WBBFanWest

Is he THAT loyal though? He's fired people that folks said he'd never fire and that he personally likes, he's cut players not performing (just slower than some people like). I don't think O'Shea is loyal to a fault, I think he's just patient.... which is likely why so many here have a problem with him. Lotta knee jerk reactions types on message boards. Etch, MB and Kuale say hi and he tossed Etch and Kuale! Yes he did, but after the damage had been done and the season was over. He stuck by both even though it was clear that neither was good enough. In the case of Etch, it was pretty clear that he agonized over the decision, which is completely baffling to me because Etch was so incredibly bad. And you don't wait an entire season to see if an under performing MLB will suddenly "get it" especially when he was doing the same thing with another team before we signed him. Instead, you march down to your GM and get him to find you someone else chop bloody chop. So sorry, waiting for season's end to fix stuff doesn't count in my books. You're still confusing loyalty with patience. No sorry, I'm not. Patience is waiting to see if you can correct a problem, but acting when it becomes apparent that you can't Loyalty (the problematic kind) is hanging onto someone long after they've demonstrated that they are just not good enough under some delusion that a bolt from the blue will strike and they'll suddenly morph into the player/coach you always knew they would be. I will grant that it is possible that what we are seeing is not misplaced loyalty, but sheer stubbornness, or pride. Label it what you will, but the results seem to be the same. No you really are, trying to change the definition isn't a good argument, just trying to salvage a losing position. Oh yea, I forgot about your "debate style". Congratz, you win.

Is he THAT loyal though? He's fired people that folks said he'd never fire and that he personally likes, he's cut players not performing (just slower than some people like). I don't think O'Shea is loyal to a fault, I think he's just patient.... which is likely why so many here have a problem with him. Lotta knee jerk reactions types on message boards. Etch, MB and Kuale say hi and he tossed Etch and Kuale! Yes he did, but after the damage had been done and the season was over. He stuck by both even though it was clear that neither was good enough. In the case of Etch, it was pretty clear that he agonized over the decision, which is completely baffling to me because Etch was so incredibly bad. And you don't wait an entire season to see if an under performing MLB will suddenly "get it" especially when he was doing the same thing with another team before we signed him. Instead, you march down to your GM and get him to find you someone else chop bloody chop. So sorry, waiting for season's end to fix stuff doesn't count in my books. You're still confusing loyalty with patience. No sorry, I'm not. Patience is waiting to see if you can correct a problem, but acting when it becomes apparent that you can't Loyalty (the problematic kind) is hanging onto someone long after they've demonstrated that they are just not good enough under some delusion that a bolt from the blue will strike and they'll suddenly morph into the player/coach you always knew they would be. I will grant that it is possible that what we are seeing is not misplaced loyalty, but sheer stubbornness, or pride. Label it what you will, but the results seem to be the same.

Is he THAT loyal though? He's fired people that folks said he'd never fire and that he personally likes, he's cut players not performing (just slower than some people like). I don't think O'Shea is loyal to a fault, I think he's just patient.... which is likely why so many here have a problem with him. Lotta knee jerk reactions types on message boards. Etch, MB and Kuale say hi and he tossed Etch and Kuale! Yes he did, but after the damage had been done and the season was over. He stuck by both even though it was clear that neither was good enough. In the case of Etch, it was pretty clear that he agonized over the decision, which is completely baffling to me because Etch was so incredibly bad. And you don't wait an entire season to see if an under performing MLB will suddenly "get it" especially when he was doing the same thing with another team before we signed him. Instead, you march down to your GM and get him to find you someone else chop bloody chop. So sorry, waiting for season's end to fix stuff doesn't count in my books. And I will grant that maybe, he's slowly starting to get it when you bring up Tracey but I think that O'Shea is also sensing that the sand is running out of the hourglass. For me, the sign that he's truly getting it will be if MB is let go and how quickly it happens. Because if O'Shea has to agonize over MB like he did Etch, it tells me that he really doesn't get it.

