WEST FINAL LEOS BOMBERS POST GAME THOUGHTS
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2023 8:36 am
WEST FINAL LEOS BOMBERS POST GAME THOUGHTS
Our B.C. Lions had a great chance to play in this year’s Grey Cup game. With holding the Bombers to two field goals in the second half, the game was there for the taking. But our offence fired blanks and the Bombers walked away victorious. It was a heart wrenching loss and as I read the numerous posts on Lionbackers, the frustration and disappointment of die hard Leo fans was more than obvious.
It was torturous to think, if only Adams had played an average game, if only our defense had been more prepared for the Bombers opening drive, if only we had not allowed a blocked punt for a touchdown, if only the refs had made a few 50/50 calls differently, if only Macinnis had not slipped. But championship teams find ways to win and pretenders don’t.
Here are some post game thoughts, in the morning light with the pain less sharp but still lingering. We look forward to reading yours.
FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE
OFFENCE
Our offence only scored 13 points in the West Final and one of those scores was a touchdown on the last play of the first half on a Hail Mary pass. Without that fortunate play, our Leos would have been down 19-3 at the half and things would have looked dismal. With our defense playing a hell of a second half and the score 18-13, in the fourth quarter, all we needed was an offensive touchdown to take the lead. Considering how badly our offence had played in the game up to that point surely, there were some plays in our offensive arsenal, considering how productive our offence had been during the season but it didn’t happen.
Instead of going down with a bang, we went out with a whimper. There was no ‘Roar you Lions roar, just like you did in ‘64’ or “From the mountains to the sea, you are the pride of all B.C.” Instead, on the cold tundra of IG Field, the song turned into “There will be no football fame, once again we won’t be playing in this year’s Grey Cup game!"
I’ve been a Leos fan since ’63. Its been a long haul. Our Leos have only won 6 Grey Cups in our 60 year history. There have been many lean times. So when an opportunity is lost, as it was on Saturday, when the opportunity was there, it resonates. So what went wrong?
Vernon Adams
Football is a team game so no one player is the reason for a victory or a loss. But quarterback play is so very important and especially when one enters a playoff game with the best passing attack and the worst running attack in the CFL. A one dimensional offence means as your quarterback goes, so does your offence. The biggest reason most analysts said our Leos would lose this game was based on our lack of a balanced offence. We had an entire season to make an attempt to address an obvious issue and we didn’t.
Pressure can do a lot of strange things to people. Prior to the West Semi-Final, I posted that Adams needed to be decisive and not be John Travolta in the pocket, as he was during the first half of his final regular season contest. Adams came out slinging in the West Final. He was decisive. He went through his reads quickly. He had great pocket presence and dumped off or took off quickly if no one was open.
He was the Good Adams and during the West Semi he was the Great Adams. Yesterday, he was the BAD Adams and in fact he was the Very Bad Adams. Most of our nine sacks were caused by Adams holding the football too long and then trying to disco dance out of the pocket. When he was sacked by blitzing defensive backs, the issue was mostly poor pass blocking by Mizzell or Adams not dumping it quickly. Adams has a hot receiver or a safety valve on every passing play. Its designed into our passing attack.
In the West Semi, Cottoy had 6 receptions and Mizzell had 5 receptions as Adams used his underneath receivers often. In this contest Cottoy had 0 receptions and Mizzell had 2 receptions. Adams never saw them nor looked to them. Why? Because Adams was in a fog. Wally Buono would use the word discombobulated to describe this type of football play. He understood the notion well for a good reason.
In pressure games, Buono was often so discombobulated he was in an alternate universe. You could see it in his eyes on the sidelines. Yesterday you could see it in Chad Kelly’s eyes in the East Final as he threw 4 interceptions, two returned for touchdowns, fumbled and looked like a complete different quarterback. It was very unexpected from Kelly.
However, the Bad Vernon should not have been unexpected. Vernon Adams has had games in the past this season where one thinks something has taken over his body and his mind. Its like the Football Gods disappear and instead we are watching the football version of the Exorcist. However, most of the time this happens during a game. Vernon will be great for one half and horrible the other half.
However, one never knows which half it will happen in or whether it will happen at all. But one can always anticipate that the Jekyll Hyde quarterback persona lurks. There are good reasons why Vernon Adams was not able to establish himself as a CFL starter before this season and its certainly not his talent level. But the quarterback position is such a mental game too.
