Montreal punts for a single and gets penalized. We accept the penalty push them back and they do it again yet, Miller concedes the next penalty. The way Duval was punting I would have let him hopefully botch another and run more time off the clock. You had the lead, you KNEW you were getting the ball regardless. I have to wonder about that one.
Second - we just couldn't get a first down when it counted. 1:20 to go and a first down wins it and we couldn't do it.
We gotta great nucleus and positive years ahead. Let's not dismantle the franchise on one gaffe.
Further to your first point: we take the penalty on the first kick and push them 10 yards back. IF we had accepted the second penalty, two things come into play: 1. Montreal would have been pushed back another 10 yards, and we all saw how Duval was kicking. Chances are, he would have shanked it; and 2. even if Duval hadn't shanked it, Montreal's cover team would have already run down the field twice, and would now have been tasked to run a third time. VERY good chance they would have been too tired to offer much resistance.
You guys had a 16 point lead with 8 minutes left, your defence didn't make the crucial stops when needed.
What if Duval pinned you guys inside the 10, you can't assume Duval was going put another one in the Endzone. Miller was playing the percentages , thinking Duval is going to get one of these punts right. MTL was at their own 30 with 40 secs.left and no timeouts !
On the other hand, for the cost of 1 point, we gain 35 yards (or 1/3 of the field). Then we march for a touchdown that probably wouldn't have happened if we take the ball near our goal line. So a net gain of 6 points by giving up one.
Coming from this game, I needed a couple of days to assemble my thoughts before I stated anything here or even turn the TV back on. I shut it off because I was sick watching people gloat over that kick, over and over again.
I understand/empathize with what happened, despite the long commercial break before the first kick. I had trouble understanding why they couldn’t get their act together with such a long break. I had to think back to my playing days, being a special teams player. Which team takes the field? Coach sends it in, players yell it to each other. You line up, look left/right, your in position is correct. Did you hear it correct, or was the message lost between players relaying it? In this case, final seconds, Grey Cup is won, you are ready to celebrate, emotions are high. "I’m sure I heard it right, no one is saying anything, snap the ball already and get the celebrations on". Armstead, did he count, probably, his emotions are high, he too EARNED the Cup. He probably either counted two people once since it was a bunched up, or forgot himself. Who knows, all I know is that you cannot possibly blame one person, for that matter, I don’t want to blame anyone….it’s just time to chalk it up as “one of those things?. Being that I don’t know what happened (and neither does anyone else except in the very inner circle), I made a short list of FACTS I do know:
Durant is officially a PREMIER quarterback in this league. He won this Grey Cup no doubt, hands down, and finally “proved? himself to all doubters, myself included. We NEED to be proud of this guy, and not be sending this guy down the river to excel for another team because we didn't support him. Simple deal, stick by him, he will stick by us
This TEAM WON the Grey Cup, and EVERYONE ACROSS CANADA knows this to be fact! Montreal did not win this. Ever. At any point in the game. They played like crap, like I have never seen Montreal play this year. It was their absolute worst game, and one of our best! Show me ANYONE, even a player for Montreal that says they won. They have the cup because of an error. One error. If Duval made the first kick, then I would say yes, they still played like crap, but they played ok enough to just win. So I don’t care what they engrave on the damn thing, we won it and everyone knows it.
The friggin morons that started the stupid “I hate the 13th Man? Facebook page and the 8,000 plus that signed up as fans of the site need to be dragged through the streets by their ankles for threatening to "kill whoever was responsible". You are not fans, you are idiots. You need to take whatever little Rider Gear you own and donate to real fans that can’t afford to buy it themselves. You are an embarrassment to us, and to this province, to the league and mostly to yourselves and your families. Quit taking up my oxygen and move away from here.
And lastly: This team has the eyes of the league and the world on it and not because of one play. It was happening to us the entire season. Because everyone wants to either be us, or have a team like us. We need to be proud of that. Today, tomorrow and next year and years following. Because even though people want to be like us, they simply are not. And if that sounds snooty, that's because it is. It very much is, and I damn well think we've earned the RIGHT to be snooty. There's two kinds of teams, 1) Saskatchewan 2) everyone else. And I like it this way.
I love this team, and will always love this team. And it’s ok to be mad at them once in awhile. That’s part of the game. But don’t forget they are probably just as mad at themselves. More. Their lives are all about the team. They leave their families for long periods of time, they live, eat, sleep and breath this game. They worked their entire lives hard to get to that game. And this group brought us there, again elevating and proving us to be a province that is a force to be fearful of.
