Monday Morning Sentimonies: Eastern Embarassment

Riders 15- Argos 48

They all sucked.

If I stopped my analysis right there it would pretty much be comprehensive. About the only good thing I can about that garbage was at least they are close enough as teammates to all decide to suck as one collective unit. Honestly, there's been stuff in Prophet Jr's diapers that didn't stink that much.

What it boiled down to (I mean other than everyone sucking) was that our best players were not our best players... well maybe they were technically our best but they were the best in same way someone is the "best" player on the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Our defense was so useless I'm not sure why they even bothered coming on the field. The secondary that was supposed to be our defensive strenght looked awful. Maze had a bad day. Anderson must have some condition in getting his charges dropped whereby he can't use his hands to initiate physical contact because he attempts at tackling were embarrassing. And for me that was the big frustration. Ray, Owens and Durie are elite level talent, they are going to make plays. But we helped them with every missed tackle (of which there were many). Hard enough to beat them without making their life easier. Last week against Hamilton, our blitzes paralyzed the O. This week, you could almost see Ray laughing as he knew exactly where to put the ball to make a play when we tried to blitz.

Offense decided to show up for exactly 2 minutes of that game during which Durant surgically tore that defense apart (like i expected heading into this game). But for the remaining 48 mins of that game the O was as useless as the D. To a man, our much vaunted OL got beat. Picard, Best, Labatte, you name it, I saw them lose one on one battles all day. That put even more pressure on Durant who wasn't having a good day to begin with. He just looked flustered. Forcing passes, ignoring clear running lanes in favour or passing. Inexperienced receivers likely didn't help but that wasn't the only problem. Then there was Allen... I won't get too much into him. He fumbled (again), he needs to get better, he will.The only part of that entire game I enjoyed was Neal Hughes showing how a running back is supposed to play. Run hard, block hard, play smart. Hughes is immensely underrated in my opinion. A shame to see him injured. Hopefully he's back soon.

So there it is. We played an awful game. Doesn't mean we are an awful team just that we sucked on that day. Remember Banjo Bowl last year? That was an embarrassment too but we recovered as I'm sure we will do here. This is the worst loss in the Chamblin era so I'm confident he and the coaches will get this team back on track.