Monday Morning Sentimonies: Save Me Mario

Riders 39 – Argos 32

There were two all time great moments to come out of Friday’s win in Toronto. First was obviously Mario Alford. As of Saturday morning he could walk into any house or business in this province and people would give him anything he wanted: food, money, sexual favours from their wife, sexual favours from them, you name it. But the other, was an epic post game press conference from Ryan Dinwiddie.  If you haven’t watched it here the link, I can’t recommend it enough. The best line (probably of the year) was “You know one of our guards is 280 pounds. I don’t know what he did all offseason.” Gold! 

Back to Alford for a second. I hope you all appreciate that we are witnessing all-time greatness in front of our eyes. Alford has already established himself as the best returner in Rider history. He his now knocking on the door of CFL history. He is one away from tying the record for kickoff return TDs and 3 away from tying Bashir Levingston for most return TDs by a guy not named Gizmo.  With 15 games to go this season I don’t think we’ve seen his last endzone call.

There are a number of things that are just guarantees when it comes to Rider football. Our defense will allow a TD on the first drive of the game, that same defense won’t allow any semblance of a run game, and if the Riders win they will do it in the most complicated, heart attack enduing way possible. Just accept it. But as much as I don’t like how we are going about it, I am just happy that the end result keeps on being wins. 3-0 is a great start.

Offensively its amazing what a difference a healthy Ouelette makes. He is leading a strong running attack. He averaged over 5 yards per carry. Between him a Stevens we were able to put together some clock draining drives. Harris was very up and down. In his good moments we were carving through the Argos thanks in large part to a breakout game from Dohnte Myers. This is a team with Bane, Baker and Emilus on the IR and guys like Myers and Johnson are stepping up to ensure the passing attack remains dangerous. While his good far outweighed his bad, Harris did throw a pick for a 3^rd straight game (and could have had 1 or 2 more) which ended up gifting Toronto a TD. For the amount of injuries its dealt with, the O has actually been pretty solid overall. 

Surprisingly the defense is not as solid as we’ve come to expect. To their credit they do lead the CFL in sacks and you can’t run on them. They had a good redzone stand and the turnovers are starting to come. But you can pass all day on us and facing a Bo Levi Mitchell on the downside of his career and Arbuckle you can maybe get away with that but better teams are going to make us pay. Fields is the weak spot and teams are starting to attack it. I still have no clue what Lokombo does. I see him chip in in run support but in passing situations I can’t even tell what he is supposed to be doing. Whatever it is its not making an impact.

This group is allowing 27 points per game but how they are allowing it is really interesting. They allow 15 points per game over the first 3 quarters. And remember they pretty much automatically give up a first drive TD before deciding to start trying. So from drive 2 until the end of the 3^rd they play great. Then the 4^th hits and they allow almost as many points in the 4^th as in the previous 3 quarters (12 points per game). We need to spotting teams a free TD and we need to learn to close games out. 

You can blame me for all the penalties. I commented in my game preview about how much improved we were over last year. Like mentioning a possible no-hitter, I jinxed it. Sorry. The majority of those penalties were deserved and preventable. That said, its not Micah Johnson’s fault that he has tree trunks for arms and Arbuckle ducked his head into them rather than taking the legal hit Micah was trying to deliver.    

I love Lauther and everything was looking great for him bouncing back after shitting the bed last week. The with a chance to ice the game with a chip shot FG he goes and fires up the mob again. The could have cost us the game and he has single handedly (footedly?) cost us 11 points in 2 weeks. He starts next week but there needs to be a new kicker in town ASAP to push him… and replace him if this doesn’t resolve itself. Lauther won’t blame it but I really think the change from Korsak to Couch as holder is having an impact (at least mentally). Maybe time to try Maier or Stevens to see if that settles him. 

We are 3 and 0 and each week different players are stepping up to get us there. It may not be pretty but at least our Coach hasn’t had to get so mad he threatens to fire someone and singles out one player to mock his weight. Life is pretty good. 

Other random thoughts:

-        Another week, another solid showing by Aubrey Miller on teams.

-        Carney always, always, always goes inside when he’s rushing. Any slightly mobile QB is going to roast him if he can’t fix that very noticeable bad habit.

-        The Riders are playing a 5^th round pick who has dressed for 3 games and 2 American guards and they have allowed just 2 sacks. That just defies all logic on how you build an OL.