June 15, 2019

Vernon Adams Jr Shows Impressive Composure to Cap Off Week 1 in Edmonton

What. An. Ending. Our Alouettes may have taken a 32-25 loss at Commonwealth Stadium last night, they certainly showed they could put up a great fight until the last minutes of play. And that’s exactly what Head Coach Khari Jones had asked them to do.

“I want you to play hard-nosed football, he told his locker room before the Week 1 kickoff. Compete. Whatever the score is, keep competing.”

At the top of the list of competitors stands Vernon Adams Jr. It definitely wasn’t a good feeling watching Antonio Pipkin limp off the field in the 3rd, but the performance delivered by Adams shortly after was enough to light up the atmosphere. The highly mobile number two pivot scrambled his way out of difficult situations more than once to make unexpected plays at a critical moment of the matchup. In the 4th quarter, his 17-yard touchdown throw to BJ Cunningham in the back of the end zone took the score from 15-25 to 21-25.

And just like that, we had a ball game. Cunningham was the most productive receiver of the night with seven catches for 96 yards, while Adams proved his ability to deliver under pressure.

“He moved the ball, he was able to scramble and to give his receivers the opportunity to make plays. I was impressed with his work,” confirmed Khari Jones to the media after the game.

If we could get endings like this one all year long, we’d have ourselves a season. But the last 15 minutes of the game were not the only productive ones. In the first quarter, Antonio Pipkin connected with his new favourite target DeVier Posey on an 8-yard pass, capping off a five-minute offensive drive with the first touchdown of the night. Posey repeated his preseason feat by quickly setting the tone with the Edmonton secondary.

William Stanback brought the Alouettes run game back at the forefront after a relatively quiet preseason. The RB showed off his slimmer form rushing nine times for a total of 76 yards and powering into the end zone in the 4th. Although Stanback wasn’t as solicited as his Eskimos counterpart CJ Gable (20 carries for 154 yards), he maintained an impressive average of 8.4 yards per carry. The boy makes every run count.

However, the Eskimos offence, led by Trevor Harris, was simply better at moving the chains. Harris’ passing game has always been difficult to contain and the team knew that from his time with the Redblacks. Edmonton recorded 608 offensive yards versus 325 for Khari Jones’ men. Some things will have to be fixed prior to week two:

1-Penalties

“We went backwards too often. We had too many needless offside penalties,” said Head Coach. “We kept their drives alive. Good teams can’t do that.”

Pass interference penalties are one thing. Lacking discipline is another. The latter is unacceptable.

2-Pass rushing

Bob Slowik’s defence will definitely have to do a better job stopping the pass game and it should start with getting to the QB. Harris was rarely threatened in his pocket last night and our Als recorded zero sacks.

“It’s the first week. We expect there to be things to work on. I asked the guys to fight and I liked their fight,” Jones concluded composedly.

Our Alouettes made plays and put points on the board. Offensive schemes seem to be working and it can only get better from here. Up next : Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Friday, June 28 in the hammer.