Monday Morning Sentimonies: Calling Shane Falco... We Need Heart

Riders 24 – Eskimos 39


In retrospect, given how the game started for the Riders I should have realized that we were going to lose. I mean good nights don’t start with balls bouncing off your face... unless your name is Man In The Bush, but I digress. I’m not sure if Grice-Mullen thought for a minute that he was playing European football and couldn’t use his hands but that was an embarrassing way to start.

And it was that kind of night for the Riders. Fumbles, incompletion, more fumbles, bad plays, drops, lacklustre effort and of course our perennial friends brutal special teams and ineffective run defense. You could just tell that the team didn’t care about the end result and turned in a half assed effort.

Well that’s not entirely true, there was a few players turning in an effort.

- Wes Cates came out of nowhere and rattled off 92 rushing yards, the bulk of which were amassed on a nice opening drive that ended up in a TD.

- Marc Parenteau emerged as a receiving force.

- Cary Koch was our entire offense. Hell of a game for him... shame that nobody except him and Parenteau were doing anything.

Other than that it was a painful game to watch.
- Durant is clearly playing on an injured leg. He didn’t use his legs at all and it clearly affected his performance since he is at his best when he is moving around. Our passing game was in complete disarray. Durant should not come anywhere close to the field next week. Let him heal up and use the last game of the year as a playoff tune-up. A gibbled Durant come playoff time is about as useful as a starting Jabba the Hutt at RB

- I can’t believe Edmonton figured out our Achilles heel... repeatedly running the ball and adequate special teams.

- Remember on Friday when I made a joke about how getting the ball to the opposing team is Ryan Dinwiddie’s greatest strength? How prophetic .


Actually I was watching the game with Media Consultant and my fiancée, both of whom are well aware of my blatant Dinwiddie hatred. Well after his first completion they started mocking me and pointing out how good Dinwiddie was doing. Well... on the next play karma reared its ugly head and Dinwiddie telegraphed a pass (shocking as that may be) for a pick 6. That play made my night (which says something about how bad the game was).

The result really shouldn’t have surprised anybody. As I said, they cared, we didn’t and it showed. This team and this coaching staff have 2 more weeks to figure out what is wrong with this team and fix it, because if the team continues on this steady decline that they have been on I may need to bring a paper bag with me to Mosaic Stadium for the West Semi. There is too much talent on this team for them to be doing this much wrong. It’s time for our coaches to start earning their money... every single coach, because all of them should be embarrassed by the performance of their respective units.