GDT -- The Playoffs Have Arrived - Leos vs Hamilton in East Semi-Final

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Blitz
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Our 9-9 B.C. Lions play the 8-10 Hamilton Tiger Cats in the East Semi-Final on Sunday.

Our Leos, who finished 4th in the West secured the cross-over playoff berth to play the East 2nd place Tiger Cats by having a better regular season record than the Montreal Alouttes, who finished 3rd in the East.

It’s Going to Be a Cat Fight - A Look at the Matchup
"If you want it you're gonna bleed but it's the price to pay"
Guns and Roses
Both teams split the season series. Neither team enters this game with momentum.

Our Leos lost decisively to both the Saskatchewan RoughRiders and the Calgary Stampeders. Neither a shot at a second-place finish in the West nor Wally Buono night could get our Leos playing their best football in those two contests.
In our last two games, we’ve been outscored 51-25 and the opposition’s defense has scored as many touchdowns (two) as our Lions’ offence over that span.
Our running game, which was so important to our offensive success in our wins over Ottawa, Calgary, and Edmonton, barely produced 100 combined yards in our two recent losses to Saskatchewan and Calgary, as Sutton was held down in both contests.
Our Lions’ defense, which is our strength has surrendered 344 rushing yards in those two recent losses.
Our Leos were only 2-7 on the road this season and will need to play much better away from home if they are going to win this contest.

The Hamilton Tiger Cats have also struggled recently, losing their last 3 games, including a pivotal game against Ottawa, which would have given them a shot at 1st place in the East.
The Tiger Cats offence has been decimated with injuries this season and especially to their receiving corps. They haven’t looked like the same offence since their leading receiver Brandon Banks was lost for the season.
But they also lost Jalen Saunders, who was having an outstanding season, as well as Chris Williams, who came to Hamilton in the trade.

Our Leos are favored to win this game.

LULAY WILL START AT QUARTERBACK

Travis Lulay will start at quarterback for our Leos. It will be Lulay’s first start in a playoff game since 2013. Our Leos lost that game to the Riders.
Since 2011, we are 1-5 in the playoffs. Our only playoff victory since that season was when Jennings led us to a late fourth quarter victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 2016, after Mark Washington’s defense gave up 25 first half points to the Bombers.
Last season Buono’s Leos didn’t make the playoffs for the first time in over two decades. This season, the same fate looked likely and it took a second half turnaround, an Edmonton collapse in the second half of this season, and huge come from behind victories, led by both Jennings and Lulay, against Hamilton at home and Edmonton at home to secure the playoff berth.
It also required a tremendous defensive game against Calgary, to secure a cross-over playoff spot. With the talent on this Leos team, a playoff berth should have been secure for 2018.
Buono named Lulay as our starter for the East Semi-Final, as expected. The decision is the most sensible, as Lulay has been our starter now for our last four games. It was also expected.

If Buono was willing to sit MOP Casey Printers in 2004 to play a rusty Dickenson in the Grey Cup game and if he was willing to pull Jarious Jackson (who had quarterbacked us to 9 wins in our last 11 games) in the 2nd quarter of the 2007 West Final, to insert a rusty Dickenson once again, one had to know he would go with his veteran quarterback.
The bigger question will be, should our offence struggle, is whether he will insert Jonathan Jennings or not. Buono pulled Dickenson and inserted Casey Printers into the West Final playoff game, late in the 4th quarter in 2005 but usually he has gone all the way with his starter since 2007.
Hopefully, that question will not need to be asked for this playoff game, Lulay will go all the way at quarterback, and our Leos offence will play well.

A positive is that Jonathan Jennings has had playing time in our last two contests, so he is not rusty, should he be needed to play.
Jonathan Jennings finished the 2018 season with a higher quarterback passing percentage (85.6) than Travis Lulay (84.8). Jonathan Jennings also finished the 2018 season with a higher quarterback efficiency (60.3) to Travis Lulay’s quarterback efficiency of 57.3
.

We also had a winning record when Jennings was our quarterback whereas we lost more games than we won with Lulay at the controls. Jennings also had a lower interception rate (2.9) to Lulay (3.5) but both quarterbacks threw more interceptions than touchdown passes.

Jennings also had a higher passing percentage, completing 67.4% of his passes compared to Lulay’s pass percentage of 60.1%. Lulay had a better yds. per pass completion average (8.0) to Jennings 6.8 yd. average per completion.
Lulay went vertical for long pass completions more often this season while the former gunslinger Jonathan Jennings became more of a possession type passer.


