Saturday, August 29, 2015

Thoughts on Montreal's Win Over the Ticats

I only caught slightly over half of the game at the stadium due to arriving at Pearson at 6:30 pm, although I did hear most of the rest on CKOC 1150's broadcast. Not a big fan of that broadcast although I do like Coach Sal. Obviously the home winning streak ended, which is sad, but not the end of the world.

I think compared to the Ticats's five game win streak prior to this game, the Cats didn't get out to a big lead early. That made things more difficult; teams that get way behind, even it was just bad luck don't play that well. The Cats were constantly in catch up mode themselves, but to be fair they never let the game really get away from them and only lost by three points.

Should the Cats go with Grigsby over Holley as their main running back? Holley hasn't done much (although the Cats don't run a lot) and but he is a better blocker in pass protection to warrant starting over Grigsby.

The Cats missed Andy Fantuz in this one. Due to the ratio, Coates takes his spot, and apologies to Coates, he isn't Fantuz. He didn't catch a pass and I only saw one pass thrown in his direction (although that resulted in a Montreal penalty). Montreal was blitzing a lot and had six sacks; Fantuz likely would have made a better quick target for Collaros to get rid of the ball quickly and avoid the rush. The Cats themselves didn't get a lot of pressure this game with only one sack, although they managed to knock Cato out of the game. Underwood had a good game with three catches for 93 yards.

Sears Jr. led the Ticats with 7 tackles, which I'm not sure is necessarily a good thing but I'm glad he's healthy again.

Strangely after the Cats knocked out Cato, Tanner Marsh seemed to play better than Cato did. That's unusual for a backup and I never thought Marsh was that great when he was playing before the ascension of Jonathon Crompton to the Montreal starting quarterback position.

In terms of victory, to me there were a few second and longs the Cats had Montreal in where if they could have prevented Montreal from getting the first down, things could have been very different (especially the final FG drive of Montreal where the Cats had the Alouettes relatively deep in their own end).

On to the Argos next week on Labour Day in the annual classic. Toronto lost the Edmonton yesterday on the road so the Cats are tied at 6 and 3 with Toronto. A win on Labour Day would have the Cats winning the season series tie-breaker and winning the vaunted Harold Ballard Cup.

No comments: