Summer holidays are over for the CFL West Division teams as they renew their Grey Cup hopes.
The Eskimos and Lions have largely pinned their championship hopes on the magical powers of moonbeams and puppy dog tails this year. They are indeed long-shots.
Even the likelihood of either B.C. or Edmonton leaving this weekend as winners is remote in a Baffin Island remote kind of way. Calgary and Saskatchewan are in a league by themselves, while the Lions and Eskimos are chained in the basement.
Tonight’s game has B.C. at home to play the Calgary Stampeders. Home always conjures up warm and fuzzy images for most people- not so for the Lions this year. They have not won since they moved outside to play football. They played Calgary pretty close earlier this year in a 27-22 loss, so the idea of a B.C. win is not as laughable as a vintage Three Stooges routine. However it seems highly unlikely.
B.C. has quarterback protection problems; a strong reason why Printers was banged up early in the season. Gone are the days when import tackles Rob Murphy and Jason Jiminez beat up anybody that got close to a Lions quarterback. These two guys were despised by everybody in the league for their violent and questionable approach to the game of football. But they did their job and their quarterbacks loved them.
Calgary has talent on both sides of the ball. It really doesn’t matter who plays quarterback for B.C. tonight because they are in for a world of hurt. Calgary plays very aggressive defense from the front seven to the secondary. B.C. will get blown out of their temporary home in tonight’s game.
Saturday night’s game answers a simple question: How do you get people to go to football games? Easy- you play the Saskatchewan Roughriders. It’s been said that ’Rider fans have become arrogant and insufferable with their team’s success. The bonus for other teams is that all of their empty seats will be sold to paying customers. They just happen to be ’Rider fans.
The logical solution would be for other teams’ fans to bar the door by grabbing all of the seats before ’Rider fans get their mitts on the seats. This logic applies to Eskimo fans too, but they have chosen to whine about the celebrations of long suffering ’Rider fans enjoying the kind of success that Eskimo fans used to enjoy.
The result is that the Eskimos will have double their normal crowd tomorrow night because ’Rider fans will take up the slack left by Eskimo fans falling off the bandwagon in droves. You’re welcome Edmonton for the cash infusion. But the game itself will not be pretty as the ’Riders will crush the Eskimos on Saturday.
The Eskimos are brutal this year. Their O-line is a quarterback’s cold sweat nightmare and they will get Ricky Ray badly hurt if something isn’t done — soon. Richie Hall has sculpted a terrible defensive scheme and a salary cap means that they can’t buy their way back into respectability.
As a ’Rider fan, I couldn’t be happier. Decades of Eskimo success prevent me from crying crocodile tears for them. See you on Tuesday.
More of Jim Sutherland at mystarcollector.com