wbbfan

I mean 3-4 targets down field in the cfl can be very hard to create opportunities with unless you have a very high level specific set of passing concepts and players. Of which we have neither. Yep, no one else goes guard to tackle on a regular basis. kola can’t create drive, so we have to chase a guard or further out. It’s a law excuse tbh. For one of the best defensive players and minds of his era, he should easily be able to help reverse engineer success from what defence do to limit our O, and create successful plays that put defenders in conflict and our skill players in space. Its not even a matter of needing to design new plays, virtually every play type imaginable is already drawn out and available on professional football XnO platforms like pro quick draw go route and tons more. Tons of teams have this stuff in visio and will send basic stuff to people in other leagues, conferences, levels etc. I don’t think you can bring that guy back in any role. Hes totally burnt here

except that’s not the case. He started a few games early on, and has been the best and most used 6ol in the league. You’d be stunned how much we have gone heavy set in the last two years.

This is what it comes down to. For who is worse between kola and jake, I’ll say kola 10 times out of 10. Jake is washed but kola is a never was good guy. A dud dt hurts, but in this league you can work around that. We did last year, and with the points allowed on D this year. Kola on the other hand, cripples the whole offence. When he gets down field he can never find a guy to block, he can’t lock a front 6 guy down when he gets on one, and is snaps have become brutal. Lt has long been considered the key cog in offensive lines all over football. The blind side protection was key and teams put their best pass rushers on that side. That lead to teams rushing their best dl at the rt who was often significantly worse. So demand became higher for RTs in pass protection. The new phase, is up the middle rushers. Guys like aaron donald, and chris jones who can dominate inside out, at most techniques with power and speed. We’ve seen guys from stove to bryant and johnson plus many more when it was our priority. Even adams who when fresh can beast mode any interior ol in the league on any given play. (problem is consistency with him.) As more and more teams carry more dl who are more athletic, a weak point at C becomes a free pass. For the past two plus years every team lines up a guy on the nose in passing downs, twists, or crosses the centres face on the huge majority of snaps. Because every one knows you can get easy free disruption going at kola. That’s why his snaps are suffering, he’s routinely getting his butt beat. not just blown by, but turned around, thrown down, powered through. Kola is the worst starter in the league. kornelson and jake are in the top 5 for worst players though. I’m preparing a soft padded room for my self when the news comes out that kola and thomas will be back

gm mos is worst case ontario Probably right that both are back.

I believe that’s an un official thing that’s been broken a few times. They usually are confident right to the end. Ugh gm mos sounds awful. We should can one, but I think we run both back unless one decides to take another job.

the only ast role that’s gonna be note worthy is when they fire hogan. Which is gc week news worthy imo.

agree 100%. The week of the gc is when you announce whose ass is grass

we did the same thing once upon a time with moe elewonibi. Certainly extended his career the final bit. Though he had serious injury problems from college on up.

The large majority of those guys are locked up for next year. he brought in the rookie ends who looked damn good. He wouldn’t talk to the media late season, Nor would he or the other gms now eliminated do any thing before gc week. Even then, the majority of the pressers league wide will wait till after the gc. Doing it during the play offs is poor form. Because the gc is here, if we have a plan we can start right away, announcing what we can during the gc week makes sense. Yep, and the fact we ran a bunch of stuff in tc only to not use it at all during the season. That could be jackson coming in and us realizing in pre season that hogans playbook is cooked. Just dismal though. If this is what’s being publicly said, imagine the crap they aren’t willing to say to the media, or to each other.

I'll be sad when vaval goes to the NFL and we have to go back to finding a KR lol Personally, I wouldn't be married to any vet. Maybe sergio?

With in the system we played, I don't think any one short of milt in his prime would create more room. We played shallow, dense passing concepts. No one stretched the d in any direction. The lawler type is some thing every team needs if they don't have one. But the thing about lawler is, when he isn't on teams sag on him. And he's off far more games than he is on. No doubt, he can dominate any game. And when he flips that switch you can't do any thing about it. But when he doesn't, he doesn't require or get double teams. Just under half of his yards and Tds came in his 4 games of 100 yards or more. He is good for as many games where he catches 3/7, 4/10 and has under 40 yards with a RBs per carry level of per catch. We could make a burner work, we could make a down field possesion guy work, a yac guy, any one who will consistenly catch and do damage no matter the situation. Bryant isn't the anchor anymore, but he could be servicable. I think our OL will be best off with high levels of change. He has struggled with great speed the last two years, but maybe the answer is flip big stan to C. Run with pool, and rando at the Ts, and 2 canadian guards. Big stan could co ordinate the utter mess our interior line has been quick fast and in a hurry. And no one would be able to line up out side him and blow by.

