Prophet In The Media

Couple things to draw your attention to...

First the Blogging competition at Sports Interaction is still going on. My second of 4 articles is now up there so please check it out. Most visitors over the 4 weeks wins.

http://news.sportsinteraction.com/sports/cfl-football/cfl-what%E2%80%99s-hot-and-what%E2%80%99s-not-40154/

Also, if you happen to have a copy of today's Leader Post handy you should check out page E8 as there is an article on me. There is also one on frequent commenter Gov. You can check out both article here

http://www.leaderpost.com/sports/Getting+connected+with+rider+nation/5239088/story.html

Riders vs. Stamps: Make Me Proud… Or At Least Less Ashamed

Friday the 1-5 Riders take on the 4-2 Stampeders in front of a sold-out crowd at Mosaic Stadium. That’s the beauty of selling 25,000 season tickets… most of your tickets are already paid for whether people decide to show up or not and its not hard to find 5000 other suckers (or the more politically correct term is people who clearly don’t have TVs). The system works!

The talk all week was about the flurry of roster moves the Riders made… though for all the fuss, the end result will be minimal impact on our game day roster. In are receivers Dallas Baker, Tyrre Burks and Freddy Barnes as well as RB Yvenson Bernard, and DL Shawn Lemon (the latter 2 filling our “Bomber cast-off” quota). Out are Luc Mullinder, Montez Murphy (thank god, he was firmly on my hatred list) and Obed Cetoute. The biggest hole to fill will be that of Cetoute who filled the “token drafted Canadian receiver who permanently occupies the injury list” role just like Nathan Hoffart and David McKoy did before him. Unless Sisco suddenly develops a chronic lower body injury we have no-one to fill that role… unless we can Getzlaf’s butterfingers classified as medical condition.

The match-ups this week certainly favour the Stamps (though to be fair they generally favour whoever is playing us). Stamps are undefeated on the road, we have yet to win at home. They have the #2 run D, we have the 2^nd worst running attack. They have the #2 pass defense… we have an offense so bad it actually ranks 10^th in an 8 team league.

Despite their 4-2 record, Calgary has yet to really impress me. I mean sure they are playing good enough to win but they are not dominating games as they did last year… particularly offensively. You want a sign the Stamp O is not firing on all cylinders: Johnny Forzani is currently their second leading receiver.  They also rank ahead of only Toronto and us in terms of offensive production… that’s like being the best player on the Fine Arts department’s intramural squad.

I won’t rehash the defensive keys to beating the Stamps since they are the same as they always are… yada yada take away the zone read play… yada yada… keep Burris in the pocket… yada yada.  All I’ll say here that somebody please tell Nick Graham not to bite on the pump fake. You know Burris has seen it on film… hell it’s so well known that there are probably penguins in the artic who don’t watch football making fun of Graham right now. Defense fared okay last time, so if they play with intensity and play disciplined they should be okay. Stamps O-line has allowed more sacks than anyone so we should be able to at least generate some pressure.  

Offensively I would like to be optimistic but I’m not sure there has been a powerful enough hallucinogen discovered to allow me to be optimistic about our passing game… actually I’m not even sure it’s right to call is a passing game since that implies there is actually a chance of someone catching it… more appropriate to call it a throwing game… or those few brief moments before we kindly return the ball to the opponents offense.  Calgary has racked up more penalty yards then anyone so in spite of our passing deficiencies we may see a few drives last more than 2 plays. As I said, I’d love to be optimistic but quite frankly at this point even just seeing a few passes completed would make me happy. Or if someone were to disconnect Doug Berry’s headset… or run him over with a car… no wait that’s too harsh… disconnect his headset it is.

We had a chance to beat these chumps 2 weeks ago despite the fact that we had no offense so there is hope. Calgary is a very beatable team right now. Our special teams have been pretty decent (which around here is a glowing compliment), defense has been holding their own over the last 3 games overall… if by some miracle we can string a few completions together we just might pull this out.

I’ll be in the stands, I’ll be cheering my lungs out and praying for a victory… but realistically I just don’t think it’s in the cards.  Winless BC was too much for us to handle so it’s tough to expect the same group of guys (minus Mullinder) and woefully ineffective coaches to fare any better against a superior team.

Stamps by Jon Cornish TD.

