After an underwhelming performance in their home opener, the Estevan Lions Club Steelers' offence woke up in a hurry on Saturday.
The Steelers fell two points short in the end though, dropping a 42-40 road game against the Weyburn Falcons in Regina Minor Football bantam division action.
"Obviously our offence played way better," said Steelers head coach Phil Zajac, referring to the team's 48-0 loss to the Regina Renegades on Aug. 24.
Saturday's game was a clash of two winless teams - Estevan won last year's meeting 68-8 - and the Falcons (1-2) came back in the second half to earn the victory.
The Steelers (0-3) led 14-8 after the first quarter and 34-26 at the half.
Among the highlights was running back Jake MacLeod rushing for over 100 yards and scoring his first touchdown of the year, and Zach Anderson reeling in his first touchdown catch on a pass from quarterback Andrew Kehler.
Star running back Levi Pick, who was injured early in the team's season opener, returned for five plays and managed to explode for over 100 yards in that short time before leaving the game.
"Then his ankle started to hurt again and we pulled him," Zajac said.
The Steelers revamped their playbook for the game. The week before, during their home opener, one of the camera operators for Access 7 happened to be a member of Weyburn's coaching staff.
"So we changed our whole offence and only ran the plays from the previous week maybe eight to 10 times. We installed an all-new offence with new plays and obviously they weren't ready for them," Zajac said. "Things worked. We threw touchdown passes, we had lots of rushing yards."
Part of the new strategy included only working out of the shotgun early in the game.
"It takes a little pressure off the offensive line, and it gives the quarterback a little more time to look at receivers rather than having to back peddle. We put in a lot of short swing passes with just the odd deep downfield play. And it worked well," he added.
The Steelers had a chance to win the game late in the fourth quarter, getting the ball back with 1:10 left after making a defensive stop. It was second and six at the Weyburn 42-yard-line when the Steelers took an objectionable conduct penalty over something a player said.
"Instead of second and six, it was third and 21. We gained about 16 yards on third down, but they stopped us and it was basically game over," said Zajac, adding that kicker Prestin Bergen had been booting the ball over 30 yards in warmups and another 15 yards would have been enough for a field goal attempt.
The Steelers are back at home on Saturday, playing the third-place Regina Mounties. Kick-off is at 2 p.m. at Dana Quewezance Memorial Field.
"The Mounties are a good team. We'll work with the same offence we did this week, then it'll depend on personnel, who we have back, who we don't and try to be creative," Zajac said.
