Sept. 5 Game Notes
Not a very good game for us. Not terrible, but nobody was really playing that well, and we caught some bad breaks.
QBs - the o-line wasn't giving Ray much time, but Ray was holding onto the ball too long. He looked gun shy, the Stamps secondary isn't that good. I couldn't see the coverage, but it would almost appear that they were glued to every receiver every play. We needed to stretch the field, we need more variety. Too much medium stuff, this looked like the offense of the last two years.
RBs - Harris was great, he was running over people, making guys miss....but unfortunately it was mostly as a receiver. We need to run the ball, it hurt us really bad not doing it today. Some good though - we don't need KK, or anyone else, Harris is the real deal, he is amazing, give him the ball 20 times a game, preferably on hand-offs.
WRs - where was Stamps, he was MIA all game. He makes big catches though, and I think Ray needed to force some to him if they had good coverage on him. Campbell got all the looks, and didn't do much with them. He got better near the end, but he had a sub-par game. Kamau was solid, the fumble was a fumble IMO, except that they've called that multiple times this year as an incomplete pass, to in order to be consistent, they should have ruled that as inconsistent.
OL - not very good, McGrath in particular. They weren't awful though. Ray held onto the ball and we didn't run at all. It puts them at a disadvantage. I'm not disappointed in their performance, only in the situation that we put them in.
DL - these guys did not have a jump to their step. Burris was immobile and they still couldn't get to them. They have an excuse though, and it's name is holding. Usually I don't complain about holding because it goes on in varying degrees on every play, but there was some very obvious and ridiculous holding calls out there. Romero's Roughing the Passer was him letting our frustration of being held for 4-5 seconds by two different guys. Anoai had another clear path to the QB and was almost tackled. Romero still needs to not take that penalty, but the holding has me really frustrated. I also think that Davis needed more reps...but overall, they looked tired. Short week, understandable.
LBs - nothing much to complain of, they stuffed the run big time, screens didn't work, underneath middle zones were solid. They never made a huge impact on the game, but they weren't beaten up, that's for sure. It was also really nice to see Garrett get that TD, not a more deserving person on that field.
DBs - tough luck. Younger was letting a lot of underneath stuff go early, and then Goss even got picked on, which I was surprised at. He had good coverage but failed to make a play on the ball. Robinson and Buhl were actually playing well, but when Robinson went out, Buhl's play went downhill. Those two have good chemistry and play well together. I hope that when Lenny is back that they don't break that up. Jackson got picked on, he is athletic but not very good in man coverage. Shabazz was solid though. I was most disappointed with the secondary though tonight, they came up lame.
ST - Jackson looked a lot better, it looks like someone sat him down and taught him how to be a solid returner. He was giving us good field position and never ran around being stupid...yet still showed the ability to break one. Kudos.
WORST CALL EVER - Kamau had that ball. Onside kicks rarely ever work, but on that one, Kamau got downfield and Pre gave him a nice high beauty of a kick. It clearly bounced off Kamau. I have no idea how they can call it to Calgary on the field, and then review and still not give it to Kamau. At that point in the game, we played brutal and probably didn't deserve to win, but we deserved our fair shot.
playcalling - I was starting to be encouraged, I really was. But we started doing the play fakes on 3 of our first 4 passes without running the ball first, we weren't going deep. Coming into this game, it should have been obvious to our coaches that this was going to be a war of a attrition. Running the ball and keeping the offense on the field should have been our main priority. We have a guy who is doing great right now, no reason to come out as we did. It hurt our defense.....
overall, I'm actually not too discouraged. It means that we have some learning to do, and that we still haven't turned the corner yet, as I suspected. But let's look at it this way, this was our offense of old, and how often did we score 33 pts. and actually keep fighting under the old system? Never. We're a better team, we're a solid team. We had a bad outing, but this is still the same team. No reason to panic. We're going to make the playoffs this season, let's learn from our mistakes and get back to what was working for us. We have a lot of games against the East here, we're going to improve.
