CFL Thoughts - Week Seven

Its being billed as "The Great Escape". The Saskatchewan RoughRiders take a 23 - 0 lead on the Hamilton TigerCats, allow the Cats to tie it up all on third quarter points, and then score then themselves to post a 33 - 23 win and grab a share of first place with the Edmonton Eskimos.
The Riders may have made CFL history in the process allowing absolutely no first downs in the first half and holding the TigerCats to negative yardage. Whether the Riders went to sleep in the third quarter or the TigerCats woke up is debatable but the important factor is the win and two valuable points. Along the way quarterback Darian Durant looked pretty good and if he can have another good outing against Montreal Friday night, he could perhaps silence his critics.
Ask Henry Burris how important statistics are. Burris went 30 for 45 for 479 yards but lost to the Edmonton Eskimos 38 - 35.
That brought about the comment from General Manager and Coach John Hufnagel something about time to take the training wheels off. Not sure to whom that comment was intended. The training wheels are off. We should be able to execute our assignments in a manner in which we win football games,” added Hufnagel. “We knew it would be a physical game, a high-scoring game and that it would likely be decided in the fourth quarter. And that the teams that made the plays in the fourth quarter would win the game. We made some plays, no question about it. But the bottom line is, who makes the most plays at the end to win, and we came up short.”
BC Lions stayed with the pack coming from way behind to defeat Toronto 36 - 28 while Montreal whipped Mike Kelly's Winnipeg Blue Bombers 39 - 12. Things are not rosy in Bomber land. Kelly serves as head coach, offensive coach, quarterback coach and almost anything else and there are rumors the Bombers will be looking to hire him some help. There are also many complaints about the Bombers offense to which Kelly says. There's nothing wrong with this scheme. I've seen it work 1,000 times," said Kelly, when asked after Saturday night's debacle if it was time to tinker with the game plan. "We have to catch the football. We have to block when we're supposed to block. Catch when we're supposed to catch and throw to where we're supposed to throw. Right now we're not doing those things. We'll continue to look at it and we have to execute better."
Next week its
Saskatchewan at Montreal - tough assignment for the Riders.
Winnipeg at British Columbia
The other four teams take a bye.
Western Standings
Edmonton 4 - 3
Saskatchewan 4 - 3
Calgary 3 - 4
BC 3 - 4