Monday Morning Sentimoines: Ya Who?!

Riders 42 – RedBlacks 20

On a night that fittingly started with a fan getting injured in the pre-game relay contest (which by the way, running a gauntlet of ropers in an inflatable suit is diabolically hilarious) I think the first half of Friday’s game delivered exactly what we were expecting… terrible football. On one side you had a team that is literally down to one Canadian remaining because they are so riddled with injury. On the other side a team that hasn’t won in almost a calendar year. But then after halftime one remembered it was good and the other remembered they were still not and the end result was lopsided beatdown despite Ottawa being in the lead early in the 3^rd quarter.

We had to empty the practice roster for this one. Anyone with a pulse and Canadian passport was dressed. Half our roster was rookies including 4 starting players on offense. We tested the limits of our depth and guys stepped up. Mimbs, Djete and Joey Jojo made impacts offensively despite a combined playing experience of 15 games prior to Friday. I feel bad for the long-suffering Ottawa fan because if you can’t even come within 20 points when playing essentially a preseason roster, I don’t know what there is to hope in. Not even Stewart Johnston’s incoming “everyone makes it” playoff format could save them at this point. 

Offense had 3 big things going in their favour. First was the O-line. The only sack they gave up was by rookie Darius Bell when he lined up at TE. Otherwise the starters (including rookie Erik Andersen) gave Harris time to operate. The second thing was Trevor Harris. Other than that one ill-advised pass to the RedBlack LB he was rock solid and kept the offense rolling despite most of his normal starters being on the 6-game. Offense could have easily gone to hell but he trusted in the new guys and kept rolling. The final thing is of course Tommy Stevens. Here's the telling stat of the day: Tommy had more rushing attempts, rushing yards and points than all off Ottawa combined. KeeSean Johnson should only be targeted on hooks or outbreaking routes going forward. He’s solid on those. But give that man an easy slant and he displays all the receiving prowess of a box of Cheerios. 

Defense played solid, almost boringly uneventful, but solid. Thurman has really stepped up his game these last couple weeks. Not that he is even “bad” but I felt he had a slow start to the season by his standards. But these last 2 weeks he has been back to his elite form. Jonathan Edouard might be the steal of the season. For a guy we picked up partway through the year he has been a solid starter. Why on earth was a Canadian with his abilities unemployed? (Thank you Argos). He became the first DB to get a pick for us this season. Liam Hoskins is a guy who keeps making plays when he gets a chance. That game for me encapsulates Jake Maier. He didn’t play bad. He had one turnover and threw for over 300. But despite that he produced very little points. Now his coach could help him out by even occasionally trying to run the ball. Dinwiddie seems to hate running almost as much as he hates punters who wuss out on making tackles. But what we saw Friday was Maier’s ceiling… mediocrity. I did have to chuckle about Bethel-Thompson (at age 63) being sent in for mop-up duty only to get killed. 

Two final things I need to address. 

First, that BS roughing the long snapper call. The intent of the rule is good, to protect the snapper when he is in a vulnerable position. So you can’t line up over top of him (we did not) and you can’t engage him when his head is down (we did not). Adams went after the gap between the guard and snapper and it was both guard and snapper who initiated blocking with him. I feel bad that their snapper got injured but that was a legal play. We were robbed of a TD and yet again I am left wondering what the purpose of the Command Centre is. They seem to be willing to randomly intervene and impact the game at will except for when something egregious has happened to us. 

Second and most importantly, if you did not attend the game in person you missed the greatest halftime show possibly ever. By greatest I mean it was so lame/bad that I was almost in tears laughing at it. If you missed out, they had a trick roper who also told jokes. The best way I can describe it is that I think this guy was legitimately a top end act in 1970 and based on that has changed nothing about his act since. Highlights included making a “yellow rope of Texas joke” that 4 people understood, making an Amway joke (how could that possibly not get laughs?), playing a plunger with a rubber chicken (that is not a typo, that’s what actually happened), all building to the big finally where he had to end the show because he got a call on his iphone (a fake toy phone with two giant eyes on either end). I think we need to make his signature joke a fixture going forward:

Knock-knock

Who’s there?

Ya

Ya Who?

Yahoo!!!!!!!

Is beating Ottawa anything to brag about? No. But a beat up roster managed to not let a winnable game slip through their grasp. A massive win in light of Edmonton and Calgary both losing. We are now back in first place. Hopefully we spend the coming week either airlifting in a bunch more back-up Canadians, or injecting all our current injured Canadians with the best steroids you can find (they can’t randomly test all of them). 

Other random thoughts:

-       My current conspiracy theory is that we have rigged the coin toss at home. Hear me out. The Rider logo is always tails, pretty much guaranteeing an opposing team will never pick it. The coin lands on tails a very disproportionate amount of the time leading me to believe it’s a weighted coin.

-       The anthem singers are extremely talented and have great voices but they took way too many creative liberties with the anthem and I thought it was bordering on O Christmas tree-levels for how much they wandered from the actual song.

-       Kudos to Hale for not sucking this week (maybe its his new tinted lenses). It’s sad that we have so little confidence in him that we punt from the 42. But as much as I hate that we have to it was the right call to punt and I loved the play call with the onside guys.