Is he THAT loyal though? He's fired people that folks said he'd never fire and that he personally likes, he's cut players not performing (just slower than some people like). I don't think O'Shea is loyal to a fault, I think he's just patient.... which is likely why so many here have a problem with him. Lotta knee jerk reactions types on message boards. Etch, MB and Kuale say hi

What I desperately wish for is an experienced GM that could sit O'Shea down and mentor him. Explain how loyalty is great, but winning is greater. I don't think that Walters has the chops to do that and as a result the team suffers because of O'Shea's misplaced loyalty to coaches and players that just aren't good enough. He may just have to learn the hard way that keeping coaches and players that aren't that good, but who really love you just means that you'll have lots of guys willing to carry stuff out to your car as you clean out your office.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/bombers-kicker-lirim-hajrullahu-apologizes-for-missing-4-field-goals-1.3259456

Darrin Bauming ‏@DarrinBauming 10m10 minutes ago Lirim Hajrullahu says he made little mental adjustments (errors) on Saturday. "I personally would like to think that was a fluke game."

Yep some people are ignoring those things...probably because they have absolutely no bearing on this conversation. You can't apply generalities across the board as if they are absolutes. You judge MOS solely on his body of work, and with the facts you have, if you are the Bombers....certainly not on historical data. If we ignore history, we're doomed to repeat it. If you ignore context, you're doomed to sound like an idiot. Yup... let's ignore history because context (excuses) are so much more reliable. #haha As long as we want to remember history, let's do that by all means. I'm looking at our history of cleaning house every couple of years. Seems to me that we haven't done so well doing that, but by all means, let's do it again because 5th-or-6th-or7th time's the charm, right?

If you were going to throw in a draft pick or two to get Chick and Owens you would have gotten full marks from the Tamen School of Roster Management. As it is, trading younger guys for older ones only gets you part marks. Make sure that when you sign Owens and Chick you really front load their contracts too because... "F" the future.

Public ownership doesn't mean they can't get into financial trouble, especially if the will to support the team is gone. The people of Manitoba are unlikely to want to keep flushing their money. Other than constantly complaining about every single facet of the Blue Bombers organization, do you have anything else to contribute here? I seem to recall that in your first few posts you talked about how people don't often react favourably to what you have to say. I'm seeing why that is and the issue, I would suggest, does not lie with them.

I'd rather have an OC come in because he wants the team to succeed, not because he wants the team to fail so they'll fire the HC and promote him.

Personally, I think there's something going on there.

Yea, that's the ticket. Hire a guy with dubious OC credentials and hope that he'll be ever better as a HC. That's some smart football thinking there all right.

When Etch was let go, we got Hall. I'd consider that to be a huge upgrade. Think Hall would have signed on if O'Shea had been heading into his last year with no extension? I highly doubt it. We could have hired a top notch OC at that time like you suggest, but I don't think he'd have had a lot of success running the defense. If you don't extend O'Shea, you have almost zero chance of hiring the best OC available. That means you end up with people at the MB level of ability. Think we'll be any better in 2016 with that? If they think that O'Shea is worth keeping around, then they can offer him a one year extension. They risk very little doing that and the chances of us getting a better OC increase. If they don't want to offer his the extension, then fire him now and be done with it. I really don't think there is a third option here.

And then how do you propose we attract a top notch OC? No one with any brains is going to take a job when he knows that the HC has only one year left and hasn't been extended. That's a disaster waiting to happen.

The issue is between Lirim's ears because he didn't suddenly loose talent over the off season. He's been struggling all year and the big meltdown finally happened. Don't expect him to suddenly pull himself together and return to 2014 form anytime soon because if it was that easy to correct whatever is going on, he'd have already done it. It's going to be a bumpy last few games if he continues to play. Maybe, with the right professional help over the winter, he'll return to form in 2016.

If they don't extend O'Shea, at least for one more year, we will likely be narrowing the pool of OC's that will consider coming here. So after the season's done, if Walters is still here and not gone on to Guelph, he's going to either have to offer O'Shea an extension or let him go. I can't really see status quo as an option. And if a new GM comes in, then we clean house once again and all this is moot.

