Lions @ Argos -- Game Blog -- Post Game Comments

[WestCoastJoe]

Some quick observations ...

Nice to see Mark W running some blitzes. Effectively. It took him a long time this year, with our backs to the wall, to reach this point.

Some twists and stunts. Some overloads. Some disguises.

On O, some good. Some bad. JJ makes a lot of stuff work. Running game horrendous. Andrew should move on. To Calgary or Winnipeg. We do not know how to create space for him. Maybe we should go to more of an Int roster of RBs. If the D can key on one RB they can snuff the run. Two capable RBs? Tougher to defend.

OK, we are learning to walk.

STs beyond abysmal again. Utterly abysmal. Amateurish. Unprepared. Chuck has the deer in headlights look. He has that what happened look. And his troops reflect his confusion. We get killed when opponents study film on us. We seem not to do that. We just line them up. Same old. Same old. Mark W might be saving his career. Chuck? Time to move on.

What happens when a GM is in one place for 13 years? Some coaches stick around who should be cut loose. The GM gets comfy with them. They work hard. The GM thinks they should be OK. Bad decision. One needs objectivity. And a cold heart. But that is the job. And when that GM is ultra conservative in his preferred systems, a kind of rot can set in. We are trying to break out of it, but it is tough.

We might be gradually developing winning spirit. Thanks to JJ. But we have many soft spots.

Leone? How did we miss out on Shawn Whyte who is from White Rock?

[sj-roc]

Why do we struggle so much to score in the final quarter? Especially on the road? We've either been shut out or had only a rouge to show offensively in Q4 a whopping eight times this year, and in seven of our last ten games. In all other quarters combined so far in 2015 (51 in total) we've only matched that level of futility a mere seven times.



This graphic is total pts for, by quarter. I'd also planned to show pts against but it's even more unflattering.

[B.C.FAN]

Two blocked kicks in a game, including a blocked punt for a TD for the third time in five weeks. When was the last time that happened?

Answering one of my own questions after a bit of research: Until this month, no team had given up two blocked kicks in a game in six years. It has happened three times to the Lions in their five games this October.

[chwk_lionsfan]

They almost snatched defeat from the claws of victory.

That called back Rainey punt return TD, was a huge momentum changer, couple that with a blocked punt right after and you could see the wheels coming off.

Somehow they managed to hold on to win, but how many points were left on the field tonight(if you count penalties as well)? 17-21 from my count.

[SammyGreene]

Can’t see how these 4th quarter meltdowns are helping Tedford’s heart condition.

Thank goodness for 2 or 3 clutch plays by Jennings and some very good 4th quarter defence to nullify another nightmare game on special teams and an absolutely horrendous & predictable running game.

Tedford could do himself a huge favour and bench Leone. This convert circus has gone on long enough and frankly makes the club look bad by doing nothing about it. Tedford needs to remember this is professional football not college where he keeps giving chance after chance to justify giving a kid a 4 year scholarship.
A very good bet next Saturday’s game against Calgary will mean nothing. No better time to see how Fera looks.If not that option then pull Curran of the roster since he never gets defensive reps and took a costly illegal block penalty tonight to wipe out a TD.

McMann should have been fired after the Winnipeg debacle. The Lions are getting what they deserve by keeping him employed.

Haven’t seen Jennings have that much trouble reading a defence as he did tonight. Was locked into his primary receiver too much and was going to his check downs a lot. However, even when he is not in top form he has that big play ability to provide quick strikes.

Great job by the defensive front 4. Brooks getting a lot of praise and rightly so but this unit didn’t start to really click until Minter was inserted into the line-up. An unsung hero doing great work in the trenches.

[TheLionKing]

Amazing the difference the insertion of Zach Minter into the defensive tackle has made to the defensive line.

[B.C.FAN]

Amazing the difference the insertion of Zach Minter into the defensive tackle has made to the defensive line.

Yes, and he had been pencilled in for that position from the start of training camp before being injured. Imagine if he had been healthy all year.

[Blitz]

Two blocked kicks in a game, including a blocked punt for a TD for the third time in five weeks. When was the last time that happened?

Answering one of my own questions after a bit of research: Until this month, no team had given up two blocked kicks in a game in six years. It has happened three times to the Lions in their five games this October.

lquote="B.C.FAN"]

What is scarier than a foggy pitch black Halloween night. What is more humiliating that having your worst enemy steal your girlfriend? What could be crueler than being tortured by a psychopath? What makes opposition teams lick their lips with eager anticipation each week?

The answer is having Chuck McMann as your special teams coordinator. He looks confused, disoriented, disassociated. He looks as if he doesn't know what day of the week it is, where he is, or what he is doing. Maybe he is a nice, guy. Maybe he has early Alziemers. Maybe he needs help. But he should never be anywhere close to coaching on a football field. Every football game is Feamright Night with McMann coaching our special teams.

Wally Buono, Mr. 'living legend' himself should be ashamed of foisting McMann on Tedford this season. McMann should have been fired many seasons ago. We've had dozens of games over the past number of seasons where our special teams have been so ill prepared that they have looked like a badly coached pee wee team that never practices special teams play.

bIt is head shaking to remember that we could have had Barrin Miles as our special teams coordinator, as well as working with our defensive backs at one time but instead Wally chose to retain McMann instead...and we lost Miles, who was so highly respected.