Stress can create a fog for a quarterback or any player or coach for that matter, and when it happens to a quarterback, their usual field awareness seems to go absent, the clock in their head does not seem to work, and they go back to the sandlot mentality of their childhood football days. Whether its unconscious fear of failure that drives the fog, its hard know, but yesterday, Vernon did not see the field, had no internal clock, and his pocket presence was gone. He began the game in a funk and stayed in that funk all contest. He was operating in a surreal world. He had 'deer in the headlights' syndrome to the max.
We only had 189 yards of offence In this game and that includes the long Hail Mary pass. It was a horrible offensive performance made even more agonizing because Vernon would not throw the football and just let the pocket collapse on him time and again.
Maksymic, overall, did a great job with Vernon Adams this season. But we should also have prepared our offence for Adams inconsistency, as well as for defeating a Bomber team in November. We did neither. We needed a much better run game, and that is both a personell and a football strategy matter. We needed a different coaching approach to our offence, so that when Vernon is off, we pull him from the game for a couple of series and have him watch from the sidelines. We needed a coach on the sidelines who could help get his mind right, when it was off, as it was yesterday or at least try to.
A Different Approach
However, think about the difference between Collaros and Adams in terms of pressure. Collaros knows he has a run game to rely on if he is struggling. That takes off a lot of pressure off. The tailback position is much more than just a running game position. As an ace back in a CFL offence, the position requires not only the ability to run inside and outside and also to be a good receiver out of the backfield. The position is also a pass blocking position and pass blocking is about 50% of the equation.
The ability to break tackles is also important, as well as find holes in a zone blocking scheme. Winnipeg’s Olivera gained most of his yards this season after contact. A scatback who can’t pass block, struggles to find holes, and who is mediocre after first contact is not what our offence needed. That is on the coaching staff.
Mizzell began this contest with a couple of excellent runs. But the Bombers basically pinned their ears back and ignored our run game anyway. They were smart to do so, because Maksymic had such little faith in it that we only ran Mizzell 5 times, even with Bighill out and Adams struggling badly.
We just didn’t lose because of Adams and Mizzell. We lost last year to the Bombers with Rourke as quarterback and James Butler as our tailback. Its time “to make a new plan, Stan, no need to be coy Roy’ on offence for next season.
DEFENCE
All week long, it was no secret that the key to stopping the Bombers offence was to minimize their running attack and play action off it when they run successfully, which they do. Our defense prepared for it in terms of dressing extra defensive lineman but without run blitzing on the first Winipeg drive, the Bombers handed the football off to Olivera 9 times on a 10 play opening drive that led to the Bombers only touchdown. It looked like men playing boys on that first Bombers drive and we were ill prepared for it it seemed. Olivera had 70 yards on that drive but in the second half, with effective run blitzing by our defense, we held him to 9 yards on 8 carries - impressive!!
Our defense held the Bombers to three field goals after that opening drive, even with our three interceptions and often dealing with terrible field position. It was a defensive effort worthy of a Grey Cup bid and especially when one considers we went with Mike Jones at corner, with Lee injured early and going with Bagayogo, as well as playing Greene at safety. Without three of our starters for most of the season not out there and with Peters having to attempt to cover Lawler one on one, with all the extra coverage issues that created, our defense, after the Bombers opening drive, played one hell of a game.
They gave our offence chance after chance but our offence was 4 of 19 on second down attempts in this contest. Still, if MacInnis had not slipped, there was still a chance we could have pulled the rabbit out.
Ryan Phillips, other than that opening drive, coached a hell of a game and our defense played their hearts out. However that opening drive should give us insight that we cannot go into next season with two defensive ends who are as light as ours. One yes, but two, no. We also need a stud defensive tackle who is a run stopper first and can disrupt.
PURGATORY
While our special teams made a first down on a fake punt and throw, the Winnipeg punt block was the key play of the game. It resulted in a touchdown for the Bombers and made things much more of an uphill battle. The Bombers just overloaded one side. Benevedes should have had his punt team better prepared for that type of siuation. Mackie tried to come over from the opposite side of the formation but was too late.
WRAP
Ah, the agony of defeat. It creates a bad gut feeling that takes time to go away. But hope is eternal. Here is to a successful off-season and lessons learned, I hope.
