Calgary Blows Hapless Tigercats
I'm not a cat person, more of a hound kinda guy myself. Lucky for me the Hamilton version of cat is without bite, scratch, claw, not even a whimper of a meow. Despite showing a touch of promise in the first two games of the season, the Hamilton Tiger Cats were mauled to death by a hungry Calgary team. Without their starting tailback Jesse Lumsden the Ticats were seemingly not a team. Things pretty much started how they ended for Hamilton--in the gutter.
On the opening snap QB Casey 'I'm not Mr. Dressup's Puppet' Printers lost the ball off a low snap. That would be the high point of Hamilton. Most of the scoring for the team was done through single point punts that Marcus Howell let sail through the endzone.
Recap:
Calgary was challenged to come out and score on the first possession. They didn't achieve the score, however, not all was lost, as Calgary and the offensive machine run by Henry Burris up 10 points in the first quarter, and then 17, 15, 1 in ensuing quarters.
The offence was firing on all cylinders after the first couple of series. Main targets were Reynolds in the backfield amassing 5000 yards as a Stamp and 96 yards rushing. Rambo and Lewis were key targets with 127 and 125 yards receiving at the end of the game respectively. Both Reynolds and Lewis had two TDs each. The offence ended the game with almost 500 yards total offence.
The defence, victimized on a number of huge plays in recent games looked to put out a strong outing against an albeit weak Hamilton offence. The best run defence in the league (surprisingly since we have so many DE's injured) continued their dominance allowing less than 35 yards for each of the RB's for Hamilton.
The first defensive back to be victimized for a big play was yet again Calvin Bannister, however, on this night he would redeem himself with two picks. (He ended up getting the defensive game ball.) You gotta come up big against weak teams and Calvin did. A few big plays were surrendered by the defence, but all in all, the forced turnovers was the key insight into the play of the Stamps D.
In total Calgary captured six (seven) turnovers and surrendered only one. Yes, it's just Hamilton, but it's a good exercise for a team that's now arguably the best in the league. Questions still remain on defence but we can say that going into Winnipeg, Calgary is a heavy favorite to go 4-1.
Notes: Two rookies on the O-line again performed with a passing grade (only hurried a couple times but then again it's Hamilton.) Dave Dickenson got into fourth quarter action but didn't do much (his first regular season action this year.) Worth noting was Jon Cornish who came in the game at RB in the fourth and had some nice runs getting 55 yards with 48 yards being his longest.
