Eskies vs Alouettes

Not suggesting he is. Still people are starting to call for his head in Edmonton.
Not a good situation for ANY quarterback

A lot of people measure the performance of a middle linebacker by how well the team does against the run.
Stopping the run…especially between the tackles…often involves getting some beef in there and out muscling the other guy.
It’s not always going to show up in stats or tackles. A perfect example of this is how BAD the Alouettes do when Eric Wilson isn’t playing. He’s unheralded and often forgotten. But ask any Alouette what he means to the team.

As long as the run defense is solid…I’m not worried about the middle linebacker. Let Cox and Ferri get all the glory.

A note of caution. We’ve tried blitzing Ricky Ray before…
He’s burnt us REAL bad.
Still…without Whitlock back there the DLine can wield their axes with impunity
Here’s hoping for a Saxon slaughter

Aye !

Just a note of caution here, guys.

On paper, the Esks shouldn't even be on the same field as the Als, at least this season. BUT, football is football. Everyone was all keyed up for Chris Leak's first start two weeks ago against a similarly struggling team. We should have won that one by a large margin - right? Wrong! Being confident is important; cocky - never!!! As has been suggested, these guys are playing for their jobs, to impress their coaches, management...etc., but let's never take any team lightly. Last season, the Als had an impressive 15-3 season, which could have/should have been 17-1, but they got a little too cocky in some games and were blown out!

So, I think we should come of of the game with a W, but I never take anything for granted. The Als still need to prepare, and I hope Trestman and the boys let Adrian play.

True. But that was mostly in the years when he had Tucker, Hervey, and Mitchell to throw to with Mike Pringle on the ground. This year, Stamps is still injured and Campbell is as likely to run the wrong route as make a blitz pickup and run a hot route properly.

In the first meeting this season, we did get torched in the first half, but that was an Edmonton team that hadn’t had its collective spirit crushed by a nightmare season gone wrong. In fact, one could argue our stirring comeback win against the Esks is what started their season-long collapse. :wink:

Still...without Whitlock back there the DLine can wield their axes with impunity Here's hoping for a Saxon slaughter
:thup: :thup: :thup:

And to that, Discipline, I would add that the Als were somewhat lucky to win that first game against the Esks. There were at least two long bombs that were dropped by their receivers (which should have been TDs!), and would no doubt have changed the momentum of the game, and perhaps their season.

While they come in to Montreal limping, spirits down, they are coming to play against the defending GC champs. That should always be motivation for any team, even if they do nothing much this season. The Als need to come charging out of the gates with fire in their eyes and never let up.

This game scares me like the BC game , where we get overconfident and don't end up generating anything.

Any idea who will start as Qb ?

Haven't heard anything about who's starting, but after Adrian's impressive outing against Hamilton, I'd bet that he starts, with Calvillo maybe dressing as the third-stringer if Trestman feels he's capable of absorbing contact (sorry, Tim, it's back to KR for you :lol: ).

I really hope Marc exercises full caution with Anthony in the next week or two. There is absolutely no need to rush Anthony back into the lineup prematurely. And every meaningful game Adrian plays is one more game under his belt to help him improve his timing, ability to read the field, and familiarity with specific CFL defenses around the league.

Just listened to CKAC sport news and AC took all 1st team reps today. Im guessing he's starting?

Ok its on TSN.ca now. Calvillo has to wait till thursday to see if there is any soreness.

Stamps is going to be healthy for the Edmonton game. Changes things a lot for our defense. I do not want to see us getting torched again by Stamps and Campbell running double-seam routes against cover zero or cover 1. Burke had better put together a good game plan for the Eskimos.

Agreed…although the Eskimos are a long way (mentally at least) from that team.
I think I remember the Als getting burned pretty bad on cover 2 not too long ago…
Hopefully they’ll put a solid gameplan together

Mad Jack I agree with you fully. I have tried to focus my attention on the linebackers this season [ as much as one can do on TV ] and from my perspective when the linebackers blitz the defense has been strong. Emery, Cox and the emerging Banks have this talent. I only remember one occasion this year when Boulay did the safety blitz. It reminds me of Matthews era when Baron Miles was the master of the safety blitz. I also like the man to man press defense this year- we are a bad bunch of mother.......!

