Monday Morning Sentimonies: Friday Night Failure

Riders 16 – Lions 19

Today’s letters of the day are the letter F and the letter U. And I would like to dedicate these letters to the Riders’ offense. Generally speaking, when your defense comes up with multiple goal line stands and holds your opponents to 13 points heading into the 4^th quarter you should have a pretty good chance of winning the game. That is unless your offense decides to give them about as much support as a dead beat dad.

BC has the worst run defense in the CFL. They made a star out of DeAndra Cobb. They allowed Fred Reid to break a record. They have allowed an average of 147 yards rushing per game. Everyone seems to run over them at will… everyone, that is, but us. There is no excuse for only managing 44 rushing yards against a team that consistently gives up over triple that amount. That’s like managing to only get to second base with someone that’s been rufied. Part of the failure has to do with Wes Cates running like he’s auditioning for the ballet and part of it has to do with extremely unimaginative play calling. The run up the middle for a 1 yard gain didn’t work the first 10 times, what made you think it would magically start working if you kept trying it?

While I was happy to see the offense finally do something late in the 4^th it was a matter of too little too late. Football games have 4 quarters and you won’t win too many when you only put in effort in one of those quarters. Especially when you consistently serve up INTs… yeah I’m looking in your direction Durant. As much as I like Durant it’s getting harder and harder to support a guy who leads the league in INTs. Michael Bishop was regularly insulted in this space last season for his propensity (big word for a Monday) for throwing picks, and somehow Durant is managing to throw more than his retarded predecessor. 18 picks over 13 games is completely unacceptable. Learn to control the ball or learn to hold a clipboard.

It’s a shame that a very gutsy effort by the defense had to go to waste. By no means am I saying that the defense was perfect (they did allow a heavily concussed Buck Pierce to throw for over 300 yds on them) but they allowed only 1 TD and gave the offense every opportunity to take control of the game. If stuffing our opponents repeatedly from the 1 yard line doesn’t fire up your offense I guess nothing will. They missed tackles and seemed to have no answer for Simon and Jackson but at the end of the day they did their best to keep the Lions out of the endzone so I give them full credit for a game well played.

I still can’t believe that Buck Pierce was still able to stand at the end of that game. He was battered and tossed around about as bad as Kimbo Slice but still somehow stayed in the game. He’s dumber than this guy but I’ll give him credit for being tough.

The loss is by no means apocalyptic (despite what my alcohol fuelled ranting on Friday night may have indicated), but I’d be lying if I said I’m not somewhat concerned about the trend that is forming. We are currently in 2^nd place ahead of Edmonton and BC. Problem being so far this season we have a losing record (1-2) against both teams. Not exactly the most comforting thing at this point.

Bottom line the Riders have yet to show the ability to consistently play at a high level. Hopefully we use the upcoming Argo game as rebound game.

Random thought of the day….

The NFL season is only 16 games long yet they do not require tie breaker games… Baseball’s season is 483 games long but still somehow needs an additional tie breaker game to decide things. How ridiculous is it that?