Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Tuesday Morning Sentimonies: All’s Well That Ends Well

Apologies for the delay in posting my sentimonies. I’d like to say its because I partied too hard on Grey Cup Sunday but the truth is I’m just old and the desire to go to bed won out over the desire to pen a blog. What I lack in quality and punctuality I make up for in… err… redeeming qualities too numerous to enumerate right now.

Anyway, What. A. Game!

I was legit concerned I was about to watch Winnipeg just sack Fajardo for 3 hours but from start to finish that was a competitive, exciting game. Add in Green Day at half time (who were outstanding, though I am unabashedly biased in that assessment because I love Green Day) and the Bombers losing for a second year in a row in the dying minutes… well sir, that may just be the best Grey Cup I’ve watched in years. 

Here are my Random Quasi Coherent Grey Cup thoughts:

-        One could make the case that the Riders found a far more efficient way to not win back to back Grey Cups.

-        I kid. After 30 years of absolute misery I hope Bomber fans don’t take 4 straight appearances and 2 Cups for granted. That’s a damn good run.

-        But also, screw them and I was very, very happy they lost.

-        Watching Green Day really brings home how badly the half time show was mailed in Regina last year. Also, very happy Green Day didn’t censor their lyrics. Even better they didn’t get sucked into a stupid in game interview.

-        Lots of revisionist history in the wake of the Grey Cup. I know you are all shocked that its happening in Saskatchewan.

-        First of all, at the time we traded away Collaros it was widely believed he was done. Hell had we kept playing we would have been called inconsiderate monsters. We made a call based on what we knew at the time. Looks bad in retrospect but also, I doubt Collaros is still alive if he had to play behind our OL as opposed to the best OL in the CFL.

-        Same thing with Cody/Maas. Fans would have rioted if either were back. I like Cody and think the change of scenery was what he needed. Again, had we kept either of Maas or Cody I doubt our season would have ended any better.

-        Also (and I hate that I have to keep defending O’Day but the man has his faults but let’s at least be fair about we blame on him), yes other than the QBs, they Grey Cup featured many former Riders (Demksi, Hardrick, Neufeld, Lemon, Tuck and Harty) but the first 4 left prior to O’Day being GM and the last 2 are hardly key contributors. O’Day has his faults but not being able to preemptively stop GM Chris Jones’ errors isn’t one of them.

-        Now Willie Jefferson you can blame on O’Day. He didn’t think he was a priority signing in 2019 and Winnipeg reaped the benefits of that dumb call. Also, while we did try to retain Sankey, I’m sure we didn’t try our hardest because we knew we had Dean. No offense to Dean but Sankey is better.

-        Montreal’s punter was awful. Like so awful I’m surprised Maas didn’t hurl a Gatorade container at him.

-        For the degenerate gamblers out there (aka me and my buddies) the coin toss was chaos. We bet on head/tails but all we got was logo/cup. Had that occurred in the NFL the betting world would have exploded. In the future please just say “the logo is heads” to appease us degens.

-        Lastly anyone who is pretending to be offended by Dequoy’s French rant need to calm the hell down. First of all never discourage emotional rants in interviews. Way more interesting than regurgitated generalities that most interviews are full of. Second: he was right. The league screwed up an didn’t bother with any bilingual signage. A) the Grey Cup is a celebration of everything Canadian and we are bilingual country. B) When you are trying to attract more fans to the game doing something to piss off the core fans base of one of the teams in the game you are trying to promote is a big oopsie. Dequoy called them out and swore in French. I’m all for that.

 With the season over, the Rider coaching search now turns into high gear. Stay tuned for all the excitement.

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