Monday Morning Sentimonies: Blame Harris… and Mace

Riders 19 – Argos 20

(In my best Chris Farley voice) Remember that time we used to win game? That was awesome.

But those days are gone. And not because of the rouge but because we once again crapped the bed. At the start of the year we were notorious for our slow starts but furious finishes. Now we have upgraded the starts to pretty good but any semblance of an ability to finish has disappeared like the guy who tainted Andrew Harris’ supplements. 

This one is mostly on Trevor Harris (and the guy calling his plays). Clearly it’s my fault for praising his Montreal performance too much because he came out and looked like the second coming of Nealon Greene (but like when Nealon had a broken leg). While some passes were a thing of beauty, he mostly just threw bad picks, incompletions and generally failed to muster anything resembling an offense. Toronto was beating us in the trenches and the pressure impacted him big time. I know he’s far from a mobile QB but we needed to move his launch point. Him just standing in the pocket makes life too easy for the D-line. A rollout would help. Or some more running. It was tough sledding for Hickson but he had 79 yards. The issue was that he only touched the ball 6 times in the second half as opposed to 10 in the first. Pass game was struggling, maybe lean more on what works. What has happened to Bane? He burst onto the scene this season and has almost disappeared. Should he not me making more of an impact? Bottom line is the offense was not only useless after the first quarter but often times counter productive. 1 TD will not cut it in pro football. 

Defense was very bi polar. At pretty much any part of the field they were softer than 3 ply toilet paper. But dammit once we let them get to the 1 we had them right where we wanted them! 3 goal line stands is unreal!!! But it masks that we yet again gave up over 300 passing yards. We are the victim of our own aggressiveness. Toronto ran a couple screens and I outright said “they are setting us up for a deep shot”. Sure enough a few play later, they pump and our DB gets beat deep. If its that obvious to me, you know opposing OC’s can see it. Nice to see CJ Reavis step up and have a monster game. He hasn’t played bad this year but hasn’t really had the impact I was expecting after that season. Malik Carney also continues his upward trajectory. 

Its tough enough to win when your QB shits the bed. But compounding that with bad coaching is not a good combo. If Mace had any sense of clock management, we would have made it to OT. I don’t often like playing not to lose. But in the shadow of your own goal posts you need to understand the situation and just kill the clock. Instead we went sack (damn near safety). Timeout negating a completion and incomplete, managing to kill next to no clock. It was bad coaching and it cost us. They did the same dumb stuff to end the 1^st half. 49 seconds left in the first half and we have the lead on the road.  Run it and hit the lockers. Instead we stupidly decide to throw. It ends up being a pick and costing us 3 points… in a game we lost by 1 point I’ll remind you. We aren’t good enough to overcome bad coaching decisions like this.

I feel the need to comment on how we lost. Is a missed FG a dumb was to lose? Yes. But I love the rouge and will defend it until the day I die. Its Saskatchewan’s fault for gifting Toronto field position and time on the clock. Now I would support a rule tweak to align FGs and punts with kickoffs. Kick out the back gets you nothing, you only get a single if its downed in the endzone. That would keep the spirit of the beloved rouge. 

After starting 4-0 we have been 1-5-1 since. That’s not a great summer. We have all the tools of a contending team but until we learn to play 4 complete quarters it won’t matter. Honeymoon is over. Its time to start seeing some damn results.

Other random thoughts:

-        On the play just before the first Patterson 3^rd down plunge I swear we were a mile offside.

-        Until they change the rule, I fully support Dalke and any hair pulling of opposing returners.

-        Korsak had a great game.

-        After being the talk of the province it was nice to see Lauther go out and quietly take care of business.

-        Did Marcus Sayles sleep with ref’s wife and/or daughter? Because he could sneeze on a receiver at this point and get called for PI. They calling everything on him not matter how incidental or not his fault.

-        That one play where Schaefer got tackled for a loss looked like he was supposed to throw it. But he bobble it a bit and the pressure came too quick. But the call was definitely for him to throw.

-        I like how Kelly tried to sell that he got hit in the jaw when it was clearly to his chest. Probably not getting much sympathy from the refs this year.

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