They remain, for the moment at least, the standard. As well as a cautionary tale.
“To be honest with ya,’’ says Blake Dermott, from his office at Cowan Graphics up in Edmonton, “somebody was going to do it at some point.
“So I don’t think I’m going to lose any sleep if Calgary goes 16-1-1.
“It’s nice I was a small part of that thing. It was neat when we were doing it but we wound up losing, so what the hell?
“It means nothing.
“If Calgary goes 16-1-1 and loses, they’ll feel the exact same way.”
Since the CFL expanded its seasonal schedule in 1986, the 1989 Edmonton Eskimos hold the record for best 18-game mark at 16-2.
Success at Percival Molson Memorial Stadium against the Montreal Alouettes on Sunday afternoon would propel the 2016 Calgary Stampeders to a modern-era best regular-season record of 16-1-1.
Twenty-eight years have passed since the ’89 Joe Faragalli-coached Eskies defiled the opposition for 644 points. QB Tracy Ham won MOP that season, centre Rod Connop was named the Most Outstanding Lineman and linebacker Danny Bass the Most Outstanding Defensive Player.
The green-and-gold placed 10 players on the CFL all-star team.
But all they can remember, all that lingers, is Nov. 19 and the shock West final loss to Saskatchewan right inside Commonwealth Stadium. A day that lives in infamy up north.
“It’s amazing how much pressure there is on you when you put up that kind of a record.”
– Eskimo Alum Blake Dermott
“We had a really strong team, like Calgary has now,’’ recalls Dermott. “A lot of depth.
“Unlike Calgary this year, though, in ’89 I don’t think we had an offensive lineman miss a game the whole year. Our quarterback (Tracy Ham) stayed healthy and upright the whole way, just like Bo Levi is doing this year.
“So much of it is luck. But you do have to have a lot of talent.
“I think back on one game we played in Ottawa. If I remember correctly, we had 42 first downs. Unbelievable. Twenty-one in the first half. Rick Worman came on and played quarterback for us the second half for Tracy. Reggie Taylor had 152 yards rushing in the first half.
“And the game wasn’t even a ridiculous score, 36-22 or something along those lines.
“We never threw the ball, not once, in the fourth quarter. All we did was run.
“We were so loose …
“In ’89, I would’ve been playing right tackle. But on one series during that game, I played a different position on every play. I went from centre to right tackle to right guard to …
“Just so we could screw up our coaches in the film session.”
The cataclysmic events of Nov. 19 still draw a sense of disbelief in the relating.
“We take the kickoff and first drive we score a TD. In, like, 40 seconds. A hot knife through butter. We kick off and they turn the ball over. We march down the field again and kick a field goal.
“Two and a half minutes into the game and we’re up 10-0. I mean, we are rolling on these guys.
“Then — I’ll never forget this — our next series they get a hit on Tracy, he fumbles the ball, they pick it up and run 60 yards for a touchdown. That was our third drive and one play by us and it could’ve been 17-0.
“Instead, it’s 10-7 and everybody’s butt just got so tight.”
With the Eskimos rattled, the 9-9 Riders, quarterbacked by Kent Austin, gained belief, seized the initiative and won 32-21 to book passage to SkyDome in Toronto and the 77th Grey Cup game.
“It was … crushing,’’ recalls Dermott. “I’m from Edmonton. I had another job. After every game, I’d go to work. I think after that game, my face showed up on the front page of the Edmonton Sun.
“So I get to work the next morning and it’s like ‘Oh … my … God ….’ I’ve got to go out and call on clients. It was brutal. Some of the other guys could just get out of town. We had so many guys who worked here, lived here.
“It was terrible.
“You put so much preparation into this thing and you start to think about what could happen. I mean, at 16-2 you’re thinking ‘We’re bound to lose a game sometime.’
“Look at the New England Patriots from a couple years ago. They had this unbelievable season but who’s going to remember it? What people will remember is that they lost the Super Bowl.”
A sense of invincibility, of manifest destiny, was not, Dermott insists, at the heart of the Eskimos’ double-take demise.
“We were really prepared. But couple of our guys had shot their mouths off in the paper. John Mandarich and Andre Francis right before the game, giving some really good bulletin-board material to Saskatchewan.
“They said some things, Saskatchewan was really fired up and they wouldn’t quit. Our guys didn’t know how to handle that.
“We’d been front-running the whole year.”
The burden of beaten invincible is a heavy one to bear.
“Remember a thing the Oilers did called ‘The Boys on the Bus’?,’’ said Dermott, referring to a 1980s documentary about the Edmonton Oilers’ NHL powerhouse.
“Well, that season they were doing the same thing with us. They’d shot all this video, Don Metz from Aquila (Productions). The whole year. They had this tremendous amount of footage, we lost that game and they just had to throw it in the garbage.”
On Sunday, the 2016 Calgary Stampeders aim to go the ’89 Eskimos one point better. And then finish the job.
“It’s amazing how much pressure there is on you when you put up that kind of a record,’’ sighs Dermott.
“Having the extra couple of weeks off, there’s just more time for doubt to creep into your mind. But the Eskimos handled that pretty well last year.
“If they go 16-1-1, good for them.
“They’re not us. They’ll handle it the way they handle it.
“And they look like they’ve been handling it pretty well. I just know what kind of traps there can be.”