Colin Unger

Lets face it.. Ottawa fielded the vastly superior offensive line, runningback and receiving core.

Not to mention that Wheatfall is our leading receiver.

I'm glad we didn't lose by having the league call the game with 2 minutes left. Now we only have ourselves to blame. I think we will be ok once the offensive line gel's. I think they offensive line played pretty horribly last season through 3 or 4 weeks before pulling it together. I'll never forget the week 3 game vs BC last year. Nothing this year has quite rivaled that level of inept pass blocking. The roster management is certainly poor. Which i'm ok with when we are still winning the majority of our games. But right now its pretty frustrating to see Zach getting lit up because we think starting a guy like Augustin is acceptable. We need a dynamic running back starting all games to keep the defense honest. No reason not to have an american running back around for games where Brady isn't able to play. One plus with all the injuries is that its got players like Wheatfall on the field. He looks like a real keeper. Looking forward to him continuing to develop with an enhanced role and see him in a core of Lawler, Schoen, Demski, Wheatfall, and Woli down the stretch. Lets sign Kongbo to be another Canadian starter and still ride it out with Augustin at RB and Thomas at DT

And yet we have managed to the grey cup 4 years in a row in the more difficult division. And the Argos were basically one and done. I don’t disagree that there’s been some poor decisions made at times regarding playing injured players in the cup and how many of x position to dress for x game. But that’s basically where the shortcomings of this organization ends. The team went to the grey cup 4 times and won 2 over the span of 5 years. Now they’re doing a mini rebuild while more than likely remaining competitive. Cry me a river. Who else is even going to the cup twice in a row these days?

I'm not saying that the team has been perfect. I've got gripes about who was dressed that shouldn't have been in the Grey Cup as well. However, there's no gaurentee that we would have won had we dressed Rose and whomever on offence its our anger for O'Shea making the wrong decision that leads us to think a win would have been gaurenteed with Rose on the roster. He could have got lit up just as much as anyone else. Maybe more. Who knows. I was reponding to several different messages. One of which suggested our veterans were going to be costing us more games than our young players this season and I was responding in disagreement to that. TBH on this subject I think its you guys who are ranting not me. Day in day out its the same sky is falling stuff we used to have on these boards back when the team was legitmately bad for decades. I thought that some of that stuff would heal with 2 Grey Cup wins and 4 Grey Cup appearances in 4 years. My main issue is that people are not comparing this organization to something realistic. Like another franchise or somethjing. You're comparison is to perfection. I think they've done a pretty good job over the coarse of time of replacing players and having succession plans. They've had to replace more outgoing players then anyone else for the last 5 seasons. At least half the roster has changed since the 107th Grey Cup. Did they have replacements for Andrew Harris, Couture, Chung, Goosen, Gray, D Adams, Sayles, Salyes, Alford, Nevis, Medlock (Yes Leggio failed but he was a reasonable succession plan), Maston, Richardson, N Taylor... How often does any CFL team in the salary cap era come back to the Grey Cup 4 strait years? I'm not suggesting that team management is above critcism. Not all their moves have been correct. I'm just laying out the reasons why I'm not "yet" worried. I think we can remain competive while doing a mini-rebuild this year and next.

I don't disagree that there's been somewhat of a decline since the team peaked a couple seasons back. But the bombers still went 14 and 4 last season and came within one 3rd and long stop of winning the Grey Cup. That's not a significant decline. The focus has been on winning the Grey Cup each of the last 4 seasons and would have been 5 without the pandemic. There isn't a single season in the last 4 this team didn't legit compete for a Grey Cup. They probably should have focused on replacing more of the vets sooner. The result of that is that we are going to suffer this season more from the inexperienced younger players in the lineup than aging players. Had we replaced more of the older players sooner we wouldn't be in this situation now but when you factor in that they were competing for Grey Cups year in year out a small step back this season is likely worth it. I still think this team has the potential to be pretty good and the younger players are going to be better down the stretch than they are now. I don't really see that many aging players on the roster who are hurting the team. If we are complaining about Zach.. which other starter in the CFL right now we would not be complaining about? Micthell, Harris, Fajardo, MBT? You can argue that Bighill is hurting us as the funds might have been better spent elsewhere. Jefferson and Bryant still look good to me.

And by right now you mean that you're basing everything on one week 1 cfl game? Don't get me wrong I think the potential exists for Winnipeg to seriously decline this season. Especially with so many younger players in the starting lineup this season. I count Dobsen, Loften, Wheatfall, Mitchell, Wilson, Bonds, Ford, Fox/Bryant, and Haba. There's bound to be some growing pains. I just don't see any reason to panic based on one week 1 football game. I wouldn't even panic if i was the team that lost to a quarterbackless Toronto team. A toronto team that most on here were expecting to be horrible. We will know a lot more about this year's team after the next game or two.