When Rainey ran the punt back for a touchdown to give us a huge lead, my stomach finally stopped flipping for a second. After all our Leos had already set a CFL record for most games lost after holding a second half lead. And then I saw the penalty flag. And then the Argos blocked our punt for a touchdown. And then Leone, who probably would have missed the field goal attempt anyway, had his field goal attempt blocked. And then my stomach fell to my feet.

Here are a few more thoughts.

THE GOOD

What is scarier than a foggy pitch black Halloween night. What is more humiliating that having your worst enemy steal your girlfriend? What could be crueler than being tortured by a psychopath? What makes opposition teams lick their lips with eager anticipation each week?

The answer is having Chuck McMann. He looks confused, disoriented, disassociated. He looks as if he doesn't know what day of the week it is, where he is, or what he is doing. Maybe he is a nice, guy. Maybe he has early Alziemers. Maybe he needs help. But he should never be anywhere close to coaching on a football field.

Wally Buono, Mr. 'living legend' himself should be ashamed of foisting McMann on Tedford this season. McMann should have been fired many seasons ago. We've had dozens of games over the past number of seasons where our special teams have been so ill prepared that they have looked like a badly coached pee wee team that never practices special teams play.

When Rainey ran the punt back for a touchdown to give us a huge lead, my stomach finally stopped flipping for a second. After all our Leos had already set a CFL record for most games lost after holding a second half lead. And then I saw the blocked punt for a touchdown, the blocked Leone field goal attempt, and began to believe we would be haunted again and especially on this pre-Halloween eve night in which I believed we had to beat the Argos to win a playoff spot.

Here are a few additional thoughts.

THE GOOD

Jonathan Jennings didn't have a great game. He threw two ill advised passes that he should not have. But this rookie made some incredible throws. He ran for a key first down and threw two incredible passes down the stretch to Arsenault and Hawkins. He kept his poise, even when the wheels looked like they were coming off. Jennings also demonstrated chemistry with Harris out of the backfield in this game.

Jeff Tedford's influence on our passing offence continues. The touchdown pass to Burnham was but one of many examples of a play that we would never have seen in Cortez's boring spread scheme if we had just left him to continue running our offence on his own.

Manny Arsenault is a different player since Tedford got involved with the offence and Jennings took over the controls. His second and third effort after catching the football is impressive. Harris has also showed incredible effort to get YAC.

Hawkins is the real deal. His ability to get open deep and Jennings ability to hit him deep with incredibly accurate long throws is to watch performance art at its best.

Defensively, we got a ton of pressure on Ricky Ray. We blitzed him a lot. Brooks and Minter got a ton of pressure on him inside. Bazzie and Menard also had very good games. We harried Ray, got him to dump a lot underneath to avoid sacks. We also sacked Ray at key times.

We've had 25 quarterback sacks over our last 6 games. We only had 21 quarterback sacks in our first 11 games. The difference - stunts, blitzes, and getting our personnel right on the defensive line. (So much for Wally's deception about defensive line pressure in our first 11 games as well as Wally's ill conceived ideas of playing Roh inside and Westerman outside - and they were his ideas..and he said so)

Adam Bighill was all over the place, demonstrating his pure linebacking skills rather than free safety skills. Our defense, now that we have the right personell in the right places and we are playing much more aggressively, scheme wise, at times, is better reflecting its talent.

THE BAD

Our running attack has gone south. Once again it was poorly play called and designed. Having Harris be given a handoff on a perimeter run and pulling the onside guard and expecting the center to block the onside defensive tackle with the flow of the play is ridiculous. Running the fake reverse and then handing off to Harris inside is stupid if you run this same play time and again and never use the reverse. Defenses just ignore the reverse man and Toronto did time and again. Harris was stuffed, as well as dropped for losses, not due to bad blocking as much as bad running play design and bad play calling.

Penalties hurt us time and again. The touchdown return by Rainey, called back for an undisciplined block was a turning point. A key Harris run in the late stages of the game was called back due to a hold. Lee took a bad facemask penalty that was unnecessary and came at a terrible time, with Toronto pinned down. We were fortunate that it did not cost us the game.

THE UGLY

Watching the poor preparation of our special teams play, each and every week, is ugly. Watching McMann on the sidelines trying to figure out what happened after each special teams miscue is ugly. Watching Leone attempt to kick converts and field goals has become ugly. Watching our special teams not have a clue about blocking schemes is ugly (and embarrassing).

With one game left get Fera on the roster. He needs to kick for a game before the playoffs. Get Leone away from kicking any field goals. Get McMann away from even going near our special teams units. Get Tedford or Aragki to coach the special teams for the rest of the season.

Someone in the newspapers please put some pressure on McMann, as well as Wally, who is ultimately responsible for having McMann here. He must come cheap, idolize Wally, and whipper snipsWally's lawn for free to still be here.

