Monday Morning Sentimonies: Sucking It Up On Sunday

Riders 16 – Lions 30

I longingly remember a time where football wasn’t painful to watch. When touchdowns came more that once every 6 quarters. When positive plays weren’t a rarity. And when mistakes didn’t negate the positive plays we had. Well Sunday left no doubt that those days are dead and gone. 

There were exactly 2 good plays in that game:

#1 – Daniel Johnson motioning out to wideout and proceeding to not only make a reception but take it for 17 yards.

#2 – For the first time this season, Jaxon actually played safety like you are supposed to and made an impact play.

That was it. Everything else was either a terrible play, or a good play negated by terrible play.

Our offense has gone MIA. We have 2 total TDs in the last 2 games and failed to get 20 points in either. You simply can’t win with that kind of offensive production. The garbage yards he amassed padded his stats and hide how bad Harris played. He was off for the second game in a row. Making bad reads, forcing balls he didn’t need to, missing passes that were there, throwing INTs that sucked what little momentum we had. Its not like he was getting help from his fellow players. We had a Conley TD called back on a needless penalty. Joey Jojo had an awful game and was responsible for a turnover on one of the rare times Harris made a play. Obviously injuries play a factor but this was an offense that was near the top of the league in scoring and now I don’t think they could find the endzone unless you gave us 13 tries and from the 5 yard line and we only let Tommy touch the ball. Harris and Mueller need to get this sorted. 

Defense actually did not play awful. They shut down a great run attack. They kept it close despite no support from the O for the second week in a row. They were far from perfect but they are not what is holding the team back at this point. More pressue up front and more turnovers would help but they are holding up their end of the bargain for the most part. I don’t like Jaxon Ford. I do think we use our safety weird and some of it is just him doing what he’s told but aside from the INT you just don’t see him make many positive plays (except maybe in run stopping). I do think the roughing penalty he took was way too ticky tacky. If the ball isn’t tipped it would have been a textbook play. Many things can be blamed on him, that wasn’t one. 

As we evaluate where we are at after 10 games, I see us as a good team that is not playing great football and making too many mistakes to overcome our mediocre play. We didn’t play well and probably should have won last week. We didn’t play well and stayed in this game far longer than we should have. We are a good team but until we start limiting the mistakes and doing something… anything, on offense it will all be for naught. 

Other random thoughts:

-       There was clearly a missed holding call on one BC TD.

-       I have no clue why BC was still letting Rourke throw with 3 mins left in the game up 2 scores. Just run the damn ball.

-       There is probably a simple explanation that one of you can provide but I don’t understand something about the clock. In the 4^th quarter BC threw an incomplete pass prior to the clock hitting 3 mins. Despite the incomplete pass the clock kept going until the 3 minute warning. Should it not have stopped on the incomplete?