Riders vs. Stampeders: Who Is The Worst?

Hope you enjoyed the bye week. A chance for fans and players alike to relax, unwind and not dread losing yet again. That was nice. But now its back to reality and to be perfectly honest, reality kinda sucks right now. Fortunately we get to play a team whose reality also sucks. After this game one team’s reality will suck a little less and the other’s will suck a whole lot more. Or maybe we tie and just wallow in misery together. Have I sufficiently hyped this game for you? TSN should hire me to do their promo videos. 

Do you know the last time the Riders won a game that occurred after Labour Day? West Semi 2021. Do you know the last time the Riders won a regular season game that occurred after Labour Day? November 13, 2021. We are 0 for our last 14. Fall seems to do to us what the playoffs do to the Leafs or Cowboys.

We need to go 3-2 minimum over the final 5 to be in the playoff conversation. If we can’t beat lowly Calgary that ain’t happening, simple as that. This is a must win game, otherwise you might well just start planning for 2025. This is a very winnable as I will shortly detail the very long list of reasons that Calgary is terrible. BUT, my confidence in our ability to seize this opportunity has gone from “Skeptical hope” to “Hello darkness my old friend”. Somehow we managed to come out of the bye week in worse shape than we went into it. No injured players are ready to come back yet. Carney is now out. And we let the best player on the team attend to family matters. 

Side note: I do think it is awesome that the Riders let Milligan prioritize his family. Its those kind of actions that actually demonstrate the family culture Mace is building is more than just words. This helps build our reputation as a franchise that does right by its players. But still, selfishly it sucks and players should damn well know that prime “knock up your lady" season is late March through August. Then you baby stuff can be an offseason endeavour.

So long story short our offensive and defensive lines look like what you’d field in the 4^th quarter of a preseason game and the only thing keeping our crappy pass coverage from complete ruin is off doing stuff that brings joy and meaning to his life, thus likely sacrificing the joy and meaning for us fans. 

But let’s take a pause from wallowing in our misery to point out the misery of our opponent. They suck… and I as Rider fan I feel very qualified to make assessments on levels sucktitude. Second least points scored, 2^nd most points allowed, most giveaways, least takeaways, second most penalties, have not won since first week of August. They (like us) are close to circling the drain and Craig Dickenson is almost ready to book the bowling alley. 

Let’s start on offense. I’ll make this real simple. The Stamps have the worst, THE WORST, run defense in the CFL. If Armstead does not get 20 carries then we should all get to slap Mueller once. I don’t really understand why their run D is so bad. They have a good front 7 featuring top end guys like Awe, Judge, Rose, Howsare and Vaughters. But they can’t stop the run and they can’t generate sacks. Now our practice roster O-line will give them ample opportunity to rebound but just pound Armstead all day. Just tell him every time he gets a first down we’ll send a picture of it to Bob Dyce. They have the 3^rd best pass D and when passing you gotta watch out for Demario Houston. But as long a Harris is patient and doesn’t force anything he should be able to put up points. I think you need to lean on Baker at this point. Be nice if Bane showed up for once to stick it to his old team but I’m not counting on that. 

Defense could be a struggle. With Micah, Brown and Cox I think there is enough talent on the D-line that Baldonado won’t be a liability. But given that our pass coverage sucks at the best of times, going from team MOP Rolan Milligan to Amari Henderson, is like trading a Lamborghini for a tricycle.  This will be an interesting matchup as Calgary’s primary weakness is passing the ball and our primary weakness is stopping the pass. It’s the stoppable force vs. the movable object. I honestly expect Maier to slice and dice us until the redzone then stall and settle for a million FGs. We need to generate some turnovers. Calgary doles them out with reckless abandon and we need to capitalize on that. 

I was iffy on this game from the start but at one point was leaning towards a win. If we could have got like 1 or 2 bodies back, a Lanier or a Brammer or something, I think it would have been huge. Instead we lost 2 more starters. Calgary is very beatable team and I think we should beat them.

But maybe its my burgeoning (I purposely used that word to make myself sound smarter) old man cynicism. Maybe it’s the lack of a fall win since 2021. But I just have a really bad feeling about this. It will be close, we will have lead, but we find a way to be slightly more awful than the Stamps.

Stamps by a FG.