It is time for Vernon Adams Jr. to be Vernon Adams Jr. again.
That means being loose and being dangerous.
He also needs to be his smiling self and play with the sort of swagger that can lift the Calgary Stampeders instead of looking like he is carrying all 12 players on his shoulders.
“I just want to be better myself,” quarterback Adams told reporters Friday. “Play with more swagger, play more free. Whatever happens, just move on to the next play, good or bad. I feel like I’ve been playing a little tight these last few weeks, since the Toronto game, and I just want to be better.”
The Stampeders need that from their leader the next two weeks against the winless Ottawa Redblacks, because those meetings with the CFL’s winless squad could decide whether the Stampeders have any meaningful football left in October.
They enter Saturday’s 5 p.m. game at McMahon Stadium with a 5-8 record, last in the West Division and four points behind both Winnipeg and B.C., who are tied for third at 7-6. The Stamps have five games remaining, including an immediate rematch with Ottawa on Sept. 26 at TD Place.
Ottawa is 0-12.
Two games against the league’s only winless team look like four points Calgary has to collect. Yet the Redblacks came within a last-second Toronto field goal of forcing overtime last week, and they swept the Stamps in 2025.
Adams opened the season with 21 touchdown passes and no interceptions through Calgary’s first eight games. In Toronto on Aug. 6, he completed only 12-of-24 passes for 159 yards, threw his first two interceptions of the season and did not have a touchdown pass.
In his three starts since then, Adams has completed 38-of-71 passes, just 53.5% efficiency, for 504 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions. Calgary lost all three. Last week’s 53-16 defeat in Edmonton was his roughest finish: 10 completions on 19 attempts, 142 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions.
He still owns excellent season numbers — 2,904 yards, 25 touchdown passes, four interceptions and a 111.1 passer rating in 12 starts — but the recent version has not been the same quarterback who tore apart defences earlier in the summer.
“It’s already enough pressure at the quarterback position,” Adams said. “I don’t need to put any more on myself. Just have fun, go through my reads and do what I need to do to help us get a win.
“Just being me,” Adams said. “Getting the ball out of my hands, going through my reads, making the right reads and not holding back.”
All of that adds up to staying on the field, which has been a problem lately. Calgary’s offence has been trapped in a bad cycle of short possessions, putting pressure on its defence and leaving the playbook unopened.
“We’ve got to start staying on the field,” said Stampeders general manager and head coach Dave Dickenson. “I don’t mind big plays, but sometimes we’ve got to make some simple jobs, simple throws, simple ideas and simple play calls and just try to get the ball moving forward.
“Lately, we’ve had too many two-and-outs. It doesn’t seem like we can set anything up because we haven’t been on the field enough.”
Adams will have to do it without star running back Dedrick Mills, who suffered a hip injury in Edmonton and has been placed on the six-game injured list. Mills had rushed for 943 yards, second-most in the CFL, and his absence removes Calgary’s most reliable offensive engine.
“I’ve played with him for a year-and-a-half now, and he’s one of the best running backs I’ve ever played with and one of the best in the league,” Adams said. “He’s a great leader. Whenever our energy was down, he brought it up and made sure we kept our heads up. We want to do it for him.”
In Mills’ place, Deonta McMahon will start, with Ludovick Choquette and Tyreik McAllister also available in the backfield. Dickenson said Calgary will use a committee and ride whichever runner has the hot hand.
Ottawa’s record is ugly, but Dickenson sees a hungry team playing for new GM/head coach Ryan Dinwiddie.
“They’ve played hard every single game,” Dickenson told reporters. “There’s no quit in them. They’ve got a lot of new guys auditioning to become full-time starters, and they are hungry.”
They can’t take Ottawa for granted.
“No way can our team look past anybody,” Dickenson said. “We’re not playing our best football. Let’s make sure we play better. We understand it’s a critical time of the year, that we need wins, and it has to start this week.”
Adams knows the Redblacks are desperate.
“We’re desperate, too,” he said. “As an offence, we’ve got to stay on the field, give our defence a break and score some points.”
The Stamps need two victories in playing Ottawa. To get them, they need their quarterback to stop playing tight, trust what he sees and let Vernon Adams Jr. be Vernon Adams Jr.
Swagger included.
