Monday Morning Sentimonies: Leaving No Doubt

Riders 34 – Als 6

That was what I believe the French refer to as le ass kicking. The Riders rolled in Montreal, made up for years of futility and laid an absolute beat down on the Alouettes. Start to finish, every aspect, the Riders were the better team and it was not even close. Even when he Riders messed up and say, contacted the kicker, it ended up working out in their favour. 

We should have destroyed the Als. They were missing their QB, top 2 receivers, kick returner, best DB and their starting safety was our of the game early. This was a depleted Als roster that even despite all our injuries we were better than. But week after week we have seen inconsistency from the Riders. We have started slow or we have failed to show any killer instinct and make the end of game sway close then it had any business being. Not this one. We opened with a massive kick return, when on a 7+ minute drive for a TD and never let the Als in the game at any point. 

I know MBT is not great but our defense did not let the Als get past our 45 yard line at any point in the game! That is dominance. D-line continued their strong play. Shane Ray has sure made himself noticeable in the past couple weeks. Run game was shut down. Even our famously soft pass coverage allowed nothing. You know its great performance when the closest thing there is to a criticism of the D is that Lokombo managed to embarrassingly drop a gift of an INT. Like it looked like Make a Wish foundation had placed some terminally ill child at safety and MBT was granting his wish of getting an INT… except a terminally ill child would likely have caught that. 

Offense looked sharp. Harris came out firing. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our offense works better when Myers is a focal point. Good things happens when we target that man. He had massive games in BC and Montreal when we prioritized getting him involved. Last week the offense struggled and he was an afterthought. Gotta love a guy like Tommy Nield stepping up and making plays when he gets his chance. You find me another team that could have Baker, Emilus and Bane all sitting on the IR and be thriving with the next men up. Ouellette’s stats won’t jump off the page but he provided consistent hard-earned runs. Hell, even Anderson looked great when he got the ball. 

While everything was going right for the Riders, it was not a banner night for Glen Suitor… even by his low standards. He kept harping on how the Als only dressed 5 D-lineman (they dressed 6). He raved about MBT’s arm strength (the man has yet to complete a pass over 20 yards at any point this season) and talked about how Tommy Stevens never misses on 1 yard  plunges (he was immediately corrected by Dustin Neilson). Yet another job I think a Make a Wish kid would do better at. 

The win leaves the Riders at 7-1 and firmly in control of 1^st place in the west. They move to 4-0 on the road (with wins over both the top teams in the East). They head into a well earned by riding a wave of momentum. Even an eternal pessimist like me is starting to believe that there is something special about this group. 

Other random thoughts:

-        Montreal’s kicker has been in the league since 2019. How does he suddenly just now start adding to his name? Does he have some weird clause in his contract that grants him a new name for breaking team FG records? HE's been Maltos for 6 years. You telling me he just forgot to mention that people were omitting the Diaz part?

-        On that note, why does Maltos where his uniform in a way that makes it look like he’s wearing short shorts?

 

-        When you know in advance that Montreal is a challenging a play under automatic review, why on earth would you not just do it all at once?