THROWIN’ ELBOWS WITH BRENDAN MCGUIRE

1. RIDER OFFENCE IMPROVING: It’s not showing in the game scores yet, but there are signs of Cody Fajardo syncing up with his deep threat receivers. Friday night we saw it in the form of a 38-yard ’50-50 ball’ that Duke Williams went up and got. It’s a sign the offensive line, despite centre Dan Clark playing through injury, can keep Fajardo upright long enough to air the ball out and connect on some of those homerun passes. It’s a sign for Saskatchewan fans that the best for this Fajardo experiment is yet to come and could still peak in the playoffs.  

2. COVID STILL A LEGIT EXCUSE FOR CFL OFFENCES: It’s a lot easier to install a defensive system of 25 plays than an offensive system of 100-plus different plays. The cancelled season, then the cancelled preseason would be enough to set even the most sophisticated of NFL offences back a full year. That’s what we’re seeing this year in the Canadian Football League. There’s still time for some of these offences, including the Riders, to breakout. But the COVID curse coupled with the fact the league’s signature QB’s Michael Reilly and Bo Levi Mitchell appear to be on the down side of their careers has more to do with the league’s offensive struggles then anything that could possibly be wrong with the CFL rules. The game is still great when it’s executed at its highest level, which we haven’t seen in 2021, so far.  

3. CFL RULES STILL SUPERIOR TO NFL: I’ve been to exactly ten NFL games in my lifetime and can count two of them where the game was in still in doubt come the 4th quarter. It happens a lot more up here than it does down there. The two rules that should be looked at would mimick the XFL (Can’t believe I’m actually suggesting this). A 3-point convert try from the 10-yard-line is something they really should look at it. So is a better kickoff where the kicking team is staggered all over the field before the ball is kicked but can’t move until the returner has it. The XFL can serve as the CFL’s guineau pig since it really isn’t good for much else.  

4. GLOBAL RULE WORKS FOR A CHANGE: Roughrider punter Kaare Vedvik just might be the most interesting man in the Canadian Football League. Jon Ryan’s replacement has played soccer and football in his home country of Norway, the United States and now, Canada. He’s been with eight different NFL teams and was even injured after a night in a bar during his time with the Baltimore Ravens. This guy is writing one of the most fascinating novels of any athlete I’ve ever seen and he’s one helluva punter to boot. This is one example of CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie’s Global initiative actually doing something good for the league. 

5. DISMAL EDMONTON CROWDS: Smaller CFL crowds during a pandemic don’t worry me. An empty stadium in Edmonton terrifies me. This is one of the league’s signature markets. Even when the Riders struggled to survive in the 90’s, Edmonton was always an island of strength surrounded by insanity. What we’re seeing there at the end of the first winless home season in franchise history shows us a disconnect much worse than just a losing season. Terry Jones of the Edmonton Sun recently suggested the board of directors for the community-owned club should light a match and just blow the whole thing up and start fresh. Sounds to me like some sage advice.  

6. THIS WEEK I’M JEALOUS OF: Scott MacAulay. The Regina Thunder head coach has pieced together arguably the greatest season in Canadian junior football history. A win over the Saskatoon Hilltops at Mosaic Stadium on Sunday will capture the Prairie Football Conference, and for all intents and purposes, the Canadian championship. The only other time they did it was 2013 when their thunder (pardon my pun) was stolen by the Saskatchewan Roughriders winning the Grey Cup at home. This time, they should be able to celebrate without any shadow crowding their glory.  

7. DISMAL WHL CROWDS: Attendance is down across junior hockey and sports leagues everywhere. The emergence of Connor Bedard is what makes this so newsworthy. Many are blaming it on the pandemic but deteriorating attendance at amateur sporting events has been a gradual thing for years. You can thank the erosion of local sports media coverage for that. If everyone were okay to lay on the couch and just watch pro sports on their TV all the time, then this would be alright. But for actual sports fans, I just know that isn’t true.      

8. REMEMBRANCE DAY: We need this day to not just remember those who serve or have served but also to avoid repeating mistakes from the past to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Somehow it doesn’t seem to me like a coincidence that around the time world war veterans were pretty well all gone and remembrance day became less of a thing that all of a sudden the world seems careless and in chaos all over again.   

9. JACK EICHEL TRADE: Buffalo doesn’t miss him. He never enriched them with his presence in any way. The Sabres sucked with him and they can suck without him. They just might even suck a little bit less now that he’s gone.  

10. TV PICK THIS WEEK: The Netflix film my wife and I saw over the weekend, RICHARD JEWELL is all about the security guard who saved countless lives by shoeing people away from the pipe bomb that exploded in a park during the 1996 summer olympics in Atlanta but ended having his own world turned upside down by the sheer stupidity of the FBI. A worthwhile story about authority figures happy to scapegoat anyone they can just to say they ‘solved it’. Reminded me of Brendan Dassey from MAKING A MURDERER in the worst way possible. 

 (Follow Brendan on Twitter at @brendanhowardmc)