The game you played was a total bore
From the Rockies to the Island Sea
You showed how bad your play can be
POST GAME THOUGHTS
Tom Landy said the job of a football coach "is to make men do what they don’t want to do, in order to achieve what they’ve always wanted to be".
Judging by our Leos play in this game against the Argos, Rich Campbell was unable or unwilling to get our Leos to do the things they need to do in order to achieve the success they want to have.
What a difference a week makes. Last week, we travelled to Montreal on a short week and dominated a team that had won 17 of its last 18 games. One week later, and on our home turf, the Argos completely dominated us on offence, defense, and special teams.
A couple of weeks ago, before our two-game winning streak, I posted that often football coaches have to be brought to their knees in order for the notion of change to enter their brains. Last game, Jordan Maksymic was praised for such an excellent offensive game plan and play calling. I highly doubt I will read the same positive comments after such a vanilla, predictable game plan and play calling against the Argos. What happened to all that misdirection and bootleg action we used against Montreal? The reality is that all those plays went back and deep into Maksymic's filing cabinet.
But why? Because the changes he implemented were not embedded in his mind. The pressure was off. He went back to familiar and familiar is a vanilla, inside zone read, pocket passing, deep intermediate Spread Offence
The Spread offence is not an offensive system. For those coordinators who lead it, it’s a religious sect. Its as rigid as doctrine. They almost see it as sacrilegious to stray away from it. They may do so under significant pressure, when brought to their knees, for a couple of games but it's like they have sinned to do so and as quickly as possible, will revert back to their comfort zone.
You would think that after our losing streak and then making some key offensive changes in the previous two games that we could continue to do the things that got us turned around and on our winning streak the last two games. But compulsive behavior is compulsive behavior and we compulsively went back to what did not work.
Lets have a closer look.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the game.
It was a miserable offensive performance in which our offence only looked dangerous with Brice and Terrell in final minutes of the game. In the first quarter Rourke started the game by going just one-of-five passing for five yards, as our Lions managed negative one-yard of net offence in the first quarter. We couldn’t run and we couldn’t pass. That first quarter set the tone for the rest of the game.LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO GET. BUT OUR OFFENCE IS LIKE VANILLA ICE CREAM. YOU ALMOST ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO GET.
Our defense played very well for most of the first half and kept us in the game, until the final 53 seconds of the first half, and then caved. Rourke had just engineered our offence into the end zone, running in for the major himself but our defensive collapse, with such little time left on the clock before half time, was a dagger to our own throat.
Campbell started Adams for the second half. I was not surprised. I anticipated Campbell would insert Adams into action at the first opportunity, if Rourke stumbled a bit. He wanted to give Adams the opportunity to play, to be the good guy, to share the cheese. Did he make the right decision? No, in my mind and here is why. Had Adams taken a lot of practice reps with the first team offence this week, then yes, perhaps Adams could have ignited things or provided the ‘spark’ Cambell hoped Adams would provide.
Rourke had a poor first quarter but had engineered a drive for a touchdown on our final drive of the first half and had looked good doing so. Therefore, it made better sense to have Rourke start the second half and after a drive or two, had he not continued to play well, then inserting Adams would have made a bit more sense.
One could anticipate Adams would have some rust, but he also had training camp and has only missed about five games. He has been practicing for a while now. Therefore, a better performance could have been expected. However, Adams looked like the Adams of his last game of action before his injury, when he played against Winnipeg and we lost 25-0 and we looked futile and Adams looked awful.
The reality is that, if Vernon Adams has time to throw, he can dissect a defense better than any present CFL quarterback. He has an outstanding arm. But blitz Adams or get quick pressure and he is in big trouble. He is not good at throwing the football away or throwing to a safety valve. Instead, he will try to escape, like a college quarterback, dancing around, often a half second too late and get sacked or throw an ill-timed interception.
