STACKHOUSE’S 10 WEEKEND THOUGHTS

1 – RIDERS LOSE TD ATLANTIC – The Saskatchewan Roughriders lost their third game in a row on Saturday afternoon after taking a 31-13 defeat at the hands of the Toronto Argonauts at Touchdown Atlantic in Halifax.  The debate this week will be who to start at quarterback next weekend against Ottawa as Mason Fine passed for 302 scoreless yards before leaving with a hand injury late in the fourth quarter, at which point Jake Dolegala went 4-for-5 for 100 yards and a touchdown in garbage time.  Fine is now 0-and-4 for his career as a starter and he has failed to engineer a touchdown in his two starts this year.  Dolegala looked good with under three minutes to go in a game that was long decided but I would be cautious to judge Dolegala off the one drive late in the game.  Granted he looked good, but I would have liked to have seen him at the start of the third quarter and evaluated his play based on the final 30 minutes.

2 – FINE STILL STARTER – 3 Down Nation reported shortly after the conclusion of the game that Fine will remain the starter and that coach Craig Dickenson just wanted to get a glimpse of Dolegala with the game out of hand.  Dickenson was quoted as saying Fine has done enough to remain the starter.  I guess I’d like to see Dolegala get a start but I also think Fine hasn’t been put in the best position to win.  It’s eerily similar to what I saw in Cody Fajardo last year.  While there was certainly some responsibility on Fajardo for how things ended here, there was also some on the coaching staff for allowing everything to deteriorate the way it did both on the field and off.  

3 – RIDERS CIRCLING DRAIN – The Riders are now 1-and-12 dating back to last year, minus the two wins against Edmonton this season, in their last thirteen games overall but there doesn’t seem to be any internal appetite to make changes to the front office or the sideline.  One fan suggested to me this week that the Riders need to make a change at the very top and they need to put someone in charge that can emulate the culture created when Jim Hopson was at the helm.  To that end, I nominate Scott Schultz.  Another fan mentioned Henry Burris as the next head coach.  I have no idea if Hank can coach or would even want the job, but I will go out on a limb and say a Rider organization led by Schultz with Burris as coach would generate an immediate uptick in fan interest.

4 – RUSH MAKEOVER – The Saskatchewan Rush are serious about retooling and getting back into the playoffs sooner rather than later.  Long time fans are not going to recognize a good chunk of the roster when the season opens in December as franchise icons Mark Matthews and Kyle Rubisch will be elsewhere and GM Derek Keenan has made it clear there won’t be a lot of patience in restoring the excellence on the pitch this team was known for when they relocated from Edmonton in 2015.  While it does appear as though Robert Church, Ryan Keenan, and Austin Madronic will be back, they’ll be aided by the likes of Patrick Dodds and Zach Manns, a couple of youngsters who are potentially going to be explosive on the scoresheet.  Dodds was second to Jeff Teat (arguably the NLL’s top player) in rookie scoring two years ago.  Manns will be given every opportunity to breakout after debuting with the Toronto Rock in 2020 and showing steady improvement in each season to date.  Keenan isn’t ignoring the defense by bringing in Adam Jay from the Rock as part of the Matthews trade and locking up some of the promising youth we’ve seen in the last couple of seasons in the form of Bobby Kidd III and Holden Garlent.  I was impressed with rookies Ryan Barnable and Jake Boudreau, especially in the first half of the season, so it’s not unrealistic to expect both of those players to take a major step forward in year two as well.  Finally, the Achilles heel of this team has been goaltending and Keenan went out this week and acquired Frank Scigliano from San Diego.  Scigliano may have slipped a bit last season, but he still grades out better than what the Rush have had for the last two years.  The Rush shouldn’t need their goalie to be Dillon Ward-like.  Just don’t lose the game.

5 – RATTLERS SEASON OVER – The Saskatchewan Rattlers missed the CEBL playoffs but they won me over big time down the stretch, winning four of their final six going into the regular season finale Friday night versus Calgary.  It would have been easy to just roll over and go through the motions in the last couple of weeks, but Justin Wright-Foreman put the team on his back and he got some help from the likes of his buddy, Malik Benlevi, as well as Finnish import Trey Niemi and Canadians Michael Nuga and Jermel Kennedy in giving the fans a pseudo-playoff game to get into the playoffs.  Unfortunately, they came up short in losing 92-89 to Calgary in what was an exciting game played in front of a season high crowd that had to be in the range of 3500+.  If you are a frequent reader of this column, you are probably more than familiar with me singing the praises of the CEBL but I maintain this is an exciting league for the fans to watch even if you aren’t, typically, a basketball fan.  Roster construction ensures we watch top professional Canadian players and some of the Americans brought in are fringe NBAers.  In the case of Wright-Foreman, he is the best pure scorer the league has seen by a country mile and I hope he gets another NBA chance.  He deserves it.

