poor execution inside the 5-yard line," Dinwiddie said. "It almost felt like we scored a bunch of points tonight just in terms of how many first downs we were getting in. And we were staying at second and long for the most part. And we were doing a lot of things that we said that we wanted to do. But then once we got inside the 5, man, really poor execution by all of us. And to an embarrassing level, to be truthful to you."
Dinwiddie pointed to the what-if of the night. Ottawa moved the ball well between the 10s but couldn't turn drives into touchdowns once they got in scoring range.
"You get stopped 3 times inside the 5-yard line. What if you score all 3 times? That's the biggest what if and woulda, coulda, shoulda aspect of this game. It's just lack of ability to finish drives inside the 5," Dinwiddie said.
Short Yardage: 'Our Achilles Heel'
Dinwiddie didn't hide from the pattern, either. This isn't a one-game problem for Ottawa — it's become the thing that's sinking otherwise solid drives all year.
"I think that's our Achilles heel right now is our short yardage," Dinwiddie said. "We got to look at different avenues, maybe throw it. We had the one to KP on the third down. We went on two to try to get them to jump off sides. They jump off sides. Now it's first and goal from the one. We get a whole new set of downs. We jump off sides. It's just costing us. We preach details from the get-go of camp, especially in the red zone. We're not getting it done down there."
He also explained the decision to go for it on fourth down in the third quarter instead of taking points. "I just felt like our defense was giving up some points and it felt like we needed a touchdown there. We were down quite a bit there, right? So yeah, I thought we had to be aggressive. That was our approach going into it," he said. "We had a third down conversion and then we went down there and didn't finish, so. That's disheartening right now."
Jake Maier on the Game Plan and His Own Reads
Quarterback Jake Maier threw for over 300 yards in the loss, and while the numbers looked solid, he took ownership of the moments that mattered most. Asked about the psychology of failing to finish inside the 5, Maier didn't lean on outside pressure.
"I don't know how much of a role that plays," Maier said. "I think sometimes defensively they're doing a good job of really forcing the issue and showing you some funky looks and trying to screw up your IDs and the way you're blocking it. I think sometimes that just kind of gets us. And obviously there's things that I can do better in terms of decision-making."
Maier also addressed spreading the ball around more than usual against Montreal, saying it wasn't a scripted approach but a byproduct of how Montreal's defense played. "It's not like intentional, like, oh, I'm going to feed everybody 5 balls each today. It's really just working the boundary, and whatever that defensive player takes me, I'll go opposite and try to get the ball to whoever it is. It's never a crazy agenda. I just think it worked out that way tonight," he said.
On Montreal's fast start, Maier said early scoreboard pressure doesn't change how the offense operates. "You're not really scoreboard watching early in games. You're trying to get into the flow of your game plan and execute what you're doing. That doesn't have any effect on whether or not I can read a curl flat read in the first quarter," he said.
C.J. Reavis: 'We're Beating Ourselves'
On defense, C.J. Reavis didn't point at Montreal. He pointed inward, and his message to the locker room centered on doing the individual job rather than searching for outside excuses.
"I think we know we're beating ourselves. We know we're not playing good enough ball collectively at the right time. Sometimes when the offense is getting it going, we're not getting it going on defense. And when we're getting it going, they're not getting it going. Football is a real simple game. I think we're just making it hard on ourselves," Reavis said.
Reavis said Montreal's first-drive touchdown, despite Montreal playing on a short week, was more about Ottawa's execution than anything unpredictable Montreal did. "We know what they're going to do. We know what the game plan is. They came out and ran what they always run. It's not hard football. We just got to play better," he said.
Looking ahead to a tougher matchup against Saskatchewan, Reavis said the fix isn't complicated, but it does require more than what the team has been giving. "The process has to change. Whatever we've been doing isn't good enough. So I think guys got to dig in and do more. It got to be more," Reavis said. "We got to put in more work, more film study, practice harder. Even if it's stretch more, lift more, eat better, go to sleep more, whatever we got to do, we got to figure it out."
Justin's Status and Looking Ahead
Dinwiddie also gave an update on Justin, who left the game and was replaced in the lineup, forcing a shuffle that led to a costly interception on the final play. "Once Justin went down, that was tough. But I thought Justin played really well, battled, just didn't do enough," Dinwiddie said of the in-game shift. Asked directly about Justin's status, Dinwiddie said, "I think he'll be all right. He had a shoulder, high shoulder. So at that stage, didn't want to risk him getting hurt."
Dinwiddie's message to the team heading forward stayed simple. "It's what it is, right? It's reality. We got to find a way to get a win. Focus on 1-0. Still not out of it yet, but we got to get on a streak. Let's just worry about winning one game," he said.
Ottawa now heads to Saskatchewan looking for its first win of the season, needing to prove the red zone breakdowns that have defined this stretch are fixable before, as Reavis put it, real football starts.