WRAP

If Edmonton wins, we'll be in the playoffs. Ten losses so far this season. Blown half time leads and fourth quarter leads. Our coaches don't deserve a playoff game, exept perhaps Tedford, who has had his work cut out for him. But our players and fans do deserve a playoff game for putting up with this circus called Wally's World.

Go Edmonton. Thanks Leos players for gutting out a win that embarrassing special teams coaching tried to throw away again.

[DanoT]

While the D line played well and had a surprising number of sacks and pressures on Ray, including the hit on Ray that allowed Philips to make the game ending interception, a lot of those were coverage sacks. Think about it, Ricky Ray a master at the quick release, was hanging onto the ball long enough for the D line and blitzers to get to him. This could only happen if the LBs and DBs are in tight coverage. So congrats to all of the players on D and to DC Washington who called a good game, with only one 3 man rush play that I could see and even that play worked as the Ray pass was caught and the receiver immediately tackled short of a first down.

[Blitz]

While the D line played well and had a surprising number of sacks and pressures on Ray, including the hit on Ray that allowed Philips to make the game ending interception, a lot of those were coverage sacks. Think about it, Ricky Ray a master at the quick release, was hanging onto the ball long enough for the D line and blitzers to get to him. This could only happen if the LBs and DBs are in tight coverage. So congrats to all of the players on D and to DC Washington who called a good game, with only one 3 man rush play that I could see and even that play worked as the Ray pass was caught and the receiver immediately tackled short of a first down.

We ran a ton of end/tackle stunts, tackle/tackle stunts, and blitz stunts in this game.

I don't buy that our problem was that Minter was injured early in the season. We could have inserted a big import tackle, other than Roh playing inside and rotated Westerman inside as we are now. We could have run more blitzes and stunts.

Instead we used a straight up pass rush and a passive zone defense, while dropping Bighill as a second safety. It was stupid. What our Leos defense is doing now is what a lot of Lionbacker posters said we should be doing early this season.

Thankfully, finally we are using smarter defensive schemes and the results are very evident.

[almo89]

Just finished watching the post game locker room reaction. Team looks jacked. Players seemed to bond with Tedford at the end.

[BC 1988]

Tedford could do himself a huge favour and bench Leone. This convert circus has gone on long enough and frankly makes the club look bad by doing nothing about it. Tedford needs to remember this is professional football not college where he keeps giving chance after chance to justify giving a kid a 4 year scholarship.
A very good bet next Saturday’s game against Calgary will mean nothing. No better time to see how Fera looks.If not that option then pull Curran of the roster since he never gets defensive reps and took a costly illegal block penalty tonight to wipe out a TD.

McMann should have been fired after the Winnipeg debacle. The Lions are getting what they deserve by keeping him employed.

Agreed, but I doubt they will take that opportunity to give Fera a try (even if BC is already in the playoffs).

[peeby]

cro-ny (noun)

a close friend or companion: "For special teams coach, the GM hired a crony."

synonyms: friend, companion, bosom buddy, a McMann, and in some cases, *******Rude term edited by Mod staff

[dat]

Couldn't agree more with what previous posters were saying about special teams play against TO. Wally has never had a problem cutting players who didn't measure up. Why hasn't he taken the same approach with some coaches ? I give the offence and defence a pass because improvement has been made. However the ST's have been terrible most of the year. Not so much on returns where Rainey and Murray- Lawrence have been good. On punt and kick blocking, converts and opposition returns they have been poor to horrible. The number of blocked punts, converts and FG's the Leos have given up must be a record. Then you can add the number of times the Lions have been caught giving the ball back when the opposition tries an onside kick or a fake punt. Let's see the other team is down by 6 points with 45 seconds left in the game and they're about to kick off after scoring a TD. I bet they're going to try an onside kick. Oh they did and they recovered it. Chuck looks surprised on the sidelines. What I don't get is that I've never seen a sportscaster corner Chuck after a game and say " Coach , your teams had 3 kicks blocked today and you gave up a fake punt for a first down. What's going on ? " You'd think that after a horrendous game like the Winnipeg one they would have done everything possible to prevent a reoccurrence. I can't remember a game when Leone made all his convert attempts. I get that he is a good punter. The blame in not just on him because he's not up front blocking or designing the schemes. However the special teams cannot continue to gift wrap 10- 14 points a game to the opposition and expect to win.

dat

[LionsLip]

I would say we were very fortunate to have won that game last night. But give me a break, how could you possibly allow a field goal to be blocked at that critical juncture of the game! How long before we loose a game by one or two points.... two missed converts and a missed field goal I think! To top it off a brilliant punt return called back on a hold. How long do we put up with this! I really do like Leon as a punter, but his place kicking is something to be desired! I wish we could have picked up Sean Whyte for that. On a positive note, the defense was stellar! Offense so, so. Jennings threw a few bad picks and I guess they figured they could run Harris up the gut a few too many times. They were also lucky to commit that many turn overs and still win the game. Let's tighten up the ship and I'm sure we could give the Esks/Stamps a run for their money if we make the playoffs....so far, so good. See what happens in tomorrow's Edmonton/Montreal game. So close I can taste it!