Welcome to Canada Week

[ticatfan]

For the next 7 days, The MMQB will cover North America's other great football league. To kick things off, Bears coach Marc Trestman, winner of two Grey Cups in Montreal, explains the rules and nuances that make the CFL unique


Note from editor-in-chief Peter King: Today opens Canada Week at The MMQB. It’s the opening week of the Canadian Football League season—the league traditionally plays from the end of June until the end of November, with the league championship, the Grey Cup, always happening around our Thanksgiving. We’re trying something novel here at our site: We’re covering three CFL games, with Toronto at Winnipeg on Thursday night (our Jenny Vrentas will be on site) and we’ll have some other features on the site to tell you about the game up north. I’ll have a full explanation at the end of the column, in an abridged Five Things I Think I Think.

Now for this week’s Monday Morning Quarterback guest columnist, Chicago Bears coach Marc Trestman, on his five seasons as a Canadian Football League head coach.
http://mmqb.si.com/2014/06/23/marc-trestman-canada-week-guest-monday-morning-qb/3/

[ticatfan]

During my days with the Buffalo Bills, we were a running, play-action team that played really good defense in low-scoring games. You adapt, and you do it that way. But boy, the mindset was different. When I was in the CFL, I was very aggressive. Aggressive in my play-calling; aggressive in my decision-making. In the NFL, I became much more passive, trying to do what I thought the coaches wanted me to do all the time.
http://mmqb.si.com/2014/06/24/cfl-doug-flutie-grey-cup-canadian-football-league/

[ticatfan]

http://mmqb.si.com/2014/06/26/cfl-offseason-jobs-jon-cornish-calgary-stampeders/
A man walks up to the bank window. “Wow,” the man says to the teller. “You look exactly like Jon Cornish, the running back for the Calgary Stampeders.”

The bank teller smiles. He’s bald, like Cornish, has broad shoulders, like Cornish, and that grin? It looks awfully familiar.

Another customer from the back of the line interjects. “Hold up,” he says. “That doesn’t just look like Jon Cornish, that is Jon Cornish!”

“The whole scene seems a bit corny,” says the bank teller, who is in fact the real Jon Cornish. “But that’s my life. Interactions like that happen all the time.”

[ticatfan]

http://mmqb.si.com/2014/06/30/canada-week-peter-king-cfl/

REGINA, Saskatchewan — So I didn’t see art this weekend in my two Canadian Football League experiences. One game was 29-1 (I love the rouge) in the final minute, Calgary over Montreal and new import Chad “Humble Pie” Johnson. The other, here at rickety Mosaic Stadium, was 31-1 midway through the third quarter, Saskatchewan over Hamilton in a fizzled Grey Cup rematch.

That’s okay. Training camps in the CFL are short, and the early games often stink. What I did find here on the prairies north of Montana and North Dakota—when I asked one Roughrider fan what the nearest American city was, she said, “Minot”—was a fierce love of their game, very little NFL envy, and some wonderment that no one in America cares a whit about this hidden game up here.

Case in point: The quarterback of the Grey Cup champion Saskatchewan Roughriders, Darian Durant, jogged off the field Sunday on one of the most miserable days for a football game I’ve ever experienced (low fifties, high and biting winds, sheets of sideways rain that occasionally slowed but never stopped all day), and found me. “Thanks a lot for coming and covering us,’’ he said. “We play some good ball, and we have lots of players up here who played at a high level in college. Then I watch ‘SportsCenter’ and they cover everything else, even the international soccer over and over, and never us. It’s frustrating sometimes.”

[Dr. Lecter]

All mayors of cities in the US should smoke crack to celebrate!

[ticatfan]

All mayors of cities in the US should smoke crack to celebrate!Call barry or did you post in the wrong forum?

[ticatfan]

During the pregame , they said wealthy owners from the other pro leagues are watching how well the REDBLACKS do ,to see about investing into a team in Halifax, wonder if it is football people.

[mightysimi]

During the pregame , they said wealthy owners from the other pro leagues are watching how well the REDBLACKS do ,to see about investing into a team in Halifax, wonder if it is football people.

I can't imagine there is any way that Halifax gets a team without a stadium and with that economy, they aren't building one without a team in place. Vicious cycle. Never happen.