Mike O’Shea’s Anger Management and Other Thoughts

O’ Shea defended his player, Jeff Jeffcoat, for his hit, even though the player got fined by the league. So the question should now be asked, does Mike O’Shea coach his players to take dirty shots at the heads of opposing quarterbacks?

All this skates by the Riders winning the Labour Day Classic with the Bombers with a walk off field goal in a 19-17 game that featured the Winnipeg defense folding like a cheap suit on the final drive of the game. Expect the intensity to go up to 11, as Spinal Tap would say, at the Banjo Bowl, or as it is called in Winnipeg – Prison Conjugal Visit Day.

The closeness of the game should not have been unexpected, after an impressive start by the Rider defense, the offense failed to cash in and let the game be closer than it should have been. Considering the Bombers were missing their starting quarterback and their running back was serving the first of a two game suspension for doping and two defensive starters were out, Rider fans were licking their lips at the thought of a two game sweep.

Instead the 2019 Winnipeg Blue Bombers continued their impersonation of the 2018 Saskatchewan Roughriders – a team that relied on an aggressive defense to compensate for an offense that features a quarterback who prefers to run to pass and who panics when he can’t make his initial read of a defense.

Maybe the next four games will help Chris (the Shriveler) Streveler learn that being a quarterback is doing more than carrying the ball to the outside on a short yardage situation. Maybe Winnipeg’s defense can help them tread water until Matt (Game Manager) Nichols comes back.

Maybe.

For Winnipeg the takeaways are this is probably their best shot to win a Grey Cup. Their defense can keep them in games while their offense, when all in one piece, does enough to avoid blowing games. Johnny Augustine at running back gives them a running back who might be able to help the Bombers offer options in the backfield.

The problem is if the Riders had managed to show some discipline and played smarter, they could have put the game away in the first half. Instead they let Winnipeg back into the game until the last drive when they nickeled and dimed their way down the field. The final field goal was a nice finish to what was a sloppy, choppy game.

So while Bomber fans like to call the Riders one of the luckiest teams in the league because of the timing of their wins, here are a few numbers to consider. The Riders are 3-2 against teams with winning records in the CFL while the Bombers are 2-3. When it comes to playing teams with losing records, the Riders are 4-1 and Winnipeg is 6-0.

So when you indulge in a game of “who have you really beaten?” the Riders have been more competitive against teams with winning records. The Bombers have won the games they were supposed to, now the Bombers have to figure out if they can win competitive games.

So if Rider and Cheater fans pulled their respective heads out of their respective rear ends, there was a development Monday that should give teams pause in the wild west. Bo Levi Mitchell returned to lead the Calgary Stampeders to a 25-9 win on Labour Day.

Calgary has been without Mitchell for the last six games, but Nick Arbuckle has done a great job of keeping the Stampeders competitive. What has really been impressive has been the play of the Calgary defense.

With DeVone Claybrooks leaving Calgary to become the head coach of the BC Lions, one of the questions was how the Calgary defense would look this year. The answer is under Brent Munson, Calgary’s defensive backfield has been fantastic and been quite the surprise.

With Edmonton and Jason (No) Maas claiming the mantle of league’s best defense, that claim kind of tipped over like a Gatorade container during a Maas tantrum. The wheels are slowly popping off the Eskimo bandwagon and if Calgary is now finished treading water and ready to reassert itself, then the rest of the west is going to be a dogfight.

Calgary already has taken the season series with Edmonton and could very well doom Edmonton to fourth place and a cross-over berth with a win this weekend. Somehow, that seems right.

The middle game saw the Toronto Argonauts look very good in their first half against Hamilton, but then lose the thread as Hamilton came back to win 38-27. Toronto has an excellent weapon in Derel Walker but nothing really behind him which would force Hamilton to do more than just concentrate on Walker.

Toronto needs to diversify their offense, but what they don’t have as of yet is an ability to close out a game. Being able to do that means having players who can contribute and not act as place holders as it appears much of the Toronto offense appears to be.

So while die-hard Argo fans, and they number in the one to three dozen, were disappointed by their appearance against the Cats, this team is in better shape than the BC Lions and perhaps in a year or two will be contending again.

Unless they can’t find a running back or two, and maybe some consistent receiving.

So this week we have four games on the agenda, starting with BC at Montreal. Both teams were off last weekend and Montreal is hosting feeling much better about themselves. Vernon Adams Jr. seems to have realized that a splashy collegiate career is no guarantee of professional success and he has finally emerged as the leader Montreal needs at quarterback.

Montreal’s offense has a ground component and an proficient air attack with some bells and whistles like the triple reverse that resulted in a touchdown when Montreal beat Toronto two weeks ago. Montreal is moving towards clinching second place with a four-point lead over Ottawa while eight points behind first place Hamilton. With BC coming in, trying to protect Mike Reilly is priority number one while trying to sustain their pass rush comes in second.

The problem is BC will serve as a textbook example of how not using your salary cap can turn around and bite you. With the CFL CBA not being negotiated until just before training camp, teams may have expected the salary cap ceiling to have increased, but that didn’t happen the ways teams like BC may have expected.

So BC was forced to release veterans like Manny Arceneaux and Solomon Elimimian who provided character to their locker room despite both missing time last year due to injury. The team culture was impacted more than perhaps BC GM Ed Hervey would have liked and the pressure of being the focus of the team with the accompanying salary is making Mike Reilly the piñata of the CFL.

