[CaptainCrunch]

I thought I'd add the start of my preview. You can also follow along this week at www.cflhorsemen.ca

ts almost time for Grey Cup 104, at least I think it’s 104, all I know is that’s a lot of Grey Cups.

As expected the Calgary Stampeders are heading to Toronto to take on the Ottawa REDBLACKS. If you look at conventional wisdom the Stampeders should steam roll over Ottawa on their way to their 8th Grey Cup and second of this decade. But Grey Cup Games are unconventional as a rule and nothing can be taken for granted. As a Stampeder fan I can remember looking back on the super teams in the 90’s and even this century and saying, we should have won way more. Also at stake for the Stampeders a chance to label this team as one of the greatest teams of all time, though I think that the 1948 undefeated team is the greatest CFL team of all time.

Even the odds makers have the Stamps as heavy 9 point or more favorites so if you’re a betting man you might want to take Ottawa in case this game is close.

Just like last week, I want to break this game down a bit, and to keep you people interested I’ll break it down over three days. So first off we’ll look at the offenses, but I want to do things a little different.

Stampeders Offense versus Ottawa’s defense.

Overall – Calgary offense

Calgary’s offense lead the league in points scored with 586 yards, in terms of a scoring breakdown Calgary scored 21 tds via rushing and 32 touchdowns via passing, which means that this is a team that can hurt you in a lot of ways. In terms of play distribution Calgary rushed the ball 331 times for 1744 yards while passing the ball 652 times while completing 441 passes for a 67% percentage and 5655 yards. At the same time Calgary turned the ball over very few times with 10 interceptions and a total of 26 turnovers versus 53 TDS. On top of that Calgary’s aggregate QB rating efficiency is 104.5%. In other words, the Stampeders have a slightly higher tendency to pass the ball, which I might add is common in the CFL. But they do a excellent job of protecting the football. They make very few mistakes and a team with a 104.5% efficiency rating while maintaining a 5.3 ypc average on the ground and a 9.18.7 ypp average is a team that can not only eat the clock at a prodigious rate, has the ability to maintain drives, but as we’ve seen also has a big play tendency.

Scheme wise, we really don’t know what to expect from the Stampeders as their big strength is their offensive game planning. However there are some commonalities. The Stampeders play a very patient progression style offense.

On the run the Stampeders have a tendency to put their bigger offensive linemen at the Guard position, while they put their more athletic slightly smaller linemen at the tackle spot. This creates two situations. On the inside runs they tend to do a lot of deuce blocking while the guard and tackle will both attack the end, then the inside guard will disengage and push through to the second level. On the outside run the Stampeders will tend to move a tight end into the formation from the back field and they will do a deuce block on the end with the tight end disengaging to get to the outside linebacker while the tackle continues to wash the end. When a tight end isn’t used the tackle will utilize a long reach block to turn the defensive end inside creating a lane and forcing the outside linebacker to try to stretch the play until help arrives. For the Stampeders though it helps to have a monster back who can tear through the middle and take on a linebacker in a single matchup. What the Stampeders changed last week was the insertion of Roy Finch into the formation which means that he can exploit smaller or faster closing holes and then stretch the linebackers.

The Stampeders also tend to use a lot of misdirection in their run game, this is a team that runs exceptional counters where they sell the line and run in one direction and then the running back goes opposite to the line block. This tends to freeze the first steps of the linebackers and can put a running back into a one on one battle with a defensive back which tends to be a mismatch.

If the Stamps can establish a running game it creates a unique challenge to Ottawa defensive coordinator Mark Nelson. The Redblacks have a very good front 7 which is anchored by a strong set of ends and very good mobile linebackers. This allows him to use their front 7 to run stop and pressure while allowing their secondary to play a physical full zone without heavily stacking the box. If the Stampeders can establish the run this will force Nelson to bring more players into the box where he’s sending 7 instead of 6 or 5 players, if he’s forced to stack the box to close the inside of the field this opens up the Stampeders passing game to the outside of the field and the area just behind the linebackers.

The other thing that the Stampeders do very well is run the Jet Sweep, we saw it on the first TD against BC, where the Stamps bought Lamar Durant across the formation into a overloaded blocking situation. The advantage of the jet sweep is it allows you to run a fast sweep, as long as the timing is good.

If the Stamps can move the ball on the ground and force Ottawa to load the bock, this can lead to the effective use of their play action and zone read play action packages. With the play action the Stamps have shown that they can freeze linebackers and halfbacks which can allow the mesh pass into the middle of the field that’s abandoned. It also can force the cornerbacks to think run first which is a first zone responsibility and the Stamps tend to have receivers that are very good at recognizing gaps in coverage caused by play action. With the zone option passing play, Mitchell can now decide on the field whether a play is a run play or a passing play by riding the ball with his running back to see how Ottawa is going to play and then deciding whether to take the ball back to pass or to leave the ball with the running back. The biggest difficulty in running the zone read is leaving a defensive end unblocked. But if the defensive end decides or is fooled into thinking that it’s a run play it tends to quickly blunt a team’s pass rush.

Overall Ottawa’s defense

Ottawa’s defense is a study in contrasts, this is a team that’s very good against the run but in the bottom half of the CFL against the pass. They only allowed 11 TD’s on the ground, while allowing 31 in the air. Yardage wise they allowed 78.4 ypg rushing which was good for 3rd in the CFL with a stingy 4.8 ypc. Passing defense was a different story, Ottawa allowed a 2nd worse 311 ypg passing average while giving up a average of 8.33 ypc, what this means is that teams threw against the RedBlacks a lot. The dangerous part of the Ottawa pass defense is that they did generate 16 interceptions. However when you look at the completions verses interceptions this isn’t a product of ball hawking as much as teams just passed against the Red Blacks a lot.

From a philosophy standpoint the Mark Nelson doesn’t exactly play cautious like Mark Washington of the Lions. This is a very physical defense that uses its front 7 to effectively take away the run, while their secondary plays a much tighter zone and cover 2 man game plan.
For Ottawa to win this matchup Mark Nelson has to show a lot of patience and resist over stacking the box, or blitzing too aggressively which would give the Stampeders an edge in terms of exploiting abandoned holes in the defense.