Jennings was much more of a running threat this season than Travis Lulay. Jennings ran for 226 yds while seeing less action than Lulay, who only ran for 72 yds in 2018.

What does this all mean?

Well, firstly, for the Jarious Jackson’s and the Ed Willes who were enthusiastic about throwing Jonathan Jennings under a bus this season, with public comments as Jennings was not smart enough to quarterback a CFL pro offence or was not a competent CFL quarterback, their comments were unfair, demeaning, and wrong.
Jonathan Jennings finished this season as the CFL’s 7th rated quarterback. Travis Lulay finished this season as the CFL’s 9th rated quarterback.
Both quarterbacks had similar overall statistics, with one being a bit better at a certain phase of the game and vice-versa.

Both quarterbacks have proven in the past that they could get it done and done well. Both quarterbacks, this season, when not stuck in RPO or the short pre-snap passing game, with RPO styled pass patterns, could be explosive.
Both quarterbacks showed what they could accomplish, when we were playing from behind and forced to open our offence up, using traditional pass blocking and vertical layered pass routes.
Jonathan Jennings was spectacular in the second half of our home victory against Hamilton. The contrast between that half and his play in the first half of the Hamilton road game, when we were back in RPO, was more than obvious.

Travis Lulay lit up Edmonton in the second half of another key matchup but struggled mightily against the Riders when we went back to RPO again.
But it has not just been our passing game that has struggled in RPO. We only had 3 games this season when our tailback rushed for over 100 yds.
Jeremiah Johnson did that against Ottawa and Terrel Sutton did that in his first two starts. But Sutton has only rushed for 50 yds and 15 yds. in our last two games and he has only averaged 3.9 yds. per carry over those two contests.
In Sutton’s first two starts, we used a lot of pre-snap run plays, with our guards and tackles pulling and making kick out blocks. It was very successful. But in our last two contests we’ve mostly used Sutton for RPO styled post-snap run plays and the results have been dismal.


In fact, we are more successful with Jeremiah Johnson at tailback when we use RPO styled run plays.

'NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR SCHEME' SAYS JARIOUS JACKSON

Jarious Jackson is either delusional or in ego denial when he said this week:
“I don’t think there was anything wrong with scheme. I just think it was more the guys (not) being locked in whereas this week if you got to get guys locked in then you got the wrong guys. The last couple of games the guys were content and let the opportunity (to host a home playoff game) slip.”
Lowell Ullrich, the only sports reporter with the courage to ask questions about our offensive scheme, pointed out this week that our offence needs ‘a wakeup call but there is little to suggest that one is in the offing, based on Jarious Jackson’s comments.

It’s not just that our offence has only averaged 236 yds. in our last two games or that Bryan Burnham was our only receiver to hit the 1,000 yd. mark or that Lulay and Jennings only have three 300 yd. plus passing games this season or that we only have three games in which our tailback (Johnson, Sutton) have more than a 100 yds. rushing.
The reality is that Jackson’s offensive scheme, mainly made up of RPO post snap run or pass plays, or possession style pre-snap pass plays sucks.
This is supposed to be a high percentage passing offence and it’s been anything but that. It’s also supposed to feature successful first down run or pass plays, based on a post-snap read and we’ve been anything but successful.
Our Leos offence finished the season ranked 7th in points scored, 7th in passing yards, 8th in rushing, 7th in time of possession, 6th in giving up quarterback sacks, and 8th in turnovers.
Wow. Jackson’s offence has not only been mediocre at both the run and the pass.

We also have given up way too many sacks and turned the football over way too many times for what is supposed to be a possession style offence that takes advantage of post-snap reads to run or pass effectively, gets rid of the football quickly to prevent sacks, has a high percentage pass completion rate, and low turnovers.
How is that working out? It’s NOT. And yet Jackson says he is not changing it.

THE KEYS TO WINNING THIS GAME

There is no question that there are keys to winning this game. They are the following:

1.We Have to Run the Football and We Have to Threaten Deep with the Pass

We all know that we must run the football, but we won’t be able to do that with RPO because Hamilton will put an extra defender in the box on first down to not only stop the run but also to force the RPO post-snap read into a pass play. In other words, their defense will predicate pass on first down.

Therefore, we must do two things.
Firstly, we have to go with pre-snap running designed running plays on first down.

