wbbfan

Fix it by micing the cc booth and letting them break down the replay as well as tsn. Don’t let them hide behind anonymity. Also grading official performances (including cc) and releasing them after each game (like mlb). Then simplify what they can and can’t review on their own and with a challenge. Finally, don’t have the CC exist to support the refs. Their primary job should be getting the call right not limiting embarrassment for refs. For a bonus point, add a couple camera specifically for the end zone, side line and line of scrimmage. Nothing crazy, some thing parallel to the lines from each end. Also give teams an official review per time out, and cap each review at say 2 minutes outside of the last 3. Last 3 let em have 3 minutes. Imagine what the league could do with a couple mid tier hobbyist drones, the line wire cam etc?

Sit around and watch the cars rust.

That’d be a great way to roll it out!

I have a heavy bias against ref collusion type stuff in sports. But it does happen, just almost never the way people think or for the reasons people think. But with out question the leagues best interest is in eastern teams doing well. Especially the Ontario teams. As well as I desire to keep Regina alive as the top market (which it hasn’t been for years) and in aiding doman in B.C. I don’t think that extends to game to game enforcement of the rules, nor do I think the refs are competent to even do that. But I certainly see it in other aspects like supplemental punishment, and so far as off setting misconducts.

I don’t think it’s even that much. It’s just that what they are letting slide is more beneficial to some teams than others. It’s not a big help for us but is for teams with young ols and who run pressure fronts. Which happens to be bc on o, tor and mtl on D. It’s like in the nba how in the LeBron era, they started calling every thing an and 1. In that case the nba does bend calls more towards star players I don’t think it’s as prevalent here.

It changed early this season. Doug on one of the early games calls was talking about how long we took to get the ball snapped (tons of early season snap count violations and time outs) and that he was signalling basically for buck to stop talking in the head set. It’s become a problem in general with OCs all over football, over talking through the head set. In some places they basically don’t stop. It got drastically better by mid season. I suspect bucks move to the side line was to change and improve the communication with zach, and reduce the excess. I’ve even seen mos do play call and signal on offence this year. Zach has been fired up more in the last season and half to 2 seasons than I’ve ever seen him. At pass pro, WRs you name it. He’s also been hit as much in that time as he has since he left the riders, and was with them the last year or so. I could see zach being frustrated with buck to the point of a rift this year. Though not a crazy big one. If buck doesn’t leave in the off season (really hope he does) I would be surprised if we don’t add a qb coach to the side line and send buck back up stairs. I could also see buck being frustrated with zach this year especially early to mid. Physically he wasn’t were he needed to be, he’s struggled making decisions this year, and for most of the year couldn’t hit with the same accuracy/touch he has in the past. Arguably buck could’ve been running a basic offence all year because he didn’t think zach and our ol could accomplish more. And while we’ve seen much better flashes from buck prior to this year, it doesn’t make sense in terms of actually running systems to counter what opponents do and or build off what works.

I agree with your point. Tv ratings were pretty good too out side of ctv. I however also don’t trust those numbers. Any one who thinks ssk was up in attendance has lost it. But some times actual attendance is hidden with give aways and tickets being sold but those people not coming. I think fan engagement wise the cfl is in ok shape, but a league like this does need to constantly be grinding away to improve it any way they can. That’s our life blood.

I don’t think the CC favours any one. It is soo completely inept that it can be a big swing in terms of luck. If you live and die by the CC you haven’t done enough to win the game. A lot of mediocre teams fall into that range though. And some teams are more susceptible to specific rule enforcement. Several times this year the cc and refs ruined the competitive balance of games. I’d say more this year than the last 5 combined. I also think the lack of escalated punishment for cheap shots contributed heavily to a chippy dirty trending play after the whistle that spun games out of control, and lead to many injuries. I don’t think it was intentional, I think it was mass incompetence and attempts to protect refs while micro managing Ds to create offence. I think the hash mark change caused a temporary blip in scoring, but that since defences have adjusted it’s actually lead to a reduction in scoring and making the game less fun to watch on O and D. TLDR, league screwed the league up. Inept not corrupt. No difference in feeling between being screwed by ineptness or corruption. tldr 2 I’m bad at tldr