Obviously, a QB who spends a good portion of the game running for his life will not be effective - hurried throws, passes batted down at the LOS, INTs, sacks...etc. However, blitz packages must be used among other D formations - blitzes can be beat.

They key to a W in this game, I think, is to go big in the 1st quarter and run up a lead. When the opposing team is playing catch-up, that makes them more one-dimensional. We got burned by the long bomb in the previous meeting and I hope Burke has come up with better D schemes on deep routes for this game.

We don’t seem to come with a safety blitz much at all, since Chris Jones took his act west.

I wouldn’t consider using it when Proulx is in at safety. . . I don’t believe that he has the physicality to be effective at it.

But Boulay is another kettle of fish entirely. He hits like a locomotive. . . I’d like to see them try a safety blitz when Boulay is on the field.

C’est McPherson qui va agir comme partant. Un choix logique après sa prestation de la semaine dernière.

Yep, they’ve had trouble in the deep zones as well, but as far as I remember, that usually happens on second and long when we drop into that soft cover 2 or cover 3 shell. For some reason, we don’t disguise our zone drops effectively enough to fool the quarterback or the receivers, who can settle into the soft holes in the zones and make 15 or 20-yard receptions even when we’ve dropped eight into coverage. Some misdirection might help. Maybe drop Anwar Stewart back into a hook zone and blitz an extra linebacker (Cox, Ferri, Banks, or Guzman)? That way, you can overload one side or another and disguise the pressure until the snap. Anwar is athletic enough to fulfill coverage responsibilities in a shallow hook zone.

I’m just happy that we’re sending more guys on second and long instead of playing prevent defense that doesn’t actually work for us.

I have never been a fan of "prevent defence". Prevent defence essentially means allowing the opposing O to gain yards, keep the yardsticks moving, and the clock running. In a close game (2 scores or less), this could be disastrous! The Als, simply put, are not good at it. The only time I would agree with this strategy is when the game is waaaayyyy out of reach, like a 35-point lead with less than 4 minutes to go.

Well, it depends on the situation. Prevent defense is perfectly fine when you’ve got the other team in second and long midway through the game, you just want to get a stop, and you can execute said defense well enough to get that stop. The problem with our prevent defense is that it actually doesn’t prevent anything. It’s inexcusable for teams to routinely convert second and 10, 15, or 20 into first downs when we’ve dropped everyone back in coverage. Ideally, a prevent defense takes away those intermediate and deep passes, allows the underneath stuff, and forces the other team to come up short of the first down (not inches short, where they can gamble on third down, but multiple yards short, forcing a punt). For some reason, we can’t run this defense properly. I don’t think it’s personnel-related, because we had the same issues in 2008 with many different faces in the defense (Hill and Hunt for Cox and Emry at LB, Drew and Cox for Brown and Parker at DB, Sanchez for Dix at CB).

My gut feeling is that Burke doesn’t do a good enough job of:

[ol]- Disguising our coverages with different looks at the line.

  • Getting individual players to disguise what they’re doing well enough to really confuse the opposing quarterback. I don’t think we fool anyone when we show blitz. [/ol]

This is a valid point, but IMO our success against the run is largely due to Eric Wilson and Chip Cox. Wilson plugs up the interior, while Cox is the one flying to the football and making tackles. Shea has been invisible for this most part this season, and that’s not a good sign for a middle linebacker; if he’s not shooting the gap and getting sacks or scraping to the RB in the trenches and making tackles, what exactly is he doing? He’s also taken some bone-headed penalties on passing downs that have extended enemy drives. Ultimately, Shea needs to become an impact player again, the player he was during the East Final last year when his aggressive ball pursuit forced the Mallett fumble that led to our first seven points of the game.