Tuesday Morning Sentimonies: Unprecedented

Riders 48 – Bombers 25

Well there was a lot more drama early than I bet we were hoping for but the end result was a predictably lopsided victory in the Labour Day Classic. The Riders overcame a not so great start and finished like winners. And unlike Justin Goltz they managed to not embarrass themselves by taunting just a bit too early.

After an electric entrance and opening things started to go downhill. Not terribly but certainly not good. Then the afternoon hit rock bottom when a giant bag of salt was poured on our wounds when the worst halftime show in recent memory was announced. The only thing that made that announcement remotely redeeming was Hedley being their live to hear the chorus of boos. Unless a bunch of Grey Cup tickets get snatched up by young girls they can expect a similar chorus come November.

Everything from then was pretty much great. We scored before half, halftime skydiving was awesome, we scored coming out of half and from there it turned into the game we all expected to see.  We dominated that second half, like Labour Day should be.

Despite yet another slow start (a recurring theme that we can hopefully resolve before it bites us in the ass), Durant kicked the offense into gear and really attacked a weak Winnipeg secondary. Getzlaf was the workhorse chalking up the yards all day but once again we made great use of Taj Smith. Geroy adding in a couple majors for the hometown crowd was nice. Not the standard super human day yardage-wize for Sheets but he produced when it mattered most. With his 4 TD passes on Sunday Durant is poised to destroy his current career high of 25 pass TDs in a season… he already has a league leading 21. Have I told you lately how much I love Cortez?

Defense took a while to get their bearings but were suffocating in the second half. In the first half I think it was a combination of sloppy play on our end, great plays on their end (that Watson catch was just a nice play) and some play calling like the flea flicker that just caught us by surprise. Nice to see John Chick finally have a big stat day after weeks of being an unheralded beast along our DL. The defense was able to take advantage of a favourable match-up on the Winnipeg OL (which isn’t very good) and get sacks and create pressure leading to incomplete passes and turnovers. Only real negative was Dwight Anderson not knowing when to shut the hell up. We need to appoint Tearrius George to kick Anderson in the balls anytime he starts even looking in the direction of a ref.

Despite the slow start, the team pulled together and came through with a convincing victory over a weak opponent. Granted they showed more fight than in past games but still very good teams beat very bad teams. The Bombers are really bad, the Riders are very good. 8-1 for the first time in franchise history. Damn that feels good!!  Now let’s just keep things rolling next Sunday.

Other random thoughts

-       Love how the crowd was jacked up right from the start. 44,900 sounds pretty good.

-       Nice effort on the blocked punt by Moore. I mean it’s slightly embarrassing to get tackled by the punter but nice play nonetheless.

-       Another kick for Milo!!! This time it was a long won. Nice to know he can be counted on for more than just the easy ones.

-       Loved the skydivers… though I thought for a minute that the guys that came down together were going to crash.

-       Also a childhood of Looney Tunes had me hoping one would hit the uprights.

-       Mediocre and ugly looking guys everywhere were probably sad that fewer Bomber fans than normal made the trip this year. This is usually the one weekend where our visitors make them look great by comparison.