They did and they are good at it. That’s really what they are designed around. We didn’t move away from the run because they forced us to. We had 1 run in the first Q for 6 yards from Brady. We had 7 runs in the first half, 3 went for 3 yards, 4 went for 5+ and we averaged over 5 per rush with Brady. 2 of the runs were read options where zach made the wrong call as well. The game plan was clearly possession passing to force feed Wilson and Demski their 1k and chuck to lawler when in doubt/need. A couple 3 yard runs instead of 5 don’t force you to pack in the run. It just wasn’t the game plan. We’ve seen games in the past where we are hammering away for 3-4 till we break the D with physicality. I wouldn’t say the bend but don’t break worked. The ALs pulled Cody in the 3rd and still gave us every thing we could handle and more. Took a literal miracle occurrence to win it. The big issue is play calling and game plan. If a team packs the box and plays the run aggressively, that’s when you bust them with counter traps, counter jet sweeps, pa screens, pa boots, wide zone etc. play action wheel route to the rb is deadly too. The issue is our offence is one dimensional. Buck had no progression for the curls to Wilson, to the counter to our run (which was a decent battle but not a win by any means for them) or a plan to punish the ALs for sending pressure, or any thing. We have no 1-2 combo. No counter punch. All we do is throw one punch constantly. Jabs with the run, jabs with short passes, or haymakers with deep shots. Strategy with out tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics with out strategy is the noise before defeat. Bucks upside as an oc has been strategy with out sound tactics to achieve the strategy. His downside has been tactics with out strategy. And it’s been a down side heavy year. OT but I wish they’d add like 1-2k tickets for standing only in the rumhut area. I know a few people who are in that pack that’d love it.

He certainly seems the type. I agree it sucks we didn’t get him in a game to see. Yeah I’m sure that’s some of what we do. He also just free lances a lot, you can see especially if he’s faced double team a few times he just doesn’t rush much or jogs on the back end of plays. Honestly his ability to finish pressures has always been an issue, he’s never been a great tackler. But the last year and a half the oppositions have consistently run read plays off him and he hasn’t made the play once. When he turns it on ya, you can see he can still get off the line with the best of them and whip tackles with speed. Which pretty much makes him the most frustrating bomber to watch. Jake shouldn’t be out there at all, but wj can just be confounding. agree 100%, using him as a stand up rusher would drastically improve his effectiveness and decision making, and add length to his career. Rotating him more again would be huge too. At his best he wasn’t an every down guy or close to it. He was a 50% of snaps guy playing his best ball. I think we’ve seen glimpses of that. And that next year, or maybe even in the play offs we will start to see more of that. Selective times we throw those explosive imp tweeners into rushes clean off the edge. We had one effective blitz this week late in the game and boy was it pretty. Montreal was not prepared for that. Gives me a lot of hope moving forward. Absolutely. I think we have the pieces to temp fix it and be decent. But idk if we will. I actually rather doubt it. It also makes me wonder what we’d have done if Lawson didn’t get hurt? Clearly with that pay day he was gonna be dt1. Would they have cut woods/adams? Or would Jake have been a rotational back up?

Thats true in a man scheme, however in a zone scheme you don’t need to have every block executed. You need the gap with the line men forming it to seal those edges. You can allow defenders outside of that to push the backfield and get trapped on the back side of plays, or if the defense is getting leverage on the blockers in outside zone you run wide zone, allowing them to get that outside leverage then cutting back and washing them all out. Zone is much more about a gap with good blocks at the point of attack and then washing out as many guys as you can outside of that. Which is also what’s been happening to our box defenders the last two seasons. Athletes will some times just make plays and blow up your scheme single handedly. That’s the nature of football. However to do that consistently you need an exceptional player the likes of which are rare up here. Stacking the line and the box is traditional wisdom. You can defend the run many ways, it really depends on what you want to take away and what you want to give. Like the original 3-4 D was used to force the run side ways and force the back into a group of backers who were fairly well spread. It gave up a couple yards on each run to prevent getting gauged for huge runs. Stacking the box in the cfl isn’t actually a great idea imo. You might have 2 guys on the field the size of an ol. You might have 3 the size of the rb or bigger. Trying to stack plays into the offences hands. If you have a dominant nose, and also if the opposition runs a limited set of designs it’s more effective. But overall it’s kinda lack lustre. You need run fits, but play action is way more dangerous than the run in the CFL.