I plan to cope by drinking heavily… though in light of the irritable mood I have been in lately following Rider games I will probably be switching to been this week. An angry Prophet and rye is a very dangerous combination. 

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As you may have surmised by now, the Rider Prophet is not exactly the most techno-savvy guy. I pretty much stopped learning things since Windows 98 and Sega Genesis. I swear if i could find a rotary dial cell phone with a built in cassette player and Polaroid camera I would be in heaven.

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Monday Morning Sentimonies: Bottom Of The Barrel

Riders 11 - 24

Just to the east, Winnipeg will soon be putting up signs saying Welcome to Swaggerville. Here in Saskatchewan we will soon be putting up welcome signs as well... though ours will say Welcome to Loserville. We actually wanted the name Sucktown but apparently that name is already under copyright to the city of Toronto ... as well as a brothel in that town.

It took me a long time to calm down to the point where I could actually write this post. Had you driven by my house Friday night you would have seen/heard some very animated and profanity filled ranting. Something I haven’t done in a long time. Sure I get mad after loses but it takes a lot to get me to the point of rage-filled rants. Sadly the 2011 Riders have driven me to this point.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow as recently we have become accustomed to being a team that is firmly in second and in contention for first. Hell even in the latter years of the Shivers/Barrett regime we were firmly a 3^rd place team in contention for 2^nd. But now, now we are firmly a dead last team in contention with the Argos for first overall pick in 2012.

I can some up my thoughts on that sorry excuse for a game in 2 words... Offense Sucks!!!!! Our offense makes the Bellefeuille ball control offense of ‘04/’05 look imaginative and potent by comparison. Yeah our defense struggled but if you take out the embarrassing play of Nick Graham (whose stock is plummeting faster than actual stocks) they did enough to win. 3 sacks, a pick, only 2 TDs allowed (one of which was entirely due to the aforementioned Graham). They weren’t outstanding but at least they did a respectable job.

But our offense... good lord!!  Ottawa doesn’t even officially have a roster yet and I still think their current defense could handle our offense. It’s become painfully obvious to everyone but the Riders that Doug Berry is the problem. Now you could give me the standard “but the players need to take some accountability too” line but I’m not buying it. Durant isn’t running. There were times when I was screaming at my TV for him to run because the D parted like the Red Sea but he refused to run. Now either Berry is telling him not to run, in which case he should be fired. Or he is telling Durant to run but Double D isn’t, in which case Berry is to blame for not benching him. I personally think that Berry is telling him not to run but either way he’s to blame. We have the worst offense in the league and at some point maybe Berry should take some responsibility.

You could also give the “but our receivers aren’t good enough “ line. While I agree that our receivers (at least those over 5 feet tall) are crap it’s still the best we have to work with. So maybe Berry should design an offense these losers can actually execute instead of continuing to believe that eventually his game plan will start working. Think back to 2008... injuries had removed pretty much anyone with talent from our offense. We were reduced to starting the likes of Michael Bishop, Gerran Walker, Michael Palmer, Vince Marshall and Mike Washington. But Miller and LaPolice designed an offense that even this rag tag group of future welfare recipients was able to win with. Berry has infinitely more talent to work with than Miller and LaPo did and is accomplishing far less. Simple put Berry is failing miserably at his job and does not deserve to keep it.

The next logical question is who the hell would replace him? Bob Dyce I guess. Now Dyce may not be that exciting of a prospect but at this point can he really do worse than Berry? Unless of course his receivers walk on to the field with high heels and feathered boas.

I also think Marshall is failing miserably and should be fired but I’m trying to be realistic here. I don’t see that happening. That said I doubt the team has the balls to fire Berry either so I guess we better get comfortable here in last place. Booze is my preferred method of coping. I’m am thinking a trip to Sucktown might help. At least a trip there has a good chance of resulting in scoring... unlike our current team.

Buckle up friends... its going to be a long season (well technically since it doesn’t look good at this point we will make the playoffs it will actually be a shorter season than we are used to. But it will be a metaphorically long season nonetheless.)

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Riders vs. BC: Toilet Bowl

While our history is full of games such as this, the idea of a battle for last place is something we haven’t been subject to for many years. We’ve had battles for first place and battles for home playoff games but battles for last… why those were about as frequent as discount liquor night at Taylor Field. But sadly that is what we are in for Friday when the 1-4 Riders travel to BC to take on the winless Lions.

