OUT OF THE TUNNEL: WILD TIMES IN THE CFL

BY: RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF

The soap opera that is the Montreal Alouettes took another turn on Sunday morning with the firing of general manager Kavis Reed. Reed’s short run saw him take some huge risks without gaining much in return.

He finished with a record of 10-30 in two seasons and four games. During that time he went through four head coaches (Jacques Chapdelaine, Reed himself, Mike Sherman and Khari Jones) and just couldn’t seem to figure things out.

Reed will be best known for the ill-fated acquisition of  former Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel for a pile of picks and players. It felt like an all-or-nothing deal for Reed and in the end was the death-knell of his stint in Montreal.

Former Winnipeg Blue Bomber general manager Joe Mack (who’s stint as GM with the Bombers is eerily similar to Reed’s) will be part of a team, along with Khari Jones and director of football operations Patrick Donovan.

It’s a consensus among CFL media that this move was an opportunity to clean house ahead of the team being sold in the not-so-distant future.

It’s another sad chapter for a once proud team that was the beacon of the East Division. This is as close to rock-bottom as a team can get but it will be a clean slate for the potential new owners.

On the field, things haven’t been that bad to begin the season. It looks like the Alouettes have responded to the leadership of head coach Khari Jones and their 2-2 start has them in the thick of things early on in the season.

The CFL will be relieved once this saga is over and some stability returns to the league’s third biggest market while regaining a foothold in a football crazy province.

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Now to the Saskatchewan Roughriders who are fresh off a bye-week and are prepping for a crucial home-and-home series with the B.C. Lions.

A sweep by the Green and White would get them to .500 for the season (and a .500 record over the first third of the season) and it would keep pace with Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary in the West Division playoff race.

It will be very interesting to see what this team looks like at home this coming Saturday night at 7:30. Will it be the lethal combination of a big-play offence with a sturdy defence that beat up on the Toronto Argonauts? Or will it be the team that got pushed around on both sides of the football in their latest effort versus the Stampeders?

Cody Fajardo will have a great chance to bounce back from a difficult night against Calgary. With any young quarterback there will be ups and downs during the season and it looks like a great opportunity against a Lions defence that has been lit up at times, but at others looked solid.

The Lions offence may be the cure for the Rider defensive woes. B.C.’s offensive line is brutal. They look like they are chasing during pass protections, and it’s so bad at times they have had to install multiple plays with cut blocks. They are not much better running the football.

It will be feeding time for a well-rested defensive unit. The rest is probably what the doctor ordered for older players like Micah Johnson and Charleston Hughes and it also gives the younger players more time to hit the reset button and take a deep breath before another long stretch of games.

If the Riders split or even worse, drop both games, the pressure will increase on a team that has already felt the pressures of a slow start.

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Week five of the CFL season saw three blowouts and a long losing streak end.

The biggest win of the week would be the Hamilton Tiger-Cats ending an eight-game losing streak to the Calgary Stampeders on Saturday afternoon by a score of 30-23.

Calgary dominated on offence and defence but it was the Hamilton special teams winning the game for them again. They had two returns for touchdowns (William Likely’s 110 yard kickoff return and Brandon Banks’ 115 yard field goal return) to up their total to four on the season.

The rest of the week was chalk. Edmonton smoked B.C. for the second time in this early 2019 season, Winnipeg beat up on the Toronto Argonauts at home and Montreal won their second in a row with a road victory in Ottawa.

After a split this week, the East is still trying to keep pace in the inter-divisional games as the West has the edge 5-4.

Fun fact of the week: Teams with quarterbacks that have a 300-yard or more passing game are just a game below .500 at 6-7. On the flip side, teams with a 100-yard rusher are 8-2 to begin the season with both losses coming in week one.

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Finally there is a lot of hand-wringing about the falling CFL attendance in 2019. This is nothing new. According to CFLdb.com, in 2009 the CFL averaged 28,463 per game and it dropped to 23,833 in 2018 or 4,608 less per game as compared to 10 years ago.

The league continues to tinker with the schedule and game times. Some is league-motivated, and some is because of TSN.

Four things the league should change coming into 2019:

1) The Thursday night games are a dud in the stadiums. They may have provided a small bump in TV ratings, but Thursday nights don’t work anywhere when it comes to ticket sales and even worse, it makes things difficult for football ops with so many quick four or five day turnarounds between games.

2) Begin the season with divisional rivals. Seeing Saskatchewan in Hamilton or Montreal in Edmonton does nothing to get fans excited to come to the stadium. Always begin and end the season with rival games. Give the fans the best games to begin the season.

3) End the 8pm starts in the West. It’s difficult to bring families to the game when the final gun goes at 11pm at the earliest and it’s two-hours later in the eastern time zone so no one is watching.

4) Finally, play Sunday games until the NFL starts on Labour Day. Sundays are for pro football, let’s keep it that way.

(BY RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF/PHOTO: MONTREAL ALOUETTES)