Colin Unger

At the pace they’re elevated his role Jones might be 30 by the time he replaces one of our 30 year olds. He’ll be 29 in a couple weeks.

According to Tait’s 48 hour primer it sounds like Tony Jones will get an expanded role this week and the bombers might be comfortable with Whiteheads knowledge of the playbook to roster him this week.

It all depends. He might take the roster spot of Jones who's 28 already. Its probably just a move to get someone who they think can play special teams and make have one role in the defense. I don't think he's being brought in to start.

I don't disagree but I also don't think our practice roster right now is filled with sure fire prospects. If we find one we could release someone of lower value to make room. Unless we're paying real money for Grymes im not going to lose any sleep over it.

I have no opinion on Grymes except he better have been cheap. With the team still mathematically within striking distance of a playoff spot we certainly shouldn't be throwing in the towel. We'll need to balance using this as a rebuilding year and trying to win as many games as possible until such a time as we are mathematically out of the playoff picture. Its not a good thing for team culture to give up while the team has won 2 out of 3 and can make a clear mathematical case for making the playoffs.

Its not an open and shut case based on just looking at what his QB rating has dropped to. When in bad situations in 2017 and 2018 his QB ratings were 81.1 and 79.5 before recovering to elite levels in a good situation. There are those who argue you can't pay top dollar for a qb who is team dependant. If that is the case you can argue that we could have let him walk a a long time ago and not paid him as the best qb in the league because that fact is that he's always been the type of QB who needs a team around him to be good. We never should have paid him top money if the logic of a top paid qb should be able to perform in a bad situation. Anthony Cavillo was similar in this regard.

I'm not convinced that many American starters need to be changed anyways. Outside of Alexander, Wilson, and Bighill who are we really looking at upgrading right now and we probably have at least a couple internal options here already to replace those guys. Between Garbutt, Fox, Woods, Bryant, and Haba I think we have what we need here already to improve the defensive line. When Wheatfall and Lawler are healthy I think we have the pieces here to have a good receiving core and that doesn't even mention Whitehead who i'm ho humm on. We have two american tackles on the practice roster already who we haven't had a chance to see. Ect. NFL cuts are definitely more about next season. I don't disagree with this at all. We should be looking at Tui at center at the very least.

He's not playing well. Even I would prefer to move on from him if there was an incredibly viable alternative option who could win immediately. Your comments sort of sound like what ticats fans would have said when he was on the way out of there. Before setting a record for consecutive appearances and winning two Grey Cups. I think he showed last year that he can win without the best OL in the league. This year he's showing that he can't win with a mediocre defence, below average receiving core and league worst pass blocking offensive line and 8th overall according to PFF. His salary certainly needs to be considered. They need to do an analysis on everything this offseason. Viable trade options. Overall QB cost to release him and replace him with someone else. Who else can we trade or release to free up money. What do we need to do better to compete next season ect. It's certainly hard to imagine he's worth what he's getting paid that's for sure. But as much as we'd like to blame one thing so we only have to fix one thing this team has a lot of issues right now.

My expectation this week was that Zach would outperform Shea and that Vernon Adams would outperform Maier. What does that have to do with the larger discussion that was being had?

How do we know that this isn't the same thing that happens to Zach whenever he's on a bad team in the past? His current offensive line grades out to be the worst in the league in pass protection this season on top of whatever receiving core issues he's dealt with. Did Zach actually blame everyone else or did you attribute the comments of a fan supporting him to Zach himself? It seems as though you're talking more about Zach in terms of value for the dollar rather then looking at where he's at as a player right now. You have expectations for him that that are influenced by how much he's getting paid. Clearly we can't pay him like this next season. He'll have to take a pay cut. I'd look him strait in the eyes and say if you don't take a paycut we're sticking with Nuefeld and Kolo and see who blinks

If the ticats miss the playoffs again I think there will be an appetite for change at QB. I personally think that with the receiving core we've fielded for most of the season and offensive line we've fielded for the whole season Bo would be doing even worse here than Hamilton. There's likely an appetite for Zach out there from losing franchises looking to bring in someone who's been to 4 out of the last 5 Grey Cups and winning 2. I just don't see us trading him to replace him with who exactly? Our only chance is Rourke coming back to the CFL and BC choosing to stick with Adams who might have a record breaking season. If BC chooses to trade Adams and go with Rourke then we're hooped.