I’m really curious to see the TSN pre-game promo for this game. Normally they do a pretty good montage hyping the game and telling viewers all the reasons this will be an exciting game. For this game though, the producers will certain have to bust their brains to hype it.

“Welcome to Friday Night Football where the Riders will battle the Lions in an epic showdown to prove who sucks the least. It’s the team that doesn’t run vs. the team that can’t pass. The league’s worst defense vs. the league’s worst offense. Something has gotta give. Stay tuned as we take you Empire Field for all the turnovers, ineptness and futility that you can handle!”

Seriously I’m pretty sure the only way they could further decrease the quality of this game would be to somehow make this a 3-way battler and include the Argos.

Wally Buono may be the winningest coach in CFL history but over the past 3 years his success has been in a massive nosedive. This has led to another distinction for Buono, he is now the losingest coach in CFL history. You know that whole Brett Favre-style “own every record even the bad ones approach”… though I would hope that Buono hasn’t texted pictures of his junk. You have to look no further than the status of his roster to see the signs that Buono is slipping.

Traditionally Buono was a talented drafter and consistently had elite Canadian talent (he’s had 5 of the past 7 top Canadians). Recently his drafting has been falling into question. His top pick from ’08 was recently cut for performance reasons, his top pick from ’09 has had zero impact so far and his top pick from last year was just selected in the 1st round of the NFL draft. Traditionally Buono has been a top notch recruiter (he’s had an amazing 7 of the past 10 top Rookies). This year he has been reduced to picking up other teams’ scraps (JR Ruffin, Kamau Imcompleterson, Jerome Dennis, Tad Kornegay and most recently Runako Reth aka the receiver formerly known as Arland Bruce). Might be time for Wally to start considering retirement… before David Braley starts contemplating it for him.

The Lions pass game is similar to ours… struggling. They really have no one to blame but themselves as they decided the start the season with only one starting receiver who had ever caught a pass in the CFL. Simon is still performing at a high level but (much like Dressler) without other capable receivers to take the pressure off of him he is facing a lot of double coverage. Shawn Gore is also emerging as a reliable target. Of course he could be doing that for the Riders but in our infinite wisdom we decided to draft Jordan Sisco instead (a move I curse every time Gore makes a reception). Their O-line is somewhat vulnerable as their depth has been depleted to the point where they had to get Kelly Bates (who is their O-line coach) to put on the pads again (yikes). As I mentioned before, their run game is the worst in the league… mainly because they simply didn’t run the ball at all for the first 3 games of the year. They finally got their run game going last week with Tim Brown carrying the ball. He is a talented runner and a dangerous returner that we need to be mindful of on defense and kick coverage. His speed and shiftiness remind me a lot of Yonus Davis… which I can only assume means he’s dealing a ridiculous amount of ecstasy in his spare time.

To win this game and avoid becoming the official laughingstock of the league it’s going to take solid play on both sides of the ball regardless of the fact that BC has yet to win. Defense has come a long way since the start for the season and have had good showings in the past 2 games. That needs to continue. Lulay is young and prone to mistakes so some pressure from our front 7 will go a long way to forcing him into bad decisions. Our secondary managed to hold its own against Richardson/Bratton/Green and Rambo/Bryant/Lewis so they should be up to the task of covering Simon/Gore/a bunch of people who couldn’t catch a pass if their life depended on it and would probably fit in great as Rider receivers. BC likes the swing pass to the RB so our LBs will need to stay on their toes and take that read away. Lulay is hardly a precision passer so if we can limit the big plays and contain Tim Brown when he gets the ball, I don’t see the Lions putting up too many points.

