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Riders Load up on Bye Week, Threaten to Seize Ottawa on Friday Night!

Oct 7, 2016 | 10:16 AM

The Saskatchewan Roughriders are clearly not marching to anyone else’s drum beat as they have loaded up their defense and offense heading into their Friday night game with the whiney Ottawa Redblacks.

The Riders headed into their bye week on a two game winning streak and then spent the time convincing NFL cuts like William Jefferson, a former Edmonton Eskimo defensive end who came back from the NFL to sign up with the Riders; then Jeff Fuller, former Calgary Stampeder wide receiver; then the biggest surprise so far – Henoc Muamba, a Canadian linebacker who has taken multiple NFL shots and is known as a ratio buster because he plays in a spot where you would normally expect to find an American.

So the Riders defense, which has continued to improve since bottoming out against Hamilton in a 53-7 loss is showing signs of what it could look like. Now with the Riders magic number at one, that being a combination of Rider losses and Edmonton wins equalling one, it may be more realistic to look at the Riders remaining games as a testing ground for what 2017 will look like.

However this doesn’t mean the Riders will not be spoilers.

Far from it.

The Riders will be looking to showcase their defense for the next few games and that will include an active pass rush and blitzing scheme that will also seek to limit initial gains for runs and receivers. As teams head into the depth of October and November, that means stopping their running game.

The Riders have already beaten Ottawa once when Darian Durant, Henry Burris and Trevor Harris were all out of action and it was left to Mitchell Gale to figure things out for the Riders first win of the year. That meant putting the brakes on Ottawa’s receiving corps and so far it looks like if the Riders are going to do it again, they will again have to figure out how to stop Ottawa’s multiple threats.

So unless the Riders knock out Harris and Burris, expect the Riders to blitz the Ottawa duo to prevent them from setting up the Redblack deep receiving threats. The Riders defensive backfield is in better shape than what it was when the teams first met, so the question is: how the Riders fleet of receivers will fare against the Ottawa defense and if the Riders will be able to run effectively with Kendial Lawrence now out of the picture.

The answers will be yes, because Durant will add his legs to the threat of Steele, and Armanti Edwards also adds a threat. Jeff Fuller will be lined up at receiver giving Durant a new target and if Fuller retains his form from his Calgary days, one would want to see the Riders resign Durant and Naaman Roosevelt to provide the Riders with perhaps of their deepest receiving corps ever and I say that as a season ticket holder since 1976.

Ottawa will be looking to extend its lead on top of the eastern conference and prove the east is a legitimate football power. Well good luck to that as the Riders take another step towards respectability and win their first road game of the year 28-23.

BC goes to Winnipeg on Saturday and this features a BC team that is talented, but sometimes tends to blow the games it needs to has to clinch playoff berths or eliminate rivals. On the other hand, Winnipeg after a seven game winning streak is now on a two game losing streak and in danger of slipping to third as crowds fail to show up in the self proclaimed  home of the CFL’s loudest fans.

A lot of that is due to how Canada’s Crime Capital has failed to keep fans on their side through either how they are treated in the stands or through player moves on the field. But I digress. Winnipeg has picked up one of the “cancers” in the Argonaut dressing room cut last week in Tori Gurley which I can only hope means the Bomber receivers will start to beat each other up in an effort to catch from the ball from Matt “Stone Hands Luke” Nicholls.

Winnipeg’s winning streak was provided courtesy from playing various Leper colonies in Toronto, Regina and Montreal and the thing about playing lepers is that they weren’t able to field full lineups. So while a win is a win, when Winnipeg started to play teams that didn’t didn’t recruit from Leper colonies, they had to settle for the magical “moral” victories, which in Winnipeg is an absolute contradiction like Bomber fans with their own original teeth.

So with Kyle Walters and Mike “Smirk” O’Shea looking at contract extensions, they are probably feeling some pressure to stem the attendance loss and build the feeling the Bombers are legit by beating a genuine western Canadian contender in BC. That could very well happen in this game because desperation is a very real motivating device for a football team, but so is talent and Wally Buono is not about to be panicked by a gang of criminals with potential cancerous tumors setting up shop in their locker room, so lets say BC wins what should be an entertaining game 26-25.

Edmonton slithers to Montreal to plead its case for allowing the energy east pipeline to make its way through La Belle Province and to help ferry the pit bulls placed under a potential civic ban escape the crazy owners through the underground puppy railroad.

Well, maybe.

That would assume Ed Hervey the Schmo GM has a heart and that has not been demonstrated through conventional medical technology. The Schmos were teetering on the verge of topping out of the crossover race but a couple of wins have the Schmos talking about heart and rigging the game like they did in the 1980s in the glory days of the Campbell Football League.

The problem and the curiousity behind all this is how Montreal responded to Jacques Chapdelaine becoming head coach last week. The first Francophone coach in the history of the Dirty Birds helped spark a sellout although the fact that Jim Popp was not longer on the sidelines to perpetuate his reign of error was probably the sign from the deity of choice of Francophone football fans they were looking for.

So the question this game will attempt to answer is if the dead cat bounce from the coaching change is for real for Montreal or if Deadmonton will continue to eat the living dead in its Walking Dead march to defend its Grey Cup title.

The head says go with Deadmonton since Montreal strippers are nothing compared to the lovelies of Fort Mac and less of a distraction, but Montreal’s defense is the real thing compared to what Jim Popp was trying to pass on on offense. Considering that Deadmonton’s offense has had problems with an defense that can mount pressure and cover, then let’s go out on a limb and say Montreal 26-25.

Finally we have Calgary at Toronto and Toronto has attempted to clear the decks by cutting four receivers who while talented, were not really contributing on a consistent basis. So while it may appear Toronto was giving up on the season, it is kind of a calculated risk by doing what probably should have been done a season or two ago and that is go the BC Lion route by making Ricky Ray the capable backup and going with a young arm.

I’ll leave it up to historians to judge whether Drew Willy is that arm, or if the current management structure in Toronto is the right one to move forward with. Personally from a distance I would think it is, with Toronto really needing to work on enhancing its game day experience for its fans in what will be a three to five year process.

In the meantime, this will be a nice coaching challenge for Toronto who will be marked underdogs against the Calgary behemouth. But while Calgary last week was the proper favorite for attempting to recover from the shooting death of Mylan Hicks, Calgary can be beat. But I don’t think it will be this week by a Toronto team that unlike Saskatchewan, is a work in progress that is a little behind the Riders in getting its act together. Calgary 21-22.