OUT OF THE TUNNEL: ON A ROLL!

BY: RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF

Saturday night may have been the best example of when a game’s fate is completely sealed by the play in the trenches.

Both offensive and defensive fronts for the Saskatchewan Roughriders dominated in their 45-18 demolishing of a very bad B.C. Lions squad.

First to the Rider defensive front. They began the game by playing six or seven in the box and just went after an awful Lions offensive line. There were twists, stunts, multiple blitz packages, players were coming from everywhere and the Lions couldn’t seem to figure it out.

There were a few one-on-one wins but the Lions had zero clue on how to pass off an engaged defender and pick up the blitzing Rider player.

Protection of the quarterback is a team affair and even the Lions running backs are terrible at blocking too.

It was said on the broadcast that the Lions offensive line should go back to the drawing board. They should burn whatever drawing board they have and get a new one.

Now flip the field and the Rider offensive line was just as dominant. They mopped the field with Lions defenders.

B.C.’s defensive line plays a very vanilla front, their blitz packages are easily picked up before the snap of the football and on the run they don’t occupy blockers to help the linebacker mop up the tackles.

Watching the game, all one saw was numerous white clad players with green numbers starting with a “6” smashing anything and everything. It was beautiful.

The cherry on top was William Powell. He had his best game as a Rider running the football but where he is the complete package is his ability to block.

His chip blocks and picking up blitzing defenders helped Cody Fajardo stay relatively clean and pick apart the Lions secondary.

Since things are going great, lets have some fun. When Brendon LaBatte returns to the lineup, do the Riders go with four Canadian offensive linemen?

Dakoda Shepley is a natural right tackle. It’s the position he played at UBC and filled in nicely on the few plays when Thaddeus Coleman was hurt. You can move Shepley to right tackle, Dariusz Bladek to right guard, LaBatte back to his left guard spot with Dan Clark anchoring at centre.

Or as this club heads into the future and Braden Schram continues to improve, it increases the possibilities for the Riders to have even more flexibility with their Canadians.

To continue on the Canadian note, it was the homegrown talent that really had a chance to shine on Saturday.

Along with the offensive line, both Canadian defensive tackles, Zack Evans and Makana Henry picked up sacks, Cam Judge had a solid game at linebacker, Cory Watson led the Riders in receiving and Jon Ryan may have had his best game as a Rider as well.

There are two camps in CFL front offices; win with solid Canadians or win by surviving with your Canadians.

The Riders are going the route by winning with a solid group of Canucks unlike the Chris Jones era where he wanted just enough to fill the roster with no flexibility and even hide a few and win with the Americans he was more comfortable with.

A few more notes from the game:

-Any field goal cover team is usually their heavy personnel when the kick is around the under 40-yard mark because kickers rarely miss from that range. The Riders got burned when Gabriel Ferraro missed from 42-yards and Ryan Lankford went the other way for the score.

It probably should have been their cover group (some call it their ‘eagle’ cover team) out for that kick with a rookie kicker.

-The stats looked like the 1976 version of the Saskatchewan Roughriders with 227 yards rushing and 169 yards passing. The time of possession was almost 2:1 in favour of the Riders.

-How dominant was this win? The Lions ran a paltry 33 plays for 110 yards total offence. William Powell had more yards rushing (146) and the Riders ran 52 offensive plays from scrimmage.

-Weird stat of the night: B.C. actually averaged more yards on first down (8.1) than the Riders (7.3) but second down was a completely different story with the Lions averaging just 2.1 yards a play while the Riders picked up 8.8 yards per play.

So the Riders are now 3-3 and have finished their first third of the season. We said in this column at the beginning of the season that you can figure out who a team is by now, but we are going to hedge our bets a little.

The Riders’ three wins have come against two very (possibly historically) bad football teams with a combined record of 1-12. Their three losses come against teams with a combined record of 11-7. Once the Riders hit the meat of their schedule we will truly find out who this team is.

Are they a team that can smash teams they should beat but once stiff competition is put in front of them they struggle? Or have the Riders figured some things out the past two weeks in their dominant victories over the Lions?

It won’t come for a while with three more winnable games.

Thursday night it begins with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats coming to town but it’s a toothless kitty without Jeremiah Masoli who is out for the season with a torn ACL.

The Riders should roll over the Ticats, head on the road and pick up a win in Montreal and then another home victory over Ottawa.

The schedule makers were kind to the Riders in the first half of the season and they are taking full advantage of it. A playoff berth is a definite possibility but where it is won’t be made clear until they play West Division foes that are ahead of them.