The East Division-leading Hamilton Tiger-Cats take a six-game winning streak into Thursday night’s clash with the visiting BC Lions.
The Tiger-Cats (6-2) have won three of their last four games by four or fewer points, including last weekend’s 28-24 victory at Edmonton.
“It’s different people. It’s different groups every time,” Hamilton quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell said of the narrow wins, per TSN. “When it matters, we are playing the complementary football we need to play.”
The Lions (3-5) have been idle since their 37-33 loss to Hamilton on July 27 in Vancouver. BC has dropped its last two games by a combined 10 points.
Thursday’s matchup has the makings of another high-scoring contest as Hamilton leads the CFL with 31.6 points per game, while BC tops the league with 408.3 yards of offense per contest.
In the first meeting, Mitchell rallied the Tiger-Cats from a 10-point deficit in the final five minutes. The early front-runner for CFL Most Outstanding Player honors completed 34 of 41 passes for 389 yards and three touchdowns, the last one with 16 seconds remaining.
“He’s playing the best football I’ve seen him play,” Hamilton coach Scott Milanovich said of Mitchell, a two-time CFL MOP (2016, 2018) who leads the league in passing yards (2,551) and touchdowns (18) with just three interceptions.
BC counterpart Nathan Rourke has been hot, too. Since returning from an oblique injury four weeks ago, he has completed 70.9 percent of his passes and averaged 330.8 yards with six touchdowns and three interceptions.
Prior to their bye last week, Lions coach Buck Pierce said he told his players to look at themselves and ask, “What more can I do?”
“Because we’ve got to be able to finish football games,” he said, per the CBC. “We’ve got to be able to get ourselves to a point where we’re more consistent and find a way to close games out.”
The Tiger-Cats signed American running back Kevin Brown this week. Brown, 28, rushed for 1,141 yards with the Elks in 2023. He has recorded 379 carries for 2,186 yards (5.8 average) and six touchdowns and added 568 receiving yards in 40 CFL games.
–Field Level Media
