Edmonton beats Ottawa to win Grey Cup

“We had opportunities to turn the tide and we just didn’t make the plays, whether it was me missing a throw or making a play or something”, Burris said.

“At the end of the day, they (the officials) made the calls and that’s the way it ended”, said defensive back Jovon Johnson.

“I think they got the call right on the field, which is why they didn’t call a PI”, he said of the play that was changed after review.

“We went through the progression and didn’t just get a bunch of quick fixes and bring in a bunch of high-paycheque free agents in order to just fix it right away”.

The Ottawa Redblacks flew back to Ottawa on Monday after losing to a worthy Edmonton Eskimos team in the Canadian Football League’s championship game at Winnipeg’s Investors Group Field less than 24 hours earlier. Raj Khanna, from Ottawa, left the stadium with mixed feelings.

“We gave it all we had”, Burris said.

Flybys by RCAF aircraft are conducted in support of special events and are carefully planned and closely controlled to ensure public safety at all times. Ferguson and his friends, Peter and Matthew Machado, bought their tickets in April hoping that this was going to be Edmonton’s year. “This isn’t it. We’ll be back and we will get it done”.

“Winnipeg really did put on a good show”.

Ken Macinnes, 40, from Ottawa, admitted he’s been feeling the love in Winnipeg as well. “Of course, in a situation like that, we always feel we could have done a little bit more”. “All the restaurants you go to, people are wearing Redblacks hats or jerseys”.

“Last year we learned how to win those close games but we learned how to lose the big games”.

In fact, the final score wasn’t much different. “My teammates all stayed behind me and really supported me… when you get into games like this the only thing you can do is just play as hard as you can and when the game is on the line you’ve got to make sure you make the plays that come to you”.

They say football is most commonly paired with beer and whiskey. Whatever happens in the off-season is going to happen.

“Every team in this league is disappointed except for Edmonton this year”, said Campbell.

It was a struggle for the heavily favoured Eskimos, playing in their record 25th Grey Cup, but Reilly, despite being battered by the Ottawa defence both while passing and when he took off with the football, had enough left to engineer the points needed to hold off a courageous effort by the underdogs.