Tough Loss

Well, we saw shades of the past (is that kind of a Danny Barrett pun?) with the loss on Friday. After a very strong first half where we could do no wrong, we came out flat in the second half and couldn't answer the Eskimo's offense. The difference, as it turns out, was a missed field goal by Luca Congi to end the first half.

In my opinion, the reason we lost was that we were out-coached. And I don't mean by Danny "Shave" Maciocia. The credit goes to the uber-intelligent and future Edmonton head coach Jacques Chapdelaine. He took in what our defense did in the first half and came out with perfect play calling in the second half.

To be fair, I don't think our defense played that bad in the second half. They gave up two early touchdowns on back-to-back drives before figuring out the Edmonton offense. After that, they held them to two field goals, which is pretty good. Additionally, after we failed on a last minute desperation drive for a winning field goal, the defense gave us one more shot at it with a forced fumble. No, this loss falls on the offense, much like it did in the blowout against BC.

It's tempting to put this loss on Kerry Joseph. That seems to be the Saskatchewan way - it's always the QB's fault. I disagree. The difference between the first and second half was the O-line. Kerry had ZERO time in the pocket for the whole second half. We gave up four sacks, not to mention the countless times that Kerry threw it away as he was being taken to the ground. Okay, so we weren't holding up to the constant blitzing from Edmonton. Now the blame shifts to the offensive coordinators, Kent Austin and Ken Miller. Countless times during the CBC telecast, you could see Edmonton leaving the middle of the field completely empty of defenders during their blitzes, but we never sent anybody through there on a hot route, there was no outlet receiver for Kerry to quickly dump the ball off on during the pressure. Most of our receivers were busy running deep routes down the sidelines.

So, anything positive to take from this game? I saw a few things that I think are noteworthy. First, Austin seems to have taught Kerry how to put nice touch on the deep balls. His TD pass to DJ Flick in the first half was a perfectly placed ball. He also perfectly placed the ball in Fantuz's hands on at least two long bombs. Secondly, it looks like we've found our running back. I was really excited when I heard that we got Wes Cates from Calgary because I remember him being a game breaker with the limited playing time he had, stuck playing behind arguably the best back in the league, Joffrey Reynolds. He's still no KK, but he's a huge upgrade over Childs.

Next up we have Edmonton at home. I wouldn't be against putting Crandell in for a change of pace. I still think Kerry can be our #1, but you just know that Edmonton is planning around keeping Kerry under pressure with blitzes. Marcus tends to pick those up better and doesn't panic like Kerry does. Also, Marcus passes to Dominguez, something Kerry doesn't do too often. Maybe it'd give Joseph a chance to watch what his receivers are doing, see who is constantly getting open. We play Edmonton two more times after this next one. It might be nice for him to sit this one out and study the defense.