The Montreal Alouettes put an end to their five-game losing streak when they took down the Saskatchewan Roughriders, 48-31, at Mosaic Stadium in Regina on Saturday night. This was the team\u2019s first victory since July 24th in Calgary.<\/p>\n
The victory improves the Alouettes record to 6-7, which puts them in second place in the East Division.<\/p>\n
So many players stepped up throughout this game, so let\u2019s break it all down.<\/p>\n
Tyson knocks out Riders<\/p>\n
Canadian receiver Tyson Philpot had a career night on a rainy prairie evening. He and quarterback McLeod Bethel-Thompson were able to connect on big play after big play. Philpot finished the game with a whopping nine receptions for 238 yards and two touchdowns.<\/p>\n
This was the first time an Alouettes receiver surpassed the 200-yard mark in a game since Jeremaine Copeland, who was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame this year, did so on August 21, 2003, against the Toronto Argonauts (he had 208 yards).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Philpot\u2019s 238 yards were second-most in franchise history behind the legendary Hal Patterson who had 338 receiving yards back in 1956 against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never gone over 200 yards before. That\u2019s definitely a career-high,\u201d Philpot mentioned after the game. \u201cI was told it was the second-best performance in Alouettes history. Every week, I look to put my name in Alouettes history. I love it here and I just can\u2019t wait to keep performing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t always need performances like this. We just need to win the game. That\u2019s all that matters to this locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethel-Thompson put together his best effort of the season, as he looked calm in the pocket while delivering strike after strike to his open receivers. He finished the game 20-of-26 with 379 yards and three touchdowns. This was his first 300-yard performance as a member of the Alouettes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was incredible,\u201d Bethel-Thompson said of the team\u2019s performance. \u201cI\u2019m thankful for this locker room, for this coaching staff and this organization from top to bottom\u2026It\u2019s been a hard road on and off the field. This team has been through hell as well. The CFL is about who gets hot late, so hopefully this is the start of a little fire, and we want to keep it going.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old\u2019s second touchdown toss of the night to Philpot was also the 100th of his CFL career.<\/p>\n
OL + SS3 = SUCCESS<\/p>\n
The offensive line gets way too much blame when things go poorly and no love when they play well, so we\u2019re going to change that right now.<\/p>\n
The big boys up front were awesome. They gave Bethel-Thompson time to throw the ball, and they managed to open up some big holes for running back Stevie Scott III.<\/p>\n
Scott III got an impressive 19 carries tonight after Travis Theis exited the game on the first play from scrimmage with a lower-body injury. Theis didn\u2019t return.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s ability to dominate the line of scrimmage tonight was a huge reason why they were able to win. They punched the Riders in the mouth repeatedly and Saskatchewan didn\u2019t seem to have an answer.<\/p>\n
Scott III finished the night with 125 yards rushing and averaged 6.6 yards per carry. Those are big numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to shoutout my offensive line,\u201d Scott III said. \u201cWithout those guys, this wouldn\u2019t have been possible. The guys up front were blocking their butts off and creating holes for me so that I could find those seams and do what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Sean Thomas Erlington on the six-game injured list and Theis potentially banged up, Scott III could see a lot more work down the stretch.<\/p>\n
On top of the outstanding blocking performance by the offensive line, one of them also scored a touchdown, as Donny Ventrelli fell on a fumble at the goal line to add six points to the Alouettes\u2019 tally.<\/p>\n
The offensive line also didn\u2019t allow a sack on Saturday night, by the way.<\/p>\n
Stout defence<\/p>\n
A lot was made of the Als\u2019 run defence last week, as they gave up more than 200 yards on the ground to Hamilton. This week, they faced a very good ground game led by A.J. Ouellette, who had 90 yards on 16 carries. Many defensive players that came on the Alouettes Postgame Show admitted that they left some plays on the field, but there was a net improvement in their performance on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Defensive coordinator Noel Thorpe\u2019s unit came up with three big turnovers. Wes Sutton had a big interception in the first half, Tyrell Richards knocked the ball out of Tommy Stevens\u2019 hands on a quarterback sneak which Marc-Antoine Dequoy recovered, and Kabion Ento had a pick near the goal line in the final moments of the game. That doesn\u2019t even include the two forced fumbles the Alouettes were able to create that the Riders recovered.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n
The Als will play a huge game against the Argos in Toronto next Friday night. The Argonauts are two points behind the Alouettes. The good news for Montreal is that they have already claimed the season series against the Argos, but the game will still be huge.<\/p>\n
Game Content<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Montreal Alouettes put an end to their five-game losing streak when they took down the Saskatchewan Roughriders,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-237949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}