Riders vs. Bombers: Banjo Bowl 2024

I’ll cut right to the chase… we’re screwed. There’s many reason’s I could point to. Where would you like to start?

Historically we suck at the Banjo Bowl. We don’t just lose, we get beat like we owe the Bombers money. We have one solitary win in the last 8 Banjo Bowls (Zach Collaros is the last Rider QB to win in Winnipeg). The average score in those games was 36-15. If you look at just the last 4 seasons, we have never held the Bombers under 30 (we allowed 50 each of the last 2 years) and only once score more than 10 points. Amazingly the most points we scored came in the year everyone got deathly ill on game day. That was our best performance.

Compound an abysmal history with the fact that we haven’t won in close to 2 calendar months.

Compound all that with having to field what might be the worst O-line I’ve seen us field in years (and the bar is pretty low there as O-line play has struggled in recent years). Our starting OL struggles with the noise in the Winnipeg. What hope do you think a line consisting of 3 guys who have no business starting will manage?

We are going to lose this one, plain and simple. I do think Mace will have this team better prepared for this game than Dickenson ever did. I do think Trevor Harris will eclipse the 6 points Dolegala put up last year. But we couldn’t beat them at home in a game where real starting O-lineman played most of the game. Take away Godber, Fry and our current best receiver in Meyers and you think the outcome of the game will change in the rematch?

Rather than my normal analysis, here’s somethings I would like to see that would at least give us a chance at keeping the score from getting to embarrassing levels.

-        Run the ball. Receivers can’t catch and we are on our 721^st o-line combination of the season. Let Hickson do his thing early and often.

-        For god sake let this be the game where Ford replaces Lokombo. I’m not even convinced Ford is anything special yet but I’m pretty sure he’s good enough to make some impact in pass defense. Any impact in the pass game would immediately place his 400 tiers above Lokombo who couldn’t break up a pass is if accidently stumbled directly into exact right spot.

-        I agree with the Brown penalty and fine. I’m glad they didn’t cave to pressure and needlessly suspend him. I find ironic that Collaros spent his time in Saskatchewan pretending to be heathy despite being medically a mess but as soon as he gets to Winnipeg he switches to pretending he's dying despite being fine. Anyway, I'm petty and want to see Micah Johnson hit him cleanly a few times for good measure.

Next week is the bye week. We will absorb this impending beatdown take a week off. Hopefully get a couple heathy bodies back and regroup for the final part of the season. By then it will be 2 months since we won so if we don’t show life in Week 16 against a struggling Calgary team, then we’re officially done.

 

Bombers by 18.