The veteran quarterback leads the Ottawa Redblacks into the Grey Cup game Sunday night against Edmonton at Investors Group Field.
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The Eskimos won the Canadian Football League title for the first time since 2005.
The game didn’t start well for Edmonton.
It was a dramatic finish in Winnipeg before a sellout crowd of 36,634, the second-smallest Grey Cup attendance since 1975.
Lynch, the former Northern Illinois star in his rookie season with the Eskimos, scored a third-down play. Chris Milo missed the PAT on the second Ottawa major. That gave the Eskimos the ball at the RedBlacks’ 10-yard line.
But Ottawa finished 0-3 versus Edmonton this year, the first two losses coming in July with Reilly on injured list. Burris, the CFL’s outstanding player this year, spent the week practising his club’s offensive game plan but knows he’ll see a different wrinkle or two from Chris Jones, the Eskimos head coach and architect of the league’s stingiest defence.
The Eskimos cut it to 13-10 late in the quarter on Reilly’s 23-yard pass to Adarius Bowman.
Edmonton put up just a field goal from Sean Whyte to answer, but the tide was beginning to turn. Reilly, who was chosen the game’s MVP, completed a strike for the two-point conversion to regain the lead, going up by six. The Eskimos’ offence then came through, though, pulling together a touchdown drive and a two-point convert, getting a defensive stop, and then grinding out enough first downs to win.
Burris then launched a wobbler well off target for Chris Williams, and it easily fell into the hands of Edmonton cornerback Patrick Watkins.
Bar manager Budameir says it was different past year when Vancouver hosted the Grey Cup.
Edmonton’s Mike Reilly outplayed his counterpart, throwing for 269 yards and a pair of scores while adding 66 yards on the ground. With 12 seconds left, Mike Reilly threw a two-yard touchdown pass to Akeem Shavers.
Ottawa punted with less than three minutes to go, giving Edmonton a chance to kill the game on the ground. Ottawa capped off a 72 yard opening drive of the game with a 3 yard Henry Burris pass to Patrick Lavoie.
The second quarter’s early drives didn’t create much, with Ottawa settling for a Milo field goal from 26 yards and Whyte missing from 44 (but producing a rouge).
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Whyte had been Mr. Automatic since joining the Eskimos for the Labour Day game in Calgary, hitting 27 of 29 field goals through the West Division final, but missed two of his first three attempts Sunday.
