So… full disclosure before I get too deep into this, I didn’t watch the game live. I was busy this entire weekend doing shows with both my bands and celebrating my birthday, and when I was celebrating it happened to coincide with yesterday’s game between the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. I was busy watching John Fogerty wail his ass off at almost 80 years old, and I definitely cried a little bit watching one of my favorite musicians burn his way through a catalog of both solo hits and the songs he did with Creedence Clearwater Revival. I also saw George Thorogood do a pretty good job as another supporting act. Dude’s solid, check out his non-”Bad To The Bone” and “I Drink Alone” hits sometime. I did catch up on the game via the game recap that the CFL posted so maybe I’m not getting the full picture here as to what happened last night.
Imagine my disappointment coming home and seeing that the Ticats lost a nail-biter of a game by a 33-30 scoreline.
Okay, close games happen, sometimes a lucky bounce just doesn’t go your way…
THE BAD:
…imagine the rage I felt when I saw that once again Hamilton just did Hamilton things and allowed the Roughriders to score 16 points in the 4th quarter compared to their 3. The offense could’ve done some better work, sure, but once again we get a Mark Washington masterclass in how to absolutely blow a lead like he’s done with these Cats for the last few years. Over the last few seasons I’ve seen this team blow every kind of lead imaginable, from both the 2021 Grey Cup to any given regular-season game where we should’ve had it in the bag, and knowing we’re just going to keep continuing that trend until the outrage grows too loud to ignore is going to probably put me in an early grave. Yes, we got to the 2019 & 2021 Grey Cups in part because of our defense, but as anyone can say; in sports it’s not about what you’ve done in the past, but what have you done for me lately? This game could’ve easily been over inside the 3-minute warning when they got it down to 2nd & 17 inside Saskatchewan’s 15-yard line, and what did they do? The left a man open who made the easy catch. And then they did it again. And again. And ultimately again to tie the game up with 44 seconds left in the game. At some point a tough conversation is going to be had about Mark Washington the same way a tough conversation was had about Tommy Condell last season.
I don’t want to place the blame entirely on his shoulders though, Tim White for the second week in a row dropped easily catchable throws, including the critical one in the fourth quarter where he made the ‘Riders defense play “tip drill” in real time. Even making one of those grabs could’ve been the difference between a win and a loss this week. Scott Milanovich decided at some point in the 4th that the game was over. It’s a story I’ve heard and seen plenty of times before about this team; they don’t play up to the final whistle and it really shows.
THE GOOD:
Bo-Levi Mitchell of years past has finally arrived, going 27/38 and averaging 10 yards a throw, and throwing for 380 yards and 3 touchdowns. He was reading defenses and finding gaps like nobody’s business, and these are the sorts of things that you want to hear when you banked a solid chunk of your future on a guy finding his form again. The offense looked like it was clicking on all cylinders until they decided the game was over before the final whistle, maybe getting rid of Tommy Condell wasn’t such a bad move after all. There’s something there with this team, I just know it. They can bounce back from this and use this as fuel for the future.
FINAL NOTES:
Deep down I’m a guy who loves going out and seeing the world because there’s so many beautiful things to experience (such as ROUGE! at Punk Prom this past weekend where we played with our friend Jules who did lead vocals for us, and the aforementioned Fogerty show), but deep down I sometimes feel some weird form of existential dread because I’ll go out to these things but still feel some FOMO over not being able to sit down and watch the games on TV like I love doing. I love this team and I love this league, but this was probably a good weekend to get off the couch and go do some things I don’t get to do too often. We’ll see the Riders again on Sunday, this time at Mosaic Stadium and hopefully next time we’ll see something better.
The Ticats are now 0-2 on the season
They play the Saskatchewan Roughriders on June 23rd for Week 3.
Kick out the ROUGE!, motherfuckers!!
Song of the Week:
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