ALOUETTES SHUT OUT ARGONAUTS

The Montreal Alouettes’ offense continues to sputter, but the way their defense is playing it may not matter.   The Als’ used a suffocating pass rush to completely shut down Toronto’s attack en route to a 25-0 home field victory on Friday night.  The shutout was Montreal’s first in 33 years, and raised their overall record to 5-1.

Montreal easily covered the -14 spread with the victory to improve their record against the number to 4-2.  Toronto, meanwhile, dropped to 2-4 straight up and against the spread with the setback.  The 25 points went easily UNDER the posted total of 50 for the Als’ fourth straight UNDER after opening the season with two OVERs.  Toronto has also played UNDER in four straight and five of six on the season.

The Alouettes’ defense was simply overwhelming.  They sacked Toronto quarterbacks Kerry Joseph and Cody Pickett a total of seven times, held star running back Jamal Robertson to 20 yards and the entire Argos’ offense to 126 yards.  After the game, Montreal defensive standout Anwar Stewart said they weren’t looking for a shutout but knew they needed to up their effort after a subpar outing at Edmonton last week:

"We just wanted to play hard, We knew that if we came out after Joseph and stopped the run we had a chance to do good things. We didn't really think about the goose-egg, but you know what? We'll take it. It's a great bounce-back from last week and we're proud of what we did. Last week we didn't touch (Eskimos quarterback) Ricky Ray and this week, we really got at them and showed what we can do."

While Montreal’s offense isn’t exactly in high gear, they’re a far cry from Toronto’s woeful output of late.  In the past four games Toronto has scored only 2 touchdowns for a total of 40 points.  Argos’ coach Bart Andrus didn’t mince words in evaluating the loss:

"We're not as good a football team as they are right now, We basically need to get to that level and we're not there now in a lot of areas. We have some issues up front. We need to get better at protecting our quarterbacks. To me, it's a blocking situation that needs to be corrected. We're trying different combinations."

That bad offensive line play proved costly, as Toronto starting QB Kerry Joseph got hit in the head and was forced to leave the game.  Argos’ coach Andrus made it clear that he wasn’t yanked due to his performance:

"He had been hit in the head on the previous series and our trainer was a little concerned. He had something on the side of his head. I didn't want to lose him for the next two weeks with another hit. And I wanted to see how Cody looked in a game situation because I haven't seen him, other than in the pre-season."

The Alouettes will play at Winnipeg on Saturday night, while the Argonauts will try to get some momentum going at home as they host the BC Lions on Friday.  The Argos and the Alouettes will face each other twice more this season, with both games in Toronto.