Tiger-(Cats) Beat, Week 4

What's even left to say??

…I have spent the last few days sitting in front of my laptop with my notes from Sunday’s game trying to even figure out what combination of words I could even put together that would begin to properly explain how I feel about what I saw. I keep thinking about what to write and then deleting it because good lord, after what just happened what’s even left to say about this Tiger-Cats team? And we’re only 4 weeks into the season. Four weeks. That’s how long it took for me to break this year. Typically this doesn’t happen until midway through the season, but this was bad. Bad beyond words.

Let’s just sum it up real quick; the Hamilton Tiger-Cats went to the nation’s capital to play the Ottawa REDBLACKS for the Canada Day game (a day before because it fell on a Monday but, you know) and held their own for almost the entire four quarters of play and then Ottawa wins it on a walk-off field goal . This is the first time since 2018 that Ottawa has beaten Hamilton in a game of any sort after they won their playoff matchup that year. Some losses feel tougher than others to swallow but this loss felt like a new low. Oh well, let’s just get into it.


THE BAD:
There was a bad omen hanging over this game right from the very beginning when it was announced that James Butler would not be available due to injury. He’s been a very solid steady rock for the team since he came to the Hammer last season and helped provide a little bit of balance between the air and land game the offense would put together on the field. His absence was filled in by some key players on offense (we’ll get to that later) but once again the defense finds new ways to disappoint. They lacked discipline all night and wound up with penalties that would lead to Ottawa maintaining momentum on offense, they couldn’t make tackles at all which would lead to more yards being conceded, and ultimately looked like scared confused children in the final 3 minutes of the game where they gave Ottawa the yardage to get the go-ahead field goal. The meltdowns this team had on the defensive end of the ball was unacceptable and if I tried and failed at my job as often as these folks did the next question I’d be asking my boss is “would you like fries with that?” And look, I’m sure a lot of readers keep coming here and think I’m being too harsh on this team, but they’re now 0-4 on the season and at least 2 of those losses could’ve been converted into wins if the defense simply did their jobs and we’d be in a fighting position to start the season off. Elsewhere, the offensive line was not great, giving up 2 sacks and leading Bo-Levi Mitchell to have to run for his life on multiple occasions when the pocket would start falling apart. Some of the offensive decisions were questionable as well, such as the turnover on downs that happened with 26 seconds to go in the first half. The only upside was that they recovered the ball on the very next play. As I was writing this article and trying to figure out what to even say, the Ticats announced they’d released special teams coach Paul Boudreau, and while I will say that was a correct move (the special teams unit was awful all night) he is far from the only one who deserved blame for the team’s misfortunes. I’ve been saying it since the beginning of the season and I will continue saying it until something is done about it; Mark Washington needs to go because of how much he’s failed the defensive half of the team and the sad thing is he probably won’t go until either the season is no longer salvageable, or until the end of the year when the team has been left with no choice but to clean house. Meanwhile the team also now has to contend with the knee injury that has put Lawrence Woods III out of commission for the foreseeable future, and the injuries are going to start piling on left and right if this keeps up.

THE GOOD:
Okay, so there was a lot of awful that happened in that game but there were some bright moments in there. Bo-Levi Mitchell had a heck of a night, having another 300+ yard game, 2 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions this time around. Tim White finally broke out of his slump with an 8/12, 118 yard, 1 touchdown game while just being an overall menace on the gridiron and proving that the first 3 games were just flukes. If you took him for your fantasy team last week I hope you got some good returns on him. Punter Nik Contantinou has a leg of gold, booting for an average of 49.3 yards per punt. It’s unfortunate that those punts get the returns they do, but he could be a beast in future situations where he’s needed to pin them back in their endzone. Shemar Bridges also had another great game as well coming in clutch in the final offensive drive of the game. So yeah this loss stings a little, but there’s still bright spots.

FINAL NOTES:
With all this said I’m getting tired of having to constantly find the bright spots with this team, I really am. Bright spots are nice but when they don’t translate to wins it starts to get discouraging real fast. I don’t want to see this team melt down the core just yet because we’re still only 4 games into the season, but we’re also 6 losses away from having a losing record and those 6 games can sneak up on you like no one’s business if you aren’t paying attention. This might actually be the most deflated I’ve felt after a Ticats loss in a very long time, which says a lot considering the years I’ve sat through before this one. After this game I thought long and hard (heh) about the off-season we had following our defeat in the 2021 Grey Cup matchup, and I thought about the people we let go or let walk that year. I think about wide receiver Jaelin Acklin, GM Shawn Burke, & QB Jeremiah Masoli way more than I should because I have really started to wonder over the last few days if we made the right decisions that year. I really wonder if Burke would’ve made sure the Ticats weren’t a team that rebuilt, but reloaded. I wonder if letting Masoli go and keeping Evans was the right call. I thank Acklin for his contributions to the culture. As I look back on that and I look back on all the decisions that have lead to us losing against Ottawa for the first time in 6 years, I have to just ask what the fuck happened to this team and where we’re going from here. If this is a rebuild year then let’s just watch the bullshit unfold in real time and hope for the absolute worst outcome so Orlondo “The Genius” Steinhauer and all his yes-men can all leave and this team can start to heal. Maybe we’ll win a Grey Cup before I inevitably die, and if they can’t do that then the least I can hope for is that the Argos don’t win any anytime soon either.

What else is there to say about this??


The Ticats go to 0-4 on the season.
They play the BC Lions on July 7th for Week 5.
Kick out the ROUGE!, motherfuckers!!


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