Monday Mornings Sentimonies: Emphatic Win

Riders 36 – Ti-Cats 20

After back to back weeks where the Riders felt lucky to escape with wins and had to rely on furious 4^th quarter comebacks, they opened their home schedule with an exclamation mark. From the fumble on the opening kickoff they were the better team. The final score flatters the Ti-Cats as they were not close to making it a game at any point. Despite the happiness of winning I left both the previous games with more questions than confidence… but many of those questions were answered. I love that we attacked early. We turned an early mistake in a TD right away and then didn’t let up. We kept being aggressive and built a 17 point lead.

Let’s start on offense. We can run!! Ouelette finally had his coming out party in green. That was made much easier by the fact that we were actually able to run block. A lot easier to put up yards when you aren’t getting first contact behind the line of scrimmage. We used him effectively in the pass game as well. With every passing week I am more and more convinced that we have a very dangerous passing attack. Our best 2 receivers in Baker and Bane were held under 42 combined yards but it did not matter. We spread the ball around. Eight different players caught passes. Emilus stepped up and made up for last week’s struggles. Ajou squared had a picture perfect TD. If Harris didn’t get hurt we may have hung 50 on Hamilton. Emilus fell down and still scored a TD from his knees for Pete sake (Sterns damn near one upped him and scored from his back). Thank-you football Jebus, it looks like Harris will be ok. He even tried to sneak himself back into the game. Credit also to Patterson. It wasn’t pretty but he came in and did his job. Which was protect the lead and don’t make mistakes. He tried a couple times but he was overall smart with the ball. 

Defense showed what they can do when they don’t wait until the 4^th quarter to show up. Pass rush was noticeable this week. Not a ton of sacks but a lot of pressure. Through 3 games our defense has not allowed 100 rushing yards… that’s total. Bo was Hamilton’s leading rusher. I would also like to point out that he completed more passes to Riders than to his supposed #1 receiver White.  His #1 receiver this game was the turf. Even Marcus Sayles didn’t look like a lost tourist who does not speak the local language this week. What was the best to see what the defense stepped up when this team needed a boost with Harris being out. Turnovers galore. 

We even managed to not take penalties on special teams. It was a well rounded, total team effort. Hell we even managed to have our most productive 2^nd quarter of the season by far (sure it was only a single but its more than we scored all year).

This is the best I’ve felt after a win. Now the caveat is that we just beat 2 teams that were expected to be bottom dwellers so I’m not ready to say we are the team to beat yet. But we are now showing that we can be a well rounded team. We are 3-0 despite not playing our best football… if we can keep improving on our weak spots we could be very dangerous.

Other random thoughts:

-        That PI call on Lokombo was 100% tipped and should not have been a penalty. I don’t know how command centre doesn’t fix that.

-        After years of screaming that Hardrick jumps early, I am suddenly very ok with it all of the sudden.

-        CJ Avery has a knack for making plays.

-        That onside punt attempt was damn near perfect. Great back spin on the kick by Korsack and Milligan was so close to getting there.

-        On that one drive in the first quarter I thought we might set a record for the most first downs while not gaining yards. We had like 3 first downs and did not move 10 yards total.