Bombers not taking Stamps’ rookie QB lightly

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This article was published 26/08/2021 (1475 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jake Maier is not Bo Levi Mitchell.

He isn’t a two-time Grey Cup winning quarterback or a two-time Most Outstanding Player award winner.

By no means does that mean the Bombers are taking Maier lightly. In his first CFL start last week, the 24-year-old out of UC Davis overcame a rocky start to help the Calgary Stampeders to a 28-22 home victory over the Montreal Alouettes.

With Mitchell out of action with a broken leg, Maier was thrust into the spotlight, completing 16 of 29 passes for 304 yards and a touchdown as well as two interceptions in his debut. Both picks came in the first quarter, but the rookie managed to settle down after that.

Maier will have another shot under centre Sunday in Winnipeg against the Blue Bombers.

“It didn’t seem like the game was too big for him and what I mean by that is he didn’t get off to the start that he wanted to have, but he still stayed in there and he still made some nice throws,” said Bombers defensive coordinator Richie Hall after Thursday’s closed practice.

“He still played with confidence, you know? The thing that he didn’t do is he didn’t get rattled. He maintained his composure. That’s the biggest thing that I took from him, that his start didn’t diminish how he played for the rest of the game. He did a solid job for them.”

With no preseason, Montreal didn’t have any professional tape on Maier to go off of — a luxury that the Bombers will have heading into this week.

“It’s helpful, but Calgary still does what they do. They’re a very quarterback friendly team. You look at them over the years and quarterbacks have always had success. They have a great system, they’ve got good players, they’re well coached,” Hall said.

“…It’s good to see him, but they still do the same things. He’s just a different quarterback than Bo Levi. They still called the game, for the most part, the same. I’m sure they’ll have some wrinkles this week, but our focus has to be what we do and take care of our business.”

Even though Maier is 1-0, it can be easy to fall into the thinking the Bombers will have an easy time Sunday going up against an inexperienced backup. Not so fast, says Hall.

“Especially when you get to this level, everyone is a good player because they’ve done something right to be playing at a professional level. When I look at our defence, when I look at our football team, we can’t go into any game being overconfident because we haven’t accomplished anything,” Hall said.

“Everyone’s good and in order to win, you have to play well… Us being overconfident, we’re coming off a loss. We haven’t played well in the last two weeks.”

Making Maier look like a rookie will be important, but so will stopping the run. The Toronto Argonauts had 100-yard rushers against Winnipeg these past two weeks. John White scampered for 111 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries in Week 2 and in last week’s 30-23 victory over the Blue and Gold, D.J. Foster rushed 10 times for a total of 101 yards and a touchdown.

“It’s a new week… I think it’s just getting back to the basics. Football is not too difficult,” said defensive tackle Jake Thomas.

“Some guy is going to try to block you one way or the other… We’ve had a few games now to kind of gel together, especially (with) the D tackles. Casey (Sayles) and Ricky (Walker), they’re fairly new. We had (linebacker) Jesse (Briggs) in there, that was pretty new. I think we’re now getting more used to each other and we know what the person beside us is gonna do and now it’s just going to come down to execution and I think we have to execute better.”

The Stampeders will be handing the ball off to former Chicago Bears running back Ka’Deem Carey. The 28-year-old from the University of Arizona is third in the league in rushing yards with 185 on 43 carries and two touchdowns.

“Obviously, you never want anyone to run the ball down your throat. I think we’ve done a good job making teams over the last few years very one dimensional,” said Thomas.

“But that was in the past. Obviously, we’ve had two back to back games of giving up 100 yards so I think we just got to get back to basics and focus on shutting down the run.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @TaylorAllen31