With both walters and mos contracts' up, I am sure the process will be Wade meets with both, then walters meets with mos before the deals run out. Walters deal would come from wade and mos from walters. Will any of them step up and demand change? I honestly don't have a clue. I can only hope so. Which veteran players are actually providing irreplaceable leadership? Probably zach, demski, nichols, and brady. i don't think any of the long in the tooth gang, especially wj, is actually providing leadership. You can't lead on or off the field and put in that low an effort for much of the game. You can't coast, you can't sleep walk through quarters, continually fail to finish plays/tackle and command respect and leadership. I think that is one of the biggest problems we have. We don't actually have that strong locker room leadership we used to. The guys like Yoshi, kongbo, Adams, Bailey, and BA that did the job are gone. Wilson was solid, but flashed maybe half a game of the top-level play we used to see for a month or two. Even when healthy, I don't think he has enough to offer to keep bringing back at any salary. The upside just isn't worth much risk, or bottle necking young guys who are probably as good as him already. Willy is a lot of talk and not a lot else. I love the guy, but he's miles past where JJ was when we wrote him off. In fact, I would take JJ today over WJ. he might not be great ever again, but atleast he would get his ass upfield and after the qb on every snap and finish plays where he gets both hands on the qb. Forget the 200k+ he's been getting. For 100k, and to be the 3rd end as the nat imp it only makes sense if we get a premiere end to be the first guy. I agree on Vaughters, he was solid if not spectactular. he's the 2nd end in a 3 man end rotation. We need the first, and it isn't wj. Cant be married to him but wouldn't be the worst guy to bring back. I'm still not sure schmeks career is on the defensive side of the ball. But for the low price he will get, he brings a ton of value as the extra big body on the end of the roster. Lawson at most would get the same starting money we already gave him. he isn't due any raise. Maybe a couple grand less. I love what the guy can do, but he is still the 3rd dt in a good front. Thomas I don't think will ever quit. He is the kind of guy who has to be told it's over. Idk if we will but we sure as hell need to. Wood and Adams are guys I would like back in camp. Adams is too rare a combination of size and athleticism to give up on in relatively few snaps. Not to mention his versatility covering kicks, on teams, backing up the p/k, and playing inside out. One of those two nees to step up and be the no2 dt. And at that, I think we need a Ceressna type to be the straw who turns the drink, or a stove. Other guys to look long and hard at; Eli. if we aren't gonna give him a chance to start we need to move younger. If the guy won't get the look over kola we need to tear down the entire interior of the OL and start over. Rebuilding a Line involving the Ts is hard, when you have the tackles and can go imp at G it's easy. Kola 15 minutes were up a couple years ago. Bryant. It's time for him to hang em up. I love the guy, he is such a great pro maintaining him self but it's time. Lofton, Rando, and Vanterpool should fight it out for T spot. I wouldn't mind bringing in a top end guy and pushing lofton out. Or sliding Vanterpool inside to play G full time. Neufeld, should be time to go, but if he wants to 1) move to centre, or 2) be the 6th ol you can easily keep him around for leadership and limited use. Parker, Bonds, Mitchell, Logan, Strev, Lawson jr, and Kody can all go. No need to be married to older DBs on this team when we can so easily find guys who plug and play at a high level. I love nichols, but I wouldn't be married to any of our dbs right now. From wrs, the last thing we need is more mediocrity. None of these guys will or should have the same opportunity to step up and be a no1 or no2 again here or other wise. Sterns was solid but unspectactular. Wheatfall was very seldom brilliant and other wise largely invisible. We can't built our WR from the bottom up and wait for the great wr1 to emerge or return. We gotta go out and get top guys and fill the bottom with young guns. If that ends up being either sterns or wheatfall that's fine. But they should be only signed after we do some thing impactful. Other wise it'll be the same thing over again next year, and we can replace those guys easily. If zach comes back, I wouldn't bring back Wilson. Even with out Elgersma factored in, we need to go out and get a real qb2, and have it be a battle for that spot. We can't run out a qb3 who we won't play late in blow outs that qb2 started.

