Monday Morning Sentimonies: Macho!

Riders 33 - Alouettes 21

"We won! We won! Unfortunately, since I bet on the other team, we won't be going out for pizza"

I guess you can add Jonathan Crompton to the list of QBs that are so terrible they can't even look good against our porous secondary (its an exclusive club currently featuring Brian Brohm and now Crompton). Actually I do have to give credit to our defense, I mean, yes, Crompton is terrible but our defense certainly came to play. Most notable was the performance of Macho Harris... who did more in the first half on Sunday than he had done in the previous 12 games. The pick 6 in the second half was just the icing on the cake. Not sure where that Macho has been all season but seemed to be a step ahead of both Crompton and Cato when making his reads.

There were of course flashes of the old D that require about 8 attempts to tackle someone (there was a play where I swear all of our DBs and LBs were unable to get close enough to tackle a guy but Andre Munroe had to hustle downfield to finally make the tackle) but for once those plays were the minority. The line got pressure. Our coverage was for once within the same area code of the receiver. They held the Als to 5 points through all but the final 3 minutes. The final score actually greatly flatters the Als because they had nothing.

Offensively I love our philosophy of going deep early and often. Our first two passes were 38 and 49 yards respectively. They were explosive plays that have been lacking this season. It allowed us to take early control of the game from the Als and never let them back into it. Not bad for a team with nothing to play for. Man that Roosevelt just makes plays. Really looking forward to what his future has in store. I also love how we balanced the deep ball we a heavy dose of Allen and Messam. One of the greatest feelings in football is late in the fourth when they know you are going to run, still churning out big run after big run. Our O-line did pretty good against a strong Als defensive front and certainly made some holes for our RBs in the run game.

Full credit to the coaches and players for staying focused on winning. You can just sense that everyone still cares and wants badly to win. Not easy to stay that focused when your season is filled with so much crap you think someone mistook it for Paul McCallum's lawn. I love winning and I love when other teams have to share in our misery. Haha the Als suck worse than the Riders!

Other random thoughts:
- The Als slow walk out of the locker room to start the game was certainly weird. While coming down the ramps after the game I heard Als assistant Anwar Stewart telling people that they were previously fined $10K for coming out of the tunnel late after a communication malfunction. So now they do that as a pseudo FU response to the league. Either way it was the only visitor entrance so far that I've seen incite laughter... well except when that Hamilton guy slipped in the Grey Cup intros in 2013.

- Love Kevin Glenn but the guy has some weird compulsion for a terrible throw into double coverage per game that results in a pick.

- I've liked Munroe for a while but I really noticed today for the first time just how much he hustles all over the field.

- I probably wouldn't say this to his face but how in the hell does Rakeem Cato out-muscle John Chick for a ball? Cato is literally the size of one of Chick's arms.

- Not sure if its due to scheme or talent but Matt Webster generally comes nowhere near to the ball. I realize we are starting him out of ratio necessity only but he makes Scott Gordon look like a ball magnet.

- On that note, I come back to how brutal Keenan MacDougall must be to not even be getting any defensive snaps at this point?