Monday Morning Sentimonies: Opportunity Blown

Riders 19 – Ti-Cats 26

The best summary I can give for that game was that Alex Hale was legitimately our best player on Saturday. Kudos to him but that tells you all you need to know about the rest of the team. After all the praise our depth got for not missing a beat last week, we got to see how effective that depth is when not playing an absolute joke of a franchise. We did not get blown out, but we looked a lot more human than we have in a while. Offense had to play a rock solid D and looked like a team missing a third of their starters.

As pissed off as I was about that game, the difference was 2 plays given up on D. Harris throws an errant pass that gets tipped up into an INT giving the Ti-Cats the ball deep in our territory. Two plays later they toss a deep pass over top of Lokombo (shocking). Then there was the miracle Ford to Wheatfall throw. Take one of those passes away it’s a tie game. Take both away and Hamilton did sweet FA all game. So I won’t hang this on the defense. Yes they failed to get a sack. Yes they couldn’t make a big play when needed. But through 3 quarters the only play they gave up was because offense put them in a bad spot. And most of what happened in the fourth can be blamed on them being tired from receiving zero help from the O. Defense wasn’t great but I feel they played well enough to give us a solid chance.

Offense was a completely different story. They just sucked. The first quartered featured an offensive game plan based entirely on nothing but swing passes. Curious choice and by curious I mean stupid. The 2^nd and 3^rd we actually managed to grind out a few drives and look respectable. But then to reward themselves for the effort the O just didn’t bother showing up for the 4^th . They literally could have been more effective by not taking the field at all. In the 4^th we had 4 drives: 3 of them were 2 and out and 1 was an INT. We ran 7 offensive plays and one of the gained positive yards. When you factor in the sack given up and the yards lost on the INT we netted a total of -2 yards in that quarter. Like I said, would have been better to just not take the field. Harris had a terrible day. Receivers weren’t exactly helping him out, nor was Mueller’s playcalling. It’s clear you can’t just expect to roll over an actual defense like Hamilton with your practice roster starting. (Seriously though, after watching the Hamilton game how much worse does it make Ottawa look?) 

I’ll try and end on the only positive… Alex Hale. After months of not even being willing to let him try a kick over 40 yards (for good reason) we suddenly were like, screw it, and let him kick from anywhere. Maybe Mace just finally decided either I’m right about you or you’re going down in flames but we need to figure that out now. I don’t suddenly believe Hale has turned the corner and will still hold my breath anytime he lines up but its reassuring that he can actually hit long distance FGs. 

The loss was costly because it should have been a winnable game but instead we let Edmonton reclaim first and BC and Winnipeg gain ground in standings. We tried to win a road game by only putting in 2 quarters of effort. That won’t cut it. Only gets harder from here unless we start feeding our injured list some steroids. 

Other random thoughts:

-       For his first game I liked Star Thomas.

-       Dylan Djete is also growing on me.

-       I am anything but a Lokombo lover but I truly believe our secondary would be better if he went back to safety and Bell played corner.