thats the reality of our team right now, the only positives on the Riders right now who seem to be giving an effort are:
Baggs - Mr intensity
Bagg - Pleasant surprise and most improved
Dressler - Nothing but 100% for him all the time
Clermont - Whenever he touches it he goes all out
Alexander - Best rookie in the league in my books
Getzlaf - Good season although I don't know where he was tonight
Unfortunately, I hate to say it but our O line and QB's both are sub par. Miller, play Harrell or resign!
You think putting in a rookie QB with a bush league O-line is a good idea? Wow! You should be the coach. :roll:
O-line needs to step it up big time before any QB has a chance.
Remember when MTL Als O-line was weak a couple seasons ago? Calvillo looked like a bum. Now their O-line is top notch again and Calvillo looks great again.
Use some sense Terminator. 8)
If Harrell did play and lost you would have went through your rolodex of lame complaints and blamed somebody else.
Suck it up and take the loss like a man. :x
Seriously though, I blame the O-line more than anything . . . again. :?
Is Makowsky trying to win? How about Chick and Fantuz before they got hurt? How about Williams at linebacker? Isn’t he 2nd in the league in tackles? How about that rookie Stewart? He has to be leading the team in special teams tackles. Frazier and Davis seem to be playing real good in the secondary. Same for Mullinder after Chick got hurt.
That was a crappy loss. A total bummer. But don’t crap on all the players. I really think the coaches aren’t getting it done. Quinn makes a great catch at the end of the game. Where was he before that? Sitting on the bench? What about Dressler? Did he catch 1 pass before the last play of the 1st half? The Rider offence has to many 2 and outs again. And the special teams were the worst I’ve ever seen as a 34 year old Rider fan.
This guy is back? Look our QB's NEED to be better or maybe even change, BUT HARRELL IS NOT READY!!!!!!! YOU WILL JUST SCREW HIM UP!!!! SACRIFICE ONE LOSING SEASON (this year) AND WE MAY HAVE MANY GREAT ONES WITH HARRELL! HE NEEDS TO LEARN!
The O-line was not good and the play calling was not good. It seems like both our QBs couldn't pull the trigger even when they did find time. I have a hard time believing that not one receiver was open on many of those plays. They really looked like they had no idea what to do on many occasions.
When I say play Harrell I assume that revamping the Oline should also be a priority. For Gods sake get someone in there who can protect the QB. And the other poster was correct, even when we did have time to throw the ball, either Durant was putting his intentions to throw up on the jumbotron and getting picked off or Jyles forgot he had receivers and just tried to run the ball. If you all are so concerned that Harrell will fail what good is he doing on the injury list? Why not at least dress him and have him next to the action so he can learn this "complex" game like you like to think it is? For crying out loud Durant and Jyles would not be able to make any other roster in the league, why are they #1 and #2 in Sask? Because Miller and coaches need to be replaced as well. Just a bad scene in Riderville this year and its going to get uglier. Wait till we go to Montreal and Hamilton in the next few games, bad scene indeed.
I agree Harrell isn’t ready for sure but We can’t sacrafice a season!! By the time we have someone that can actually throw the ball we’ll have lost all the guys that can catch AND the defence. We’ll always be lacking in a major way on one side of the ball or the other. That seams to be the rider way. Get great talent and promise them we’ll be a contender then sh*t the bed. The great talent then looks to play elswhere. The end.
and what about this kid Bell? He has been on the bench for two years and hasn't seen a down only to watch two high school caliber qb's start ahead of him.
LaPolice’s play calling is so predictable; even I can usually tell what we are trying on offence. Any seasoned defence can adjust and stop us. Adjustments on offence, or lack of it is the reason why we can’t score points in the third. The opposing defence adjusts and we just keep doing the same predictable things. LaPolice needs to get his head in the game, and make adjustments, as his play calling is a large part of the offences problem.
When Durant gets time, he is so locked on a receiver, and doesn’t see his other receivers. If the primary receiver is covered, he either throws the pick, forces the bad pass, or runs around in the backfield like a deer in the headlights and gets sacked! If nothings there, throw it out of bounds, or in some instances run with it. Has he been coached not to run, or is he afraid? Defences play him to pass the ball when he rolls out because he won’t cross the line and run.
Our line hasn’t been great, but predictable formations and an inability to read a defences at the QB spot don’t help the cause. Durant still has potential, but doesn’t look decisive or confident at this time. He may need to sit and watch for a few games to get his head straightened out.
Can anyone here really take a guy who thinks that Harrell should be playing despite his lack of experience and his newness to the CFL seriously? I sure don’t. It’s laughable.
