“Up to now, the play has been defined by what the quarterback sees. It’s about to be defined by what he doesn’t.” – The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis, 2006.
The amazing non-fiction book writes about the importance of the offensive line in football and the evolution of the left tackle position following the career ending injury of Super Bowl Champion quarterback Joe Theismann from a blind-side tackle by Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor on November 18, 1985.
Since that day, the offensive guards, tackles and centers have received a higher importance on the field to protect the team’s most valuable asset, the man behind center.
Clearly, the offensive line for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats didn’t get the message. Joel Figueroa, Steve Myddleton, Tim O’Neill, Greg Wojt and Brian Simmons looked just like cats out there, not Tiger-Cats, and that was on good plays.
They played more like lemmings, just follow the leader. Whoever the leader out of the five was, must have been pretty bad, since all five of them together as one, were outright awful.
Just in case you don’t know what a lemming is, it’s a type of species that all follow a leader to a certain location, even if the head of the herd happens to run off a cliff, they all run off the cliff.
Without intellectual genius Peter Dyakowski, who has been put on the 6-game injured reserve (knee), as the line’s leader, whoever their new leader is, just ran the offence’s scoring attack off the cliff.
The Hamilton Tiger-Cats younger quarterback, Zach Collaros has been sacked 12 times the past two weeks, 10 by the Saskachewan Roughriders and 2 by the Edmonton Eskimos. Despite a decreased sack total in week 2, the offensive line failed to protect Collaros, who was knocked out of the game following a vicious hit by Odell Willis in the 2nd quarter. It was a dirty hit that merited a max fine from the league, but the line still has to protect their QB, a fine or suspension won’t get him uninjured.
Jeremiah Masoli stepped into the game for Collaros and was sacked two more times by a defence-oriented Eskimos squad.
The only positive out of this situation is that Purolator donates the same amount of food as the quarterback’s weight when he is sacked. So, the offensive line is donating to two charities; sack total of the other teams and to the Purolator food drive.
The sacks against needs to go down fast or else they will get no where near the Grey Cup game, which they reached last year, to ultimately lose.
Meanwhile, in the same division, the Montreal Alouettes defence is the complete opposite in production. Instead of 4 sacks against, John Bowman collected 4 sacks for, against Kevin Glenn of the B.C. Lions. Bowman dominated the Lions offensive line, another big-man unit who needs to drastically improve in order to raise their teams chances to win.
Bownman and fellow defensive tackle Alan-Michael Cash went through the Lions guards and tackles as if they were swiss cheese. If someone said the line was swiss cheese, it could have easily been true.
Defensive end Scott Paxson even jumped higher than the Lions o-linemen to intercept a pass on the opening drive, followed by a beautiful lateral pass to Chip Cox, who ran it in for a score.
So do we blame these two losses to the offensive lines of the Ti-Cats and the Lions, two cats who didn’t look very intimidating, on the o-lines or the strong opposing defences? Well you can say a little bit of both, Montreal and Edmonton’s defence may end up being the best of the league this year. But to what point do we blame the offensive line?
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