Moderator: Team Captains
cromartie wrote:Well, for one thing, our starting QB could be done for the year with a screwed up shoulder. Or we could be Winnipeg. Or we could live in Hamilton.WestCoastJoe wrote:
Worse problems? 129 yard TD return? 10 point swing?
Not sure where where you are coming from on that one, cro.
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Worse problems.
Thanks for posting that article, BCFAN.B.C.FAN wrote:Mike Benevides said Sunday that the Lions do in fact have a special field goal unit for long attempts where a runback is possible. It wasn't used on Saturday because the coaches thought the kicks were in McCallum's range.
Mike Beamish article
It has been noticeable that missed field goals provide a dangerous return option in the last couple of years. Teams are doing more to take advantage of it.By Mike Beamish, Vancouver Sun July 15, 2012
VANCOUVER - Despite being confined by sidelines and stadiums and congested with officials and 24 players, a Canadian Football League field is a remarkably large piece of real estate, as CFL coaches are being reminded this season, to their dismay.
Taking it to the house has become endemic, with seven return touchdowns coming in the first 12 games of the 2012 season, a boon to fans who regard runbacks of a punt, kickoff or missed field goal for scores as the most exciting play in football.
Hope you’re having fun, says B.C. Lions head coach Mike Benevides, because he’s not.
The Lions have given up return touchdowns in successive weeks, to Hamilton and Saskatchewan, the latter costing them a 23-20 decision Saturday in Regina, where Paul McCallum shanked a 40-yard field goal attempt and the Roughriders Tristan Jackson ran it back 129 yards for a touchdown.
Looked like a clip. Stuff happens.Jackson’s return, which gave the ‘Riders a 23-13 lead, was historic -- the longest touchdown resulting from a missed field goal in team history, and the third-longest in the annals of the CFL. But history did get a helpful push.
Video replays clearly showed Lions tackler Khreem Smith being shoved from behind by the Roughriders’ Brent Hawkins -- an illegal tactic -- at the Saskatchewan goal line just as Jackson was making his move upfield.
Because of it, a lane opened, and the speedy Jackson was off to the races.
Three officials, two of them planted by the goalpost, had an excellent view of Hawkins’ infraction but we’re frozen into inaction.
“They’re [CFL headquarters] clearly aware of what’s going on,” Benevides said in his post-mortem Sunday at Lions HQ in Surrey. “They do a great job over there [Toronto] and they keep their eyes on stuff. The game is fast.”
Good. Take care of it.Jackson’s was the fifth return touchdown of the young CFL season. Hamilton’s Chris Williams, who had a 67-yard punt return TD against the Lions on July 6, added two more against Toronto in a later Saturday game, on a punt return and runback from a missed field goal.
“I’m a fan of our league, I love our game,” Benevides said. “Right now, the cover teams aren’t matching what the returners are doing. And it’s fun to watch runbacks for touchdowns in someone else’s game. But it can’t and will not happen again in one of our games.”
Bomber field goal. And IMO McCallum has been so accurate that the team has not had to cover these types of missed FGs very often in the last couple of years. It seems we were caught a little bit off guard.This thought touched why unsuccessful field goal attempts are such dangerous propositions for the kicking team. Seven of the 12 Lions participating in an attempt -- the kicker, holder and five offensive linemen -- are players not normally required or capable of tracking down speedy returners, once they start upfield.
“You can tweak some personnel, but you can’t tweak all of them,” Benevides said. “We have what we call ‘Bomber field goal’ -- it’s a long field goal attempt in a range where we think it might not be successful. Then we need a different kind of athlete on the cover team. That was not in play Saturday. It was a 40-yard attempt. The way Paul is so good at what he does, it wasn’t a concern.”
I'm not concerned with Paul McCallum at this point. He has been money. I fully expect he and his holder and snapper will get it corrected.The concern, however, is that McCallum missed two, makable field-goal attempts Saturday. His first mistake, from 44 yards out, was returned by Jackson to midfield, and the Roughriders used the favourable field position to kick a field goal a few plays later.
Still, the ageless kicker perhaps is being judged too harshly by the impossibly high standards he set last year, when McCallum missed on only three of 53 field-goal attempts, setting a CFL record for proficiency of 94.9 per cent.
In the previous five seasons to 2011, all with B.C., he averaged a success rate of 85.1 per cent.
Prior to joining the Lions in 2006, McCallum averaged 75.8 per cent on field goal attempts in his last five seasons with the Roughriders.
With three misses in three games this season, the 42-year-old may simply be returning to earth and his historical average. He is a 75 per cent field goal kicker (nine of 12 attempts) in 2012.
“When you kick as many field goals as Paul has over his career, you’re going to have some times like this,” suggested his new holder, Mike Reilly. “I’m confident we’ll get it turned around.”
“I’m struggling right now,” McCallum agreed. “But I’ll get it sorted out. I expect to make those kicks, and I haven’t been.”
Oh yeah, it was huge. 10 point swing.While the missed kick initiated the sequence which led to Jackson’s touchdown, Benevides said the disastrous consequences could have been limited if the Lions had spread the return coverage properly.
“You want to create what we call a ‘net’ around the returner, and our guys didn’t do a good enough job of it,” he said. “When the net got cast, there was a void in it. When you have a hole, you have a problem. The result of a game is based on a couple of plays, and that was one of them there.”
Of course, he’s not letting McCallum off the hook entirely.
“The best thing is putting the ball through the uprights,” Benevides said, offering a succinct remedy to the problem.
Fact is with most kickers these days anything from 40 on in is considered automatic unless wind is a factor. Saturday was one of those rare Regina occasions where wind was not a factor. There is always a possibility of a miss but the stats show the percentage to be extremely low. Anything from 35 or closer normally is through the endzone and 35-40 should be deep enough that most returners won't return them for fear of a good chewing out on the sidelines if they don't get them at least out to the 20. Coaching is about calculating risk and reward. I would submit that if Benevides wants to prepare the FG block scheme in fear of the 1 in 50 chance McCallum will miss from 40 then he won't be in this business long.B.C.FAN wrote:Paul has been so automatic in recent years that it's easy to forget that he's human. Sorry, he is and the coaching staff should have prepared accordingly. This one is on the coaches.
Mike Beamish article
