Montreal Alouettes Thread

[AngeloV]

He badly needs a change of scene and a last chance.

Only way he gets that is the Als release him and he takes a significant pay cut. Remember, he was the prized FA signing last year, and I believe that makes him one of the top paid import receivers in the league.

[OV Argo]

He badly needs a change of scene and a last chance.

Manny Arcenaux & Burnham doing basically nothing on a $hite BC offence this season so far; not sure I'd conclude either of them or Jackson are finished now.

Some gutless & predictable CFL offensive coaching can make a lot of decent players look bad.

[jerrym]

The Als have added CFL Supplemental Draft choice OL Tyler Johnstone, who was a second team All-American with the University of Oregon but went undrafted by the NFL, to their roster. They also placed International DB Greg Ducre, who played nine games with the Redskins and Chargers in 2014-2015, on their PR.

[jerrym]

Montreal has released starting International offensive left tackle Xavier Fulton.

[jerrym]

With former Argo QB Jeff Mathews out four to six weeks due to a foot injury, the Als inept offence will once again have former Argo QB Drew Willy as its starting QB.

[Foxhound]

CFL legend Hal Patterson passed away on 21 November 2011 at the age of 79.

Prior to arriving in the CFL, Hal played football, baseball and basketball at the University of Kansas. He was the leading rebounder on the 1953 Kansas basketball team that lost the NCAA championship final to Indiana by one point. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles but chose to sign with the Montreal Alouettes where he teamed with QB Sam "The Rifle" Etcheverry.

The two were dynamite together. In 1956 Hal set the record for receiving yards in one game with 338. This record has yet to be broken. In another game that same year, Hal caught a 109 yard touchdown pass. The 1914 receiving yard record he set that season in fourteen games would not be broken until Terry Greer of the Argonauts caught passes for 2003 yards in 1983 in a sixteen game season. Hal had ten 100-yard receiving games in 1956, a record that was not broken until Jamel Richardson of the Alouettes set a new mark with eleven in an eighteen game season in 2010.

Hal went to Grey Cup games in 1954, 1955 and 1956 with the Als but they lost them all to the Eskimos. Hal was traded to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1961 and made it to the 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1967 Grey Cup games emerging victorious in 1963, 1965 and 1967.

He did of course play both ways and was an excellent defensive back as well. Hal was voted the thirteenth best CFL player of all time in 2006.

This first picture appeared as part of one of the three series of CFL players that Weekend Magazine published in 1957, 1958 and 1959:



Here as well are front and back scans of my 1959 Topps CFL card of Hal Patterson:



Great pose of a great player!

[R.J]

Kavis making deals! : Alouettes acquire Adarius Bowman for a 2019 8th round pick.

[jerrym]

HC Mike Sherman was responsible for getting Manziel to switch his college commitment form the University of Oregon to Texas A & M where Sherman coached. So he has a closer link to him than most other CFL coaches.

[jerrym]

Can Manziel change the fortunes of the Als that thirteen other QBs who started for the team (namely, Crompton, Neiswander, Smith, Brink, Cato, Glenn, Marsh, Bridge, Adams, Durant, Willy, Mathews, and Shiltz) since Calvillo were unable to do?

[jerrym]

Vernon Adams responds to starting the Edmonton game and to the Manziel trade below. HC Sherman also comments on whether he might use Manziel in the game.

“I’m blessed. I could be home, doing other things, or not getting paid. It’s a tough situation,” Adams said. “You know, as a player, you want to be that guy. But there can only be one (quarterback) on the field. ...

“Everybody knows Johnny didn’t come here to sit. They didn’t pay him just to sit. I understand he’s coming here to play,” Adams said. “As of right now, the Alouettes are 1-4. I’m worried about winning a game. I’m not worried about what Johnny’s doing.
“Coach gave me the start. I’m going to come out here, do my best, lead this team, be efficient on second down and just have fun. When I have fun, I play my best.” ...


