Monday Morning Sentimonies: Same Old

Riders 21 – Bombers 26

Someone asked me yesterday what was more frustrating: last year when we were clearly a bad team and got blown out? Or this year when we are competitive in every single game but couldn’t win a game if you gave us the ball, the lead and 30 seconds on the clock? I honestly don’t know the answer but am almost leaning to this year. At least last year we knew we were just letting things burn to the ground before blowing it up in the offseason. This year… we are the equivalent having a nice sports car but it has a manual transmission and we are watching our teenage nephew struggle to have any clue how to get it into gear. 

Honestly we played better than expected. We didn’t embarrass ourselves or give up 50. We tried really hard to embarrass ourselves, managing to give up a blocked punt and INT within the first 5 minutes but we recovered. We were competitive… but still lost. But really, at no point in that game did it feel like we the aggressor. Yet again we just played chase. 

I’m not going to do a full breakdown but here are a few of my thoughts on the game:

-        I know he’s still learning and will grow into a solid OC over time, but after a hot start, the shine is starting to come off Marc Mueller a bit. He can coordinate a pass game but the run seems to be an afterthought. Week after week Frankie Hickson is our most reliable player on the field. Week after week he gets an insanely low number of carries. Just 9 total despite averaging 5 yards per carry. He touched the ball just once in the 3^rd quarter and 5 times total in the second half. I don’t know if you saw what he did in the 4^th when we actually fed him the ball, but maybe we could use a little more of that.

-        Also find Mueller gets too cute sometimes. I don’t mind the design on that shovel pass to Baker. I absolutely hate the timing of that call.

-        The stat line will show that the O-line gave up zero sacks and to be honest anything above utter embarrassment with the quality of the players we were starting is a win (so hats off to our OL coach who is earning every dime he makes this season), but the reality is that Harris bailed them out with quick throws. Sometime he made his decisions so quickly that he made the wrong read, but the lack of sacks are more a product of Harris than the OL. The Winnipeg pass rush was disruptive.

-        Defense followed the same script as last week. Start hot with a sack from Cox and then disappear. For the longest time I felt I was watching the same play on loop. We would stunt our D-line and Collaros would effortlessly throw over them to a wide open Olivera for a easy first down. Given that we’ve seen that play a million times you’d think we’d be prepared by maybe having someone spy him but we looked dumbfounded for half the game every time they ran it.

-        If you believe Miles Brown is a dirty player then you clearly aren’t watching the actual plays. In a plunge situation, Brown got low and attacked the point where 9 time out of 10 Streveler would be. He did his job. On top of that the O-lineman blocked him and took him down. So unless Brown suddenly develops the ability to defy gravity, momentum and the 300 pound man taking him to the ground, how was he supposed to end up anywhere but where he did. His arm hit above the knee. Last week’s hit on Collaros was a bad one and he was rightly flagged and fined. But this one?

-        Even Brady Olivera (noted for his strong pro-Rider bias) did not think it was a dirty play. Unfortunate? Yes. You never want to see players get hurt. But dirty? Not a chance.

-    Our games are coming down to 2-3 plays. Early in the season, we were making those plays. But over the past 2 months, when we absolutely need to a play, whether its on offense or defense, we just can't.

We mercifully get a bye week now and then Calgary in 2 weeks. This is it, this is the season. If can’t get our lives figured out over a bye week and against the only team in our division that is struggling like us then we are not winning another game this season. It’s the sad reality. It’s now or never. 

I’ll end on a bit of a lighter note, since we could use it amid this misery...

During the game as I again watched the continuing trend of Harris hitting receivers in the hands only to have them drop it, I tweeted a picture of out the famous Giselle Bundchen quote “My husband cannot throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time” and said “Trevor Harris’ wife”. The picture I tweeted had Giselle’s picture and attributed the quote to her by name. Some of you got my humour. But people (not a person but multiple people) legitimately thought it was a quote from Mrs. Harris and questioned why I would post that. It was getting to the point where I envisioned Mrs. Harris having to hold a press conference to clarify that she never said that. All because people think the stuff some idiot in a robe posts on twitter is anything more than poor attempts at humour. It almost turned into a Luca Congi’s girlfriend level incident.