When we decide to pass on first down, we need to go with pre-snap designed pass plays, with traditional type pass blocking and we need to threaten deep.
Why? Because if we don’t, Hamilton will keep that extra defender in the box on first down and not have to adjust because they will not feel ‘threatened’ by our short passing game. It’s also predictable so they can jump routes when the opportunity arises.
If we can successfully throw deep, it will force Hamilton to take that extra defender out of the box and therefore create more running game success.
There is a possibility that we might dress both Sutton and Johnson. Sutton is the best north-south runner in the CFL, but Johnson is one of the CFL's best off-tackle runners.
He is also outstanding out of the backfield, with 40 receptions on 42 pass targets and he makes defenders miss. A one-two punch could pay dividends.

2.We Have to Stop the Run

Our defense led the CFL in interceptions this season and pass knockdowns and tied for 2nd in CFL sacks.
But we were 7th in terms of rushing yards against and 7th in terms of opposition yds. per rush.
Sol E. could start in this game.

I have never been a proponent of playing rusty players in a playoff game. It certainly didn’t work for us in 2004, 2005, and 2007 when Wally chose to go with a rusty Dickenson at quarterback.

But I would rather have us go with Sol E than Michael Awe at middle linebacker. A second option would be to with Herdman at middle linebacker and Lokombo go all the way at outside linebacker. He is too good to just be rotating in. Davis could rotate in.
The return of Sol E could also be inspirational for our defense. But it’s not just a personnel issue. Washington could also improve our run defense by scheme too.
But Washington is a pass defense first coordinator and we are weak against the run due to formation on first down.

3. We Have to Stay in Man Defense Most of the Time

Our defense was playing great until we played Hamilton this season. We had switched to man defense and we were playing aggressively and successfully. June Jones decided he didn’t want his offence to be dealing with our man defense.

So, he adjusted his run and shoot offence, going with a lot of quad receiver sets to the wide side and then sending his back out to the short side flat while our linebackers dropped off into underneath zone, due to Masoli running with the football, while our defenders played man.
Mark Washington adjusted by going back to zone. Hamilton’s offence successfully exploited our zone defense in both contests. They took advantage of all the vulnerabilities in Washington’s zone defense approach.
But we can still play man against June Jones strategy. One of the ways to do that is to take T.J. Lee and have him play man on the short side isolation receiver. At the same time, all we need to do is have Lokombo cover the back out of the backfield in man defense while our middle linebacker is responsible for Masoli running with the football.
If we ever chose to, when we do switch up and go zone on occasion, we could choose to put Lee on Tasker in man while everyone else plays zone. Chris Jones uses Marshall in this way to take away the opposition’s best receiver.


I have always believed that Korey Banks was the best man cover defender to ever play in the CFL (of course, we mostly stuck him in zone defense). But T.J. Lee may be just as good. He’s an incredible man defense defender and we need to use those talents to their best advantage in this game.

4. We Can’t Be Overly Conservative

We need to do all the ‘old fashioned’ things that never go out of style in a playoff game. We need to run the football successfully, not get into second and long, and when we pass, we have to threaten all areas of the field, vertically and horizontally.

On defense, the same tried and true equation works. Stop the run, put the defense in second and long, and get pressure on the opposing quarterback.

But there is one thing that doesn’t work and that is being too conservative. Wally has always been a fear-based coach that is usually written up as ‘conservative’ or ‘not taking chances’. He tends to even simplify strategy and game planning even more than ever for a playoff game, which can make us overly predictable.
But we can’t be too predictable. It hurt us so much in the past by being so. We can’t just always play for field position. When field goals are in Long’s range, we have to attempt them.
If we have the lead, we can’t just play fear-based defense, dropping everyone off into zone defense, which Wally has still had a penchant to do this season with a lead.
Finally, we can’t get ‘stuck’. If something isn’t working, we can’t just do the old Wally thing and keep hitting our head against it. In game adjustments are important and rigidity is a recipe for disaster.
Our Leos are the better team going into this contest. Our Leos have the better record, more talent, and more physicality. We are also a more veteran team.

Bryan Burnham said:
“Man, we’re in a good spot. We’re not worried. There’s no worries. I think we’re in a very good place, mentally. I’m excited. We’re all excited.”
The Tiger Cats are also suffering at the receiver position. But they do have three starters returning. include shutdown cornerback Delvin Breaux and starting offensive tackles, Ryker Mathews and Kelvin Palmer (Palmer was awful for us last season)

Hamilton’s safety Mike Davis said this week, after practice:
“With Lulay there, he’s going to be going through the same reads (as Jennings),” “He’s a little quicker to pull the trigger but Jonathon added that running aspect so it’s like you give, take. What’s better than the other? I’m not too sure.”
But June Jones will likely prepare differently for Lulay, worrying less about him running and focusing more on Travis throwing quickly off his first read.

