Riders 27 – Stampeders 42
Friday’s
game in Calgary marked the first loss of the season for the Riders and it was a
game of frustrating contrasts. The first half was an embarrassment on both
sides of the ball. It wasn’t even the same Rider team we had grown accustomed
to seeing over the first 5 games. They were undisciplined racking up more penalties
than offense to start the game, they got beat in the trenches, offense couldn’t
get anything going, defense looked terrible… hell it looked for a while like
Hall and Cortez had decided to switch jobs for the night. I was mentally
getting ready to write a scathing post about an embarrassing performance.
But
then came the third quarter, defense locked things down and offense started
delivering strikes, Kory Sheets casually ripped the field up for almost 100
yards in that quarter alone. These were our Riders, fighting tooth and nail,
dictating the play on both sides of the ball.
Unfortunately
when the 4th quarter hit, the offense sputtered a bit and the
defense just laid down and gave yardage to the Stamps whenever they wanted it.
In the end, it was a matter of starting too late and running out of gas too
early. But on the plus side that 3rd quarter showed that when we play
our game even the mightiest of foes (as I consider the Stamps to be) are no
match. The rest of the game however showed that we are not a super power
capable of winning games without executing in all 3 phases. Hopefully lesson
learned.
While
the offense is far from blameless in the loss, I didn’t think they were
terrible. They needed to get going earlier and I think got surprised by how
well the Stamps dominated the line of scrimmage at times. But their struggles
were minor compared to how bad the defense was. They let Jon Cornish single handedly
beat us… despite knowing full well coming in that Cornish would be the focal
point. A key reason was that the Stamps were able to make Rey Williams more
invisible than Gainer’s pants. There were times I honestly wasn’t even sure he
was out there. Unlike other games where our DL dominated the trenches and kept
Rey free to wreak havoc, clearly the Stamps got blockers on Rey and made him a
non-factor and also opened our run D wide open.
But
as much as he was a non-factor, at least Rey wasn’t a negative factor. Butler
had a bad game but by far the worst was Dwight Anderson. He was terrible. He
got beat more often than Chris Brown’s women. The tipping point for me was when
he was smiling and beaking at Cornish for getting a taunting call on his 4th
TD. Yes Cornish is a classless asshat but it is hardly the time for beaking
when a guy just scores for the 4th time and in all reality seals the
game. Smile and chatter away Anderson you moron that 10 yards on the kickoff
will really hurt them. I’m not a Cornish fan but really when a guy scores 4 TDs
he should be allowed to taunt. You don’t like it, stop him.
Now
I’m not all doom and gloom, thinking that our 5-0 start was just smoke and
mirrors or anything like that. We got beat by our toughest competitor on the road and almost made a
comeback despite a horrendous start. We need to clean up the penalties and
shore things up on both sides of the ball but let that 3rd quarter
show that we are still a force to be reckoned with.
5-1
is still a solid place to be after the first third of the season so let’s learn
from this and comeback and take thing out on the Als next weekend.
Other
random thoughts:
- After
Getzlaf’s shaky start I wonder if someone reminded him we were in Calgary
because he quickly rediscovered his Stampeder killer persona.
- The
reffing was far from great but it wasn’t a factor in the loss and hasn’t been
perfect in our previous games either.
- The
logic of sending Forde and Black to the both in the biggest regular season game
so far (on Friday Night football no less) is baffling.
- I
love how it’s just assumed now that Sheets will get at least 100 in the second
half. First half yards are just a bonus at this point.
- Loved
the design on the Sanders TD.
- Jermaine
McElveen was probably the person we least wanted to come up with the ball on
that blocked convert. But kudos to him for trying him damnedest.
- I
wonder what time zone Brandon Smith thought he was in after getting his bell
rung?
- That Chick sack was 100% pure spite and anger
No comments:
Post a Comment