Monday Morning Sentimonies: So Close

Riders 38 – Stamps 41 (OT)

Dear Riders: You make my baby cry. Well technically you make on field mistakes that make me yell and swear which in turn makes the boy cry. But in this day and age of no one taking personal responsibility for anything I am blaming you. Please by more considerate toward babies nest time you decide to go out and suck. Won’t someone think of the children!

Okay let me preface this post with the following disclaimer. As mad as I was on Thursday, I am not in the doom and gloom, fire/replace everyone faction that seemed to have quickly formed. For god sakes we are 3-1and in first place. Even a diehard Rider fan like me has to admit we are doing way better than expected this early. It sucks to lose the way we did but fact is we weren’t going to go undefeated. So am I pissed about the game? Yes. But overall am i still happy with the season so far? Yes.

This loss reminds me a lot of the ’07 loss to Edmonton where we were up 20 something to nothing at half and managed to lose by not scoring in the 2^nd half. Austin turned that crap game into a learning moment and the season turned out okay from there. I’m hoping Chamblain will do the same.

It’s too bad that you don’t get partial credit in the win column because the Riders put in most of a great game on Thursday. We had a big lead, Calgary was coming unglued, taking penalties, getting their best lineman kicked out, losing their long snapper to injury... I mean short of flying in Michael Bishop during the 4^th quarter stretch I’m not sure what else they could have done to aid our cause. Then in what I can only describe as the most ill timed act of charity we decided to start helping the Stamps out so we wouldn’t make them look too bad.

Huclack sailed a snap high enough that we are facing fines from Canada’s aviation regulators for failing to file the appropriate flight plans prior to taking off. It’s the first bad snap I can recall in Huclack’s 3 years here. Durant threw a pick. Now the fact that he threw one didn’t really bother me. It happens and Durant deserves huge props for going this long without one. But the timing could not have been worse. Dressler dropped a deep one (which is surprising). Getzlaf had a couple drop (which is not, just took him a while to remember that he is still Chris Getzlaf).

All that considered, this one is on the defense. There is no way 38 points is not enough to win a football game (unless you are relying on Montreal’s horrific defense). By the end we weren’t even really playing defense so much as laying there and letting them do what they wanted to us (I hope we at least got a nice supper out of the deal). We were super effective at eliminating Cornish but that was about the extent of it. Bad coverage. Bad match-ups (on the Taylor TD, Kromah was the guy covering... that is a terrible match-up no wonder they scored). Russ has been playing good but you can’t tell me he is the glue that holds that unit together (at least I pray that is not the case). The worst was the textbook Richie Hall “softer than dinner at and old folks home” defense late in the game.

As I said the game made me mad but at the end of the day we are still in a good spot and hopefully with a longer practice week the team can get physically and mentally refreshed and ready to defend our home turf. It’s a home game so my baby will get a reprieve from the yelling.

Other random thoughts on the game

-       Efrem Hill almost got himself upgraded to mentally challenged rabbit based on his efforts to score a TD. Unfortunately in this performance based business: no TD, no upgrade.

-       Nice to see us open up the playbook and stretch the field.

-       We need to find an offensive weapon not named Dressler, Getzlaf or Sheets cause right now that’s all we have.

-       On that Hughes TD, Shologan was open... just keep that in the back of your mind for later.

-       I wonder what Tearrius George was saying in the trenches because he sure got the Stamps mad at him

Milo got leg!