NOT SAYING GOODBYE TO JONES
Vanstone: Riders will stay the course
Ugh! Where do we begin after the Hamilton Tiger-Cats dominated every aspect of the game en route to shellacking the Saskatchewan Roughriders 53-7 on Saturday?
It is said that game-planning begins in the trenches, and that games are won and lost there, so let’s begin on the line on the Riders’ first offensive play.
Right guard Matt Vonk, who was making his very first professional start, went offside and backed the team up five yards to begin the possession. That play set the tone for a game that was filled with penalties and mental errors.
Because it was Vonk’s first career start, it’s almost understandable that he would jump offside on the first play — a mistake of enthusiasm — but the problem is that the Riders have had to go so deeply into the depth chart to field a team.
Due to poor play and injuries, the Riders have used eight different offensive guards this season — Vonk, Brendon LaBatte, Andrew Jones, Aaron Picton, Josiah St. John, Marcus Hall, Kennedy Estelle and Hasan Hazime. Plus, a ninth guard — Chris Best — was injured in training camp and has yet to play this season.
In eight CFL games this season, the Riders have been unable to field the same offensive line for back-to-back games, and they have played 13 — 13! — different offensive linemen.
Teams typically carry eight or nine offensive linemen on their active and practice rosters. To think that the Riders are now 13 players deep on their depth chart is a testament to their ability to find talent, but putting five guys next to each other and calling them an offensive line doesn’t make then an effective unit.
Offensive lines take time to marinate. Personalities and playing styles have to jell and the players have to learn how to complement each other so that the sum of the players’ collective efforts is magnified and made greater than their individual contributions. Once that happens, they actually make one another better players.
The display in Hamilton on Saturday night was the exact opposite of this synchronicity.
If good offensive line play is supposed to look like a fine waltz, on Saturday night the Riders looked like Rob Vanstone and I doing the jitterbug with four left feet.
Granted, Ticats defensive coordinator Orlondo Steinauer had a very good game plan and gave the inexperienced Riders’ offensive line a lot of different defensive fronts and looks to worry about. Nonetheless, the Riders’ O-line looked overmatched — like five guys who had never played offensive line before.
There were gaffes such as jumping offside, coming off early on double teams, letting the nose tackle come free up the middle to sack the quarterback, and not accounting for John Chick in pass protection schemes to, again, allow him to come up the middle and sack Darian Durant.
The very basics of offensiveline play were part of the problem on Saturday. Teams work on these concepts on Day 1 of training camp. These concepts have very little to do with physical ability or where players are situated on the depth chart. These errors should not be happening eight games into the season.
Of course, with the injuries, lack of playing time or consistency in the lineup, it can be easy to make excuses for the players, but I don’t imagine excuses go too far with head coach Chris Jones.
Coming into the season, there were a lot of questions. The only constant was the offensive line. Clark, LaBatte, Best and Xavier Fulton can still be the foundation. The Roughriders just need to wait for all the veteran offensive linemen to be activated from the injury list.
In the meantime, all Jones can do is find talent to plug some of the gaping holes on the roster that other teams are exposing.