In many ways, Adams plays a Russell Wilson style of long ball and therefore he can look great or look terrible. Adams can process his progressions quickly enough, but he has a very slow learning curve regarding quarterback pressure - the need to throw more quickly and the need to leave the pocket sooner, when he is not getting his 3 seconds or more in the pocket. Its been an Achilles heel of his for a long time with little hope of improvement or change in sight.
However, quarterbacks, as important as they are, most often get too much credit for wins and too much blame for losses. They may be the most important player on the field but football is a team game. Football is a game in which the coach effects the game more than in any other sport.
Why? In no other sport, does the game stop after each play so the coach can send in a different strategy.
The reality is that we have a plug and play vanilla Spread offence that is not designed around our offensive talent for decades. We really have not had that since early 2004, with the following rare exceptions - in 2007, when Hufnagel as consultant and Steve Kruck was our play caller and gave us an offence designed around a running attack with Joe Smith as our tailback, in the second half of 2011, when the losses piled up so bad early that season that we modified our Spread Offence into much more of a misdirection bootleg offence with Lulay bootlegging (and often throwing to Harris off the bootleg), and in 2013, in the second half of that season, when we went with two backs in Andrew Harris and Stefan Logan and changed our blocking scheme from the typical Spread offence zone blocking scheme to man blocking.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY IS DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT.
No matter how mobile so many of our quarterbacks have been (and we have had some very impressively mobile quarterbacks) from Casey Printers, Buck Pierce, Jarious Jackson, Travis Lulay, Jonathan Jennings, Nathan Rourke, and Vernon Adams, we have kept them in the same spot in the pocket like a shooting duck and let defensive lines tee off on them. Heck in the good ol Wally days, when our quarterbacks were sitting ducks, in the Spread, Wally said "That's why we have four of them (Dickenson, Printers, Pierce and Jackson and we were down to Pierce at the time). It seems like not a whole lot has changed other than we only have three quarterbacks now.
Even worse we plug and played Travis Lulay into a Run Pass Option offence that turned into a nightmare and for good reason as we really pushed some round pegs into square holes.
Our Leos team gave up more sacks than any other CFL team in the first two decades of this new century and we were in vanilla Spread Offence throughout, other than the Run Pass Option of Jarious Jackson. During the 2012 season, Kelly Bates, (our left guard back then, now our present offensive line coach) moaned publicly about how much more challenging it was to pass block when the defense knows exactly the spot the quarterback will be throwing from on almost each play. The Bombers use play action bootlegs and misdirection play action bootlegs about 10 times more each game with Zack Collaros at quarterback than we do. A bootleg play for our Leos is as rare as hens teeth and rocking horse poo.
The Spread and the Inside Zone Read running play go together like peas and carrots (even when the peas and carrots are old, past their best date, and mushy) they are the only vegetable allowed. Its 2024 and we are basically in the same offence we ran in 2005, as hard as that it to believe. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Quite simply, an offence cannot run the football inside the tackles successfully on a consistent basis unless they are able to stretch out the defensive line. How to do that? Its quite simple. The running attack has to attack the edges with outside zone read plays, reverses, fly sweeps etc. if in the Spread Offence to widen out the defense. Also, relying on an inside zone read run only, and also without the quarterback faking and keeping the football once in a while is far too predictable and easy to defend. The defensive ends have to be stretched out.
Better still, getting out of the Spread and using tight ends and two back sets, using double teams and kickout blocks and trap blocks also can gets it done. Play action bootleg action and misdirection bootleg action also widen out defensive ends and opens up the inside running game.
In the passing game, the key is to move the pocket as well as get the football out quickly, especially on first down with high percentage passing plays. Second and ten plays into the defense's hands. If they get pressure, a quick pass or dump off is often stopped short of a first down on a long yardage needed second down play. The short passing game sets up highly favorable second down and distance situations and it also sets up the long pass, when there is time to throw it, and when the defense starts creeping up.
You set up the deep ball. We don't do that, and defenses are ready for us to throw it and we often throw it when we shouldn't or don't have time to throw it and take a sack. A sack should be thought of as nitro. On first down, it sets up a terrible second down situation. On second down. it ends a drive. Sacks negatively impact field position. They can also be demoralizing for an offence and a team while pumping up the opposition.
