Monday, July 6, 2015

Here is the Canadian Football season in a nutshell so far:

Our selections in the AFL have been spot on all year; we've gotten 84 out of 116 correct this season, (75%) and sit in the top third of 1% in every grouping we're part of in the official AFL "tipping" contest (that's what they call predicting down under). So we know how to pick games. 

In the CFL, we're 3 out of 8 so far. (Which is better than the odds makers at BoDog, the official CFL gambling site, who have only gotten two games right so far.) Despite what actually passes as worse than "flip a coin" prognostication, we're in the top half of the pool already, and moving up. Go figure.

Last weekend, in Round 2, the Eastern Division somehow went 4-0 against the "vastly superior" West, with Hamilton annihilating 1-0 Winnipeg 52-26 - and that was the LEAST of the four results! - "quarterbackless Montreal crushing defending champion Calgary 29-11 behind first-time starter Raheem Cato (of Marshall U fame); Ottawa matched its 2014 win total sixteen games early by upending the British Columbia Lions 27-16; and in the game of the young season so far, two incredibly proficient teams went toe-to-toe, slugging it out as long as theoretically possible - more on that in a moment - before Toronto upset Saskatchewan in the Mosaic in Regina 42-40 in double overtime. Two great writers to follow on Canadian football are Don Landry and Pat Steinberg on cfl.ca; here are their wrap-ups.

Backup QB Trevor Harris drove the Argonauts down for the tying score late in the fourth, and the teams traded touchdowns (and missed mandatory 2-pt conversions) in the first overtime together. In the CFL, OTs are run in the same basic Kansas City format the NCAA uses, except each possession starts from the 35 (the extra ten yards account for the goal posts being ten yards closer, on the goal line itself). They only allow two overtimes at most in a regular season game, and 2-pt conversions are required on all TDs. The Roughriders made their second TD to come within two of Toronto in the second OT, and then on the by-definition last play of the game, the Argos stopped Saskatchewan from converting to win the game by two. 

So right now, Toronto and Ottawa are 2-0 in the East (Toronto has a 17 point higher rating at the moment), with Hamilton and Montreal a game back at 1-1. Calgary still leads the West, tied with Winnipeg at 1-1; BC and Edmonton each sit at 0-1, and the Roughriders have looked good two straight weeks and are 0-2 to show for it. 

Next week, we see these likelihoods:
Edmonton over Ottawa 19-13 at home...Winnipeg at home over Montreal 28-23...Saskatchewan over BC 30-24 in Vancouver...Calgary edging Toronto 24-23 at home. The Hamilton Ti-Cats have the week off.

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