Argos vs. Lions Game Day Thread

[TheLionKing]

Return of Khalif Mitchell. Will the Lions be ready to play from the opening gun ?

[DanoT]

Will the Lions have an answer for the running of Klackert that they didn't have for Cornish?

Will they have designed roll out plays for Lulay, which is his strength?

Will they get Harris more touches?

[Dan_Payne_fan!!]

cant wait to get to the stadium! lets have a good one guys!!

[B.C.FAN]

The Lions will have their starting front four together for the first time this year, with Julius Williams drawing into the lieup at rush end and Keron Williams starting at tackle beside Eric Taylor. If the Lions can't stop the run and pressure the QB with this lineup, they'll have to go back to the drawing board.

We should see Korey Williams returning kicks for the Lions. B.C.'s special teams played soft against Calgary and I'm not sure the right personnel are in place to contain Chad Owens, who was the last player to return a kickoff for a TD against the Lions, in 2011. If Williams can match Owens' production on returns tonight, it will be a huge plus for the Lions.

Defensively, in addition to shutting down Chad Kackert, the Lions must contain Owens, who led the Argos last week with 9 catches for 95 yards and had 8 for 114 yards and a TD when the Argos were here last year. The pressure will be on J.R. LaRose at safety to defend against the deep ball.

The Argos haven't won in B.C. since 2002. Travis Lulay threw for 390 yards and 2 TDs to lead the Lions to a 28-23 win in that Argo visit last year. Defence is the Argos' biggest weakness. If the Lions play with intensity and don't give up many big plays, they should emerge with a victory.

[Centrum22]

Regarding attendance, judging from the Ticket Master map, the Lions appear to be on pace for a disappointingly low turnout for their home opener. Despite this year's major reduction of availability in the upper bowl, the lower bowl still has huge swaths of unsold seats.

I really hope the Ticket Master map is inaccurate or that the Lions get thousands of last minute walk-ups.

[B.C.FAN]

Regarding attendance, judging from the Ticket Master map, the Lions appear to be on pace for a disappointingly low turnout for their home opener. Despite this year's major reduction of availability in the upper bowl, the lower bowl still has huge swaths of unsold seats.

I really hope the Ticket Master map is inaccurate or that the Lions get thousands of last minute walk-ups.

LU says the estimated crowd is 25,000. A Thursday night in July is a lousy time to hold a football game.

[David]

I hold the Lions (Mr. Skulsky) partly responsible for the lousy schedule. I know it's never going to be 100% satisfactory for everyone, but they should have fought harder with the league instead of adopting an "oh well..." posture. And why did Whitecaps get ALL the plum Saturday dates?


DH

[Centrum22]

LU says the estimated crowd is 25,000.

That's truly horrible. That's less than pre-season!

[South Pender]

Well, their bomb last week didn't help. It's true that Thursday night is a lousy time for a game, with work for most the next day, but I believe that the play of the team is a big determiner of subsequent attendance. If the Lions stink it up much more, even Saturday night games will have sparse attendance.

[sj-roc]

I hold the Lions (Mr. Skulsky) partly responsible for the lousy schedule. I know it's never going to be 100% satisfactory for everyone, but they should have fought harder with the league instead of adopting an "oh well..." posture. And why did Whitecaps get ALL the plum Saturday dates?


DH

David, this is our first Thursday regular season game since 2007/08/02. That's nearly six years between then and tonight, during which the league will have played 39 other Thursday games (not including Canada Day games when that holiday happened to fall on a Thursday) with the following host breakdown:

Mtl...13
Edm...8
Wpg...7
Tor.....4
Ham...3
Cgy....2
Ssk....2

So while we've never hosted on a Thursday in that stretch, everyone else has done so at least TWICE and some quite more than that. This doesn't include a small handful of games played on other weeknights (mostly Wed and mostly in Tor) but we didn't host any of these either. I'd say we were pretty much due after the rest of the league had a long stretch of "adopting an 'oh well...' posture" and now it's our turn. Those Thu games get aired and watched on TV so it's inevitable that we're going to have host at least the occasional one. Wpg played on Thu last week and Mtl has one tonight as well (both of which were included in the above breakdown). Looking at the rest of 2013 going forward, Tor is hosting on a Thu next week and on a Tue against us on Jul 30, and Mtl has three more consecutive Thu home games after this (four in a row including tonight). Tonight is our only Thu home date for 2013.

So while never playing on Thu might be ideal, I'm afraid we're not really in a good position compared to the rest of the league when it comes to pulling off the old "woe is us" routine. To be honest I'd say Braley is more dissatisfied with his Tor sched than his BC.

[B.C.FAN]

Good breakdown, sj-roc. If the Lions are taking one for the league in this case by hosting an occasional Thursday game to satisfy the TV schedule, we'll have to live with it an the resulting low attendance. I suspect this has more to do with David's point that the Whitecaps locked up all the prime Saturday dates, including this week's, because their schedule came out first. The Lions have been a tenant of B.C. Place since 1983 and they draw bigger crowds than the Whitecaps. They should get a better choice of home dates.

[Centrum22]

And given the infamous tardiness of Vancouver sports crowds, the atmosphere for tonight's pre-game ceremonies could be extra cringe-worthy.

[Centrum22]

The Lions have been a tenant of B.C. Place since 1983 and they draw bigger crowds than the Whitecaps. They should get a better choice of home dates.

Yes they damn well should. So why don't they?

[sj-roc]

The Lions have been a tenant of B.C. Place since 1983 and they draw bigger crowds than the Whitecaps. They should get a better choice of home dates.

Yes they damn well should. So why don't they?

Probably because the MLS season had already begun with a Whitecaps game @BCP on March 2 before we even got our schedule released on March 5. Theirs was released on January 9 according to the time stamp of this article.

[Rammer]

The Lions have been a tenant of B.C. Place since 1983 and they draw bigger crowds than the Whitecaps. They should get a better choice of home dates.

Yes they damn well should. So why don't they?

Along with that why did the Lions get bumped to 1410, that was a large mistake as well.