Saturday, November 15, 2014

A Look At The Nine 2014 Ticat CFL East All-Stars

The Ticats placed nine players on the CFL East all-star list. The Montreal Alouettes had ten. The Cats had three players on offense, all imports. A bit strangely, Nic Grigsby, who the Cats picked up after Winnipeg released him and only played three games for Hamilton. That's probably more to do with the lack of running backs staying healthy this year in the East.

Luke Tasker made the list after leading the Ticats in receiving yards and being close to 1000. Brian Simmoms made the list as a guard. Almost no guards are imports in the CFL, so an import guard all-star is a rarity.

On defence, the Cats had a massive six players. Unusually two of them were non-imports, defensive tackle Ted Laurent and safety Craig Butler. Non-import starters are fairly rare in the CFL and all-star non-imports are rarer. The Ticats unusual import strength on defence gave the team a lot of ratio flexiblity, which is probably why the team ended up 9 and 9 even with a lot of roster turmoil.

Defensive end Eric Norwood, linebacker Simoni Lawrence, cornerback Delvin Breaux and halfback (and often linebacker) Derico Murray were the other defensive all-stars.

Brandon Banks rounded out the Cat all-stars making it on special teams.

No comments: