Riders vs Argos

Rider Prophet here gearing up for Week 7 in the CFL…

This week the Riders travel to Toronto for a Friday night showdown with the 2-4 Argonauts. There will be a couple familiar faces in this game as the Argonauts, much like the Lions, have lost their top 2 QBs to injury. This means that Ian “Rocky” Butler will get the start. Last week Rocky had a performance befitting of his name, going 8 for 20 and tossing up 4 INTs! His QB efficiency rating currently sits at 3.8. To put this in perspective, Calgary WR Jermaine Copeland currently has 2.1 rating after going 0 for 1 in the last game, meaning that Butler is only a slightly better QB.

This shows that Butler is getting the start not based on merit but because he is Toronto’s only healthy QB not named McMahon (which really doesn’t say that much for McMahon).

Joining Butler on offense this week will be fellow Rider cast-off Dominique Dorsey. After Dorsey was named Special Teams Player of the week and tied a CFL record, one wonders if we missed the boat by shipping him off and should be worried come Friday. I for one am not concerned though. Remember that Dorsey won that same award with us in Week 1 and 19 and 20 last year but did absolutely nothing in between; he even got benched for a while. So I will not worry too much about Dorsey... at least until the Argos roll into Regina in November.

As for the game itself, the Riders should once again be able to take advantage of a team plagued by injuries. If Montreal’s defense was able to get 4 INTs from Butler (which matched the amount they had in the previous 5 games) our secondary must be licking their lips. Also if BC (who rarely allows any back to get 100 rushing yards) couldn’t stop Wes Cates how does Toronto expect to slow him down? As long as Joseph avoids throwing up ducks to the Argo secondary (which at this point is their only real strength), we should walk out of Rogers Centre with 2 points.

The only thing that really concerns me heading into this week’s game is our kicking game. For some reason, the once reliable Luca Congi has only hit 72% of his kicks so far. The odd thing is he seems to hit everything from 30 yards and farther but can’t make anything inside 30. These symptoms indicate that he appears to have come down with a case of Reverse Lui Passaglia-itis. This is a rare condition so here’s hoping Austin and the training staff can figure out how to cure it and soon.

Hopefully TSN and CBC's commentary is better this week. With gems last week like: “Dorsey runs back a missed FG for a TD in his first CFL game” I don’t see how it can get worse. But I’m sure the commentators will find a way though, they always do.

That’s it for now. Don’t forget to check my guest blogging at Mysask.com

Rider Prophet away…