My Prayers Have Been Answered

Ask and ye shall receive…

Wednesday I made a plea to Ken Miller to realize that Michael Bishop was terrible and it didn’t take long for him to take heed. He has announced that Darian Durant would be starting on Sunday and Bishop would likely be dropping to 3rd on the depth chart behind Stephen Jyles. Furthermore, coming into today Bishop had yet to take a single snap in practice. Alleluia!!!! Seems as though the coaches’ patience with Bishop has finally worn out. I guess only managing 5 good quarters of football over 7 games (28 quarters) will tend to put your security in jeopardy. (Hmm 5 for 28… guess Bishop’s good quarter % mirrors his standard completion %).

As much as I love Bishop bashing though, we have more important things to address… Sunday’s game against the Ti-Cats. To be fair though, a lengthy discussion on crocheting techniques would be more important that Michael Bishop but I digress.

Sunday the 9-6 Riders take on the 3-12 Ti-Cats at Mosaic Stadium. Hamilton is of course coached by my old friend Marcel Bellefeuille. Last year Marcel was my most insulted sports figure. This year I have gone fairly easy on him… now that doesn’t mean he’s improved as a coach to the point where it would be wrong to insult him, it’s more a product of that fact that I’ve been too busy insulting the likes of Bishop, Kornegay and Morgan to have any time for Marcel’s failures.

In typical Ti-Cat fashion, their season is already officially over and they are looking to next year. Their string of failure is almost sad… almost but not so sad that I won’t make fun of it. They entered this season with 3 franchise players… Moreno, Printers and Lumsden. Here we are with 3 weeks left in the season and Moreno has been traded for a draft pick, Printers has dropped down the QB depth chart faster than Michael Bishop (which is quite a feat) and Lumsden has dressed in 9 games, played the equivalent of 5 and is now entering his annual season ending surgery. I’d really like to feel bad for them except we also lost our QB, star LB and RB… and managed to turn a plus 500 season in spite of it… guess you can chalk that up to not hiring Bellefeuille and Creehan as coordinators.

How sad is it when we are missing our centre, LB, DE and anything resembling a receiver and we still outmatch Hamilton at virtually every position?

We actually get some good news for a change as we are expected to get 3 offensive players back this week. Vince Marshall is set to return and more importantly so are Wes Cates and Matt Dominguez! Talk about rejuvenating an offense. Last week we played the back-up RB, an idiot QB and our “veteran” receiver was Weston Dressler by virtue of being the only one on the roster for game 1. Now we have one of the League’s top RBs, a QB whose IQ actually exceeds his jersey number and an actual veteran receiver. This can only mean good things in terms of offensive production. Not to mention we get to face a defense run by the worst D-coordinator in the league.

Despite the fact that Hamilton is currently competing with Toronto for the “Most Embarrassing Team of ‘08” (I currently give the edge to the Argos for the record) they cannot be overlooked. They have nothing to lose and have proven that they can be dangerous. Quinton Porter looks like a decent QB (though when following Printers anyone would look like a decent QB), a few promising young receivers and the most amazing depth at RB in the league… well except Lumsden is done for the season… and so is Caulley… and Kenton Keith may have to miss his homecoming due to a laceration on his arm… I guess all Hamilton really has at RB is a white guy named Tre (you should never trust a white guy named Tre).

The key for this game will be for Darian Durant to do what he does best… manage the game. Use short passes and a heavy dose of Wes Cates to move the chains. Defensively, with their RBs decimated, Hamilton’s only real offensive play will be tossing it up high to Rodriguez on the corner route so as long as we can eliminate that (please don’t suck Omarr, please) we should win.
Riders by 10

See you in the stands on Sunday.