Mauldin mène l’adaptation de ROUGE et NOIR à la nouvelle réalité de la LCF en matière de défense contre la passe
Lorenzo Mauldin won’t match the 17 sacks he recorded a couple of years ago, barring the greatest four-game performance anyone has ever seen, but he doesn’t need to.
For each of the past three seasons, the Ottawa REDBLACKS’ pass rush has been among the best in the league, with the trend continuing in 2024. Currently, they have the fourth most sacks, but are only four behind the Toronto Argonauts, who occupy the top spot.
It’s more spread out this season, for sure, but Mauldin is still playing an important role in making life difficult for opposing quarterbacks.
“I’m just being a pawn,” Mauldin said. “The game that we were playing pretty much put me in a square where I can make some plays for our defence. I’m able to just play my role, do what I have to do to help the defence.”
In previous years, you couldn’t even dream of chasing the sacks lead with five as October loomed, but this year, Mauldin is only one off the top spot. Even in the shortened 2021 season, A.C. Leonard captured the title with 11 in as many games, but 2024 has been a strange year in totality for the defensive line across the board.
Football has always been a cat-and-mouse game. Offences will do something new, find success for a few years, and then defences will figure it out. For the past couple of years, the defences found success rushing the passer, but now, getting the ball out of a quarterback’s hand quickly is the trendy thing, leading to a significant drop in sacks.
“The ball is coming out so quick,” Mauldin said. “Teams are just doing what they have to do in order to bring that sack number down, and they’re doing it well. Week in and week out, we just have to go out and do what we can to get those numbers up.”
Eventually, defensive coordinators in the CFL will find a way to counter, and offences will have to adapt once more. Already, there is a semblance of an idea of what to do, but it doesn’t come with the same fanfare as the gaudy sack totals we’re used to seeing.
“All we can do is just continue to get pressure and get our hands up when we know that the ball is coming out,” Mauldin said. “Hopefully, by working with the backend, we can force the quarterback to throw the ball [into tight windows], and we’ll see what happens after that.”
Heading into their Week 18 bye, the REDBLACKS find themselves in quite the predicament injury-wise. With so many names on the six-game injured list, they’ve been forced to rotate different names through the lineup, and in some cases, those replacements have recently been added to the list themselves.
The next-man-up mentality has been alive and well in the nation’s capital in recent weeks, including with the defensive line, who are without standout Bryce Carter.
“At the end of the day, it’s just going out and doing what we do on a regular basis,” Mauldin said. “Individually, with Bryce being out, of course, that does put a lapse in our defence, but we have guys that will be able to step up. With the entire defensive line, I feel like there are no weak links at all.
“We have a close-knit group. Most of us have been together for three years, and we all know how each other play. We know the speed of each other, and we know the mindset of each other, so we play as one. The goal of our defensive line is to make life easier for the guys in the back end by getting pressure, and making sure that the quarterback isn’t comfortable in the pocket.”
Despite their 8-6-1 record, the pundits have, by and large, not given the REDBLACKS their props this season. After losing a trio of games in a row for the first time, that has become even more true, with many hastily writing them off.
Maulding has heard the noise, or lack thereof, surrounding his squad, but it’s water off a duck’s back. All he cares about is winning, which would prove the naysayers wrong anyway.
“They’re not the ones out there playing with us,” Mauldin said. “We’re the ones out there sweating and fighting to be who they think we aren’t. We’ve done just enough to make them turn their head, but we’ve got to finish on the second end of the season and be able to right their wrongs.”