I was just thinking about it and in the offseason its not impossible that Hamilton would take Zach off our hands. If they miss the playoffs with Bo. The question is who would be our starter?

The somewhat sad part is that it would be tremendously unlikely that even if he didn’t have guaranteed money and we were being offered a 1st round pick and an elite middle linebacker on an entry level deal I doubt that the team would have any interest in trading him even in this offseason.

Nobody is going to take on his salary that's guaranteed for next season right now. And if injuries occur i see teams trading for MBT or Masoli sooner then taking on guaranteed money next season. Its crappy but we have to fix the offensive line and stick with him through next season.

Players like Bighill, Nuefeld, Thomas and Kolo had better not be back next season. Part of the problem is that there were so many aging players plus a horrible recruitment class last season that they kind of needed to choose some to replace and some to keep. In some cases they made the right and wrong choices. Jefferson and Bryant are clearly by far the best of the aging players and I wouldn't be surprised if they could help us next season.

No i think they're focus is primarily still on winning. But when you combine some aging players we kept and a bunch that we didn't keep then all the injuries in my view/hope its turning out to be a rebuilding year while we still make the playoffs. My hope is that as we get more players back they start to actually look for replacements for some weaker starters. Would like to obviously see Wallace and Tui get more playing time at some point and taking a look at some more linebackers. Either guys we have here or signing NFL cuts who can make an impact next season.

I don't see that happening. Personally, I think its mostly just an echo chamber here of people who think this team would be saved by reshuffling the pencils they already have. Sure, this team can cobble together a season while it rebuilds especially as players like Lawler get added to the lineup. But at best we're looking at a first round exit. We had a window to win championships with this nucleus and that's clearly closed. The most important thing for this season is to continue to unearth new talent like Wilson, Woods, Adams, Garbutt, Bonds, Wheatfall ect. We're going to need that and a good year in free agency in the offseason to stand a chance next year. They're going to have to find a way to build a team around zach that he can be successful with because with his guaranteed money he's certainly not going anywhere until after next season.

It's all a matter of perspective. I'm accepting the actual talent level of the team currently and then looking at the key mistakes that occured at key times. We aren't talented enough to recover from key turnovers. And since you aren't going to suddenly become significantly more talented you gotta control the things you can control... like turnovers. It would appear you're ignoring the fact that I also blamed Zach for his poor interception. You want to frame it like i'm defending Zach when clearly i singled him and Demski out for their horrible mistakes. The main reason we scored so few points was that when we actually made the plays to go deep into the Riders end of the field we committed turnovers.

You're right.. I'm now glad he fumbled. Wouldn't have wanted to find out. Can we give Demski the gameball for this game and a gameball for misjudging the pass against BC late in the game too.

I wonder if anyone has the connections here to get access to the CFL stats API. I tried and failed. It would be nice to see which stats they actually give access too.

We lost the game due to a poor decision by Zach and an annoying fumble by Demski. We already signed Whitehead and he should be in the lineup next week I would think. Garbutt looks like a keeper. Given the reason for the loss I'm not sure exactly which players the team should be expected to sign?

Its the same kind of stuff he would have said about Matt Nichols even right before Nichols' last game at the team's starter. My issue right now is not with Collaros starting but rather that we aren't doing what we did in our first Grey Cup run and using packages with Streveler to take the pressure off Zack. You could wear down the D and also give teams more to have to prepare for this way. It's frustrating.

Unfortunately the CFL does a very poor job of providing advanced stats to the fans. Even PFF is being held back by the league from offering a breakdown of each player in the league like they do for every other football league. I do my own stats database for draft kings and its very annoying that only some teams release those gamestats pdf's on their website like the bombers do. I can't even find a complete scoring summary including 2pt converts and single points anywhere on the internet. I can't find information on fumbles by each player in each game. Only fumbles lost from TSN.ca. The cfl probably has internal stats like the ones you want but i don't it's publicly available.

There would be no need for that. We'd still have Ontaria at a rookie salary next year. So we could have an elite receiving core.

Its positive that we're getting a linebacker with upside some experience. Can't imagine Wilson is the one who's going to be replaced anytime soon. With a 17 day break between BC games i'm going to be he's only back for the 2nd game.