wbbfan

Trent corney played end in college, and with the bombers for 2 years and is a 4.6 guy at 260+. Hes STILL raw. Too raw to be a starter quality DE in this league. Mulumba wasnt a book end in college. Or in the nfl. More are under 240 then over 260. By a good margin. 260+ lbs ends arent common in the cfl. Jake thomas might be an upgrade at MLBer from hurl. Corney, a particularly tough sack of potatoes would be an upgrade. You are basing explosion off a 40 number, not game play. 40 isnt a tool to judge a first step by, which is what counts. corney is much faster in the 40 then westerman, but westermans first step makes the rest of our ends look like OL running the 100 backwards. Re constituting your body can be done. After the first time though it is hard. Also the older you are the harder it is. Mulumba is 27 going on 28. The chances of him doing all that, and changing position for the cfl pay day after 4 years of taking a check down south doesnt make it some thing you bank on as a plug and play starter. 28, re constituted body, coming to the cfl game for the first time, playing a new role or position, = a hope. Not the savior. We dont need a hitter at mlber. Especially not if we run the same system. We need the opposite. A guy who will wrap and tackle, fill the gaps, can do some thing other then be a pan cake to an OL and get back a little. Most mlbers in the league are smaller and quicker then you think.

He may not be. Couture is as ready as newfie is good at worst though. Dont think he has the size to play guard in a strong/man blocking scheme though. Didnt hardrick also struggle at guard before the switch to tackle? idr. NI ol arent often ready to perform when they start. They are often forced into it by injuries, or are ready enough to sink or swim. Chung wasnt allstar quality day one, maybe not league average for a guard either. But he was worth taking some bumps to allow him to progress to that level.

Hope and imagine we didnt give a lot of money to newfie. Really glad to have hardrick back. Young, very good, imp tackle locked up is huge. I imagine we will re lock up bryant and bond will go to the nfl.

No, no it isnt. Scripting and practicing of an opening series of plays started in football in the late 70s and by the mid 80s was the norm in the nfl, ncaa, and cfl. Generally, 18 or so plays are scripted. Not allways run in order, and at times none scripted plays are mixed in. You might open with plays 12-15 or 6-9. But they are scripted, practiced and pre planned based on how you want to try to beat that defense. Sorry but this is 30+ year old news, and factual. Before calling some thing laughable of which you dont have direct knowledge, I would suggest looking into it. If you are interested in it, i can send you a ton of information about scripted openers. https://www.afcaweekly.com/2014/12/scripting-the-offense/ Nope. Its a football wide thing. You would have an incredibly hard time finding any team at any reasonable competitive level that doesnt do it.

lol. Well jake thomas is a good tackle. Nevis and poop are just better. Thomas is not nearly as effective as nevis playing on the nose, and idk if another dt in the league is as good as pass rushing as poop. We have no problems on the DL. If nevis is a FA (idr the details of his deal) and we lose him, thomas and ekakitie at one spot is solid. Course if corney comes in with more then 10 pounds of lean mass added again he will no doubt be a DT. Maybe as little 5 pounds even.

Dont know about that. Harris and hardrick were huge leaders too. The team has a TON of heart and good heads on both sides of the ball. Dressler also came back from missing 4 weeks to play the last month. Did he come back with a broken hand?

No, no it really will not. He is too big to play MLber in the cfl. Too raw to take a rush end spot and be an upgrade over westerman, jeffcoat, ogopogo or even corney. Mulumba is not henoc muamba. He is getting to the point hed be a huge DE, forget lber. Was the back half of the 4th quarter when the offense woke up "garbage" time?

This is a serious and hard question that has to be asked. Its easier to go from a bad team to a play off team, then to go from a good team to a great team. Imo, making the play offs every year for the next 8 seasons making a run of 10 years but not winning the grey cup, should not be the goal.

Not necessarily. Its possible to have a poor coach and a good unit. Great talent, the right bunch of guys etc. Or for a coach to be great at teaching, but wanting in play call or strategizing. Generally Id say a coach is never as bad as they might seem, or as good. A coach can also do a great/picky job of taking co spots. Bruce arians is known as the qb whisperer, but if he wasnt pressent would big ben, carson palmer, andrew luck, and peyton manning be any less great? We have issues on offense, no doubt about it. The fact that we go such long streaks with out moving the ball, not being able to convert in the red zone (tds), and execute poorly on the first drive of each half points to that. Some offenses score far less over all, but more consistently, and move the ball more consistently. If any thing our feast or famine scoring points to play makers making plays. Rather then our coaching staff manufacturing drives. Id wager we are among the poorest teams on those 2 drives. The most heavily pre planned and practiced drives of the game. That first drive is a pre planned 10-15 plays that we drill all week. Our offense in fact is dramatically better in the hurry up. Id rather see nichols call the plays then plop. No doubt he has put in some very good wrinkles and design plays. But they come out at sub optimal to poor times, and end up predictable. We also havent used package guys, offensive DIs / flanders as more then distractions. The lack of option use with fever/davis in their action in the regular season. Then we whip it out pulling nichols for extended periods in a play off game. Destroying the edm front 7 with the run after going 2 and out, then promptly abandoning the run play. Can you imagine if we ran the ball a reliable 20 times a game with both flanders and harris getting touches? Play action to one then toss to the other? some trap off toss stuff with both a 2 back set or one in the wing/slot? We used flanders out of the slot some, but not harris. Imo harris is clearly the better pass catcher. But why not show both? Plop has been effective enough and shown improvement enough to keep and hope it continues. But if we lost him it wouldnt be like when we nearly lost marshall as DC in the swaggerville era. Good is the enemy of great. We have a good offense. Good enough to win games, good enough to win a grey cup. But not with our current defense. Which is also good enough to win but not great.

