Impressions form quickly, so the Hamilton Tiger-Cats can be forgiven for thinking maybe they had solved a long-standing CFL riddle: how to consistently thwart Montreal Alouettes quarterback Anthony Calvillo.
After spanking the Alouettes 44-21 last week, Hamilton arrived at Percival Molson Stadium with ambitions of leaving the defending Grey Cup champions in their rearview.
Yeah, well, not so much.
The Als haven't won the title two years running for nothing, and they delivered a tart reminder that qualifiers like "reeling," "fading" and "beleaguered" should be used parsimoniously in connection to this team.
The final score was 43-13 for Montreal, a margin intended to deliver an emphatic message – as Calvillo put it afterward: "We needed to win convincingly."
"We needed to set the tone, to let them know it's not going to be an easy thing to go out there and beat us. When teams, especially in our division, start beating us they have that confidence . . . we wanted to bring things back to reality and it was very important for us in this locker room," said Calvillo, who topped 400 passing yards for the second time this season. "That's the way we need to play, that's the way we need to win, when we crush teams."
In the Hamilton locker room, Ticats running back Avon Cobourne was typically blunt in his assessment of the performance.
"It was," opined the former Alouette, "a good old-fashioned ass-kicking."
The victory snapped a two-game skid and comes at a key time for the Als: They are 6-4 and two of their next three games are against the East Division-leading Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Given that Winnipeg was handed its second consecutive loss at the hands of the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Sunday, those dates take on a new importance.
And so a team that looked dispirited and thoroughly dominated a week ago will play the Bombers next Sunday at home – where it has lost just three times since the fall of 2008 – with first place on the line.
"We've got to remember this feeling, but now we've got Winnipeg coming into our house next, so it's going to be a continued dogfight as we go forward into the second half [of the season]," Calvillo said.
The coverage scheme designed by Hamilton defensive co-ordinator Corey Chamblin – a former assistant with the Calgary Stampeders, who have also had success against the Als – had strangled Montreal's vaunted offence in the previous meetings between the team.
But if the approach, predicated on pressure and mixing zone and man-to-man coverage, seemed to befuddle Calvillo and the Alouettes coaches in three consecutive losses dating back to the preseason, it doesn't seem to bother them any longer.
Calvillo passed for 273 yards and four touchdowns – in the first half. He finished the game 31-for-45 and 421 yards passing – he is now 1,020 yards away from setting a new pro football record for career passing yards.
"In my mind I had to be patient and when it was man-to-man take advantage, and the receivers did a great job, those guys were getting open," Calvillo said.
Montreal's receivers were so open that four of them scored touchdowns (CFL receiving leader Jamel Richardson led the way with 113 yards and his league-best eighth touchdown).
The Montreal defence, meanwhile, limited Hamilton to 207 total yards and effectively eliminated the running game. The Ticats could do no better than Justin Medlock's four field goals – including a 57-yarder – and a booming 73-yard single.
"At half time they had something like eight yards total rushing, so that's cool with me," said defensive tackle Eric Wilson, saying of last week's debacle, "Sometimes we need that wakeup call."