STACKHOUSE’S 10 WEEKEND THOUGHTS

1 – RIDERS LOSE AGAIN, Part 1 – Where to begin. I guess I’ll start with Cody Fajardo. I see a quarterback who fans have targeted as the whipping boy but who isn’t even close to being at the top of the list of what ails this team. Having said that, he looks mentally beaten and every mistake he could even be partially blamed for, he gets the brunt and he knows it. I don’t think there’s any coming back from it. Rider Nation does this to its players (especially quarterbacks) and it’s sad to see. I hope he ends up on another team and resurrects his career. He hasn’t been nearly as bad as some will tell you he’s been.

2 – RIDERS LOSE AGAIN, Part 2 – You can only blame injuries for so much but having both Jamal Morrow and Frankie Hickson on the shelf is super crushing and it’s at the offensive position that I see as being the most crucial for the team. I also think asking your third string RB to start five yards behind the line of scrimmage on 3rd and 1, then hand him the ball to get a yard on the most important play of the game is the epitome of playcalling insanity.  

3 – RIDERS LOSE AGAIN, Part 3 – The team is 2-8 in their last ten games of a Grey Cup-hosting season. I was once at a banquet where Weston Dressler joked how President Jim Hopson called salary cap violations nothing more than a speeding ticket infraction when it came to ensuring you had a roster that made it to the championship game. Do we have that kind of determination in 2022? It isn’t overly evident. And, that’s why when you look at this team, there has been erosion just about everywhere. Like it or not, the public image isn’t what it once was. Fan attendance is down. The talent pool of players simply isn’t up to snuff for a Grey Cup contending team. The behaviour of the players on and off the field has been embarrassing, at times. In-game decisions have been, rightly, criticized. The quarterback play as regressed. This, to me, means there are wide sweeping changes in store during the offseason and that’s not to pick apart any specific people but it’s hard to argue against everything I’ve just laid out.

4 – WHO GETS THE TASK – I recognize this is very presumptuous, but in the event of wholesale changes, I’ve always felt that if you are going to fire or replace someone, you better have a real good idea who you are replacing that person with. In the case of the Riders, I have nearly no suggestions on who to task with tearing this down and building it back up. Would Hopson be open to a temporary position whereby he returns and puts appropriate people in place and then walks away, rescuing the franchise for a second time? I also wonder about Marc Trestman. There are very few people that would warrant receiving the keys and being told to do whatever you need to do in order to restore the pride but Trestman would be one, in my mind. I think Trestman is a coach for an XFL team and maybe he has no plan to ever come back to the CFL but if I think he’s worth investigating. Whatever the Riders do, they can’t afford to screw it up. They have to make changes and make the right changes.

5 – TUA, Part 1 – The NFLPA has fired the independent doctor who deemed Tua Tagovailoa fit to play this week. By now, you are familiar with the story so I don’t need to rehash it. Here’s where I am on it: Tua never should have played in the second half of last Sunday’s game against Buffalo. He was punch drunk and whether it was a concussion or back injury doesn’t much matter to me. He could barely stand up. Sit him down, doctor’s orders or not, and opt for long term benefit over short term gain. That seemed like the sensible, safe thing to do.

6 – TUA, Part 2 – Here’s where I’m going to defend the coach. If Tua gets a clean bill of health on Sunday, which he did. If Tua gets a clean bill of health on Monday, which he did, and if Tua shows well in practice Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday all the while maintaining clearance from the doctors to play…then I don’t know why the coach should be the one on the hot seat to make the decision to sit him. Coaches are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Let’s say Tua isn’t cleared by the doctor but somehow the coach is able to get him on the field anyway and Tua wins them the game and gets through it injury-free. The coach is still taken to the woodshed for his choice. In this case, the medical people clear the player and the coach follows ‘expert’ medical advice but the player ends up hurt anyway and there is a line-up of people looking to crucify the coach. It’s a no-win situation for Mike McDaniel. The entire purpose of these independent medical personnel is to take the ability of the head coach to decide who is and who isn’t healthy away from him because he may be paying more attention to winning than he is to health and safety. The medical people are vetted by the league, the teams, and the NFLPA. Therefore the blame here falls at the feet of the doctor and that’s also where it should end.

7 – TUA’S FAULT – Nobody is blaming Tua. Tua, himself, came out on Monday and said he had a back injury and not a concussion. If that’s a lie then shame on him for putting his career and, ultimately, his life in jeopardy for only seeing the short term benefit of playing in a game Thursday night. This isn’t 1958. Players are more involved in their personal well-being and it would not at all have been frowned upon for him to say he wasn’t feeling great. But, here’s the other thing about concussions. Everybody responds differently to them. Some athletes will bounce back quick and some won’t. Some athletes can get a concussion and then get creamed two weeks later and are perfectly fine. Some will get a concussion, won’t get hit for six months, but then the slightest bit of head trauma puts them on the shelf. It’s a tricky and scary type of injury. Maybe Tua did, legit, feel better.

8 – AARON JUDGE – I’m not a Jays fan, but I’m going to come to their defense here. There was a fair amount of criticism placed on them for refusing to pitch to Judge during their series this week, thus stalling Judge’s charge for a 70 home run season. Well to that, I say ‘too bad’. The Jays are trying to make the playoffs and throwing Judge a pitch anywhere near the strike zone is hazardous for your chances to win a baseball game. Manager John Schneider owes the Yankees nothing and walking Judge every time he’s up seems smart to me. Even with runners on base.  

9 – HOCKEY DRAFT – I’m in a few NHL fantasy drafts and one of them is a keeper league with fourteen guys who I feel are extremely smart when it comes to this type of thing, so here are the top 20 overall choices from that draft: 1-Connor McDavid, 2-Leon Draisaitl, 3-Nathan MacKinnon, 4-Cale Makar, 5-Auston Matthews, 6-Kiril Kaprizov, 7-Nikita Kucherov, 8-Alexander Barkov, 9-Mitch Marner, 10-Jonathan Huberdeau, 11-Mikko Rantanen, 12-Matthew Tkachuk, 13-Brady Tkachuk (this is the only pick I really question but the guy who picked him wins a lot of drafts), 14-JT Miller, 15-Artemi Panarin, 16-Alex Ovechkin, 17-Adam Fox, 18-Sidney Crosby, 19-Kyle Connor, 20-Steven Stamkos. Yes, goaltenders are in the draft too. Shesterkin went first (later in the second round). Vasilevskiy was second and Hellebuyck third.

10 – COACHING INTANGIBLES – A set of recent events has caused me to think about this and write about it, although I’m not going to name names but it’s incredible to me how many coaches are coaching sports at a high level and don’t understand how necessary it is to be more than an X’s and O’s person in order to achieve success. I look at Ken Miller’s tenure with the Roughriders. What set him apart was his ability to relate to his players off-the-field and how appreciated it was that he took a genuine interest in their well being. I look at my time in the SJHL and it’s no secret that Dean Brockman and Bob Beatty also have this quality about them. Don Chesney has seldom been at the helm of bad teams because he has the ability to get maximum potential from players based on the players’ desire to perform for him. I see similar qualities in Brayden Klimosko, the current Battlefords coach who won a title in his first year as a bench boss and has a team that is an early favorite to win in 2023. I look at the Regina Thunder and Scott McAulay has this trait too. It’s not rocket science. Once you hit elite level sports, just about all coaches can game plan. But not nearly as many can get maximum potential from players and the best way to do that is to show that you care about them.

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @Stack1975)