QBs - the o-line wasn't giving Ray much time, but Ray was holding onto the ball too long. He looked gun shy, the Stamps secondary isn't that good. I couldn't see the coverage, but it would almost appear that they were glued to every receiver every play. We needed to stretch the field, we need more variety. Too much medium stuff, this looked like the offense of the last two years.
RBs - Harris was great, he was running over people, making guys miss....but unfortunately it was mostly as a receiver. We need to run the ball, it hurt us really bad not doing it today. Some good though - we don't need KK, or anyone else, Harris is the real deal, he is amazing, give him the ball 20 times a game, preferably on hand-offs.
WRs - where was Stamps, he was MIA all game. He makes big catches though, and I think Ray needed to force some to him if they had good coverage on him. Campbell got all the looks, and didn't do much with them. He got better near the end, but he had a sub-par game. Kamau was solid, the fumble was a fumble IMO, except that they've called that multiple times this year as an incomplete pass, to in order to be consistent, they should have ruled that as inconsistent.
OL - not very good, McGrath in particular. They weren't awful though. Ray held onto the ball and we didn't run at all. It puts them at a disadvantage. I'm not disappointed in their performance, only in the situation that we put them in.
DL - these guys did not have a jump to their step. Burris was immobile and they still couldn't get to them. They have an excuse though, and it's name is holding. Usually I don't complain about holding because it goes on in varying degrees on every play, but there was some very obvious and ridiculous holding calls out there. Romero's Roughing the Passer was him letting our frustration of being held for 4-5 seconds by two different guys. Anoai had another clear path to the QB and was almost tackled. Romero still needs to not take that penalty, but the holding has me really frustrated. I also think that Davis needed more reps...but overall, they looked tired. Short week, understandable.
LBs - nothing much to complain of, they stuffed the run big time, screens didn't work, underneath middle zones were solid. They never made a huge impact on the game, but they weren't beaten up, that's for sure. It was also really nice to see Garrett get that TD, not a more deserving person on that field.
DBs - tough luck. Younger was letting a lot of underneath stuff go early, and then Goss even got picked on, which I was surprised at. He had good coverage but failed to make a play on the ball. Robinson and Buhl were actually playing well, but when Robinson went out, Buhl's play went downhill. Those two have good chemistry and play well together. I hope that when Lenny is back that they don't break that up. Jackson got picked on, he is athletic but not very good in man coverage. Shabazz was solid though. I was most disappointed with the secondary though tonight, they came up lame.
ST - Jackson looked a lot better, it looks like someone sat him down and taught him how to be a solid returner. He was giving us good field position and never ran around being stupid...yet still showed the ability to break one. Kudos.
WORST CALL EVER - Kamau had that ball. Onside kicks rarely ever work, but on that one, Kamau got downfield and Pre gave him a nice high beauty of a kick. It clearly bounced off Kamau. I have no idea how they can call it to Calgary on the field, and then review and still not give it to Kamau. At that point in the game, we played brutal and probably didn't deserve to win, but we deserved our fair shot.
playcalling - I was starting to be encouraged, I really was. But we started doing the play fakes on 3 of our first 4 passes without running the ball first, we weren't going deep. Coming into this game, it should have been obvious to our coaches that this was going to be a war of a attrition. Running the ball and keeping the offense on the field should have been our main priority. We have a guy who is doing great right now, no reason to come out as we did. It hurt our defense.....
overall, I'm actually not too discouraged. It means that we have some learning to do, and that we still haven't turned the corner yet, as I suspected. But let's look at it this way, this was our offense of old, and how often did we score 33 pts. and actually keep fighting under the old system? Never. We're a better team, we're a solid team. We had a bad outing, but this is still the same team. No reason to panic. We're going to make the playoffs this season, let's learn from our mistakes and get back to what was working for us. We have a lot of games against the East here, we're going to improve.
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