Chamblin is Cause of and Solution to the Rider Problems

You don’t have to look far to see who was responsible for the Riders 34-31 loss to the Calgary Stampeders.

In a strangely up and down week featuring a tantrum by running back Anthony Allen and the appearance of former Prince Albert Daily Herald ace sports reporter, Darren Oleksyn in the stands with me at practice, Cory Chamblin once again served notice that he is the biggest stumbling roadblock this team has as well as perhaps being the person who can pull the team out of its 0-8 start.

In terms of stupid plays (and why be polite when you are 0-8), the decision to go for a 65 yard field goal at the end of the first half that resulted in a miss, an unnecessary roughness penalty and then capped with a Hail Mary pass that four Rider defensive backs looked at like high school victims while Stampeder Eric Rogers caught the ball, ranks as one of the most dumbest I can recall seeing since Ken Miller did something stupid with his kicker.

A person can argue that hindsight being 20-20, it was a gamble worth taking by a 0-8 team that had to do anything to win, which was what Chamblin did in his post-game interview, but this is where I disagree. I’ve been reading a book on sports psychology and the book explains that athletes in a slump tend to bear down and this tends to make the slump worse. They need to focus just on the fundamentals of what they do and not try to do everything at once.

You can’t argue that the Riders aren’t trying, but I would argue that they aren’t being smarter. Setting aside the issue of the ejection of the Rider offensive guard for clothes lining the Calgary returner during the 65 yard miss, here are a few things to consider.

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Chamblin said Ray Early made a 62 yard kick during practice – which is where you don’t have 30,000 people cheering and another team looking to block the kick or return it and he hasn’t had that many game-time attempts at kicking a field goal. Plus, having offensive linemen trying to cover a missed field goal from that distance is asking for trouble.

Four defensive backs surrounded Calgary receiver Eric Rogers in the end zone and none of them attempted to jump to knock down the ball. Those defensive backs either had the deer in the headlights look that a disaster was going to happen or else they are not being coached about what to do in that situation or they are paranoid about getting a penalty.

Calgary gets the ball back with a couple of minutes left in the game and proceeds to run the clock down by running the ball with a former University of Calgary running back behind an offensive line with two replacement offensive tackles. The Riders are unable to tackle him to force a two and out and the Riders proceed to lose the game without getting the ball back.

Chamblin’s record since the Banjo Bowl is 2-15 and his new defense which was such an improvement over Richie Hall’s is now 0-2 in exhibition games and 0-8 in regular season action. Chamblin may fancy himself to be a defensive genius, but a defense where defensive backs are unable to at least try to jump up to knock down a ball is not the work of a genius.

The obvious thing is to hand over the defensive coordinator reins to Greg Quick to see if he can actually run a defense and concentrate on doing what he apparently does best – play head games with his players.

Chamblin is a fairly good motivator and some of his moves this past week, as the defense and offense doing burpees if they went offside paid off in a more disciplined game. Bringing the team into the stands to give them the fans view also seemed to work. Chamblin seems to have the teams back, but he constantly sabotages that by not knowing what he is doing – by trying too hard in an effort to appear to be doing something.

Chamblin has brought this on himself through his ego wanting to show he can run a defense better than Chris Jones of the Eskimos. He has brought in assistant coaches who can’t seem to teach fundamentals like tackling and he blames injuries for his 0-8 start. That may work for a bit, but Montreal also lost their first two quarterbacks and is 3-5 and yet fired their coach Tom Higgins after winning in BC for the first time since 2000.

The Riders had a technical sell out, although you could have gotten tickets easily for the game from fans not interested in watching a train wreck in the rain. The next home game is against Winnipeg and that game is sold out and thankfully for the Riders, they only have two more home games after that so their losses from ticket sales shouldn’t be that bad.

That all being said, this will be an interesting week.

Montreal visits Hamilton on Thursday and Jim Popp is in as head coach. The thing about Popp is that he is all hat, no cattle, and his ego forced out Tom Higgins who has been doing a great job under the circumstances as the former head coach. Hamilton is coming off a statement game in Edmonton and the game should be close, but not that close – Hamilton 27 Montreal 19.

Toronto goes to Edmonton which is the third time this year Toronto has flown to Alberta for a game, having the farce known as the Fort MacMurray game count as a Toronto home game. Toronto is coming off a win over Ottawa, helped by Ottawa acting stupid, while Edmonton is coming off a spanking from Hamilton. Edmonton hasn’t played that well in the last three games while Toronto has played well enough to win. Look for that to change – Edmonton 25 Toronto 23.

Calgary goes to Winnipeg to face the toothless Bombers and their fans and should be feeling good about winning in Saskatchewan with the help of a Hail Mary pass thanks to a stupid 65 yard field goal attempt.  Winnipeg has stumbled through a bye week with nothing of note, except a Grey Cup game with not that many tickets sold due to the Bombers underproduction. Calgary does enough to win and Winnipeg does enough to lose, so let’s say Calgary 23 Winnipeg 21.

Finally we have the Riders at Ottawa. The Riders as we have seen have another close but no cigar performance against Calgary while Ottawa blew a game against Toronto because of undisciplined play. While other games have been the should be able to win types for the Riders, this game will be because away from home, free from the fan pressure and more importantly facing the only person in the CFL with an ego bigger than Cory Chamblin and therefore prone to more mistakes, is Henry Burris. The Riders break the goose egg with a 27-26 win over Ottawa. You read it here first.