I thought going in the Cats should have been favoured to win this game (good thing I didn't make a bet). The Eskimos had lost five straight and were starting 39 year old Kerry Joseph as quarterback. The Cats were coming off a big home win and winning this game would put them in the driver's seat for the last playoff spot in the East and making things very difficult for Edmonton to overtake them.
The Cats played decently until the fourth quarter, whereupon the Cats defence collapsed and the offense started to honk. Probably the most painful thing was that the Cats lost to Kerry Joseph throwing bombs. You don't really expect that, especially the beating the Cats gave the Eskimos two weeks ago. Clearly that was an issue of the secondary and the defensive line.
Peter Dyakowski's not playing due to injury, which required an American to take his spot at guard, followed by non-import Eddie Steele starting on the defensive line due to the guard ratio issue and then Steele getting injured (probably for the season) meant the pass rush in the fourth quarter was weak, which is depressing considering Joseph generally takes a lot of sacks.
Certainly these ratio issues and injuries happen to every team in the CFL and are part of the game. However clearly the Cats don't have very much Canadian depth on either the offensive or defensive line. Having to start three Americans on the offensive line is generally a poor situation and it is not like the offense kicked a lot of ass last night. The running game was decent, although not stellar (Cobourne had 86 yards on 13 carries) and Burris was sacked twice. Burris did seem to have a lot of time though.
Henry Burris setting a new Cat TD record with 34 is somewhat bittersweet, considering the Cats are a 5 and 9 team. Stats are strange things sometimes.
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