What I see Lulay being able to do against Hamilton is to hurt them deep and we have the weapons to do so. Lulay was very good at the deep ball this season.

WRAP

So, we’ll know on Sunday, whether our Leos will be playing in the East Final with a shot at a Grey Cup berth after Sunday’s game or whether it all ends in Hamilton.
It’s going to feel exciting. It feels like a long time since we played in a playoff game.
With only one playoff win since 2011, so it would be a treat to see a victory. Lulay's last playoff victory was in 2011. Be nice to see the vet win this game.

Go Leos.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
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B.C.FAN
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You know things are bleak in the Hammer when the Ticats are looking to Kelvin Palmer to upgrade their offensive line. Shawn Lemon and Odell Willis should be licking their lips.

I'm not sure that Delvin Breaux is healthy enough to shut down receivers as he has in the past. I wouldn't be surprised if the Lions test him early with DeVier Posey or Bryan Burnham.

I see two keys to the game:
1. Defence. Blitz was more detailed in his breakdown but that includes pressuring Jeremiah Masoli, playing man defence and stopping the run.
2. Ball security. The Lions are 2-7 on the road largely because they've given away too many games with costly early turnovers. First-half fumbles or interceptions that turn into Hamilton points must be avoided at all costs.
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WestCoastJoe
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Thanks for the detailed game preview, Blitz.

Keys:

Run the ball with some deception in the preparation. The TiCats will work their butts off to stop runs up the middle. Be nice if we worked in some misdirection, sweeps, etc. Faint hope?

Less RPO. Faint hope?

Vertical passing calls, pre-snap. Attack all areas of the field. Hopefully not go with a pablum, roll out the same old game plan.

Pressure the QB. I think we need to blitz a fair amount, with some disguise. Mix up the MTM and zone coverages.

Stunt, move and vary the lineup at the LOS. Cannot give them the same looks all the time.

Very faint hope --> Move Thompson around, deep, shorter, close. Why the heck not? It seems to this fan that he rarely gets into the play when we keep playing him deep, in no man's land.

It will certainly be a good test against Jones and Glanville. They will be giving their team detailed, fresh game plans, focusing on tendencies and vulnerabilities. What a concept! Ha ha
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

Jimmy Johnson's Game Keys: Protect the ball. Make plays.

Walter Payton's Advice to Kids: Play hard. Play fair. Have fun.
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Sir Purrcival
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This game is basically going to turn on one thing. The ability of BC to put pressure on and containing Masoli. If they just pressure, he will run and he will hurt us badly if he gets in the open field.
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Need to focus on the task at hand; no dinner the night before with David Braley :rotf:
Blitz
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Our Leos have been much better than the Tiger Cats in the 2nd half of the 2018 season and that provides some confidence.


Our Leos won six of their post-Labour Day games until we dropped our final two, against Saskatchewan and Calgary.

Since beating the Argos on Labour Day, the Ticats have gone 3-5 and haven’t won at home since the invigorating win over B.C.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
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It will be a zero anxiety game for me. Win and that's great, we move on to the EF. Lose and we clean house. Either way I'm good.
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Need to focus on the task at hand; no dancing on the logo.
Blitz
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I’m hoping that our offence will play well in this game.
But Jarious Jackson is very wrong when he said that its not our offensive scheme that is the major problem.
Why? Because no matter who has been at quarterback, no matter who has been at the tailback position (Johnson, Rainey, Vann, or Sutton) and no matter who we have brought in to help our offence (eg: Figueroa, Olifioye, Posey, Parker) it has not made much of a difference.
Our Leos offence only averaged 311 yds. per game this season, which was 8th in the CFL and only better than Montreal. (McAdoo’s RPO offence in Regina was 7th in the CFL).
In terms of passing yards, we only averaged 237 yds. of passing per game (7th) in 2011.