With the Als playing at home, and also in front of CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie and most of the Toronto-based executive office, it will be difficult for Sherman not to tap Manziel on the shoulder, even if only for one series.
“I don’t want to put him in a situation that’s uncomfortable for him with only two days’ preparation. Then again, I do want to get him on the field and give him his opportunity. I’m weighing both options,” Sherman said. “He’ll definitely be in uniform. Whether he crosses over, we’ll have to wait and see.”

https://montrealgazette.com/sports/f...ohnny-manziels

[jerrym]

HC Sherman discusses why he did not play Manziel against the Eskimos.

Sherman admitted that there was about a 20 per cent chance that he’d put Manziel in the game. It would have had to have been a lopsided win, with a basic, limited playbook, given that Manziel had only one heavy practice with the team in a short week.

“It was a combination of things,” Sherman said.
“I don’t know what you guys think we do in football while we practise, but we practise because we have to learn the schemes and techniques and timing and rhythm.
“It’d be like putting on a Broadway play with one day of rehearsal. One day of rehearsal you put on a Broadway play, it doesn’t work. One actor comes on and doesn’t know his lines.”

In both the analogy and in reality, the book is heavy with a lot to commit to memory.
“He has to know protections and he has to know hot reads. He knows a lot of those things already, but not without terminology and not without players,” Sherman said.
“The timing of our different guys, how B.J. (Cunningham) runs a route as opposed to Vernon (Adams reading it), it’s just different. To put him out there and have him hesitate and then all of a sudden have him take a shot to the head and he’s out for three or four weeks it just didn’t make any sense to me at this point.”

https://www.cfl.ca/2018/07/27/oleary...et-challenges/

[jerrym]

Only in the #CFL https://t.co/rjVrY3Catf

— Herb Zurkowsky (@HerbZurkowsky1) July 28, 2018

[jerrym]

HC Sherman has named Johnny Manziel the starting QB against Hamilton on Friday. Manziel will try to show Hamilton they made a mistake in trading him.

[jerrym]

Manziel and HC Sherman comment on Johnny's first start.

"It’s a great opportunity for me to be a starter again," said Manziel, a former Cleveland Brown who has not played a game that counts in two years. "This is what I’ve wanted since I got up here. I wanted to come to the CFL to get an opportunity to play. I felt that was what I was missing. The situation didn’t work out in Hamilton and I got somewhere where I could. I’m excited about that."
If he struggles, Adams will be ready to step in. Both took snaps with the first-stringers this week. But Manziel isn’t anticipating any problems. ...


"There’s something about him that elevates people around him," said Sherman, the former Green Bay Packers coach who had Brett Favre as his star quarterback. "I always felt great players make those around them better. I thought we practised better when he was out here Monday and Tuesday. It wasn’t until the Tuesday practice that he performed at a high level that I felt comfortable to make that statement."
Now he wants Manziel to do the same in a game.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/football/cf...week-practice/

[jerrym]

Cornerback Mitchell White's season and possibly his career are over following a tackle he made on Kenny Stafford of the Eskimos on July 26th. Following the hit, White was paralyzed for three minutes. He suffered two herniated discs. If he wants to play again he must undergo surgery and six months rehabilitation. If he does not choose this surgery, his career is over. Surgery cannot be done until at least September because of swelling in the area.

[jerrym]

Jack Todd reviews the Als season below. The review is brutal, like the Als.

This year — seven games, six losses and four quarterbacks into the season — the Als think they found their guy. If so, it wasn’t obvious against Hamilton on Friday night.
Johnny Manziel had a brutal outing. Zero touchdowns, four interceptions and less yardage than the length of a Canadian football field. There were flashes. Manziel is slippery. He’s creative. He makes something out of nothing. But according to a piece on the game in Sports Illustrated, Manziel’s disastrous tenure as a first-round pick of the Cleveland Browns included some of the same flashes.

