Cauz: Not hopping on the Montreal bandwagon…yet

To all the people who are complaining that I have been either ignoring the Montreal Alouettes or just disrespecting them let me add a quick story to give you more ammunition against me.

I was so inept at Grade 8 French that I always used to copy off my buddies during any in-class assignment. One time I went a little too far, and at the top where I was supposed to write my name I wrote “David Kennedy”.

That’s right, I was so focused on cheating off my friend that I wrote his name down instead of mine. Needless to say I got a whopping 0% on that test. I tell you that not to show how dumb I can be (just check my archives for further proof), but to offer up that maybe my ignorance of the Alouettes has less to do with football and more to do with my inability to conjugate verbs.

Bad jokes aside, I think one of the main reasons Montreal doesn’t get enough attention has to do with the numbers: 16 (seasons), 269 (games played), 69, 655 (passing yards) and three (CFL MOP Awards). Those are just some of the career accomplishments of Anthony Calvillo.

The easy storyline for Montreal is with Calvillo retiring a natural regression would soon follow. It’s the nature of sports, you lose your hall of fame quarterback what usually follows is more losing. So many people who follow this game expected that to happen.

When the team started out dreadfully it was easy to dismiss this team, to lump them in “rebuilding mode” and then turn our attention elsewhere.
But going into Week 16 Montreal was still very much part of the playoff picture thanks to … well to be honest I’m not really sure beyond the fact that they play in the East Division.

Offensively they’re in the bottom two for most major statistical categories which has put a terrible strain on the defence that is middle of the pack statistically but has played better than the numbers would indicate.

But if you look past the numbers, and the ghost of Calvillo, the reason Montreal doesn’t get enough respect is they don’t feel like a team that has a higher level in them. Credit Montreal for staying relevant with an offence that is searching for an identity, but who do they have that can carry them in the playoffs and win a couple of games in November?

Yes you can gut out enough wins in the regular season with proven veterans like Josh Bourke, Jon Bowman and Chip Cox but what happens once the post-season starts? Who are the true difference makers that can turn a game around?

The Argonauts have a ton of issues on defence but Ricky Ray to Chad Owens can cover many of them up. No one would be surprised to see Ray lead Toronto back to the Grey Cup. Hamilton has the best rush defence in the CFL, Justin Hickman is back and most importantly Zack Collaros is developing into the sort of dangerous quarterback Kent Austin envisioned when he let Henry Burris go.

But with Brandon Whitaker out with a foot injury who truly scares you on Montreal?

Of course the flip side to my argument is the past six weeks of the season. Montreal has gone 5-1 with a couple blowout wins while averaging around 400 yards of offence after generating just 258 yards a game for the first eight games of the season.

Crompton is looking more comfortable every week and Duron Carter has all the makings of a guy with multiple All-Star seasons ahead of him. Certainly Montreal looked great after their 40-9 drubbing of Saskatchewan. However I have a few concerns from that game.

Crompton’s second and third touchdown passes were more about the receivers making great plays on what essentially were jump balls. Carter and Brandon London both made spectacular grabs but that really is not the recipe for a consistent offensive attack. Jump balls are a funny thing and are just as often knocked down or intercepted.

Take away those two plays and suddenly Crompton’s final stat line doesn’t look that good. Montreal still would have won that game even if both passes were incomplete but hoping for receivers to beat multiple defensive backs is really not that sustainable come the playoffs.

I commend Montreal for having bounced back from a 1-7 start and maybe what we’ve seen since Week 10 is the sign of things to come. But I need more from this team. Can they win in a shootout? Can they come back from a 14-point deficit? Any team can win when they play a clean game devoid of turnovers or special teams mistakes.

But the great teams, the dangerous playoff teams, are the ones that can overcome their own warts and still win.  I need to see in their final four games that Crompton and the entire Montreal offence continue to raise their game.

To be able to not only challenge opposing teams’ defences but to also to take some of the stress off their own defence, who are quite dangerous when given a lead.

So to Montreal I say prove me wrong. That’s the great thing about football is teams, every week, have the opportunity to prove critics and fan bases wrong. I’m very curious to see what they do.