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It was probably for the best that I was
up north fishing at not actually able to watch the last game. I know two
languages but would probably have needed to learn 3 more to have enough curse
words at my disposal to endure that.
So coming off the bye week we sit at
1-3. Is it time to panic? Well this is Rider Nation… of course its time to
panic!! Fire the coach, publicly flog the GM, fix our offense by bringing back
Durant and Szarka, wonder out loud if any of the good teams will trade us their
back up QBs for late round picks and players we don’t want. Also likely a good
time to blame our failures on some complex conspiracy theory where the league
wants us to fail.
This annual July crisis has been a
habitual occurrence, which is why I’m not nearly as concerned as some. Quick
history lesson:
2017 – Riders start 1 and 3. Mad panic
ensues. We go 9-5 to end the year and end up one play away from the Grey Cup.
2018 – Start 1 and 2. Mad panic ensues.
We go 11-4 to end the year and host a playoff game.
Face it. We suck at the start of
seasons. Gotta go back to 2014 to find early season success and its not like we
want to talk about how the rest of that year went down. Not saying I like it,
just saying its been happening for a few years now. In football it’s not how
you start it’s how you finish… unlike the bedroom where its more about where
you finish and how quickly (but I digress).
So these early season struggles are not
new to us. We know we have the ability to overcome them. So let’s take a look
at what our issues are and how we actually go about the overcoming part.
While you could certainly put a lot of
the blame for the last game on missing 7 starters… 3 of which are on the
O-line. We are not a good enough team to withstand that kind of roster
depletion. But I think we likely would have lost to Calgary even with our starters
because something bigger has plagued us all season… inconsistency.
Over the first 4 games our offense has
played well in 2 of them, our defense has played well in 2 of them and our
special teams has played well in 1 or them. Even if you discount what we did
against Toronto (because its the equivalent of Madden on rookie mode at this point), we have seen
our defense play well and we have seen our offense play well. Its just that its
rarely at the same time and you are pretty much rolling the dice on whether the
good version shows up in any given game. If we play defense like we did in
Hamilton or offense like we did in Ottawa then we can hang with any team in the
league. If we continue our pattern of choosing which one phase we will play
well in this week (save for last week when they all decided to start the bye
week early) then we may finish with less wins then a team that fired its coach
after the preseason ended and its GM after its first winning streak in years…
and replaced him with Joe Mack.
It starts with coaching. We have the talent
but if they are not executing then we need to find a way to better prepare and
get the most out of the talent when it matters. Offensively I think we also
need to check our expectations. The only games where our offense produced over
17 points were against the 2 worst defenses in the CFL. I believe we are better
than what they showed against Calgary but maybe we just look really good offensively
against bad defenses and what we can really expect is a more average offense (i.e.
slightly above what we had had last year). I’m not saying give up on Fajardo, he
still has more upside than I’ve seen in a Rider QB in a while. I’m just saying
let’s be more realistic about what we are… and that is not a top end O, at
least not yet.
This upcoming back to back set against
BC is massive. Win and life suddenly improves. Lose and life gets infinitely
worse. Buckle up.
3 comments:
The Riders look pretty solid to me despite their record. I expected their offence to be somewhat better going into the season, just not this much or with Fajardo. I expected the defence to take a step back. Without Jefferson, Eguavoen & Antigha they weren't going to create the turnovers they did last year. The offence is going to have to be consistently at or near the form we saw before Calgary. The defence? I have some concerns. Sacks aren't the only story but if we want to make it one as we did when talking about Hughes & Johnson as a measure of excellence then what has happened to our DT's? I expected Evans to get 6 or 7 sacks playing next to Johnson. He digressed last year after having 13 in Ottawa the 2 prior years & his tackles were way down. One sack last year, 2 tackles & zero sacks this year. No, sacks aren't ALL what counts but a decent DT has to put up 5 or 6 - & Evans isn't getting much in the way of pressures either. We also have issues at CB with Means & Marshall has given up a lot of big plays, which is okay if you're taking away the ball as well but that isn't happening. Solid defence but some weak spots which teams are exploiting. Bottom line - if they sweep BC all is fine in Riderville. That somehow doesn't look like an onerous task right now. But what if we lose 1 or 2 of those - OOOOHHH Boy.
Agreed with the above. We have had some sacks but not getting the consistent pressure I would have thought from this d-line. And yes, the only team we have turnovers against so far is Toronto. We've had some close calls, especially Judge almost getting picks but we need to make those count.
FYI, even in 2014 we got off to a slow start, relatively. 1-2 out of the game before we went on the win streak up to Banjo Bowl.
As far as your comments about fans over-reacting. Ha! Even in 2007 after the team dropped 2 in a row to go to 2-2 I heard grumblings about same old teams and things were no different under Austin. lol.
The d-line is not meeting expectations. They have been pretty good but for the names we have and the money we are paying we should be getting game changing pressure not just pretty good. If they can't be more than pretty good against BC then I'll worry
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