Yep. Platooning Smith and Shay (Shay starting and taking the largest portion of snaps) at one Lber spot would benefit us in soo many ways. Then the amount we played woodbey as well, making him our go to wil would only make sense. You can trade Jones for some asset, save salary cap over both jones and kyrie, gain a starting canadian on the ratio, and then you can have 2 lbers capable of picking up a wr in coverage or dropping back into a deep zone. It's like having 2 prime biggies in pass cover out of the 2nd level. We need a 2nd Canadian DL who can actually play. With that, we would have the flexibility to do any thing we want else where. We could go 3 full time imps on the OL with ease.

A few things happened. We stopped trying to retain Canadian OL in free agency with Suhk. Which wasn't a bad move to let him go, but we just hemorrhaged Canadian OL for years. That created a situation where it was only a matter of time before the NI Ol pipeline dried up. It dried up in part because of misses on the OL, but also because we shifted our drafting philosophy. We went from taking guys who topped out as teams players in the bottom of the draft, to pushing them up to the half way point and higher. 19 was an insane bumper crop of talent, and it was guaranteed we would not continue to replicate that. 21 in general was not a great draft, so that hastened the downturn. Then in 22 we ended up with only 1 pick in the top 4 rounds, Ford who had 1 really good year here then was gone. Then, 2023 was a bad draft for us. Even that great 19 draft, we lost Kongbo and Desjarlais pretty fast. So even when the influx of talent from the draft was very good, it wasn't here long. So we got left being married to scrap heap players. Now we've had strong drafts again in 24 and 25. We need to have another strong draft this year coming, but we also need to stop the loss of NI talent, and maybe find some in free agency. In the draft stuff the bombers showed, they clearly said the aim of this last draft was to pick up guys for miller on special teams. Luckily, two of those guys who were the best teams options were also the best defensive options with tons of up side. Now if we never actually give them a shot it will be yet another loss, as you can be sure those guys aren't up here to be lifers on teams.

“(In training camp) we repped a lot of things that we didn’t rep during the season. I didn’t get a lot of reps with the guys who were playing. My situation put us in jeopardy there with the suspension and trying to manage that. I think it’s getting reps — reps with the players, reps with what concepts do we like? On second-and-six, second-and-five with the game on the line, what are we going to call because we know we can execute the play? I don’t know if we had that this year, so getting good at something, I think, matters https://3downnation.com/2025/11/02/zach-collaros-frustrated-by-2025-season-but-plans-to-play-for-winnipeg-blue-bombers-in-2026/ That all tracks, but boy is that a pile of red flags. No wonder our go tos ended up being old holdovers from lapo/buck and why zach couldn’t build a repoire with any one this year. And yeah as has been said ad nauseam, the concepts we ran were trash.

on on doug was laughing at thomas on a play where he was in a 2 point stance, barely got out of his stance by the time the ball got out and still got turned and tossed on his butt. his scheme carried us from bottom of the standings to a home play off game last year. He’s shown some great ability to draw up plays that get pressure out of blitzes, but you just can’t blitz your way to victory in the cfl. you need to be able to disrupt the passing game with 4-5. I want to see what he can do with a good dl

not like we have a ton of horses to pair him with or protect him. Or some great farm to sell. That said, we need to do some thing and options are very few. His previous deals had very high guaranteed floors too.

I’d take any of those out comes over running it back yet again. As far as trading Id prefer to include manu than elgersma. I love manu, but I’d rather stack it up at qb right now. Retiring, Idk who to we would pivot to. I just hope not the pest from toronto

yep, he also said he has options, so maybe it means he is willing to be waived/opt out etc

only his first year, he played a few games while couture was out. Eli hasn’t been useless, he’s been so so as a guard when pressed into limited used, though he was good last night. He has been excellent as the 6th ol in heavy sets

hell no

oh 100%. I’ve run into way more of those than you’d think normal in my ventures into saskabush. stay as close to the border as possible drive in and out same day

Awesome list thanks! Was holms new deal only 1 year or was that 2 years ago already? The lists are soo massive these days. You really have to act quickly and decisively to prevent torpedoing your off season.

Kyrie was alright. But we need to go younger at lber and should flip the ratio to ni with the young guys there. Apparently zach said he wants to play next year with the current core. Doesn’t sound from the quote like the wants to be in a rebuild or tear down next year. He also said he has “options” for next year.

Lawler would’ve made us better, but our passing game /offence was soo bad I think he would’ve just been under used, like brady. I don’t think he would’ve put us over calgary or bc. Now if we fire hogan early or never make him oc, and keep lawler, then I think you are right.