Monday Morning Sentimonies: Merciful Ending

Riders 18 - BC... do you honestly care what the score was?

The 2016 Rider season came to an end about 2 hours before kickoff on Saturday and they went ahead and played 3 hours worth of football anyway. It was not for the faint of heart... or the sober. Kadron Boone but the "boo" in Boone. Our O-line put the "offensive" in offensive line. And the QBs... well I ran out of witty sayings but they were pretty brutal too. A senior citizen who hadn't touched a football since last year scored 14 points... which more than triple our production throughout all but the final few minutes.

If you only watched the first 10 minutes life was pretty good. You saw lots of defensive pressure, 3 turnovers, a close game and Joe McKnight lay one of the most devastating blocks I've seen all season on Gaitor. If you watched beyond that you are either a glutton for punishment like me, or misplaced your remote and were too lazy to get up and look for it. This wasn't unexpected. We were in full evaluation mode (a few people I didn't even know who the hell they were) playing a team that cared a great deal. What was unexpected was our offense being based on spinning a wheel to randomly decide which QB to send in and having that QB throw consistently high and wide forcing our receivers to try and make dangerous highlight reel catches for 2 yard gains.

Here are a few random observations on what I gleaned from the game:
- Jefferson and Muamba are impact players. Those 2 signings will give our 2017 a huge boost.
- Greg Morris is an unheralded addition that boost our Canadian content 
- Nic Demski is like the new Getzlaf. Drops way more than he should but capable of making some damn good plays.
- Not sure how much to read into it given that BC had given up all effort by that point of the game but Brandon Bridge looked the least awful of any QB.Guess the bar was set pretty low.
- Rob Bagg never quits. True professional that guy.

That's about it. It was an ugly end to an ugly season and we are all eager to move on to bigger and better things.

I'll end today by commenting on THE story in Saskatchewan following the game... negotiations with Durant. Seems relatively positive negotiations went south over the weekend and now there's doubt about the future of the franchise QB. A couple things here:

1 - 90% of negotiations is posturing so don't overreact to anything said at this point.
2 - Can you blame Durant for not wanting to concede anymore? The utter crap performance of the remaining Rider QBs has to skyrocket his bargaining power. Anytime Jones offered something too low I would just respond with "Gale, Kinne, Bridge, Moniz, Lee, Coleman, Smith, Waters... you still think you can do better than me?"
3 - I sincerely hope this is all just both sides jockeying for negotiating leverage in a deal that will eventually get done. At this point there is currently no viable alternative to Durant so unless he's hiding a clone of Doug Flutie somewhere in New Mosaic, Jones better find a way to get a deal done.