Problem is that even if we manage to stymie the BC offense, our embarrassing excuse for an offense will need to do something in order for us to win this game. Cates is out again so it will be up to Charles and maybe even West to carry the load. BC is allowing over 120 rushing yards per game (worst in the league) so we should look to attack that. My only concern is the combination of Charles’ butter fingers and Elimimian who hits like a truck. Odds are good we see a fumble at some point result from that. BC has had a different line-up in the secondary every game… this week is no exception as Tad Kornegay will start at half for them. Tad is a versatile guy but HB is the one position that made me cringe when he lined up there. I would attack that… particularly with short passes. Get the receiver the ball in front of Tad and make him make the tackle… or more likely the diving shoulder that we should be able to bounce off of and turn upfield (of course this all requires our receiver to actually catch the ball first). The Lions D have allowed more passing yards than anyone so this is the ideal match-up for our struggling pass game. It’s like the league schedule makers paid for a prostitute for us and by virtue of showing up we should score… sadly given our struggles even that isn’t a guarantee. If we can get Durant on the move and get some catches from our receivers we should be good… but that’s a big if. 


In true Rider form, I expect them to start slow and scare the crap out of us by trailing BC late in the game. That said in the end they will pull it out

Riders by a Durant rushing TD… okay okay wishful thinking… we’ll go with Riders by a Getzalf receiving TD…. You’re right, wishful thinking again… Riders by an errant pass that tips off a defender into Dresslers hands for a TD.  That’s more like it.

Monday Morning Sentimonies: No Pass-y = No Win-y

Apparently we have not learned from the follies of the Toronto Argonauts over the last 2 seasons. You simply can’t expect to be successful in the CFL without a viable passing game. Well Saturday night we tried our darndest to defeat the Stamps without one.

Our run game had its moments. Our return had its moments. Our defense played pretty good overall. But our pass game did not look good at any point in the game. I mean if you take away that fluke TD to Dressler our pass game was abysmal. I mean not since the epic combination of Marcel Bellefeuille’s ball control offense and Nealon Greene’s complete lack of ability to actually complete a pass have we seen an offense this ineffective. If it weren’t for the fact that our average drive lasted 3.7 seconds the pure boringness of our offensive output likely would have put me to sleep.

The blame for this sorry excuse for a passing game is spread amongst all parties involved. First and foremost, our receivers couldn’t catch salmonella from 3 day old raw chicken let alone a freaking football. Good god, somebody... anybody (not named Dressler) catch the F’n ball!! Even Clermont couldn’t haul in a catchable pass in the endzone.  I assume he was just shocked to actually get a look in the redzone and since it had been so long he has forgotten how to react.

 Second: after seeing firsthand how well our offense worked when Durant used his les last week, our genius OC designed a game plan that kept him stuck in the pocket all game. I mean I know that Calgary’s defense likely designed their schemes to try and force Durant to stay in the pocket but we didn’t even try to test it at all. Durant ran 2 measly times and low and behold one of those was for a TD. 2 years and we still haven’t figured out that we lose when Durant doesn’t move around.

 Lastly, although Durant was given absolutely zero help y his so-called received or his so-called offensive coordinator, he still shares in the blame because he made his share of mistakes. That time count he took at the end of the first half was a killer. No excuse for a vet like him to make an mistake like that. Also what the hell was he doing on the last series.?!? I know the game was likely over but with only a few seconds left on the clock why the hell did he check down twice?!? For the love of god throw it up and hope for a PI flag! That’s basic freaking football strategy (unless of course our big plan was hope Clermont would turn a 10 yard pass up field for 90 more yards. I don’t care if Berry called for those stupid plays. Show some sense, sends some guys deep and try and draw a flag. Don’t just lie down and give up. Durant never used to do that, why is he starting now?

Defense played well with 2 exceptions. We struggled to limit the run and we struggled to stop Nik Lewis. But I was happy with the pressure we applied and I was happy with the overall effort they played with.  Offense could take some lessons.

After the Montreal win, I cautioned against getting to excited as we were just a 1-3 team with only one good game to their name. Turns out I was right as we are now a 1-4 team with only 1 good game to our name.  The frustrating part is that even though we didn’t play all that well (at least offensively) it was still a winnable game. But like I said at the start you can’t win without a viable passing attack.

Things are looking pretty grim at this point for the Riders (though on the plus side thanks to the failures of the Lions and Argos we are still firmly in playoff spot) and we have a number of issues to address. Some should be relatively easy to fix such as designing a game plan that involves Durant using his legs (though apparently this is akin to solving complex advanced calculus for Doug Berry). Others such as fielding receivers who can actually catch are not so simple (though at the rate we are going it’s looking like the return of Fantuz, Koch and Bagg is more likely than an offensive game plan that highlights our QBs strengths).