Where has the time gone? Not only did I neglect my blog for all of September.....the length of the Riders losing streak.....but somehow we've almost reached the end of the CFL season. How did this happen? I mean, it doesn't seem like all that long ago I was on summer holidays and cheering on my Riders to an epic 8-1 season.
Then something happened. For myself, after Labour Day I headed back to work. For the Riders, they seemed to lose their mojo.
It started with the injury to Rey Williams. Then Dwight Anderson and Taj Smith got to have a slumber party in jail after some kind of altercation on Dewdney outside a "night club". The bandwagon came to a screeching halt and fans were bailing off and heading to the ER with broken ankles by the numbers. They said "I told you so" when talking about Dewdney Dwight [shamelessly coined by Fake Gainer of Twitter fame. If you don't follow him you should.] By the end of the week another Rider, Eron Riley was also involved in the alleged aggravated assault, which if you've seen the videos, you can't really see what the heck happened.
Here's what I know. Dwight Anderson and Taj Smith have earned places on this team. Dwight Anderson may play with high emotion but that edge lets him get those game sealing interceptions. Taj Smith, who seemed very unlikely to be involved in such an event, is having a great year as we've seen him scoot down the sidelines to make explosion plays.
So, yeah, Rider Nation became disheartened and split on this whole topic.
Then the unthinkable happened. Kory Sheets got injured. We didn't have an answer to the blitz. The Oline seemed to go to pot. Darian was blamed for everything. One person went as far to call him out on Twitter saying he wasn't Anthony Calvillo.....who, by the way has been injured for most of the season so really a bad analogy all the way around. Doubles was fined for his twitter response.
But then something happened. A fire was ignited. Kory was healthy. Cortez got creative. The Riders came out firing on all cylinders against the Lions and Holy Sheets! we all think they can pull this off after all.
I mean, I think they can.
I think Cortez was playing games with us all. I think he was not showing us all those crazy plays because we've got to keep them for play offs. I think Cortez is a genius and we just don't know it yet. I don't think anyone will see us coming. I believe.
I know Geroy Simon hasn't been used very much, but I think this is all a plan too. I think we will see him used when we need it the most. I'm calling up memories of Jason Clermont's overtime touchdown catch against the Lions in the Western Final in 2010 [I think, I am a girl after all and sports dates are a tough one for me.] Geroy needs to learn that the Riders are a TEAM. We like your record. We want your record to go on. Your team mates care about you and your token catch was very important to us all. We have your back Superman.
So here we go. Buckle up that strap on your cape. Get that feather headdress on. Head to the dollar store for all the green paint they have in stock. There's only 4 games to go and we are Grey Cup bound.
