Monday Morning Sentimonies: Partial Credit

Riders 34 – Argos 40

I will get into a lot more analysis but I can honestly simplify the results of Friday like this… we played a good team, didn’t show up at all in the first quarter, spotted them a 10 point lead and lost by 6. Its really that simple. Can’t beat good teams when only showing up for 3 quarters.  I will say that the Riders win as a team and they lose as a team. Everyone shares the blame on this: offense, defense, special teams and coaches. 

If you ignore the fact that I picked us to win, I pretty much nailed my game preview. Tons of points, tons of passing, Keesean had a big game and Wiebe scored (I’m pretty proud of that prediction). But I realize bragging about my predictions when I got the most important part wrong is like is like bragging about curing cancer when all you did was work on a research trial that did not find said cure. 

Offense continues to put up big points but their undoing was turnovers. Harris forced that endzone throw when it was not there. The other Johnson fumbled putting the final nail in our coffin. Obviously injuries played a factor (more on that later). But it was the turnovers and sleeping through the first quarter than did us in. Even down 2 starters we put up 4 TDs. Conley looked alright. A healthy Baker continues to be a treat to watch. My man Wiebe stepped up. I have been on the Wiebe hype train since training camp. I was dumfounded that he started the year on PR and Friday only further reinforced that. He is clearly a better receiver than Mimbs. I don’t think it will be long before he surpasses Busby. He needs to be on the roster.

I find it odd that my biggest concern coming into the season was the D-line and now they are about the only part of the D I am happy with. Each week they seem to get better and Friday’s 4 sack performance was great. Unfortunately that’s about where the compliments end. You should not lose a game when you offense scores 34 points. Clearly having Milligan would have changed things. Saying Milligan is an upgrade over Edouard is like saying steak is an upgrade over Spam that’s been left in the sun for 3 days. The thing is we expected Edouard to struggle, he’s a only playing HB because there is literally no one else. But what we were not expect is a team that tackles like they are playing flag football. This is super uncharacteristic for a Mace D. When you entire defensive philosophy is bend but don’t break you cannot afford missed tackles. Friday we were handing out missed tackles like samples at Costco. Our best pass defender was a goal post. 

Special teams contributed to the loss by allowing their second TD in as many weeks. Our defense is currently not good enough to have other phases of the game also allowing points.

Coaches contributed to the loss with stupid decisions. Mainly playing Emilus at returner. Mace is a great coach who has earned the benefit of the doubt but with due respect to him even though he defended the decision post game, it was objectively a stupid decision. There are exactly 3 players on offense more important than Emilus (your highest paid and best receiver): Haris, Ferland Hardrick. So literally anyone else would have made more sense. We know Wiebe can do it as we had him do it in preseason. Conley, Hudon, other Johnson, Mimbs, Runge, Fry, nobody… all better options. We lost our best receiver to injury because of a stupid coaching decision. He doesn’t make many but this was certainly one.

We managed to get outplayed by a team whose coach stupidly challenged a 3^rd and inches rather than just going for it only to stupidly kick a FG on 3^rd and inches rather than just going for it. We lost to that. 

My overly negative sentimonies aside its not all doom and gloom. We were close against a very good team and our offense is humming (when it chooses to play) but the streak of losing 2 starters per game is clearly starting to take its toll. Each injury makes it harder for this team to overcome the mistakes it makes. We needed to play error-free ball on Friday and could not. And we will need to continue doing that until our injury list starts shrinking. 

Other random thoughts:

-       Play Daniel Wiebe!! All this guy does is make plays. #FreeWiebe