Edmonton at Montreal
Wow, that Eskimos-Bombers game last week was pretty much the typical CFL game:

• A somewhat inexplicable to U.S. football fans score of 2-2.

• A temper tantrum by a star player

• An exciting finish featuring a rouge

• A Jesse Lumsden injury

Poor Jesse. It’s not his fault that he seems to have the durability of that old brown banana that you have sitting in the back of the fridge. So I guess the question becomes, what does Jesse do from here?

Well you’re asking the wrong guy. My medical knowledge comes exclusively from the autopsy scenes in Law and Order. So I may be able to tell you that he suffered blunt force trauma to the shoulder, but he’s not dead and we already know who did it. See? Useless.

In the mean time, Calvin McCarty looks like a good back and maybe Arkee Whitlock works out but really whenever the Esks have a returner, receiver or running back go down, our refrain will be the same. Bring back Gizmo.

Pick: Montreal

Calgary at Winnipeg
The most remarkable part about the Derick Armstrong story to me isn’t that the Bombers tried to have him come in as a substitute and it isn’t that he hasn’t reacted well to the “demotion”. It’s that the Bombers tried to get Matt Dominguez but were rebuffed when he decided not to leave his job at a Regina based realtor. That’s at least 100x worse than Rob Waldrop not coming back to the Argos to go to a Sheriff’s Academy in California.

Pick: Calgary

Hamilton at BC
Wait, the Ticats are going to be missing both Terry Caulley and Tre Smith, Nick Setta is somewhat banged up, they’ve been moving players to different positions “to see where they can help us” and they get to play the late game in B.C. where no eastern team has won probably since the last time Pinball played. Looks like I can go to a bar on Friday night that doesn’t have a TV.

Pick: BC

Saskatchewan at Toronto
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game with 15 combined turnovers like the Lions and Riders had last week. It was a close game and all, but with offences so ugly, you would have thought that Gary Etcheverry was a head coach in that game as opposed to a defensive co-ordinator. Anyway, with three interceptions and one fumble the meaning of Darian Durant’s sloppy seconds has been redefined.

Pick: Toronto