Edmonton Elks dodge self-inflicted bullet to earn first win of season

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For the new brass taking over the Edmonton Elks, this season’s manifest was pretty simple: Get this thing pointed back in the right direction.

Oh, and please avoid any further embarrassment while you’re at it.

If it sounds straightforward enough, or the kind of thing that goes without saying, you might not have been paying attention to the Elks over the past four years.

Of course, this one was going to be a continuation of the rebuild that was supposed to have begun taking place way back when. That was always going to be the case under the newest new management.

The ghost of Vince Lombardi himself couldn’t pull off a miraculous turnaround in one single off-season.

But if the guys in place now overlooking the club want to distance themselves from the disastrous results of yesteryear, they’d better not do anything to make their fans reach back for the brown paper bags.

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Not after how incredibly far things have fallen. And some of the wonky ways they unintentionally managed to keep themselves down there.

It’s bad enough in a nine-team league to miss out on playoffs, let alone to do it every year since the cancelled 2020 COVID-19 season. They haven’t punched their post-season ticket since Jason Maas was fired as head coach after — get this — leading the team to the divisional final three out of four times.

That’s right, finishing one win away from a Grey Cup three times, compared to missing playoffs once (which just happened to be the year Edmonton was hosting). These days, the club would be lucky to even remember if the trophy’s name was spelled with an ‘E’ or an ‘A’.

Then there were the 22 straight home losses, where Edmonton re-established itself on North America’s football map in the worst way possible, with an all-time terrible record among not just professional football teams, but all the four big sports on the continent. Thankfully, we don’t need to go digging up that relic any further.

Oh, and how about starting off each of the past three seasons 0-5? Make that at least 0-5. It was actually 0-7 one time, and — if you can believe it — an 0-9 start after getting blanked the entire first half of one of those seasons.

And it looked like they might have been in the running to make it four straight years of 0-5, after the luck of the draw saw them get out of the gates against a tougher-than-average schedule, not to mention a less-than-helpful early bye week, over the first four weeks.

But the methodically improving herd came up with its first win of the season and earliest victory in recent memory, defeating the Ottawa Redblacks 39-33 on Sunday to end what has to feel like a much more manageable 0-3 start, by comparison.

And it came in a crucial week where both the B.C. Lions and Calgary Stampeders looked to start pulling away in the standings, breathing — dare we say — a little life into the upstart Elks?

It marked the first win of many more to come in the head-coaching career of the freshly minted Mark Kilam, who came aboard following an unheard-of 17-year entrenchment as an assistant coach with the same club (don’t hold it against him that it was the rival Stampeders). So, he must be doing something right.

And now he is being tasked with steering the turnaround in Edmonton alongside newly repatriated general manager Ed Hervey, all the while reminding themselves of the prime directive: Win. Or at least don’t embarrass their already gun-shy fanbase in the pursuit of victory.

But the gun with which past EE iterations shot themselves in the foot on far too many occasions ended up coming dangerously close to coming out of its holster again against Ottawa.

To set the scene, the Elks exploded to an impressive 22-3 lead midway through the second quarter with their fastest, best and most efficient start in a good long while, looking like they were well on their way to running up the score against an outmatched opponent. And, truth be told, that would have been exactly what the doctor ordered to help begin curing the malaise that’s ran rampant in the seats at Commonwealth Stadium. The empty ones, at least.

Things were going so well, it was almost too good to be true.

At that moment, the Elks opted for a quarterback change in order to get Cody Fajardo some much needed game action. Remember him? He’s only two years removed from being named Grey Cup MVP with the Montreal Alouettes and was brought in to help along the development of young Tre Ford — who completed a career-best 15-of-17 passes with two touchdowns.

Now, obviously Fajardo both deserves and needs some snaps. And the sooner they come in the season, the better for the team down the road.

But instead of tightening their grip on an already suffocating opponent in the closest thing there could be to a must-win game in the first week of July, the Elks let go.

Just a little, mind you. But it was all the wiggle room the Redblacks needed, answering back with a touchdown before forcing a 2-and-out that they returned to the end zone to make it a one-score game heading into halftime. In the blink of an eye.

Fortunately for these Elks, they showed they are no longer ‘those’ Elks and didn’t blow a commanding lead by taking their foot off the gas, even if it was just a little.

Instead, they regained control of the would-be runaway train and held onto that one-score lead, much to the relief of those in attendance who got to celebrate a hard-fought home victory. Even if it was far from the blowout it had been shaping up to be.

At this point in the proceedings, no win is a bad win in Edmonton.

There is such a thing as a bad loss, however. And these Elks just gained some ground in the ongoing race to outrun their former selves by avoiding one.

E-mail: gmoddejonge@postmedia.com

On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge