You know, we understand what happened this past Labour Day game. The defence had a good game and we forced six turnovers, which put the Edmonton offence in a bind.

That’s what we spoke about even from the previous game is coming out and starting fast and trying to take the air out of them. Coming back to this game, it’s a quick turnaround and teams won’t have time to change but one or two things.

We know they’re going to come out and play harder than they did on Labour Day — we’re not expecting them to come out and lay a goose egg like they did on that day — so our preparation has to be the same. We have to come out hard and execute our game plan.

The one thing we have to work on is the penalties. When you commit something like 14 penalties for 130-some yards, that’s never good. That’s something we really have to calm down on. You can’t take unnecessary penalties because eventually, that’ll cost us.

One of the really good things that happened on Labour Day was the performance of Brandon Smith. That was great, man. It was almost like I got the pick because I was so happy for him. I’ve been here with him since Day 1 and I’ve seen how hard he works and how good of a player he is. For him to get the two picks in one game? All I can say is that it’s about time a Stampeder gets defensive player of the week.

Another good thing is that we held Edmonton to five rushing yards on Monday. I’ve never seen that before. Maybe for a quarter, but never for an entire game. But that’s just another reminder that you have to realize Edmonton will come out harder in the next game.

We have to be on our game and we have to remember that we still left a lot out there as far as gap assignments and that sort of thing. Once we clean that up — and I know it sounds crazy that we talk about making mistakes considering how the game turned out but there were a lot of mistakes out there — we’ll be even better.

Dwight Anderson, #33
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