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“It set the tone pretty well, we wanted to send a message early: We’re not going to let Mike do Mike,” said Diggs, a six-foot-two, 230-pound native of Downers Grove, Ill. “Coming out, we had a game plan to get after Mike. A lot of guys know him here, they know how he plays, they got in his head a little bit.

“The first play of the game, our D-line came off the ball great, they slipped off of him, I was there to clean it up.”

You didn’t have to have played with Reilly before to appreciate the three-time reigning league-leading passer.

“Mike’s one hell of a quarterback,” Diggs said. “I watched his tape, they praise him over here. He was here for a while, he did great things here.

“So we had to go get after him a little bit.”

That’s putting it mildly.

If anything, the Eskimos were too aggressive off the blocks, following up the initial sack with a string of penalties that helped the Lions take a 17-3 lead with 10 minutes to go in the half.

And it was all Eskimos from then on, thanks to a defensive effort that held B.C. to a grand total of minus-2 yards the rest of the way to a 39-23 victory.

“I’m a trash talker, I like it loud, I like to get after it a little bit. I like it when it’s a little heated so to have Mike here, it was like a little rivalry. So it was fun. Real fun,” said Diggs, who took the opportunity to share some of those words of wisdom Friday with Reilly. “I caught him once when he was complaining about a call, I had to tell him he was being a little baby about it. Quarterbacks to quarterbacks, they’re going to play the game the way they’re supposed to play it and there ain’t no harsh feelings from him.