8/13/2007 7:56:47 PM
Edmonton Vs Hamilton #1

It’s wonderful that this game holds three facets; offence, defence and special teams. Wonderful because when one is not functioning at full capacity, you still have a chance to win if the others came to play that day. Essentially, that’s what occurred in Commonwealth when Hamilton came to town. The offence showed up in spurts, but the defence and special teams played their hearts out which gave us a chance to win in the end. On the plus side, that game could have easily gone the other way (and usually have on my teams) so I really shouldn’t complain. On the other hand, for the first time my unit (receivers) were uncharacteristically subpar, which is unacceptable.
Hamilton is an intriguing team to me, their defence hits hard and flies to the ball well. It’ll be interesting to see if they can pull this season around with the guys that they have, or if they’ll make wholesale personnel changes again. Offensively, they’ve got a stud running back in Jesse Lumsden and a stud backing him up in Corey Holmes. Having seen them both in person, I can say that Corey is very much the real deal as well. It was good to see Jason Maas throwing the ball well again and with a smile on his face pre-game, you can tell he really loves it out here in Edmonton. Also, it was nice to see Brock Ralph playing with confidence and easing into his number one receiver role on that team.
While we got the win and I was able to muster a touchdown, it was still and unsettling night for me. When your job only really counts one night a week, it’s important that you’re at your best on that day. As receivers I didn’t feel like we were our best on that night as a unit. Too many errors came about on our part and it could have contributed to the game getting out of our hands. It was unsettling because that’s not us. The field product that we presented didn’t fully represent us as a unit and who we can be. Granted, we weren’t as bad as I’m leading on. We had two touchdowns from our corps, one being Andrew Nowacki’s first career TD which is a great milestone. When we needed the scores, we were able to march down the field and get them once again as we have in previous games, which is always a good sign.
As an offence we need to develop a level of consistency in my opinion. We need to be able to execute at a high level for upwards of 85% of the game. Perhaps not to win the game as some may take less, but to play to our capabilities. It may be asking a lot to think that we can function with that level of efficiency game in and game out, but I think it necessary in order to get to where we all say that we want to be. Otherwise, what are we doing out here at all? To me the whole point of playing is test yourself against the man across from you. If you don’t get the best of him as much as he gets the best of you, then you need to work harder in between meetings.
The Western conference being as thick a race as I think it’s going to be, we’re going to need to score points with more regularity than we are, and increase our time of possession to keep our defence off of the field and fresh to shut down opposing advances. As receivers, well…I wouldn’t expect to see much of that type of play from this group anymore. This is a hard working, humble group of athletic playmakers who will be starving to make plays in abundance this week.
In Regina this week, it’s likely that we’ll get our chances…we’ll be ready to capitalize on them. ©

KP8