Sherbrooke 30, Concordia 13: Stingers Do Themselves No Favours in Loss

Fumbles, Penalties and Dropped Passes Hand Stingers Shrine Bowl Loss to Sherbrooke

SportsDawn Kagan-Fleming — Published October 1, 2017

Entering Saturday afternoon’s Shrine Bowl at Concordia Stadium—an annual benefit game for the Shriners Hospital for Children—the Stingers were the eighth-ranked team nationally, according to the U Sports rankings.

The Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec’s last place team, Sherbrooke Vert et Or, whom the Stingers had already beaten back in week two, took advantage of every Concordia error en route to their first win of the season.

“It was not our A game. That’s for damn sure,” said Stingers head coach Mickey Donovan. “Sherbrooke capitalized on mistakes we made […] something that we couldn’t do all day.”

The game started quietly enough, with both teams trading chances in an unsuccessful battle of running backs.

Once Sherbrooke quarterback Alex Jacob-Michaud started going to the air, the Stingers found themselves in trouble. Just over six minutes in, The Vert et Or signal caller found Frédérick Cadieux Boudrias for a 56-yard touchdown.

Concordia’s mistakes started hurting them the moment that they feel behind.

Down seven points, the Stingers were fooled by a surprise onside kick, which the Vert et Or eventually recovered. While Sherbrooke would not capitalize on their successful special teams play on the ensuing drive, they would take advantage of Concordia’s missed chances all day.

Near the end of the first quarter, a strong drive led by running back Jean-Guy Rimpel combined with some accurate passing resulted in a game tying touchdown from new starter Adam Vance—replacing regular starter Trenton Miller, who’s out with a concussion—to Yanic Lessard.

“It was not our A game. That’s for damn sure.” — Stingers Head Coach Mickey Donovan

Though Vance appeared to be gaining confidence and driving down the field, mistakes and dropped passes forced his team to settle for a field goal and count themselves lucky as they were less productive through the rest of the game.

“Flags and penalties are drive killers. So it’s a little hard to get momentum […] and we just couldn’t get anything going,” said Vance of his first start since taking over for the injured Trenton Miller.

The young quarterback threw for 270 yards in his first start this season. The half finished with Concordia surrendering a fumble off of a punt and conceding two field goals to go down 20-10 going into the half while being unable to put up any offensive threat of their own.

While the third started positively for the Stingers, a fumble on the one yard line by Rimpel set the tone for the rest of the game. While Sherbrooke picked up another touchdown and field goal, the Stingers could not get out of their own way.

“We need to go hard every drive. We missed opportunities. I fumbled, the guys didn’t play well on defense […] We need to fix a lot of stuff this week,” said Rimpel, whose team managed to put up more 383 yards of total offense, outproducing Sherbrooke despite the final score.

The Stingers not only put up more yards than the Vert et Or, but beat them in passing yards (270-214) and first downs as well (26-19). The problem was that they also lost all three of their fumbles, and gave up 155 yards on 16 penalties throughout the game. While Adam Vance went 24-for-44 on pass attempts, a good number of those 20 incompletions were drops.

The news gets worse for the Stingers. Their next opponents are the Université de Montreal Carabins at the CEPSUM and they’ll have a short week to prepare for them as they’ll be playing on Thursday Oct. 5 at 7 p.m.