Riders vs. Ti-Cats: Bo Knows Sacks

Saturday the Riders go on the road for the first time in 2025 looking to stay unbeaten and keep the Ti-Cats winless. The Ti-Cats went out and brought in talent in free agency to bolster their team but have yet to see the fruits of that. The Riders are just generally happy to be able to find 45 guys healthy enough to dress in any given week.

In theory, an offense featuring Lawler, White and Bridges should be intimidating. But with the Ti-Cats it all hinges on Bo Levi Mitchell. You can buy a Porsche but if you pour urine in the gas tank it ain’t gonna perform. I am an unabashed Bo doubter. Great, hall of fame worthy career but it took an abrupt nose dive starting in 2019. Yes, last year was amazing. Full props to him for one of the best statistical seasons of his career. But let me ask you this… which is more likely? That Bo has abruptly ended a 5 year decline in performance and physical durability and found the fountain of youth… or that 2024 was an outlier and he continues to be on the downside of his career? Watch game 1 and tell me. 

His stats and the score are wildly misleading. Through 3 quarters he produced 154 yards, 11 points and no TDs. Then proceeded to pad his stats as the defense protected a 3 score lead… and still finished with a lowly 62% completion percentage. Can we take Bo lightly when he has Lawler at his disposal? No. But 2024 Bo ain’t coming back. 

Defensively, the biggest news of the week is that Milligan is good to go. Thanks to those of you that prayed to your deity of choice. When he went down I assumed he was done for a while. Him not missing a game is massive. You can bet Hamilton will be looking to get RB Bell going after not even cracking 50 yards total in week 1. Good luck. If you haven’t figured it by now Mace’s defensive philosophy is stop the run, let them pass and hope to derail drives with sacks and turnovers. Had our DBs been able to catch, game 1 would have gone perfectly to script. Hamilton has really good interior 3 O-linemen but relatively inexperienced tackles (22 total starts between them). Bo is probably about as big a risk to run as I am to break one of Summer McIntosh’s swimming records. So our front 4 should be able to focus on stopping Bell and pressuring the QB. They need to be disruptive and not wait until the 3^rd quarter to do it. Expect another 300 yard game from Bo that hides how not great he was yet again. 

Last year Hamilton’s D was awful. Their QB threw for 5000 yards they had the second most TDs and still missed the playoffs. Why? Because their defense was as about effective at stopping them from getting scored on as a ruffie. So they got rid of Chris Jones and brought in some free agents to shore that up. And the new look defense in game 1… proved to be worse than last year. 38 points allowed (and that’s despite getting 3 takeaways, it could have been worse), 158 rush yards allowed. Meet the new Ti-Cats, same as the old Ti-Cats. 

We need to attack that, preferably without waiting the standard 1-2 quarters before our offense decides to start doing something and preferably without stopping 15 minutes before the end of the game. Ouelette seems to be good to go (for now) and Ka’Deem Carey looks to suit up as well because Hudon is hurt (no doubt a sore back due to carrying this team). We need to pound those RBs at them. Expect Emilus and Johnson to be focal points this week. Also expect Picton to just keep doing Picton things. This will be as close to our desired starting OL as its gonna get so they should be able to keep Harris clean.

Discipline could play a factor in this. Hamilton took 11 penalties last week, the Riders took just 5. 

I don’t think Hamilton is as bad as they looked in Week 1. But I also don’t think their defense is very good and I don’t think Bo has another magical season in him. We should win. We will find an overly complex and stress inducing path to that victory. Ouelette about the score the game sealing TD collapses on the 1 due to heat exhaustion. Hamilton returns for a TD with 15 seconds on the clock. We recover the onside kick but some obscure rule you’ve never heard of (card rule) gives Hamilton the ball. Hail Mary bounces off 8 different players before getting inadvertently stuck in Lokombo’s facemask to end the game. Something like that.

Riders by a Lauther FG.