Monday Morning Sentimonies: All-Hatred Team

Its becoming commonplace for people to do all-time teams, all-decade teams etc… While I am certainly not above stealing other people’s ideas in a effort to be lazier, I have decided to do a very different slant on this one. 

Over the years there have been many Riders that I have hated. And I am not talking about hated because they were a horrible human beings. I am talking hated because of what they did on the field. Sometimes they were what you might call unjustified hatreds. But hatreds nonetheless. 

So with that I present to you the all-hatred Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Let’s start on defense. I honestly could not think of D-lineman that was ever on my hatred list (I’m sure there are some, I just can’t think of any). So let’s skip that position. 

LB:

-        Shae Emry – this one was more about the fact that we traded Ricky Foley to get him and then he decided to abruptly stop being a useful starting Canadian.

-        Mo Lloyd – Lloyd is on the list not because I hate him (loved Mo) but in honour of a buddy of mine who hated him because he refused to wrap up when he tackled.

DB:

-        Junion Mertile – I have not forgotten his “attempt” at a tackle.

-        Amari Henderson – Frustrating player to watch on any play that wasn’t breaking up a screen.

-        Nelson Lokmobo – This will surprise no one who read this blog this season.

-        Blace Brown – Like Henderson, a very frustrating player.

-        James Johnson – Many people will point to his status as Grey Cup MVP to try and argue my hatred but in every other game when he had to play a pro-caliber QB he was an absolute liability. 

Special Team:

-        Kicker – Chris Milo – Didn’t so much hate him as hate the fact that his kicks were magnetically attracted to doinking the goal posts at an unprecedented rate.

-        Punter – Jon Ryan – I know it always risks revoking my Saskatchewan citizenship when I say this but I hated Jon Ryan when we was a Rider. Probably more specifically I hated how everyone in the province adored him and lauded his abilities when all visual evidence disagreed. He may have world class kicking strength and he may have been an elite NFL punter but when he was in Regina he was just a guy who had no clue how to directional kick and either outkicked his coverage to the dead centre of the field or sacrificed field position to pad his stats with useless singles.

Turning to the offense:

OL:

-        Dan Goodspeed – Great CFL tackle, who was a shadow of his former self by the time he came to Saskatchewan. I said his last name was false advertising and dubbed him Dan Badslow.

-        Evan Johnson – James Johnson would have been a more useful guard.

-        Pat Neufeld – He left Saskatchewan and went on a have a great career but in his time in Regina he was a liability on the OL.

-        Dan Clark (as guard) – Dan Clark is an amazing story. Great guy. Great leader. Great 6^th OL who caught TDs. Went on to become a solid centre. But when he first became a starter as a guard he was awful. Worse than Evan Johnson. Still partially blame him for Durant’s elbow injury in 2014.

-        Charles Thomas – Going back a bit further in time on this one but there was a reason people called him turnstile. And he’s awfulness really stood out because he played on a line with 3 CFL linemen of year and perennial all-star centre O’Day. 

RB

-        Henri Childs – Childs gets a bad rep mostly because we essentially gave up a first round pick to get him. There was more to the deal but Tillman really touted Childs and paid handsomely to get him from Montreal. Problem was as an RB he ran with the aggressiveness of a baby deer/ballerina combo.

WR

-        Prechae Rodriguez – He was a one trick pony (jump ball deep) who was not big on things like effort, improving and even being that good at his one trick.

-        Jason French -  He was as the actual French might say “Le Terrible”

-        Ryan Grice-Mullen – Single handedly (greased handedly) tried to lose us the 2010 Weft Final.

-        Chris Getzlaf – Look I respect Getzlaf, he put up a ton of yards, scored a bunch of big TDs, had a great career. But he could have easily doubled his already impressive career stats had he actually been able to catch with some degree of consistency and not play half the time like he coated his hands in Crisco.

And lasty but not least everyone’s most hated position…QB:

Starter: Michael Bishop

My all time most hated player. How anyone ever let this guy onto the field for any play but a hail mary after watching any film is beyond me. He had a complete inability to throw to the right coloured jersey, maintain possession or put together a drive. I still get mad when I think about how good the defense was in 2008 and how even a mildly competent QB could have won us that playoff game in ’08. Bishop has never even come close to hitting the “mildly competent” marker. 

Back-Up: Nealon Greene

Greene was the prototypical QB who rose to prominence because he could do amazing things with his legs only to fall to pieces when defenses figured out that all they had to do was force him to pass and he would have all the usefulness an air conditioner in the arctic. Always wonder how different things could have been had Shivers/Barrett not inexplicably chosen Greene over Burris after 2004. 

3^rd String: Brandon Bridge

Look, he was a good guy and its always nice to root for a Canadian but he sucked. Like if he was not Canadian he would not have even been invited to a CFL camp. People always called him athletic… he was not. He was not a great runner and usually ended up fumbling when he did and his “strong arm” was only good missing the intended target by a wide margin, those rare times he made the right read and did not panic himself into failure.

Who is on your hatred list?