I wouldn’t be that down on the team yet. Week 1 of the regular season is an extension of the preseason especially for a Mike O’Shea coached team. I also don’t know who’s going to want to retire the year we host the grey cup.

If this was the offseason I think we’d sign him at a discount. But now with Woods and Adams it it’s super logical.

If Chris Smith is close to returning I would just let the cap savings build up and give chances to the players we already have and keep evaluating. The longer we wait to bring in veteran reinforcements the more vets we can bring in essentially. I would like to see what Pokey Wilson does with an expanded role.

I'm more worried about Strevy getting hurt because "he" decided to tee off on the defence.

I wouldn't be against bringing back Marcus Sayles at the right price. Seems to be several decent defensive backs out there if we run into trouble.

That makes more sense.

From ChatGTP "Yes, the Canadian Football League (CFL) used to have something called a developmental roster. The developmental roster was a list of additional players that teams could keep beyond their regular roster limits. These players were typically younger or less experienced individuals who were considered to have potential for future development. The purpose of the developmental roster was to allow teams to retain and develop promising talent without those players occupying spots on the main roster. The specific rules and number of spots allocated for the developmental roster could vary over time, and the concept itself might have been adjusted or renamed as the league evolved. The concept of a developmental roster in the CFL was officially introduced in 1995. This was part of the league's efforts to foster and develop young talent by allowing teams to keep a set number of additional players who did not count against the main roster limit. The developmental roster provided a space for younger or less experienced players to grow and improve their skills with the team while not being part of the active game-day roster." My God was it that long ago when it was brought in? That's one year before ourbombers.com went live.

Did they get rid of the dev roster or something? I remember when they brought it in and don't remember when they got rid of it.

I believe the active roster includes the dev roster which are players who don't dress but we protect.

How is that? The deadline was 10pm was it not?

Winnipeg and BC should be fined for not adhering the same deadline as the rest of the league

It was a poor decision to go into the game without either Zach or Chris but I also think that we dealt with a fragile Dave Dickeson ego. He hates losing to the bombers so much because of how badly he's been dominated by the Canadian mafia that he kept a lot of vets in in for most of the game. I hope he enjoys this. Maybe he'll frame a newspaper article about the game and put it on the wall of his office. Also a punter! I think Chris-Ike might be on the roster because we don't have another fullback.

If Kramdi is no longer going to start at SAM i have to wonder how long we keep paying him 130k.

My view of the situation with O'Shea and the handling of the ratio is as follows. The team essentially identifies which are their 7 canadian positions and they dedicate to keeping those positions Canadian and draft depth to make sure they won't have to change their ratio in the middle of the season due to an injury or two. Those positions are 3 OL, 2 Rec, RB, and DT. When a Canadian player is the best player at a different position like corner and sam linebacker then the best man starts. But since those positions are too difficult to draft and develop a flow of Canadian starters they will never become long term Canadian positions for the team. It's also considerably more difficult to re-sign quality backups as these positions if the team starts an American at those positions every time there's an injury. And at that point you're not really developing the younger backups into future starters either. I believe this is the appropriate context from which to view the decisions the teams makes over the handling of their roster. However, in the case of the Cam Lawson injury and the combination of the lack of experience (Sampson) and pedigree (Schmekel) of the Canadian players behind Jake Thomas i think the team should make an exception and at the very least utilize an import as a part of a rotation with Jake Thomas.

My view is Arbuckle was brought in to back up Dukes. In that division I could see the Argos still winning close to half their games with Dukes and then they get their start back for most of the second half of the season. The Argos are a good team and Dinwiddie is a great coach.

Brown has more talent than Arbuckle. I wouldn’t compare the two. Ottawa also has amassed quite a bit of talent around the qb and could be a force in a weak East division.

I was disappointed too. But nobody really flew off the page. So I’m going moreso off the role that the bombers gave him.

Its too bad Rod Black isn't still around if a guy named Moses ends up patrolling the bombers defense. There's a lot of material there. I can't imagine Barriere has any way of winning the number 3 job after that game. Both the fact that Wilson looked solid and in control and Barriere while showing some athletic flashes looked rather awful in the the passing game. I would imagine most of next game will be dedicated to getting Zach ready and giving a few extra reps to Streveler. How much opportunity will Barriere even have to redeem himself? At this point i think Cruickshank is probably in line for the return job. He didn't do anything on returns but nobody else flew off the page. I love Cruickshank's college highlight package and the bombers used him on offense. He got a sweep and a couple catches. The main separator right now is that he seems to have the potential to do more than just return kicks or at least the bombers seem to think so. Chauncy Rivers has to get some credit for making a sack. I like his size and lets face it his number of 56 at that position might be an omen. In terms of potential dev roster guys i thought Hackett looked pretty good to me if there's still room in the CFL for 5 foot 7 dbs.