The book on Manziel is that he doesn’t touch the book — the playbook, that is. A smart quarterback inhales the playbook and departs from it only when the play breaks down. Manziel ignores the playbook and starts freelancing from the snap, meaning no one quite knows what he’s going to do. He might create a play that is pure Brett Favre or Doug Flutie, or (as he did Friday night) he might remind us more of Darian Durant throwing into triple coverage. Given he was asked to play quarterback for a team that is imploding in front of our eyes, in a league with very different rules, with only a handful of practices and 950 days between games to let the rust accumulate, it’s hard to draw conclusions from Manziel’s tough first outing. ...

The larger questions have already been answered. Five years after Calvillo’s departure, this organization is so inept it makes you yearn for the glory days of the Montreal Concordes. These days, the Alouettes are a transcendent form of bad. So bad, it’s tough to know where to start. They have won once in their last 16 games. As a GM, Kavis Reed is now 4-21. Seven games into this season, the Alouettes have somehow stumbled to one win — but they have lost at home to Winnipeg 56-10, to Edmonton 44-23 and now to Hamilton 50-11. Last season, the Als scored 314 points and gave up 580 while winning three times in 18 games. This year, they’ve scored 103 and surrendered 242. In case you don’t have a calculator handy, that is 417 points for, 822 against. This isn’t simply a rough stretch; it’s clownishly, amateurishly bad. ...

On Hamilton’s first touchdown Friday evening, there was no Alouette defender close enough to Brandon Banks to hit him with a javelin. That’s coaching. When Manziel dropped back to pass, he was running for his life almost before the snap. That’s coaching. On the sidelines, you had assistant coaches arguing with each other. That goes to the head coach, but you reach out for a coach who was failing as a high-school coach when he was hired — and you’re surprised it hasn’t worked out? That clip of Mike Sherman in a battle to the death with his headset pretty much sums it up. As if all that isn’t bad enough, there is a growing suspicion Andrew Wetenhall and Patrick Boivin couldn’t organize a three-car funeral. ...

Even if Manziel is somehow the cure for a massive set of problems with the offence, the team itself is so grotesquely awful it’s hard to see him winning games. And for this, the team had to hold its nose and ignore Manziel’s past, which is enough to make anyone queasy — especially the alleged assault that burst his girlfriend’s left eardrum and caused her to lose hearing in that ear.

https://montrealgazette.com/sports/j...ateurishly-bad

[jerrym]

Als QB Vernon Adams and DE John Bowman will both miss significant time due to injuries. Adams is expected to miss 2 to 6 weeks with a leg injury while Bowman is expected to be out up to six weeks with a torn biceps.

[Argo]

3 Down Nation asks:
If the Alouettes make changes, who should it be?


Interestingly, this picture accompanies the headline, thereby answering the question most logically:

[jerrym]

Manziel commented on where he's at on Thursday:

“Like I said a couple weeks ago, I’m expecting consistent play, not turning the ball over, putting ourselves in a good position to win, being good in the red zone, being good on second down. Those are the things that are going to propel you to another level in this league,” Manziel said on Thursday. “We have to be more solid all-around, and it starts with me.

“I put our team in a bad position and felt like I let them down by turning the ball over and giving Hamilton a short field a couple of times,” added Manziel, who came to the Als in a July 22 trade with the Tiger-Cats. “It’s unacceptable from my position.” ...

Manziel said he has spent extra time this week in the meeting and film room with his receivers. He throws the ball to the spots he believes his receivers should be at. Sometimes it works, but last week clearly displayed there’s still plenty of miscommunication.
“We’re going to have some grey area and we’re trying to eliminate that right now,” Manziel explained. “They’re doing a good job of taking what I’ve seen, giving me their input, coming to a common ground and being able to go out and execute it. What we’ve talked about after practice, they’ve gone out and done it the next day on the field. I’m encouraged by that.
“There’s still a lot of work to go. I feel like we had a good week of practice. I feel we’re ready for the game. We’ll continue working on things.”

https://montrealgazette.com/sports/f...b-manziel-says

[jerrym]

DB Tommie Campbell, who did not allow a TD to be scored against him while with Calgary in 2017, was not part of the game roster leaving the Als a man short for 'personal reasons', according to HC Sherman. Could this indicate a deeper problem?