Mostly, they just make us all proud to be from Saskatchewan.
neilca, permit a troll from the Alouettes boards to comment on your thoughtful remarks.
Durant is truly a building block for the Roughriders' future, but I can think of 2 interceptions that prevented him from having "won this Grey Cup no doubt, hands down." Parker's pick snuffed out a drive that easily could have put Montreal away, while Brown hauled down that lame duck to open the door for the Als' last touchdown drive.
While there's no question the Alouettes stunk out the joint in the first half, are you going to deny they had the Riders on the ropes by game's end? If it had ended on that missed kick, fans across la Belle Province would now be in the process of running Duval out of town on a rail, saying (quite accurately) that he singlehandedly ruined the comeback.
Most clear-thinking CFL fans appreciate (and envy, frankly) the relationship Saskatchewan has with its team. It's remarkable how a province with maybe 1 million people scattered throughout (about one-third the population of Montreal alone) can pull together 30,000 strong for virtually every game. I lived in Saskatoon for a couple of years in the 1970s, and I'm still amazed how many people we knew there who held season tickets.
This intense devotion has its downside, e.g. the "13th man" nonsense on Facebook. Good for you for denouncing the idiots who think advocating physical violence is some kind of proper response. We'd also like to see some disapproval directed at the knucklehead at the game Sunday who proudly displayed a sign reading "Gophers eat frog legs for dinner." I'm aware the gopher is not the official animal of Saskatchewan; trust me, the same is true of Quebec's relationship with the frog.
The Roughriders played a great game against the heavily favoured Als, but I don't think I'm out of line to say that what "everyone across Canada knows . . . to be fact" is that they let Montreal back into the game, allowing a single messed-up play to determine the outcome. To respond to your challenge ["Show me ANYONE . . .that says (Montreal) won."]: Montreal won -- by being better in the second half and paying more attention to detail.
Not my intention to slag the Rider Nation. I'm just sticking up for my team -- we've developed some serious loyalty ourselves.
Duval missed a makeable FG. Basically, his one little error put the Riders in a position to possibly win the game. So really, Sask should never even have been in a position to think they’d won, because our kicker should have made the kick on the first try!
Nobody remembers “almost.” Fact is, you didn’t win the Cup. We did. Outscoring the Riders 25-10 in the second half en route to a comeback win in the fourth quarter isn’t nothing. You are trying to reduce the entire game to one Rider penalty and that simply doesn’t fly.
I think it's safe to say that both sides, Sask fans and Montreal fans, could go back and forth on all aspects of that game forever. I'm sure we'll all talk about it until there's a rematch, hopefully next year. Neilca, you should take your #3, start a new topic and put it in bold letters, maybe someone who signed up to that stupid facebook group will read it and realise what an idiot they were for signing up to it.
I appreciate the respectfulness of your posts on our board, but I don't normally debate the merits of games with other team’s fans in our own forum. I wouldn't post on your board debating errors for/against there. This board is for Rider fans, and comments are for us to discuss. Having said that because for some reason I find myself defending my position to other fans in our Rider forum, I will say this, all games have errors, of course. I would not say that the Als didn't surge back, they played better after the half, however, it still wasn't good enough to win the game. You were behind when the clock clicked 00:00, and were behind the ENTIRE game, and then to cap it off your clutch-play kicker shanked the ball (for which he has done so before in the past under pressure). Done deal. Despite errors on both sides of the ball, the very last one (yes it came down to one play), was one that just shouldn't have happened. Period. The Als received a stroke of luck over something that just simply does not usually happen. Read your own game threads. (Which I never commented on btw), your own fans were thrashing the Als virtually most of the game, several of your fans admitted defeat. So, I stand by my comment, a stroke of luck won the game for you in the end. It wasn't your skill as a team that caused ours to have 13 players on the field. If so, can you teach us that one? Yes, we could have done much better in the second half, etc, etc. Yes, we never should have been in that position. But the fact remains, if the Als didn't receive a stroke of luck by a very unusual penalty on what should have been the last play, that game was done. That Cup was ours......you can't change history despite on how well intentioned your love for your team is.
Because this is the Rider forum, I’m not going to continue this debate, except to note that you are indeed correct: you can’t change history. And history records that the Montreal Alouettes are the 2009 Grey Cup champions.
Thank you for that, and I respect you D&P for your insightfulness, and professional choice of words. On that note, I want to offer you on behalf of Rider Nation our congratulations for winning the Grey Cup, regardless on how your team did it.