Some excerpts from the article by Lowell Ullrich ...
Was opener a one-off or a trend?
Attack on team's running game could be a rush to judgment
By Lowell Ullrich, The Province July 4, 2011
It's just one game. It's a passing league. The Lions were too far behind. It doesn't take much to summarize what the CFL team thought about its running game in the season-opening loss to the Montreal Alouettes.
The bigger question remains whether they are running toward salvation or suicide.
It was too much to ask, once the Lions trailed by three touchdowns in what became a 30-26 setback, to learn whether the Lions have sufficiently modified their approach toward ground transport, according to coach/GM Wally Buono.
But the raw numbers were not pretty to proponents of a balanced attack.
Trying to get his team back in the game, quarterback Travis Lulay threw a career-high 45 times. Handoffs? There were exactly three to the Lions' two running backs, Jamal Robertson and Andrew Harris. There are run/pass balancing acts in football and there are high-wire tightrope jobs where teams feel they have no choice but to ditch the run to win.
It just wasn't a lot different in exhibition play, however, when the Lions ran only nine times in two games while trying to evaluate players. That was more indicative as well of last year, when they were seventh in yards rushing but effectively were a lot worse.
But suggesting the Lions don't even respect their own running game is, well, a rush to judgment, they say.
"If this was a five-game pattern I'd think differently. We have put enough time and effort into our running game," Buono said.
"There were a lot more called plays on play-action stuff [against Montreal] that didn't get run. I respect our run game; we can't put the quarterback and offensive line into that much [passing] pressure all the time."
Indeed, offensive coordinator Jacques Chapdelaine spent considerable time over the winter assessing the attack. Chapdelaine said there was a detectable pattern of how the club attacked the line of scrimmage. Too detectable, so changes were made.
Some of the adjustments were evident in Montreal in the form of runs involving receivers Nick Moore and Shawn Gore. Robertson only had one carry, but it also contained a surprise element, a successful second-and-10 draw play.
The Lions have shown pitches to Harris and primary returner Tim Brown so it's clear there's more in their playbook. It's just one game. It's been many games, however, since the promise of one of the strongest ground attacks in the league seemed just on the horizon, back when Jamall Lee was healthy and Jerome Messam and Yonus Davis weren't in trouble.
Nonetheless, take away Lulay's 396 yards last year rushing off scrambles and the occasional called run and the Lions were decidedly the worst rushing team in the CFL. They also made the least attempts of any club to force the issue based on their carry total. Running backs averaged just 65.7 yards rushing per game.
I think you may be on to something....