Go Leos!!
Our B.C. Lions had a great chance to play in this year’s Grey Cup game. With holding the Bombers to two field goals in the second half, the game was there for the taking. But our offence fired blanks and the Bombers walked away victorious. It was a heart wrenching loss and as I read the numerous posts on Lionbackers, the frustration and disappointment of die hard Leo fans was more than obvious.
It was torturous to think, if only Adams had played an average game, if only our defense had been more prepared for the Bombers opening drive, if only we had not allowed a blocked punt for a touchdown, if only the refs had made a few 50/50 calls differently, if only Macinnis had not slipped. But championship teams find ways to win and pretenders don’t.
Here are some post game thoughts, in the morning light with the pain less sharp but still lingering. We look forward to reading yours.
FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE
OFFENCE
Our offence only scored 13 points in the West Final and one of those scores was a touchdown on the last play of the first half on a Hail Mary pass. Without that fortunate play, our Leos would have been down 19-3 at the half and things would have looked dismal. With our defense playing a hell of a second half and the score 18-13, in the fourth quarter, all we needed was an offensive touchdown to take the lead. Considering how badly our offence had played in the game up to that point surely, there were some plays in our offensive arsenal, considering how productive our offence had been during the season but it didn’t happen.
Instead of going down with a bang, we went out with a whimper. There was no ‘Roar you Lions roar, just like you did in ‘64’ or “From the mountains to the sea, you are the pride of all B.C.” Instead, on the cold tundra of IG Field, the song turned into “There will be no football fame, once again we won’t be playing in this year’s Grey Cup game!"
I’ve been a Leos fan since ’63. Its been a long haul. Our Leos have only won 6 Grey Cups in our 60 year history. There have been many lean times. So when an opportunity is lost, as it was on Saturday, when the opportunity was there, it resonates. So what went wrong?
Vernon Adams
Football is a team game so no one player is the reason for a victory or a loss. But quarterback play is so very important and especially when one enters a playoff game with the best passing attack and the worst running attack in the CFL. A one dimensional offence means as your quarterback goes, so does your offence. The biggest reason most analysts said our Leos would lose this game was based on our lack of a balanced offence. We had an entire season to make an attempt to address an obvious issue and we didn’t.
Pressure can do a lot of strange things to people. Prior to the West Semi-Final, I posted that Adams needed to be decisive and not be John Travolta in the pocket, as he was during the first half of his final regular season contest. Adams came out slinging in the West Final. He was decisive. He went through his reads quickly. He had great pocket presence and dumped off or took off quickly if no one was open.
He was the Good Adams and during the West Semi he was the Great Adams. Yesterday, he was the BAD Adams and in fact he was the Very Bad Adams. Most of our nine sacks were caused by Adams holding the football too long and then trying to disco dance out of the pocket. When he was sacked by blitzing defensive backs, the issue was mostly poor pass blocking by Mizzell or Adams not dumping it quickly. Adams has a hot receiver or a safety valve on every passing play. Its designed into our passing attack.
In the West Semi, Cottoy had 6 receptions and Mizzell had 5 receptions as Adams used his underneath receivers often. In this contest Cottoy had 0 receptions and Mizzell had 2 receptions. Adams never saw them nor looked to them. Why? Because Adams was in a fog. Wally Buono would use the word discombobulated to describe this type of football play. He understood the notion well for a good reason.
In pressure games, Buono was often so discombobulated he was in an alternate universe. You could see it in his eyes on the sidelines. Yesterday you could see it in Chad Kelly’s eyes in the East Final as he threw 4 interceptions, two returned for touchdowns, fumbled and looked like a complete different quarterback. It was very unexpected from Kelly.
However, the Bad Vernon should not have been unexpected. Vernon Adams has had games in the past this season where one thinks something has taken over his body and his mind. Its like the Football Gods disappear and instead we are watching the football version of the Exorcist. However, most of the time this happens during a game. Vernon will be great for one half and horrible the other half.
However, one never knows which half it will happen in or whether it will happen at all. But one can always anticipate that the Jekyll Hyde quarterback persona lurks. There are good reasons why Vernon Adams was not able to establish himself as a CFL starter before this season and its certainly not his talent level. But the quarterback position is such a mental game too.