However, our offensive philosophy tends to treat them as just a necessary hazard at times in order to throw as many deep intermediate passes as possible.
In today’s football, avoiding negative yardage plays as well as first-down plays that do not net decent first down yardage are a key to offensive game planning. Analytics support the concept. It's all about percentages and successful offensive coordinators are focused on high percentage offence, quick reads, quick releases, second and decent, and getting the football to players in space or in seams against zone defenses and at full speed against man defense.
What do we try to do offensively?STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES
We run inside zone read run plays inside the tackles constantly against defensive lines playing tight gaps because they can play us that way due to the philosophy of both our run and pass game. In the pass game, most of our patterns are too long and therefore require more time for our quarterback to throw the football and tighter windows to throw the football into. Its low percentage football that can look exceptionally good when our quarterback has lots of time to throw and can make the almost purrfect pass into tight coverage.
When defenses drop nine or eight into zone coverage, taking our sweet time throwing the football puts us at high risk for interceptions as well as requires precise patterns and long precise throws. When teams blitz us or get quick pressure either due to defensive stunts (easier to do with narrow gaps) or just plain beat an offensive lineman, our quarterbacks too often are sacked trying to escape (usually too late) or still waiting for one of those long dig patterns to open up.
The time to throw the football against eight and nine man pass coverage is early and often in seams, before the linebackers can make their drops. Patterns need to be shorter because throwing longer passes against nine-man pass coverage, with linebackers in their drops, zone underneath, and then often two safeties deep is challenging. The fact that we have been able to do so, at times, is due to the fact that both or our quarterbacks can throw bullets, and our receivers often make excellent catches in tight coverage.
We not only need to move the pocket, bootleg, and sprint out our quarterbacks more often. The fact is we need more variety in our run and pass game. I’ve already mentioned some concepts to stretch defenses horizontally with our run game, but we also need to stretch defenses more horizontally with our passing game too, with our quarterbacks putting pressure on the edges with their legs and throwing off the run or running (dual threat) as well as integrating screens, quick tosses with a lead blocker for our tailback, etc.
Our short passing attack, which we do use it on occasion, does not have our receivers running at full speed. Instead, they are in curl or stop patterns which allows the defensive back a much easier time to come up and make a tackle. We also have thrown in some RPO into our short passing game. Last game, Rourke was given an RPO, faked to Stanback and threw a pass to our wide receiver towards the sideline. I thought WTF, why are we running RPO with a read to a wide receiver on an out pattern when he is not playing run. It was head shaking and demonstrated that some of our offensive concepts are not well designed.
Finally, we know our offensive line is not the strength of our team and it also has had to deal with injuries. Zone blocking is a very coordinated approach to blocking as the offensive line tends to operate as "One". Those two facts alone dictate a different philosophy. Our offensive inside zone read, long intermediate pass design would be at least more conducive to a more outstanding offensive line.
But our Head Coach, offensive coordinator and quarterbacks (especially Adams) continue to attempt to execute, as if our offensive line can pass block successfully for minutes and can open up holes and blow defenders out no matter how tight they are lined up and know what to expect from our run attack.
Adding another stupid to the recipe, our Leos paid a heck of a lot of money to sign Terry Williams in the off-season when they could have signed Jarion Grant for much cheaper. The decision was very obvious last night as to the choice we should have made. I wonder how much input Mike “Benny Bumps” Benevdes had in the decision but it would not surprise that Benny, trained by Wally, would want a punt returner who rarely fumbled and ran up the gut but did not do much else) would be preferred over an electric return man who would take it wide at times but might fumble on rare occasion.
I did not even mention our defense. Right now, this Leos team lacks strong enough leadership, as well as a strong identity, and the kind of hunger and intensity it takes to win consistently at this level. Its disillusioning to be a Leos fan after this stinker of a game.WRAP
Roar you Lions roar
Not lookin' Grey Cup material, like '64
You need to get off the floor
Show some leadership at the core
