First commandment of pre-season: thou shall not overreact

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This article was published 20/06/2016 (3399 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s not often we have to go down this road, but when circumstances call for it — like a negative fan reaction to 75 net yards of offence from the starters in a pre-seasonloss to Ottawa last Monday — it’s time to get biblical and invoke the first five trusted commandments of the preseason.

Thou shall not overreact.

The pre-season is a lot like watching film when you’re a rookie; it’s never as good as you wanted it to be, and it’s never as bad as you thought it was. It always lies somewhere in between.

Yes, last week the offence looked like the 2015 season could be a highlight tape for them, but when it doesn’t count, it doesn’t count. It’s nearly impossible to gauge how much a game that means absolutely nothing can affect not only the mindset of the veteran players, but the play-calling, and the strategic approach to a road game that was their second contest in only five days.

Even if that game happened to be their best effort at the time — which few think it was — sometimes the best thing that can happen to any phase of a football team is to get punched square in the mouth in the exhibition schedule, because it erases all pretenses that you have arrived and that things are ordained to fall into place. They had ample time — 11 days for the Blue and Gold since that game — to put that behind them, and focus on the fundamentals that failed them.

Besides, it’s always better to be awoken too early for work, than too late.

Thou shall believe.

It’s what your head coach, offensive coordinator, and offensive line coach have told you; at least until a few weeks into the regular season.

If they aren’t pushing the panic button, haven’t strayed from the path, and haven’t pulled out all the hair on their heads yet, then we shouldn’t start either.

After the Ottawa pre-season game, we asked the head coach if he was concerned about the underwhelming numbers put up by his predominantly starting, offensive group.

He told us it was essentially such a limited and basic package being run, that we shouldn’t read too much into it or get too worked up about it.

While on occasion, head coach O’Shea will stand in front of you and argue whether the sky is blue, in the pre-season, those who spend 12 hours a day with their players get the benefit of the doubt.

Thou shall lose players to injury.

Unfortunately, this is when the reality of football not being good for you always rears its ugly head. No matter how many times you do or don’t practise in pads, or how many two-a-day practices there are, how well hydrated the players are kept, or how limbered up and in great shape they are, football injuries are like gravity; you cannot escape them.

While losing the veteran experience and passport of a cagey non-import offensive lineman is going to sting for a while, it could always be worse.

This is not the time to feel sorry for your franchise, because you don’t have to look too far around the league to see every other team dealing with the same issue, on multitudes of different scales.

Thou shall make surprising cuts.

Matt Bucknor, and to a much lesser extent, late draft pick Rupert Butcher — who we all thought was going to end up on the offensive line — were the unfortunate recipients of this commandment in 2016.

While there is rarely a bigger surprise than parting ways with a Canadian player that has started and contributed in every game for the last two seasons, and who hasn’t missed a practice (by his own admission), there is always more to the story than what we are privy to. Contract numbers, regression, age, ratio, attitude, and compatibility are often considerations that carry weight outside of the performances we see on the field of play.

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Thou shall have no idea of what lies ahead.

If there is one definitive thing I can say about the 15 pre-seasons I participated in, it’s that you can say nothing definitive about the pre-season.

Whether we won both games, lost both games, split the games, looked like the New England Patriots, or looked like $%#, there was no reliable indicator as to how the team would fare and compete once the bright lights came on, and things started counting for real. The only guarantee going into Friday’s regular season opener against the Alouettes, is that you will be greatly surprised by something that happens on the field. Whether that is good, bad, or ugly, we will all have to wait and watch to find out, but it most certainly won’t be related to the two-week exhibition schedule.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears weekly in the Free Press.

Twitter: @DougBrown97