The silence stood out above everything else.

At the emptying out Caretaker’s Club on the ground level at Tim Horton’s Field, half-finished drinks were abandoned and TSN’s feed played on, mostly ignored by the few bodies still left in their seats. The silence stretched down through the corridors on the way to the Tiger-Cats’ locker room, where a player sat in his uniform in a trainer’s room, waiting to do a post-game drug test.

Inside the locker room, after a crushing 28-25 loss to the Calgary Stampeders, there was no music, no idle conversation between players. The only sounds you could hear were the voices of the players being interviewed.

Courtney Stephen, the Ticats’ DB that was called for pass interference on Bo Levi Mitchell’s last-second, 58-yard heave to avoid overtime that set up the game-winning field goal, eventually composed himself enough to talk about the most deflating moment of his season.

“There really aren’t no excuses. I let my team down and I didn’t make the play,” he said. “It’s a 50-50 ball. You would think that the odds are in our favour, but I didn’t make the play.”

As the reporters roamed the room, notifications started showing up on phones, cementing what the Tiger-Cats knew going into this game. They needed to win that game. With Hamilton’s loss, the Toronto Argonauts had clinched a home playoff date. They sat in silence while Ottawa and Saskatchewan battled at Mosaic Place, needing a Riders win to keep their Will Quinn-sized playoff hopes alive.

Their locker room is a big, circular-shaped space but they knew that after Rene Paredes’ heroics on the field, the walls were closing in on them. Not many were interested in watching that second game last night, hoping against hope that the REDBLACKS wouldn’t stick the Ticats’ other foot in the grave.

“To be honest, I’d rather watch our game again and see what we can do,” Stephens said. “I can’t control nothing about Sask. I’m going to continue to try to be a pro, work on my craft, make sure that next time, we finish with the result we want.”

They’ll miss the playoffs, but it’s not often that a team can even undergo the cultural change that these Ticats have in the second half of this season. Through their 0-8 start, which included a 60-1 loss to Calgary in Week 6, the Ticats looked lost on the field. It was fair to wonder if that group, as it was, would win a game this season.

Then Kent Austin stepped back as coach, handing the reins off to June Jones for the season. Phillip Lolley was promoted to defensive coordinator after Jeff Reinebold was let go, Masoli named the starting quarterback and things started to turn for them. The winless team turned into a 4-11 one that stunned 10-4 Winnipeg last week. They held the Stamps, dominant once again this year (13-1-1 now) to one offensive touchdown and were two plays away from taking them into overtime.

“I’m just disappointed for that locker room. They fought so hard and played through so much.” Ticats head coach June Jones

“It’s so different since I came over here,” offensive lineman Tony Washington said. He signed with Hamilton on Aug. 7, after the Eskimos released him.

“June Jones took over, Masoli came in at the helm, it changed confidence and people believe in the system. I still believe in the system,” he said. “That was a good team that we almost beat. A simple mistake at the end. We take that away and right now we’re still playing in OT.”

“These kids have hung in through a whole lot of tough stuff this year and that one’s a tough one,” Jones said. At that point, he was staying positive, thinking in terms of their season still being alive come Saturday morning.

“I think the last two weeks prove that if we get in, we’re viable. We’re viable,” he said. “I think the kids believe that now.

“This is a different team (from the 0-8 start) and the kids realize they’re a different team. In the long run that’ll pay off. If we can get in, these kids believe they can win it.”

You wonder how different things could be if the Ticats could have started to dig themselves out of the hole when it was at 0-5 or even 0-6. Where would this team be if it had a couple of more games that mattered? Washington said that even with Friday’s tough loss, a Riders win would have felt like a win for them that night too.

“I’m just disappointed for that locker room,” Jones said. “They fought so hard and played through so much.”