Well, that trend should continue Friday night with Montreal teeing off against BC and looking to solidify their second place hold. Montreal might have had dreams of catching Hamilton, but Hamilton has built up a big enough lead that it should feel comfortable with hanging on for first place.

For Montreal the rest of the season should be a tune-up for the playoffs as they prepare to host, say, the Edmonton Eskimos, for the Eastern Semi-Final. For a team coming off a bye week, the BC Lions are good for what ails a team – Montreal wins 28-22.

Then we have Toronto go to Ottawa as both teams try to either make a move on Montreal or just try to look respectable for their respective fan bases. Ottawa is an interesting case starting off the season 2-0 after losing their starting quarterback, running back and one of their star receivers last year.

Ottawa put its quarterback eggs into the basket of Dominique Davis who can throw a nice ball, but sometimes doesn’t seem able to know where to throw it. So now the ball seems ready to be passed to Jon Jennings who was run out of BC by BC GM Ed Hervey for not being a hard worker like, say, Mike Reilly.

For Toronto, it has been another case of close but no cigar. Toronto seems to have settled on McLeod Bethel-Thompson as their quarterback of the moment, with James Franklin likely being readied for a trade or release after the season.

Toronto is a work in progress, but the difference between them and say, BC, is that Toronto is competitive. What they lack is the ability to put the pieces together, but that will come the hard way, through losing and hopefully learning from those losses.

As we head into the second half of the season, this looks like a match between two also-rans. Ottawa rolled the dice on Davis and lost out. Toronto rolled the dice on Cory Chamblin bringing in some magic as head coach.

That hasn’t worked, but the pressure might be on Jim Popp as the GM to bring in talent from NFL cuts and try to position the team to make a run next year and show he has a plan to keep his job as GM. For this week, Ottawa has more pieces of a competitive team in place. Ottawa wins this one 27-23.

We then turn our gaze to rematches this week including Calgary at Edmonton. The Stampeders brought in Mitchell probably before other teams thought they would do so, and he was not touched by Edmonton’s pass rush that was leading the league in quarterback sacks.

The general rule of back to back games is that it is pretty tough for teams to sweep these when they win the first game. Edmonton coming home finds itself in fourth place and another loss to Calgary will make fourth place and a cross-over more likely.

For Edmonton, the game Monday was a harsh wake-up as Eskimo fans and management might be thinking their team is not as good as they thought it might be. If Edmonton cannot at least claim one win against Calgary, then psychologically they are not ready to contend for the Grey Cup because they are not credible.

This should be a closer game with more on the line for Edmonton. Calgary did what it needed to do when Mitchell went down and Arbuckle did a good job of game managing. Now Calgary looks like it has its swagger back and if Edmonton is going to try to pass itself off as a credible contender, it needs to win their game.

So expect maybe a tie, or failing that a narrow 24-23 win for the Stampeders.

Finally, we have the Banjo Bowl, where Mike O’Shea will do everything in his power to take cheap shots and get away with it with his team. Winnipeg is looking at perhaps losing its sole hold on first place with a loss with not just the Riders surging, but Calgary looking like it is gearing up with a pennant run.

For Winnipeg to fulfill its dream of ending 29 years of futility, it has to finish first to have the best shot of getting to the Grey Cup. Winnipeg needs Streveler to do what Arbuckle did in Calgary, game manage the team until the starter comes back and not lose substantial ground in the race for a home playoff game in the west.

Whether the Rempel hit will fire up the Bomber players or fans more is an open question. If Winnipeg wants to take shots to even up the scoreboard, they will draw penalties and hurt themselves.

For Streveler, he will have to reach a point where he can make more than one read before panicking and running around. Fans like the way he runs, but why he runs is the result of not being able to make more than one read at a time.

Whether he can make that move will decide whether Winnipeg is entering its usual mid season slide and get booted out of first place.

For the Riders, a six game winning streak is fun to enjoy, and their win last week has likely clinched a playoff spot for the Riders, whether in the west or as a cross-over. What was not as fun was the Riders not taking full advantage of their opportunities in the first quarter to put the Bombers away.

What the Riders did was kind of coast until the fourth quarter when Cody Fajardo led a time consuming drive that resulted in the winning field goal. For the Riders, it will be interesting to see how they respond to the near miss against Winnipeg and Winnipeg’s confidence that if they had a full arsenal, the game wouldn’t have been that close.

That isn’t an unwarranted belief, and heading into Winnipeg will be another good test for the Riders at Dollarama Field. Among the questions surrounding the Riders, a couple of them concerned whether the team could establish an identity in the post Chris Jones era; would quarterbacking hold up through the season.

Cody Fajardo has been a welcome surprise and probably his internship behind Ricky Ray and Travis Lulay has taught him about preparation. One thing about new quarterbacks getting a start is that they can be initially quite good, ie Jon Jennings or Casey Printers, but once teams have film on them and their tendencies, then it is incumbent on the quarterback to adjust his game to deal with the changes. Good quarterbacks make that change, quarterbacks who rely on their instincts often don’t and fade away.

Let’s see what happens Saturday – Riders 28-27

by Greg Urbanoski

Mike O’Shea’s Anger Management and Other Thoughts

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