Monday Morning Sentimonies: The Easy Way

Riders 37 – Lions 18

After 3 solid weeks of heart attacks, curse words and finishes way to close for anyone’s liking, Saturday was a nice refreshing resounding win. Sure it had some moments of uncertainty but overall we did our job and comfortably beat a team that we should of. 

All eyes were on Jake Maier and… well he got the job done. If this was a exam he put in a solid 70% performance. There were times he looked unsure and panicky but he avoided making any big mistakes. When the team around you is running this well and playing defense like they were, not doing anything stupid is pretty much the whole job assignment. Maier nailed it. I’m sure Mueller’s pregame speech to Maier was “Hey Jake, how’s the arm today? Great because its going to get put to use a lot today… handing off to AJ.” We some flashes of what Maier can do on those passes to Duncan-Busby and Robustelli. 

Turns out that Ouelette on a good hip is a monster. He is chewing up big yards. Since his concussion scare in game 1 he has logged at least 90 yards and a TD in every game. He was averaging 6 yards per carry. We honestly could have just not passed and ran Ouelette and Stevens back and forth and still moved up and down the field on BC. 

After 3 weeks where the talk was primarily about how soft we are versus the pass, the defense came to make noise on Saturday. The caveat is of course that at this point in his career Jeremiah Masoli belongs under centre about as much as me after a bottle of Wisers (or sober). But you can only play the cards you are dealt the Riders were about as mean to Masoli as you can be without saying something about his heritage. That first Campbell pick took any life BC had remaining and dashed it on the turf. Masoli was so generous in handing out picks that he even let Antoine Brooks get his first career one (seriously Masoli, what makes you think that throwing to the shallow sideline is going to turn out well at this point?). Their top receiver was Eberhart. On a team featuring Hatcher, Cottoy and McInnis that’s a resounding win. 

Special Teams also stepped up and contributed in this one. Lauther worked his way out of his funk and nailed all 7 of his kicks. That was also probably the best I have seen Couch punt. In the second half he had two absolute beauties that just took and unfortunate bounces into the endzone. I also am a big fan of him running the Jaime Boreham. For the younger readers, a Jaime Boreham is where you sail a short punt super high and then run down and try and recover it yourself.  

Simply put, the Riders were the better team in all three phases. When you control the ball for over 38 minutes that domination. Injuries still continue to plague us but hopefully a bye week can slow the growth of our injured list. Heading into the bye week the Riders sit a comfortable 4-0. 

Other random thoughts:

-        Even though it went in our favour if that horse collar tackle call was any later from Bradbury it would have arrived by carrier pigeon.

-        They also called a roughing the passer so bad that even Zach Collaros thought it was a soft call.

-        They all missed many offsides by BC.

-        Not a banner night for officiating.

-        I did see Lokombo make one play… and it wasn’t even by accident.

-        That play we ran that was a wide receiver screen with no blocking… let’s just rip that out of the playbook and burn the paper.