It's not how many yards you make, it;s how many points you score.. 46 yards is bad but the issue is that he failed to give us the points that would have won the game, even with 46 yards offence.

Personally, I get why he feels that way and that he feels that Edmonton didn't treat him well. I just wish that he'd have kept that opinion between himself and his teammates until after the game. Why give Edmonton any extra motivation?

That's where you (and others) and me (and others) disagree. First, It wouldn't have been thrown for 'just because', because that implies I'm throwing a challenge flag for no other reason than the simple fact of throwing it. Not true in this case. There would have been reasons (debatable yes but still reasons), other than just wanting to ensure it was a catch, for which I have mentioned in previous posts. Second, calling it a 'dumb idea' suggests very few, if any, believe that throwing the challenge flag at that moment with those circumstances would have been a good thing. Not true in this case. It seems more than a few (and some probably a lot smarter than me) equal to your side of the debate believe it would have been the appropriate thing to do.. Third, the beauty of hindsight is when a similar scenario presents itself again (and by your own admission, a perfect time to throw it), you can now apply that learning, maximizing (not guaranteeing) a successful result based based on experience. The reason that I call it a dumb idea is simple. In my understanding, you throw a challenge flag when you believe that the officials have made an challengeable error. To have that belief, you need some evidence in that moment that the official is wrong. O'Shea has said he had none. There is no other good reason that I'm aware of to throw one, so if you are throwing it without evidence, that's just dumb. And as to your point about a similar scenario presenting itself, there are big plays or circus catches occurring every game. You can't challenge every one of them, just because. You need evidence and that is what O'Shea, in my opinion, needs to focus on. Go find the replay guy, kick his butt and tell him that he better start doing his job before he (O'Shea) loses his. Anyway, I think I've said all I need to on this one, so let's just do the "agree to disagree" thing and move on, shall we?

I was one of those who maintained that throwing a challenge flag "just because" was a dumb idea and I stand by that. Listening to the coaches show, I hear a HC that is running scared right now and is beginning to doubt himself. Sure, in hindsight, it would have been a perfect time to throw the flag, knowing what he knows now. The problem is that he didn't know it then. To me he's starting to sound more like a guy who's focused on trying to hang on to his job, and less like a guy who's confident enough to stand by his decision and justify it. I'm hoping that he gets on whoever he has to in the organization to make sure that he's given timely, accurate information when he needs it because for me, that was the real issue with this situation.

You're referring, of course, to the famous "Etch-a-sketch" defense. Doesn't work all that well, it turns out.

Surely there has to be film of this official turning and revealing his uniform number? That would pretty well settle it.

You don't cut a QB until you know that you have another one ready to go. That means that he's not going anywhere until Willy is back and ready to play. O'Shea strikes me as the cautious sort who wouldn't want to be in a position where if Nichols went down, he'd be forced to start a raw rookie and have another one as backup. I suppose that if Willy's not coming back this season, they might let Brohm go once we've been eliminated (again, sigh...) from the playoffs and start looking at the younger guys

For me the issue is the way the bad call was made. This was not one of those real time split-second decisions that referees have to make. When a ref sees it one way and the video shows it another, I really don't have a problem with a mistake being made. When you think about it, we ask referees to do a really tough job, one where mistakes are going to happen every game. This however, was something completely different. This was a total brain cramp and was really inexcusable. You indicate that the guy was good on the line and then seconds later, you forget? That's not just bad, that's negligent stupidity. That's "you have to face the media and apologize" level incompetence. Remember that umpire, Jim Joyce, who made the bad call at the end of a Tigers - Indians game in 2010 that cost a young pitcher a perfect game? It was a bad call, but unlike this one, was made in real time. Joyce had the grace to man up and apologize publicly to the pitcher and the media for his actions. No "Our referee made a mistake, we'll deal with it privately" release from the League officials. Yes we need to be better as a team and overcome stuff. The referees also need to get better and one of the ways you do that is through accountability, especially when someone makes an error as egregious as this one.