6 – JOE BURROW – The Cincinnati Bengals will always be the Cincinnati Bengals and having a top NFL franchise quarterback can camouflage how bad their organization has been run but, occasionally, we will be reminded and we were again this past week when Joe Burrow, already nursing a tender calf, was on the field playing scrimmages in late July and ended up blowing out the calf entirely, putting the beginning of the season for him and his team in jeopardy.  Heck, Burrow hasn’t even signed his mega-contract yet that is expected to make him the NFL’s highest paid player and yet he’s out there on the field risking serious injury.  It makes no sense from a Bengals perspective nor does it from the player’s point of view.  That’s bad advice from the agent.

7 – SCHERZER ON THE MOVE – As I type this on Saturday night, the Texas Rangers are poised to acquire 39-year-old pitcher Max Scherzer from the New York Mets for top prospects.  Scherzer is finally showing his age with a 4.01-ERA and makes $43-million this year and also next.  With Texas deciding to pony up and pay the aging starter, it reminds me that no matter what the size of the market, all professional sports teams can afford top players if they really wanted to, but the majority of the small market teams hide behind their ‘small market’ status and fans seem to be forgiving.  The Pittsburgh Pirates can afford Shohei Ohtani.  They just don’t want to.  In this day and age of the 6-inning starting pitcher, I’m still amazed that teams are willing to pay in both money and player capital to acquire them.  Perhaps the best starter in the game today, Spencer Strider of Atlanta, was hooked in a close game last week after 91 pitches and the reliever immediately blew it.  Why pay top dollar for top starters if you don’t actually let them do their job?  Imagine hooking Tom Brady after 30 passes in a 24-21 game because you have this false notion that allowing him to throw 31 passes will result in catastrophic injury.  Only in baseball….

8 – MORE JUNIOR ‘A’ HOCKEY – Junior ‘B’ hockey leagues KIJHL, VIJHL, and PIJHL have all been granted Junior ‘A’ status and are now on par with the AJHL, SJHL, and MJHL.  What this does for recruiting remains to be seen, but those Junior ‘B’ leagues have long been a breeding ground for future regulars in the SJHL.  The BCHL’s move to be independent from Hockey Canada has sparked this domino effect and it’s a good thing for the younger players in BC who wouldn’t have been able to AP with BCHL teams due to the fact the BCHL is now considered unsanctioned hockey.  Out of province players can’t affiliate so ‘midget’ or ‘U18’ aged players in BC were out of luck as far as getting in a few Junior A games until this move to register up a level by the KI, VI, and PI.

9 – CJFL/COLTS/PFC – A week ago I wrote about the Calgary Colts possibly challenging the Regina Thunder and Saskatoon Hilltops in the PFC due to bringing in top U-Sports coach Greg DeLaval and former CFL coach Tom Higgins.  Well on Saturday, I noticed the Colts have made a change and the season hasn’t even started.  DeLaval is out and Daniel Craig is in.  As far as Higgins is concerned, I have no idea but I’m assuming he was part of the package with DeLaval.  In the first Power Rankings of the season, the Hilltops are the top rated PFC team (3) in the CJFL, followed by Edmonton Huskies (5), Thunder (6), and Winnipeg Rifles (10).

10 – HEART ISSUES – The Athletic wrote a story this week on Damar Hamlin, Vince Iwuchukwu, Keyontae Johnson, and Bronny James.  All four have suffered recent heart issues despite being in peak physical condition as athletes.  The focus of the article was whether or not heart issues are common amongst young athletes and society has pretty much decided that even though we can’t remember nearly as many dropping on the field of play in any other year, that yes…being a physically fit athlete is, indeed, hazardous to your health and this happens all the time and has happened for as long as we can remember, we just can’t identify as many people as we have in the last couple of years.  I am not even going to comment on the media people who have passed out on camera in the last 18 months, but that’s always been a regular occurrence too.   I just don’t personally remember and nobody has ever pointed me in a direction to reacquaint myself with this happening so frequently.

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