We rushed the football even worse, only averaging 94 yds. per contest.
In terms of passing percentage, with a so called high percentage passing RPO offence, Travis Lulay ranked 11th amongst CFL quarterbacks in terms of pass percentage success rate.
Both Travis Lulay and Jonathan Jennings threw more interceptions than touchdown passes. Lulay, who is known for being an accurate thrower and a quarterback who reads a defense very well had a higher interception rate than Jonathan Jennings. Jennings interception rate was 2.9.
Lulay’s interception rate of 3.5 was the worst of the 10 quarterbacks in the CFL this season who had more than 200 pass attempts in 2018.
.

We only had 3 games this season in which our quarterbacks threw for over 300 yds of offence and we only had 3 games in which our tailback rushed for over 100 yds.

As mentioned in my first post for this thread, our offence has only looked good when we’ve been out of RPO, such as when we were behind at home against Hamilton and we went non-RPO and instead went with traditional pre-snap pass blocking and opened up our offence for Jennings. The same scenario occurred for Travis Lulay, in the second half against Edmonton at home.

The reality is that our offence has only been successful most of the time when we’ve run the football well when we used more pre-snap run plays in three games or when Lulay or Jennings have thrown deep.
Lulay has especially been good at the deep ball this season and Jennings has looked so much better, in the second half of this season, when he has gone deep too.
We didn’t run the football enough, as we were 6th in rushing attempts but we also didn’t run the football very well with our RPO scheme either.
Our average rush per attempt was 4.8 yds. per carry, which was 8th in the CFL.
Who has been our best bet to pick up the most yards per rush this season.?

Its Jeremiah Johnson, who averaged 5.3 yds. per run attempt. Terrel Sutton has averaged 4.9 yds. per rush, Trevon Vann averaged 4.3 yds. per carry while Chris Rainey has only averaged 4.2 yds. per rush (Rainey has been used to run the football up the gut a lot on second and short).

Both our passing and rushing yards are down from our 2017 season.
For those of us who thought our offence didn’t look good last season under Khari Jones, its been much worse this season.
In 2017, we finished 3rd in passing yards and 5th in rushing yards., which was a hell of a lot better than Jarious Jackson’s offence in 2018, where we ranked 7th in passing and 8th in rushing.

That should not have been the case. Our offensive line has improved significantly this season with the additions of Figuroa and Olifioye and both are major improvements over Johnson and Palmer. Our National receiver talent has also improved in 2018, with the additions of Watson and Parker.
We’ve basically won off the back of our defense this season.


That defense not only finished 2nd in the CFL in quarterback sacks and 1st in pass knockdowns. It also lead the league in interceptions, which gave our offence numerous opportunities off turnovers.
Thank God, Ed Hervey revamped our defense almost completely, in terms of player personnel, with so many new starters for 2018.
But on defense, we were only good when we played man defense, which the players lobbied for. The notion that our defense played better once our new players ‘jelled’ together is a false one.

Our defense not only played badly in zone in the early part of 2018. It played badly against Hamilton in our two contests in the second half of the season, when June Jones pushed Washington to revert back to his familiar zone defense.

We’ve also played badly in the second half of this season, when we’ve gone to zone defense, when we’ve had a lead or when we’ve reverted to zone in the red zone.
We’ve been given Kool-Aid too often, from both our Leos coaching staff and from the sports media who, outside of Lowell Ullrich, have basically presented that Kool Aid from the coaching staff to us, in terms of where the real issues have been.
Its more than obvious that scheme, not personnel, that has been, by far, the most determining factor in our lack of success and our success.


On offence, if we are not in RPO but in pre-snap designed passing plays, with traditional run blocking and traditional pass blocking, we have been successful and even explosive.
When we run the football with designed run plays and we throw deep, off designed pass blocking, our offence has looked spectacular. The only problem is that has not occurred very often.


On defense we’ve looked exceptional in man defense and mediocre when reverting to our traditional zone defense.

In other words, give our players the right scheme and play calls and our Leos players more than get it done. Give them a scheme and play calls that are deficient and they have been more than difficult to overcome.
On Sunday, the scheme we use and the play calls we give our Leo players will likely be the key determining factor, (along with turnovers, as B.C. fan reminds us) in this playoff game.
"When I went to Catholic high school in Philadelphia, we just had one coach for football and basketball. He took all of us who turned out and had us run through a forest. The ones who ran into the trees were on the football team". (George Raveling)
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Worst case scenario is that we unwaveringly stick to RPO on O and a passive zone on D. I really hope we stick to things that have worked for us this season, and have the courage to blow things up that haven't; we have enough film on what success looks like.