Part of the problem is that your receiving corps lacks mobility. They’re big, have great hands, and post solid YAC, but except for Dressler, none has the speed to create real separation especially when the play breaks down. Bagg scored one TD because of a brutal breakdown in the B.C. secondary; his other one came because the Lions were in cover 0 and somehow he got behind the safety without anyone picking him up. If your QBs are scramblers who are most effective when extending the play, you need receivers with the wheels to keep up.
Why not at least dress him and have him next to the action so he can learn this "complex" game like you like to think it is?
QB is possibly the most complex position in pro sports. Yet you want to take a college QB who's never played a down of CFL football and toss him in the fire to revitalize a struggling offense after a third of the season is over? There is a reason QBs are rarely effective when arriving midway through the season on a new team. Football is complex, and it takes time to learn the playbook, get comfortable with your receivers, and make your reads quickly. A guy who has to get used to three-down football on top of all that is going to be a pinata for whichever defense he'll face.
For crying out loud Durant and Jyles would not be able to make any other roster in the league, why are they #1 and #2 in Sask?
Absurd. Both are quality players who haven't had enough seasoning as starters. For every Ricky Ray, who burst onto the scene in his rookie season, there are five Anthony Calvillos, who needed years, experience, and the right system and personnel before he was able to become a legit starter.
Because Miller and coaches need to be replaced as well.
Not sure about Miller, but I'd seriously look at replacing Lapolice. His playbook seems a bit vanilla to me and he also seems to have trouble making effective half-time adjustments.
Riders, get players that actually want to be here and play! Half of the team out there is just trotting around afraid at hitting or taking a hit! We need more Dresslers, Baggs, etc. They are the true professionals, flat out 100% of the time, regardless of the situation. Tillman, time to take back control of this time, your psuedo replacement has turned this team into a lost cause.
Look at ricky Ray’s history from Wikipedia and see how he flourished in his first year"CFL debut
In 2002, Ray made the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos out of training camp. The Eskimos were considered one of the strongest teams in the West Division of the time, and were thus a good team for a quarterback to learn a winning swagger. However, the Eskimos were not to Ray’s advantage in one way: they were deep at quarterback. Starter Jason Maas was considered one of the best at his position in the league, and had thus far in his career looked durable enough to stand a pounding and more than skilled enough to replace the recently-departed starter Nealon Greene. Ray would have to start the season as the Eskimos’ third-string quarterback.
Fate was on Ray’s side, however. Late in the fourth quarter of a Week Four game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Maas was knocked out of the game, and would not be available for the Week Five matchup against the rival British Columbia Lions. Ray made his debut relieving Maas in the Saskatchewan game and his first start against the Lions, and looked like a veteran by throwing for four touchdowns against a strong team. This was just the beginning of a remarkable 2002 season, in which the first-year Canadian football player threw for 2,991 yards, 24 touchdowns, and nine interceptions with a ridiculously high quarterback rating for a rookie: 101.3, highest in the league."
Now for all those who say lets hide away Bell and Harrell and have them learn the CFL game and playbook like it is some kind of process like getting a PHD or something, geez, if the kid showed any promise he should be given the chance to play and play now, look what Edmonton did with Ray and see what they have now.
That kind of a situation is a 1 in a million opportunity! you hardly ever see a situation like that!
Bell first off, showed in the pre-season that he wasn't ready.
Harrell may be a College star but there's a huge change from College to Pro football.
you can't throw a guy who's never played Canadian Football in is lifetime into a game with only a few weeks of "Practise" experience!
cause i'm sure you are intelligent enough to understand and realize that there's a huge 180 degree difference from Practice to an actual Game day situation!
Here's the problem - With Edmonton Ray got a chance to play when he was the ONLY QB who could. Durant and Jyles are both healthy so benching them for either Bell or Harrel could be a double disaster. If the team gets behind BellHarrell it would kill the moral of DurantJyles as they could take it as not being supported by the team. On the other hand if the team in support of DurantJyles doesn't support a new QB it could destroy a new player before they even get started .....
In the Riders case it's best to decide who the QB is and stick them them - Period. Switching back and forth is not going build team leadership behind then QB position.
If and when the riders decide that Durant is not the man - fine then switch - but once they do they have to stick with them long enough to see if they can work into it.
That and if you really think about it Durant really only has 1 year and his stats for the all games are pretty decent. It's consistancy and leadership he needs to work on and that's where I would expect a few veterans to step forward.
There are a lot of examples of rookie quarterbacks that I have described earlier making their mark early in their career (most in their first year), Warren Moon, Ricky Ray, Doug Flutie, Tom Clements. It seems all the great quarterbacks spent very little time in your so-called "learing " environment. It seems like your cauddle theory holds no water and that you are simply pimping the lines that you hear in the media about rookie quarterbacks.
The reason Durant has a winning record on paper is because of the defense behind him last year, it was better than this year but now that the defense has fallen, he gets exposed for the "2 and out" man that he is.