Stress can create a fog for a quarterback or any player or coach for that matter, and when it happens to a quarterback, their usual field awareness seems to go absent, the clock in their head does not seem to work, and they go back to the sandlot mentality of their childhood football days. Whether its unconscious fear of failure that drives the fog, its hard know, but yesterday, Vernon did not see the field, had no internal clock, and his pocket presence was gone. He began the game in a funk and stayed in that funk all contest. He was operating in a surreal world. He had 'deer in the headlights' syndrome to the max.
We only had 189 yards of offence In this game and that includes the long Hail Mary pass. It was a horrible offensive performance made even more agonizing because Vernon would not throw the football and just let the pocket collapse on him time and again.
Maksymic, overall, did a great job with Vernon Adams this season. But we should also have prepared our offence for Adams inconsistency, as well as for defeating a Bomber team in November. We did neither. We needed a much better run game, and that is both a personell and a football strategy matter. We needed a different coaching approach to our offence, so that when Vernon is off, we pull him from the game for a couple of series and have him watch from the sidelines. We needed a coach on the sidelines who could help get his mind right, when it was off, as it was yesterday or at least try to.
A Different Approach
However, think about the difference between Collaros and Adams in terms of pressure. Collaros knows he has a run game to rely on if he is struggling. That takes off a lot of pressure off. The tailback position is much more than just a running game position. As an ace back in a CFL offence, the position requires not only the ability to run inside and outside and also to be a good receiver out of the backfield. The position is also a pass blocking position and pass blocking is about 50% of the equation.
The ability to break tackles is also important, as well as find holes in a zone blocking scheme. Winnipeg’s Olivera gained most of his yards this season after contact. A scatback who can’t pass block, struggles to find holes, and who is mediocre after first contact is not what our offence needed. That is on the coaching staff.
Mizzell began this contest with a couple of excellent runs. But the Bombers basically pinned their ears back and ignored our run game anyway. They were smart to do so, because Maksymic had such little faith in it that we only ran Mizzell 5 times, even with Bighill out and Adams struggling badly.
We just didn’t lose because of Adams and Mizzell. We lost last year to the Bombers with Rourke as quarterback and James Butler as our tailback. Its time “to make a new plan, Stan, no need to be coy Roy’ on offence for next season.
DEFENCE
All week long, it was no secret that the key to stopping the Bombers offence was to minimize their running attack and play action off it when they run successfully, which they do. Our defense prepared for it in terms of dressing extra defensive lineman but without run blitzing on the first Winipeg drive, the Bombers handed the football off to Olivera 9 times on a 10 play opening drive that led to the Bombers only touchdown. It looked like men playing boys on that first Bombers drive and we were ill prepared for it it seemed. Olivera had 70 yards on that drive but in the second half, with effective run blitzing by our defense, we held him to 9 yards on 8 carries - impressive!!
Our defense held the Bombers to three field goals after that opening drive, even with our three interceptions and often dealing with terrible field position. It was a defensive effort worthy of a Grey Cup bid and especially when one considers we went with Mike Jones at corner, with Lee injured early and going with Bagayogo, as well as playing Greene at safety. Without three of our starters for most of the season not out there and with Peters having to attempt to cover Lawler one on one, with all the extra coverage issues that created, our defense, after the Bombers opening drive, played one hell of a game.
They gave our offence chance after chance but our offence was 4 of 19 on second down attempts in this contest. Still, if MacInnis had not slipped, there was still a chance we could have pulled the rabbit out.
Ryan Phillips, other than that opening drive, coached a hell of a game and our defense played their hearts out. However that opening drive should give us insight that we cannot go into next season with two defensive ends who are as light as ours. One yes, but two, no. We also need a stud defensive tackle who is a run stopper first and can disrupt.
PURGATORY
While our special teams made a first down on a fake punt and throw, the Winnipeg punt block was the key play of the game. It resulted in a touchdown for the Bombers and made things much more of an uphill battle. The Bombers just overloaded one side. Benevedes should have had his punt team better prepared for that type of siuation. Mackie tried to come over from the opposite side of the formation but was too late.
WRAP
Ah, the agony of defeat. It creates a bad gut feeling that takes time to go away. But hope is eternal. Here is to a successful off-season and lessons learned, I hope.
Go Leos!!