Rusty Redblacks look to get offence rolling

No one should ever doubt the value of those so-called “meaningless” exhibition games. Certainly not the members of the Ottawa Redblacks offence.

After counting only three field goals in their season opener, the Redblacks (1-0) will still be looking for their first offensive touchdown when they travel to Regina to face the Saskatchewan Roughriders (also 1-0) a week from Saturday.

So the club interrupted its bye week with practices on Wednesday and Thursday in sweltering heat at TD Place, then will take the weekend off before getting back to work on Monday.

The bye week might have been more valuable a few weeks into the season, but it has afforded the offence the chance to scrutinize what went wrong, and there was plenty that did.

Still, a couple of exhibition contests would have been beneficial.

“I mean, we're not in the business of making excuses, of why we didn't do as well on offence as we would have liked,” said quarterback Matt Nichols, who did run his CFL record as a starter to an impressive 38-16 while completing just 12-of-20 passes for 72 yards. “But I know what we can do is kind of watch and see what's there.

“Everyone just kind of took their turn making mistakes and it all adds up, you know, to a bunch of mistakes.”

Those mistakes added up to seven 2-and-outs to start the game, putting the onus on the defence to come up big. That unit also spent extra time on the field when the offence failed to achieve a single first down until late in the opening half.

But, at the end of the day, all that matters is the outcome.

And it's not like the Redblacks were the only CFL team to start slowly on offence.

Only Saskatchewan and the B.C. Lions looked in midseason form, combining for a more CFL-like 62 points.

Elsewhere, only the Toronto Argonauts and Calgary Stampeders put as many as 20 points on the board as the Argos prevailed 23-20.

So a lot of teams are spending this week back at the drawing board.

But oh, how those exhibitions would have helped.

“I mean, there's nothing like live game reps,” said Nichols. “You can replicate as much as you want in practice, but it's just not quite the same. And you know, a lot of us haven't played football in two years, and more of that showed up than we would have liked.

“We did some good things. We had a couple of good drives that we needed to run some clock at the end of the game. Just not enough good things, but some things to build on.

“So we quickly need to get past that. We got a game under our belt now, we know what we need to do.”

Meanwhile, the win left the head coach pleased and the on-field performance left the offensive co-ordinator a little frustrated.

The fact that both roles belong to Paul LaPolice means things better change out west.

“You need to create first downs on first down,” said LaPolice. “And you need to stay on the field, so then you can attack and see what's working. We've got to get better first on productivity.

“There's no excuse. We've got to locate the guys when they're open and hold up on our protection so we can throw the ball to the open guy and all that stuff.

“It's not acceptable what we did the other night, and we've got to get better.”

Everyone just kind of took their turn making mistakes and it all adds up, you know, to a bunch of mistakes.