Heading into the 2017/18 season McCall would note the knock-on effects of the Lions tour – tiredness and, especially, lack of pre-season time. This looked to become true as Saracens fell into a seven-game losing streak (the worst in over a decade) towards the end of 2017, with a bare mathematical scrape into the ECC Quarter-Finals. Saracens would then be knocked out against Leinster (the ultimate ECC champions), their earliest departure in six years. However additional rest time enabled a strong AP run-in, with a 27-10 defeat of Exeter to retake the AP trophy.