Warren Moon, a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame, recalls his visits to Taylor Field
By Rob Vanstone
In the early 1980s, Warren Moon was so busy lacerating the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ defence that fans of the Green and White might not have fully appreciated what they were watching.
Greatness.
Perfect spirals.
Someone who would eventually be enshrined in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.All these years later, what stands out for the former Edmonton quarterback when he recalls time spent at dear old Taylor Field?
“The wind,” Moon, 63, says with a chuckle. “Whenever we were going there to play, depending on what time of the year it was, that was something that we had to worry about — especially me as a passer.“Of course, there was also our punter at the time, Hank Ilesic. Coach (Hugh) Campbell was huge on strategy in different places we played, so we definitely had to try and score when we had the wind at our back. If we could score with the wind in our face, that was like a huge bonus.
“You wanted to make sure that when you had that wind at your back, you took advantage of it, because when you had it in your face, you didn’t know where the ball was going to go.”
Edmonton usually won in a runaway when Warren Moon, 1, was the visiting quarterback at Taylor Field. Roy Antal/Regina Leader-Post.
Edmonton definitely took advantage of the wind — thereby taking it out of the Roughriders’ sails — during an Oct. 18, 1981 visit to Regina.
Moon and company would soon win their fourth of an unprecedented five consecutive Grey Cup championships. The Roughriders, meanwhile, entered the game with an 8-5 record — a rare flirtation with prosperity during an 11-year playoff drought that began in 1977.
A then-record Taylor Field crowd of 30,312 packed the stadium.
“The last bar of the national anthem barely was out when Moon rocketed a 91-yard touchdown pass to wide-open receiver Brian Kelly on the first play,’’ Bob Hughes wrote in the Oct. 19, 1981 edition of the Regina Leader-Post, documenting a game Edmonton led 34-7 at halftime and ultimately won 41-29.
The headline: “Moon launch was right on target.” As usual.
Warren Moon is shown with Edmonton against the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Oct. 18, 1981 at Taylor Field. Moon threw for 280 yards in the first half of that game, won 41-29 by Edmonton. Ian Caldwell/Regina Leader-Post.
Moon threw three touchdown passes in each of his final three visits to Taylor Field — in 1981, 1982 and 1983.
Over those three contests, Moon completed 57 of 95 passes for 917 yards, for a quarterback-efficiency rating of 119.5. Those stats would have been even gaudier if Moon had played beyond the first half of the 1981 laugher. He amassed 280 passing yards in 30 minutes of duty.
“We felt like if we could get ahead early and take some of the energy out of the stadium, it would make it a lot easier for us to operate and communicate,” Moon recalls of that 1981 contest. “That’s exactly what we did. It worked like the game plan.”
As for the pre-game and post-game routines, the surroundings were hardly befitting of a legend. The visiting team’s dressing room at Taylor Field was not, shall we say, state of the art.
“There was a nail on the wall to hang your pants and hang your shirt,” Moon says. “That’s the first thing you think of when you walk into that locker room.
“I walked in there going, ‘What the heck is this? Are we back in high school?’ The way that locker room was, sometimes there wasn’t even hot water at the end of the game. You had to take a cold shower.”
Moon was introduced to Taylor Field in 1978, as a CFL rookie, after starring with the University of Washington Huskies.
In 1983, Moon was named the league’s most outstanding player, after which he signed with the Campbell-coached Houston Oilers and began a 17-year NFL career
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Head coach Hugh Campbell, left, and Warren Moon helped Edmonton win an unprecedented five consecutive Grey Cups. Arnie Glassburg/UPC. ARNIE GLASSBURG
A 2006 inductee into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the nine-time Pro Bowler threw for 49,325 yards and 291 touchdowns in the NFL.
Even with all the success he enjoyed south of the border, Moon has never forgotten the time he spent in Canada — a period in which he threw for 21,228 yards and 144 majors, despite splitting time with veteran Tom Wilkinson during the early years in Edmonton.
“You don’t realize what it means to you until your career is almost over,” reflects Moon, who entered the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2001.
“I played at a time when we won five straight championships and nobody has done that since in any professional sport. That’s when you realize how special it is, when you see that nobody else has been able to do that.
“That was just a very special time in my life.”
VIA: https://leaderpost.com/sports/football/cfl/legendary-quarterback-warren-moon-shone-at-taylor-field/
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