November 2, 2014: Toronto Argonauts vs. Montreal Alouettes

[Argo]

Ray's head bounced off the turf real good after having his left toe was stepped on by Slaton and then by Van Zehl as he lay on the ground. Van Zehl stepped on Ray's foot on the previous play as well. Van Zehl also tackled Slaton in the forth. He had a shite game.

You make a good point. With my usual disclaimer that I don't subscribe to cable and so only watch the highlight package on cfl.ca, I was wondering before this game why Milanovich was screwing around with an O-Line that had seemed (I gather) to play rather effectively the previous game. Not only wondering but opining that such change wouldn't end well, and indeed, it didn't.

[paulwoods13]

I was wondering before this game why Milanovich was screwing around with an O-Line that had seemed (I gather) to play rather effectively the previous game. Not only wondering but opining that such change wouldn't end well, and indeed, it didn't.

VZ had a bad game (as did most of his colleagues on the o-line), but he has been consistently better than King this season, and he is a NAT starter. Had the Argos dressed and started King, some other INT starter would have had to sit. It couldn't be a receiver like Mann because the Argos were already starting both of their experienced NAT receivers. It couldn't be a d-lineman because the Argos have only one healthy NAT d-lineman -- he's not really starting-calibre and if he did start and got hurt, it would ripple throughout the lineup. It would have had to be an LB (Jones or Ware) because that is the only position where we are deep enough to start a backup NAT. Jones has had a solid year and Ware has also played well, but arguably we could have sat one for Yurichuk without too great a dropoff. But even then, would we really play King over VZ? I doubt it. Maybe play King over Smith but that would mean screwing around with the o-line (your original point), and I don't know that Smith is our worst o-lineman at the moment.