The Chris Jones School for Wayward Football Players is still taking applications!
It’s usually towards the end of the season when you have an idea of how a team has progressed or not, so the Riders did their fans a favor last week by imploding against the Montreal Alouettes 23-17 to put themselves in the drivers seat for the first overall pick of the 2019 draft.
Chris Jones got his start under Don Matthews and you can see a number of parallels with the unusual player selections and the “go big or go home” approach that Matthews and now Jones seems to favor.
Unfortunately, the Riders tendency these last few years to swing away with players with either a chip on their shoulder has resulted in an organization with many fine athletes but with no apparent sense of being a team yet, or anytime soon.
On paper before the Montreal game it seemed the Riders should beat Montreal, maybe not by a 56-10 score that Winnipeg beat Montreal with a week before with a rookie backup quarterback, but overall the Riders seemed to have a chip on their shoulder after getting flattened by Ottawa and would work out their frustrations on Montreal.