Monday Morning Sentimonies: Well Now I’m Confused

Riders 35 – Stamps 45

So turns out Taman/Miller were right… Luc Mullinder was the problem with our offense and getting rid of him had the intended effect of jumpstarting our offense. Unfortunately Mullinder was apparently the only thing holding our D together so while his departure benefited us on one side of the ball, it hurt us dramatically on the other. Behold the awesome power of Mullinder!

Through 6 games I was pretty sure I had it figured out. Our defense was nothing special but had developed into something at least respectable over the last few games. Our offense was clearly the problem. It all seemed so simple… then Friday came along and screwed everything up.

If you had told me before the game that we were going to score 35 points (all on offense) I would have been pretty confident in a victory for us… I also would have called you a boldfaced liar but that’s beside the point. For the first time all season, our offense finally decided to show up and not embarrass themselves…well we did have 3 turnovers but I mean embarrass ourselves by Rider standards. We committed to the run, we discovered a receiver who is tall enough to go on the big boy rides at the fair who could actually catch and we showed some creativity. Basically we did everything that I had assumed by now were against the Doug Berry rules of offense. I can honestly say that for the first time this year I was happy with our offense.

Sadly the Welcome Back party for our offense was ruined by our defense. Had they sucked this bad any other week we barely would have noticed… but this week all we needed was an average performance and they shit the bed. Is it really too much to ask to hold your opponents to 4 TDs or less? Well in the Marshall/Hall world of defensive planning, apparently so. To be fair I doubt many teams would have game planned around Jabari Arthur being the focal point of the Stamps’ attack but still holding them under 30 shouldn’t have been that hard.

Apparently our defensive plan was to assume that Dickenson and Hufnagel had never seen game film of our not-so revolutionary soft zone scheme. Shockingly they were not surprised to see the same coverage we run every game nor were they confused by its simplicity. I realize their punter is pretty good but I don’t think it was necessary to game plan defensively to keep Burke Dales on the sidelines until close to half time.   Though it’s amazing how easy that is to accomplish when your secondary is constantly in prevent and nobody knows how to tackle.

Sean Lucas was at his peak level of crapiness… yet again. Good lord if we shipped out Kornegay and Mullinder for being paid too much for their level of play, Sean Lucas should have been cut 8 times already. He is awful!! Might as well bring back Chunky Adams and line him up in Lucas’ spot since I bet Chunky would actually have a better chance of covering his guy. Lance Frazier also had an awful game as well as Barrin Simpson who either couldn’t make the tackle or had to wait until his 2^nd or 3^rd attempt on the same guy.

Clearly there are issues with our coaching staff… most notably Greg Marshall who through 7 games has been an absolute failure. I guess all those teams who passed on him for head coach knew what they were doing. But anyone expecting coaching changes will have to wait at least one more week. We have a super short week due to playing on Thursday and the bye week is up after that. The bye week is the most logical time for a change in coaching since you have 2 weeks to sort everything out. So we are stuck with this mess for at least one more game.

Other Random thoughts…

-        Though it apparently does exist I have never once heard of “Accidental pass interference” before. I have also never heard of requiring video review to sort out a penalty. Ridiculous. The again I guess the refs have hardly set a high bar for themselves this year.

-       Drew Tate got at least 6 feet off the ground while celebrating a TD he had nothing to do with. I guess when you have accomplished nothing in your career so far you need to take pleasure in the accomplishments of others. When you can be seamlessly replaced by Michael Bishop it speaks volumes about how useful you currently are.

-       How many more TDs could Charles have scored before vomiting?