the ALs sure are, they’re tough in the trenches. I think Garbutt has really turned a corner. I think the edge problem revolves around wj, and the Canadians inside. Half his snaps wj doesn’t put any effort into getting to the qb. He coasts playing for pass kick downs. Which means the ol cheats in the other direction. The issues with Jake and schmek are well known and don’t need to be restated. If we ran a 40 with woods and fox as the dts, Garbutt and wj on the edge and a rotation of Adam’s and Lawson we’d be in great shape. We’d need 1 more de who can rush to heavily spell wj but it’d work well. If we ran a 30 with those same guys and just heavily rotated wj, we’d do well. It’d be well worth while for us to pay a good pass rusher in free agency this year. But the changes we need are subtractions not additions.

If you fill every gap, you are still in a situation where the back is likely 1on1 in any gap he hits. Considering most teams run 1 decent sized lber max, the rb is basically 1on1 with a db sized player in a good 3 gaps. Which is a battle you expect a good rb to win more often than not. Run schemes today often seek to steal back a body too. That’s why teams run read plays, boot the qb, use jet motion, or what some teams are doing is motioning two guys in jet, then returning one to force defenders to spread out creating seams and gaps inside. When we pass twice and don’t pa, or semi frequently go empty back field. If we ran once with Brady, then threw an iso fade to some one like lawler and did that on every single red zone series we would have a drastically higher success rate. The problem is we often throw twice, don’t threat the run, and don’t throw into the end zone. We throw a screen or short pass and expect the wr to do the rest.

Agree. I could still see him getting an interview this time and getting the job in the future. Cus pinball is the cfls teflon man.

Toronto is the best team in the east rn imo. That said, I’m calling Ottawa. Mainly I just don’t want to see either tor or mtl in the gc. Brown vs Zach would be a great story too.

they should stay put. But last week game they stayed in town and didn’t get the work done.

Should do a lightning play off round

Wonder how the weather will be. It’ll probably be the only chance for a cold weather play off game for any team this year. Also imagine they will keep the guys in town for the week and use it to work on internal systems and execution.

I believe what he’s referring to is the Covid assistance program application from the govt. the league tried to play hard ball and missed out because of it. The cancellation, and launch of the 21 season were both really late, to the point the 21 schedule was a nightmare. Just basically give us 30m plus and an open line cus we said so

I don’t think it’s confidence, it’s elation. But also, we haven’t lost off a buy in a long time. And we are starting to see signs of the attitude change we need. Zach pissed, no vacation on buy week.

Yup. Honestly with Hubert next year and Samson. The only point to bring back schmek is to convert him to offence. Thomas shouldn’t play again. I like Adam’s a lot but he struggled in his snaps at 0 in the 30. He’s much better at 3i, or really any other dl tech. They’ve been using him more as an end this year than a nose and that’s a tough transition to just switch.

With Kelly at S, and 3 total ni dbs starting, 3 starting ni ol, 2 wrs, and 1 rb we should never see 2 ni dl on the field at the same time. Take Kelly off for an imp and slam in one ni dt for a package 10-15 times a game. Other wise dl should be all imp. Especially when we run 30.

We did use a 40 a decent chunk. The real problem was the 2 Canadian dl with 3 or 4 and with multiple combinations of alignments (Jake once even at wide 5 tech) was all bad. The all imp 30 was good, would’ve been better if Adam’s wasn’t having to play nose when both fox and woods were banged up.

At this rate rider fans are gonna come over here for entertainment lol

Do you follow the cebl? Does their growth seem legit?