Spoiler alert: I don’t see us winning this
week.
Clearly
we have angered the football gods and the cost of our wrongdoings is 2-3 of our
starting players per week. The only logical thing to do is get out in front of
this and pre-emptively “sacrifice” players. So let’s take Steve Miller and Tino
Sunseri out to centre field and break a bone of their choosing with a baseball
bat. Hopefully that will appease the football gods. It’s really the only
rational thing to do at this point.
This
is one of the weirdest seasons I have ever lived through… and I’ve seen some
pretty crazy stuff over the years. The best way I can describe this is if you
took all the injuries from 2008 and combined them with all the sucking of 2011
you’d get the 2015 Riders (just with less Dinwiddie and Bishop… though never
say never at the rate we are going). With Glenn out any remote chance we had of
winning this week is gone, let’s just be up front about that. The only good
thing we had going for us was our offense and now we are sending our 3rd
string QB against the stingiest defense in the league in a tough road match-up…
I mean there’ s a chance Brett Smith miraculously leads us to victory but
there’s also a chance a bus load of bikini models show up at my house asking if
they can have a pillow fight in my house while their only set of clothing is in
the washing machine. Let’s just say odds are good that both my washing machine
and the Riders’ win column will go unused.
Not to
give up on Brett Smith before he really gets a chance but I have my doubts
about him. Usually even when they struggle you can “it” in a young QB that goes
on to have success. I have not seen “it” from Smith. We did the smart thing
last week in rolling him out to cut the field in half and make his reads
easier. However on one play he badly missed a short out, on another he damn
near ran for a first down before deciding the throw the ball. Tough situation
to come into and maybe he looks better now that the initial nerves are gone but
I have my doubts. Edmonton is damn good defense. They will know and attack
Smith’s limitations. I expect them to run blitz and focus on keeping Smith in
the pocket and basically daring us to beat them through the air. If we are to have any chance of offensive
success the key will be misdirection. Esks will be looking for Smith to roll
out so fake the rollout and run a reverse the other way. They will be looking
for the run so put Messam, Allen and Demski in the backfield and make them try
and guess who’s getting the ball. Try some different receiver or tight end
screens. Have Smith test the defense with his speed running the ball. High
percentage plays that still keep the Esks from pinning their ears back and
killing us with pressure. Edmonton has tough run D but maybe we should try
something crazy like giving the league’s leading rusher more than 4 snaps.
Defensively,
Shaqir Bell will run all over us like pretty much every RB we’ve faced. You can
count on that. I personally don’t think Matt Nichols is very good (never have)
and I think Chris Jones is slowly coming around to that conclusion as well. If
we can somehow keep things close I could see Franklin making a second half
appearance again. Nichols is slowly being phased out of the picture in Edmonton.
I actually expect our defense to keep things close for the first half of the
game but a lack of offense will keep them on the field and wear them down late
in the game. Any remote chance of us winning also likely requires either our
defense or special teams to score a TD. Though given that our defense struggles
to even get a turnover the aforementioned pillow fight is probably more likely.
Short
of Edmonton defaulting the game due to all their players being placed under
quarantine for a suspected deadly disease, I don’t see any scenario that
results us winning on Friday.
I will
still watch and cheer and pray for some kind of miracle but honestly if we can
keep it close and lose less than 2 people to season ending injury that’ll be doing alright.
Eskimos
by at least 2 scores.
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