Success in the trench usually translates into success on the scoreboard, so it's no real surprise that the four still-breathing CFL teams were also the four with the most quarterback sacks this season.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats ranked third with 54 sacks, just two back of league-leaders Saskatchewan and Edmonton, and a stunning 24 more than they had last season.

Part of that, but not that much, is related to a different philosophy under defensive co-ordinator Mark Washington, who replaced Jerry Glanville. A great deal goes to the front office's acquisition of defensive end Ja'Gared Davis and tackle Dylan Wynn whose 13 and 11 sacks, respectively, ranked second and fourth in the league.

Wynn and Davis, though, heap a lot of the credit on the guy who plays between them: nose tackle Ted Laurent who's in his ninth CFL year, the last six of them in black and gold.

Among the eight defensive linemen who usually start for the Ticats and their Eastern Final opponent Edmonton Eskimos, Laurent had the fewest sacks (five). But that really signifies that he's almost always taking one — no, make that two — for the team. He usually lines up between the opposing centre and guard and is assigned to keep both of them busy on most formations, so others face lesser resistance.

"Ted makes my job so much easier," Davis says. "It's so disrespectful if you don't put two guys on him, or at least have a second guy check him, because if you don't he can wreck a whole game by himself. You line up beside him and it gives you so much freedom to wreak havoc."

Wynn adds: "He's really the backbone of our defence. You know Teddy's going to do his job and demand two blocks every time. And it's never about him."

Playing with a franchise repeatedly defined by swashbuckling defensive linemen who cut a wide swath through CFL history, the soft-spoken Laurent has played a more businesslike, but equally as effective, pressure game. He can distract offensive linemen so others "eat" but he can also feast himself. Thrice in his six years here, he's recorded eight or more sacks.

Laurent is well down the road to becoming an all-time Ticat, his name immediately evoking a certain Ticat era. In this case, the post-Ivor-Wynne stage.

"That will probably hit me after it's all done," says the 31-year-old Laurent. "Right now, I get a lot of jokes about being there for a long time, being the oldest in the D-line meetings. I feel like a Tiger-Cat. I know what it's about, I know what the tradition is about, I know what the city is about."

And he knows what having your hands full is about. Speedy Banks points out that the Montreal-born Laurent is a ratio-buster and that his stats aren't as gaudy as some others across the league because he's willing to take on two blockers, "40 times a game or more."

"But that's my job requirement in our defence," Laurent says. "As long as the guys around me are getting the job done, if I have to make sacrifice for them to eat, I'm OK with it."

Over the past five years, Laurent hasn't played beside the same defensive tackle in back-to-back seasons. He says that one of the things that separates the high-motored Wynn is that from the start of training camp he parked himself beside Laurent so the two could continually exchange ideas on and how to complement each other's play.

It must be working. Like Davis, Wynn had never approached the sack total he's recorded this season.

"I've never had," Wynn marvels, "a more selfless teammate than Ted."

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