My other fear is that we are married to the notion that a pounding running game is what is needed in cold weather games. I really like Sutton, don't get me wrong. But I don't think he is close to 100% and is not getting proper acceleration coming out of the backfield. We have a healthy and fresh Jeremiah Johnson. If Sutton falters in the first half - USE HIM!

Also, how is Solly's conditioning? He hasn't stepped on the football field in months. Is this going to be an issue as the game wears on? In a one-game do-or-die, rotate the linebackers if need be.

My third concern has been the play of Lulay lately. Again, I hope Wally and Jarious recognize if he struggles to move the team and are not reluctant to insert Jonathon into the game. I think he can be effective coming off the bench, especially as he doesn't have "starter's nerves."


DH :cool:
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The Lions have made several roster changes for this game. The biggest are the addition of Solomon Elimimian on defence as starting middle linebacker after missing 14 games with a wrist injury and the addition of Jeremiah Johnson on offence and special teams as rotational running back and kick returner in place of Chris Rainey.

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This fan does not like seeing Herdman shunted down to third on the depth chart at MLB. IMO he has been our best LB run stopper.

It is a shame that we could not successfully integrate a phenomenal talent like Chris Rainey into our schemes. I think his talent is beyond schemes. I think we tried to pound him, like a square peg, into a round hole. Not enough passes his way. Not enough outside runs. Not enough free-wheeling kick returns. That one player can bring joy to fans. The way we have ''managed'' him is so screwed up it saddens me. We ignored his talent and said subjugate yourself to our boring schemes. :dizzy: (Whether or not he is injured for this game.)

I expect Glanville and Jones breathed a sigh of relief at the absence of Rainey.

Many concerns re this game. It could be a stinker, which might be appropriate. We might also win, if the players are inspired, possibly by each other, playing for each other. We will see. It has our attention.
John Madden's Team Policies: Be on time. Pay attention. Play like hell on game day.

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Sol-E may be a question mark conditioning wise, but he should be a big help to the defence stopping the run and underneath passes. He will be in on nearly every tackle and should have a big impact on improving a run defence that has turned too many 2 yard carries into 8 yard gains due to sloppy tackling. The Lions are suddenly very deep at LB, so hopefully Washington rotates those guys and keeps the pressure on.

Looks like we have seen Rainey play his last game as a Lion. 90% of the fault lies on the shoulders of Jarious. I won't mind seeing Rainey tear it up elsewhere next year. He's a great player and a good personality. Should have been a a star here both on and off the field.
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WestCoastJoe wrote:
Sat Nov 10, 2018 10:42 am
This fan does not like seeing Herdman shunted down to third on the depth chart at MLB. IMO he has been our best LB run stopper.

It is a shame that we could not successfully integrate a phenomenal talent like Chris Rainey into our schemes. I think his talent is beyond schemes. I think we tried to pound him, like a square peg, into a round hole. Not enough passes his way. Not enough outside runs. Not enough free-wheeling kick returns. That one player can bring joy to fans. The way we have ''managed'' him is so screwed up it saddens me. We ignored his talent and said subjugate yourself to our boring schemes. :dizzy: (Whether or not he is injured for this game.)

I expect Glanville and Jones breathed a sigh of relief at the absence of Rainey.

Many concerns re this game. It could be a stinker, which might be appropriate. We might also win, if the players are inspired, possibly by each other, playing for each other. We will see. It has our attention.
In the past the Lions have also mismanaged the talents of Chris Williams and underutilized Andrew Harris' talent, so the Rainy dilemma is not a surprise. Adapting schemes to fit the player's talent is not the Wally Way.

At least the acquisition of Sutton is a good fit for Wally's preference for running between the tackles. Problem is that the TiCats will be stacking the between the tackles area of the field waiting for Sutton to arrive. :bang:
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David
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WestCoastJoe wrote:
Sat Nov 10, 2018 10:42 am
It is a shame that we could not successfully integrate a phenomenal talent like Chris Rainey into our schemes. I think his talent is beyond schemes. I think we tried to pound him, like a square peg, into a round hole. Not enough passes his way. Not enough outside runs. Not enough free-wheeling kick returns. That one player can bring joy to fans. The way we have ''managed'' him is so screwed up it saddens me. We ignored his talent and said subjugate yourself to our boring schemes. :dizzy: (Whether or not he is injured for this game.)
:whs:

Injured or not for part of this season, a colossal waste of talent IMHO.


DH :cool:
Roar, You Lions, Roar
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