Article content continued

Mateas, the Redblacks’ nominee for the Canadian Football League’s most outstanding lineman award in 2018, said he “can’t wait to get back to work. The contract) just kind of just fell together the last few weeks. I haven’t really been paying too much attention to it. I’ve been letting my agent do most of the work. I’m grateful for that … I just want to play football. Every single one of those guys coming back is an absolute dog. Those are the kind of players we want on this team.”

This was a tough year, Sinopoli said, “but I’m looking forward to the next one. This is where I want to be. I had let them know that. They felt the same way, so it was pretty easy (to get the contract done). This season was a bump in the road. This organization does a fantastic job and the fan base is amazing. We believe in it, that’s why we wanted to come back.”

So often this season, the Redblacks were shredded at home. Of nine games at TD Place stadium, they lost five of them by 14 or more points. On Friday, the margin was 10, but it didn’t seem like that. Sure, the Alouettes rested some of their starters, with quarterback Vernon Adams and running back William Stanback yanked long before the game ended,- but the Redblacks pushed back and maybe gave their fan base a flicker of hope.

“The one thing we wanted to do was show some fight,” said running back John Crockett, who rushed for 51 yards on 10 carries in his return to the lineup after being injured on Aug. 24. “It’s good to carry things over into next year. (This season), we got hit a lot, we dealt with a lot of injuries, we hurt ourselves with penalties, we did a lot of things good teams can’t do. We’ll be ready for next year, we’ll come back hungry. If they’re happy to have me, I’ll be blessed to come back, go out there and kick some ass.”