On the road again
Just can't wait to get back on the road again (Willie Nelson)
Our Leos won their second road game in a row to go 2-1 for the season. We beat the Argos last week, a team that was coming off an impressive season opener and last night we defeated a Montreal team that was determined to play tough at home.
Lets have a closer look at the contest.
Our Leos came into this game as the CFL's top, rushing team. But for most of the game against the Als, our Leos offence focused on the pass. Jennings threw 39 passes in the contest, completing 28 of them for an impressive 72% completion rate.
However, Jennings threw for less than 300 yards in the contest (288) and once again, for most of the game, our offence struggled to put points up on the board, as it has for long stretches of our first two contests.
Prior to playing Montreal, our offence had only scored one touchdown prior to the fourth quarter. The pattern repeated itself. Our offence started the game like gangbusters, driving the length of the field on 9 plays before hitting paydirt.
Jeremiah Johnson came into this game as the CFL's leading rusher. He also had a 7.0 run average. Not in this contest. Montreal shut down our inside zone read play and Johnson only had 34 yards rushing and a miserable 2.8 yds. per carry, his average fattened by an 11 yard run. Noel Thorpe and his defenders completely shut down our running game.
However, Johnson was a threat of the backfield, finishing the game as our leading pass receiver, with 68 yds. in receptions. Bryan Burnham added 53 yards on 4 receptions. Manny caught the most passes in this game (6) but most were of the shorter variety for 48 yds. Manny did get open deep once and forced Montreal to take a pass interference penalty
Montreal mostly took away our deep and deep intermediate passes all game, while shutting down our running game. Only Shaq Johnson and Jeremiah Johnson were able to haul in the longer receptions that have been a trademark of our offence.
A big positive of this game is that Montreal only sacked Jennings once. We had given up 9 sacks in our first two games. Jennings had been hit, sacked, pressured, and harassed on almost every passing play. Montreal only had one sack going into this game, so its difficult to assess if our offensive line played better or Montreal just was inadequate.
Outside of some fourth quarter heroics and an impressive opening drive in this contest, our Leos offence has not impressed so far this season. Khari Jones supposedly spent a long time in the off-season making some adjustments to his scheme.
The only adjustments that I am seeing so far has been the use of Jeremiah Johnson out of the backfield as a receiver. Last season Johnson was mostly used as a runner and blocker. Jones is failing to get Rainey into space, where his speed and cutting ability make him dangerous. The name of the game to defend our Leos is to shut down our running game and our deep and deep intermediate passing game. Defenses also like to play us with man coverage, with zone over the top.
Jones has not been able to counter it very well. We still do not have a well designed passing attack against man and when Jones does use horizontal passing plays, too often he doesn't use our speed receivers on those types of routes.
DEFENCE
Montreal came into this contest with less than 200 yds. passing per game. Durrant has stuggled so far as Montreal's starting quarterback. Montreal has relied on Sutton and their running game so far this season for any offensive success.
Sutton came into this contest as the CFL's second leading rusher. He also had a 6.2 run yard average. Sutton rushed for only 54 yards in this game. He had a 6.0 yd average on 9 runs. Montreal would have been wiser to let him carry the rock more. He is shifty and very hard to bring down to the turf.
Durrant played his best game of the season so far, throwing for 245 yards (67|%). But he failed to lead Montreal into the end zone or put up points. Durrant may get better as the season goes on but I believed, going into this season, that Montreal would have been better off rebuilding for the future than going with an often injured quarterback who is aging and whose best days have seemed to be behind him.
But Montreal's offensive woes just can't be blamed on Durrant. The rhetoric coming from the Als it remains unchanged from game to game, week to week, year to year. The season’s still early. The players, all of them working with quarterback Darian Durant for the first time, require time to develop chemistry.
Seventeen points and two touchdowns in Week 1.. Nineteeen points and one trip to the end zone in Week 2. In this game the Als didnt' score a touchdown until midway through the fourth quarter.
Its now three seasons into trying to discover an offence in Montreal. Our defense took advantage, as most opposing defenses do, holding Montreal to 16 offensive points.
But our Leos defence failed to sack Durrant once in this game, even though we used a lot of defensive lineman once again. We did get good pressure at times and forced Durrant to run with the football.
Sol E. was a one man tackling machine against Montreal, with 15 recorded tackles. One of my favorite two Leos defensive backs - Anthony Gaitor had an interception. Our Leos defensive backfield is playing a bit more aggressive this season and that is resulting in a higher interception rate so far this season.
Our Leos defense only gave up 3 big plays - a 34-yard pass to B.J. Cunningham, a 31-yard pass to Ernest Jackson, the free-agent addition from Ottawa and a 27 yard pass to Tiquan Underwood. Cutting down on opposition offences big plays has been important. Last season our defense gave up more big plays than any defense in the CFL.
But our pass rush needs to get better. But we are younger, faster, and more athletic on defense for 2017 and that should pay dividends if we scheme properly.
SPECIAL TEAMS
Ty Long played his third game of the season. He looks confident as a field goal kicker but his lack of experience as a punter is still obvious.
Our blocking on punt returns still needs a lot of work. Rainey only averaged 7.5 yds per punt return in this game and Iannuzzi averaged 8 yds per punt return while Stephan Logan averaged 27.5 yds per punt return.
Michael Awe and Jordan Herdman led our downfield tacklers in this game with two tackles each while Purifoy, Fenner, Clarke, Shaq Johnson, and Mike Benson made contributions. Fenner's hard hit and tackle on Stephan Johnson probably saved a touchdown.
WRAP
Khari Jones has a lot of work to do to get our offence untracked. There is just way too much talent, speed, and athletic ability on our offence to be shut off the scoreboard for such long periods during games. Scoring only two touchdowns in the first three quarters of three games now is not good enough. Offensive scheme and play call adjustments need to be made.
But the positive is that we won two games on the road and return to B.C. with a winning record. Momentum and confidence are important aspects to winning.
A hard fought road victory. Not pretty at times. But a win is a win and a win on the road is always a very good win.