wbbfan

Thats an interesting pick up. Hes the kind of guy we seem to take a flyer on a lot. Well traveled pro. Smaller college school. Wiry and extremely athletic. 4.32 40, 36" vert, 10'7 broad jump, sub 4 sec shuttle 6.5 3 cone and 17 reps.

It should be a good one indeed. The league has a few back ups that are gonna be ready to do more next year too.

Did they give nichols an apple and a road map?

Haha I believe that 100%. Hes one of those "big deal" college coaches. The treatment they get is some thing else. I do love watching his sytems at work though. Hes with UCLA since the NFL. And this year it seems like he finally has that team executing his newest variants of his offense.

If you look back to his play at oregon its night and day. He used to catch and run, he had good speed and strong elusiveness. He was a multi cut runner. I feel like the injuries have diminished him, that could be physical and mental. Being a return man is a tough gig. Youre gonna get blasted a bunch. If you lose the aggressive mindset youre toast. Honestly he runs soo seldom I cant even say if hes lost a step or not. He looks like a QB with happy feet hearing foot steps. Or a wr with aligator arms who doesnt wanna go over the middle. Maybe thats not the case, but what ever the cause is its bad. And probably not easily fixed. There are older return men in the league who was much more dangerous. Its too easy to find young speed tool guys who can return. But nelson might be this years Mos guy. Hope fully he either gets it together soon, or mos moves on.

Kind of OT, but the recent Bishop sycamore scandal has a canadian twist. The team was actively trying to recruit canadian and euro talent to their "High school" program. Two canadian brothers Mark and Matt armah who had talks with bishop sycamore about joining were listed on their game day roster for the bungled game vs IMG academy. Reading about the living conditions the kids, and people playing for that team went through is atrocious. Im glad the canadian kids didnt get roped into it. Adding this for any one who hasnt heard of the bishop sycamore thing.

Hes got one of the best sets of hands in the league. No question he'd be an upgrade at our final wr slot. However his skill set and diminished speed (that was never a strong suit to begin with) Itd make more sense to put him in woli's spot and put woli in the slot at long last. High ankle is nasty, they can nag you for a long time. But a broken ankle would be brutal. I hope hes getting close but I guess we will see in the next few weeks.

Damned if that didnt warm my heart thanks for sharing it. Id love it if he could be a part time international scout for us or some thing. “I’d usually start training camp with ‘Well, you rookies look left and right because tomorrow you’re not going to be here’,” the old coach chuckles. The old bugger hasnt changed a bit!

It is, but honestly grant has that issue too. Id risk some ball security for actually getting yards and a chance to score on returns. Id have demski be the 2nd return man on KOs and Mcknight/williams/taylor split the primary KO return and punt return work. Maybe taylor as the primary KO return guy and williams or mcknight as the primary punt returner. Honestly woli would probably be an improvement. If grant is back soon then i'd be in favor of filling return internally. What ever that means. The question is will grant be back in 2 ish weeks when hes eligible to come off the 6 game, and will he be physically sharp? If either one is a no, then we gotta make changes. Even on a 3 week time line I would not give more reps to nelson. Just nothing to gain and only stand to have poor productivity. We have got to turn around the field position situation on STs.

This is a valid question, I asked my self it last week. I went back and watched clips of grant returning kicks last year. You can clearly see the first guys down field are tacklers not blockers frequently. He runs past them to the wall of blockers. The same as sask and other teams have done to us this year. If you just watch the 2 td returns in his debut you see Tacklers in position to wrap him up but as soon as he gets the ball he runs right past them and beats their angle. Honestly no amount of legal blocking is going to allow Nelson to catch the ball be at a dead stand still when the tacklers get into position then give him time to accelerate and find a seam. Grant follows his blocks well and sees the lanes well. But he also just gets it and runs right away so by the time the tacklers are down field he is a speed cut or pressure step from making a guy miss and hitting top gear. Nelsons style of running is like walking up to the hole and waiting till youre past the line backers to accelerate. Gotta hit it hard.

QFT. People are quick to forget that medlock was a 66% kicker in the NFL and run out of town by two teams. Legs made nearly 90% of all his college kicks. That doesnt disappear. Itll take time but he will be good im sure. Doing all 3 jobs may slow down his progress or who knows maybe itll be good for him.

Yeah mcknight couldnt be worse than nelson. Hes a quick polished guy more than fast. Idk if hes gonna have the wheels to stick long term. If he was 6'3 and 225 with his speed and tool set he'd probably be in the NFL. But 5'8 180 with out speed you gotta have insane quickness. Havent seen enough of him in game to say yet, but Im not holding my breath. Grant was in the exact same situation, but immediately showed great quickness and top end speed. Hes a guy who runs around the 40 yard marker. Its just not a good distance for him. 10 yard split times were great, I bet his 60 and 100 times would be great too. Mcknight had bad splits across the board. You can get by in a tiny college with extremely high football iq and polish with out speed while being tiny. But not soo much the pros. I hope his acceleration and quicks are goo enough to compensate.

Woli badly needs to be moved to slot and involved more. We got our offense out of sync and went away from the runs, we were slow to sasks adjustments to the run game but once we did it was lights out again. Nelson was the usual utility quick guy in chip kellys oregeon zone running read option system. He ran the ball, caught the ball, returned and played some db. But primarily his skill set is wr/kr. And if he is doing soo poorly at his primary skill set I sure wouldnt wanna see him out there at db.

Devonte williams the RB on our PR has returned some as well. Also the DB from the XFL demerio houston has college experience as a KR. Demski has almost 100 punt returns and 30 kick off returns in the cfl too.

Imo demski could return kicks. Our best current roster return guy would probably be nick taylor. Hes ran low 4.3 and high 4.2 times, scored 2 defensive tds. Hes returned 2 kicks for us and a couple in the AFL. Iirc he did some returning in college too. In order to keep him fresh we'd need to DI another DB to give him more breaks.

This. A sweep of the riders in the LDC/BJB is a huge step towards winning the west division. Its that and the home/away series.

We had 45 punt return yards. The riders had 67. But we had 8 punt returns the riders had 5. Nelson had an average return of 5.6 yards with a long of 10. Morrow averaged 12.6 yards per return and moore had 16 on his lone punt return. The riders had a total of 244 return yards. We had 45. Our punting was 42.2 per punt with a net of 31 yards per punt. Ryan had 48.3 with a net of 39.4. And imo, our kick cover was better then theirs. They constantly ran past the first wave of defenders. Nelson stutter stepped and danced till they got to him. on average exchanging punts on drives put us in a 16.2 yard hole. Which is enormous. Thats why the riders would frequently get starting position between their 40 and mid field. Some serious overhauling is needed to our special teams. First step is can nelson.

He was but I heard the team was pretty healthy coming out of that game. Rose or antigha would make a lot of sense to me but I think they will want all the dl for sask again. I'd have demski or a db return and pull the plug on Nelson for him and bench a dl for a db. Give those d reps to Hansen

Probably for Bailey. Or we dress one less dl and di Roosevelt.

Thatd be dynamite.

Interesting how they never seem able to keep their fas or get them back over other teams when they return from the NFL

https://3downnation.com/2021/09/06/edmonton-elks-sign-former-riders-and-nfl-linebacker-derrick-moncrief/ Good pick up for the elk.

looks like the good trevor harris has showed up tnite

They could but then they take away a lot of their timing routes and make it easy to defend their pass. If I was them I'd run a lot of slants and crossing routes and roll Fajardo out a bunch. Rpo etc. They could run 11 personnel with a ol instead of a te and roll out but I don't think they have the horses to work it.

yeah he is