(Montreal) Cody Fajardo wasn’t stellar, but he wasn’t eerie either on his first outing in the Alouettes’ uniform, while William Stanback wasn’t used as much as he’d hoped. of the Montrealers’ last preseason game.
Fajardo led the Alouettes’ offense for the first five streaks of the game, which they won 25-22 against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
He was very good on the first sequence, when the locals went for 70 yards, notably passing passes from 18 and 15 yards to Kaion Julien-Grant and Cole Spieker. The rise was crowned by a three-yard pass to Julien-Grant who then made it 7-3 Montreal.
He then lacked precision on a long play to Austin Mack, before being the victim of a too high discount from Justin Lawrence, two plays that led to as many clearances.
His last streak wasn’t much better, but the offense did enough for David Côté to score his first goal of the game to make it 11-10 for hamilton. Fajardo eventually completed seven of 14 passes for 77 yards and a major.
Caleb Evans took charge of the Alouettes’ offense for the rest of the half. Staggering in camp, Evans led the Alouettes to nine points in two offensive series: a 38-yard field goal from Côté and a touchdown from Walter Fletcher on a three-yard short that capped a streak notably punctuated by a 34 pass yards to Quartney Davis, who won his fight against his roofer to come out with the ball.
Evans had a pretty ordinary third quarter and he eventually left the game with almost four minutes left in the engagement. He finished his game with the same statistics as Fajardo, without the touchdown pass.
Of the three-quarters used by Jason Maas, it was ultimately Davis Alexander who stood out the most in this meeting.
As for Stanback, he said this week that he wanted to carry the ball fifteen times. His coach didn’t see it that way: he carried the ball four times for 25 yards before seeing his evening’s work over. The Alouettes’ ground game was not very effective in this duel.
Antwine and Rodgers stand out
On the other side of the ball, even if the Alouettes still offered some long conversions on long second downs to the visitors, Noel Thorpe’s defense contained the Ti-Cats attack well.
Tackler Israel Antwine and cornerback Kordell Rodgers were particularly successful, the former having two sacks, while the latter had the only interception of the game, in addition to excelling in pass coverage.
On the special teams side, after making five field goals last week in Ottawa, Jose Maltos was again perfect with kicks of 29 and 23 yards. He came into the game in the fourth quarter. David Côté had previously made two attempts for 45 and 38 yards.
Unlike last Friday’s outing, the meeting was punctuated by several penalties. We bet Jason Maas is eager to lower his player count to clean up that technical junk for the start of the season.