Earned his money last year. Not this year though. For the pay hes making, hes gotta kick like last year. Id rather give FMB a chance. Wouldnt castillo be a FA from ham as well?

Roster wise 1) new mlber. 2) a wr to take the no3 slot whose a viable top level threat. 3) Back up qbs. A new vet back up, and a new developmental qb. 4) dbs to push the young guys 5) another NI that is a fringe starter to maintain flexibility when injuries hit. 6) Return man to push fogg. More so roster wise its gonna be about where we cut salary to add the pieces we need. Coach wise, new dc. I think plop is only gone if he takes a promo else where. His flashes of brilliance come with soo much confounding play calls a better OC would be great. But idk where that person would come from and dont think we would fire plop to upgrade.

Yeah, weeks off can be hard to over come like that. Not to mention possible un ease in handling the ball.

Bob mentioned it early in the post game show. At that point in the season you CANT have players un sure of their assignment. Imo thats gotta be gone before LD classic. Whats really bad is we saw that on offense too. Twice a WR was off the page with his route. (i have to assume at this point that nichols is on the page) Perhaps a sign of too soft and friendly a coaching staff. (doug mentioned the coaches that got the best out of him where the hellfire and brimstone types) Or overly complicated / poorly explained systems. Coaching has to be better next year.

I would add a new back up qb, a new no3 wr, and a bit more ni depth. (every team needs that) But yeah we arent far off. Plop going away from the run and out thinking him self drives me mad some times. But even in that he showed some great wrinkles, and did not run the jet sweep with dressler.

manny would be a huge pick up for us.

QFT, one can not forget that we lost Westerman (our best rush end) Mo (Our DPOTY) Bond (maybe our best ol) Adams (our best wr) and who knows who all may have played at less then full strength. Its bloody hard to lose 4 of your very best and over come that. Adams stretching the field opened up soo much in our offense. With westerman we could carry an extra DI, or an IMP mlber, bond plays an 'easier' position on the line but is our biggest miss match, and Mo could be our MoP candidate every single year. The best sam in the league.

In general better play calling and coaches decision making. Edm didnt even coach that much better then us, we did it that poorly. I wouldnt go THAT far... But that tsn gimmick of maggie the monkey doing NHL picks but with plays may have.

you mean the people who didnt think the game was over with 9 + minutes to go in the 3rd? Sadly cant really hedge out the band wagon fans. Those are allways the ones most crazed following a let down. The bones of the team are no doubt good. Its going to be a challenge for walters and co to improve this team and stay under the salary cap for next year. A couple pieces would have been the difference between going to calgary and going golfing. We draft well, and find good young talent each year. Imagine if geoff gray comes north?

Its been more up and down, and more the back field then that. JSK has been very very good at Lber. Wild was down, then mo went down. The DL with poop and nevis has been exceptional. We havent had consistent performance from the dbs. Last year, and in camp/pre season this year it seemed like we couldnt miss on a DB prospect. We went younger, and got worse. System is some of that. I dont think any one has issue with randle or heath in general. Fogg hasnt been the same since cooling off 2/3s of the way through last year. By position we are up in the air at worst with 2 db spots and 1 lber.(sam if mo doesnt recover in time or at all) We went from a low blitz usage, zone/match zone team that dropped all but 4 or 5 guys, and some times sent a DE back and only rushed 3-4, to a team sending 6 and 7 but with out great pressure. Mos' involvement in the D doesnt mesh with halls system. Tackling gets bad for a lot of reasons. Trying to make a highlight reel hit and selling out, being worn out, being out of position etc. Its also a preparedness thing. Poorer tackling is going to happen when you cant have hard full contact practices. More so now and moving forward you need guys who come in with a rep as a guy who will wrap and tackle. You wont be able to hammer it into guys and make them good tacklers. I look at the ex bomber DBs in the league and its hard to imagine thats again a hole for us. I wish frederick was kept, and bruce johnson too.

rabble rabble rabble

That last part is the truth. The good players on the team are gonna lose sleep over this for a long time.

Played well enough to win. thats for sure. his pressure was great all night. corney too. against any other qb those guys combine for 5 or 6 sacks.

Bad play calls, bad tackling, poor execution. Edm took advantage. They beat us fair and square. This is the type of loss that you lose sleep over.

We had a couple plays with good tackling. But over all tackling was very poor. You cant play bend but dont break D, and tackle poorly.

The time to be aggressive would have been on the 2nd down. The fake punt call was HOORRRIIBBBLLLEEEE. A fake has gotta lead to a power shift in yardage or points. If it doesnt, you just kick. Abandoning the run was pretty horrible in its own right. But you cant compare to that fake. We got out play called in all aspects.