Alouettes trounce Roughriders 41-3

Trounced. Dominated. Stomped.

There are no shortage of ways to describe the way the Roughriders were beat by the Montreal Alouettes Friday night.

The Alouettes fans showed no mercy themselves, singing the classic song Kiss Him Goodbye to the anemic Roughriders, who managed just three points through all four quarters.

The final score was 41-3.

Riders quarterback Mitchell Gale, who threw for 211 yards and interception, said there wasn’t any way to explain what happened, but said the Montreal defence was strong.

“We as an offence didn’t play well enough to move the ball, to put points on the board, to be efficient. We didn’t do enough,” Gale said after the game.

“There’s not just one play you can point your finger at,” he added. “It was a collective group of plays, a string of plays where we just didn’t play well enough to hang in the game.”

The trouble started early with the first drive of the game when Kevin Glenn was able to march his team 68 yards to the end zone.

The Roughriders responded with a two and out and it didn’t get much better. They remained scoreless in the first half of the football game.

The only drive worth noting came in the third quarter when Mitchell Gale and the offence crafted a 13 play, 85 yard drive down the field. The Riders couldn’t get a touchdown, however, and it ended with a Tyler Crapigna field goal. The only points scored by the green and white that night.

“I think we shot ourselves in the foot a little more than we could have liked to in any game,” said linebacker Greg Jones.

Jones said he didn’t feel like the offence showed them anything new, just that the defence made mistakes.

“(We’ve) got to be smarter and understand what teams are trying to do to us on both sides of the ball.”

Glenn made short work of the Riders defence, throwing for 299 yards and two touchdowns, hitting Duron Carter for 115 of those yards and one touchdown. Rakeem Kato also threw for one touchdown. The other two were rushed in by Brandon Bridge and Samuel Giguere.

The game was the most lopsided one in the CFL this season, but the Roughriders’ head coach didn’t want to focus on the negative.

“We’ve got to put that in our rearview mirror, we got to keep working,” Chris Jones said. “We got a young football team, we’re not just going to throw our hands up and quit, I can assure you that.”

Jones said the team needs to pull its own weight going forward, and after allowing 41 points the defence needs to be better.

“We’ve got to take advantage of our opportunities and we’ve got to tackle, we’ve certainly got to cover better,” he said, while also giving kudos to the Alouettes for their defensive game plan.

“Hats off to them, they did everything they needed to do to win the football game.”

Gale said the team was disappointed that they weren’t able to build on last week’s win, but they won’t be dwelling on it.

“You can’t let how you feel control what you know, and what we know is this is a long season, we’ve got a lot to improve and and (we’ve) got to get to work.”

Game Notes

• Shamawd Chambers was the Roughriders top receiver with 72 yards, followed by Naaman Roosevelt with 67.
• Josh Bartel punted nine times for 403 yards. The longest was 62 yards. By comparison Montreal’s Boris Bede punted seven times for 267 yards. His longest was 51.
• Justin Cox lead the Roughriders in tackles with seven.
• Corvey Irvin was responsible for the Riders only sack.
• Roughrider running back Michael Dyer got his first CFL start Friday, rushing for 38 yards.
• For the Alouettes, Billy Parker picked off Mitchell Gale late in the fourth quarter. He also recovered a fumble earlier in the game.