gcdrought

I am critical of the BB far more than giving them praise, and that's been driven by one thing...their performance on the field. But after the impressive win like last night, you should have ditched this agenda-driven question. The team is 2-4, just came off a really good win and this question is posted yet again. I'm not even an O'Shea fan. But I am a Bombers' fan and fair is fair. Posting this question this week is totally bias-driven. As for your request to "not be divisive" in the comments, stop posting the thread when it's not warranted and you won't get any divisiveness.

Nichols was an obvious improvement and gave the team an immediate spark. But I thought the whole team was fired up from the start. Great to see...finally. Now let's follow it up with a couple more wins in a row.

One of the absolutes when a QB drops back is he hopes his receivers have beat the DB's or LB's and that one or more of them will be open. The better your receivers, the better any QB will look. Everybody tends to concentrate more on the O-line, but the receivers are just as important if not more so. If the QB drops back and the receivers haven't beaten their man, the QB has to check down or be sacked. So you and Matt right. The QB and O-line are always the ones blamed, but the talent in your receiving corp is just as critical to success. And the Bombers, right now, don't appear to have that great a group.

Mack got the team to a Grey Cup. But they went totally downhill from there. The team finished 21-39 during his regime, so I disagree that he found "a lot" of good players. You don't win 1 of every 3 games when you're signing a lot of good players. Some were signed yes (like every team), a lot no. Yes, he was better than the current regime but almost anyone could better that. Walters' record, if you include the 12 games he was interim GM in 2013, has been 15-39. And in his last 35 games his players are a staggering 8-27. Five straight years of just plain bad football.

Thanks for the correction. I guess Bauer - who did hire some good people - officially started the trend of hiring people with no experience for their new position.

You get what you hire. Joe Mack's out of the CFL for many years and has never been a GM in any football league. Well let's hire him to re-build the team. Joe Mack hires Mike Kelly, a guy who has never been a CFL Head Coach, but who is an old friend. The disaster known as the 'Mack era' ends and the Board hires Wade Miller as President, a guy who has never even tried putting together a CFL football organization. Miller walks down the hall and hires Kyle Walters, a guy who has never been a CFL GM and whose experience as an Assistant GM was with a losing football team. Kyle Walters hires Mike O'Shea who has never been a CFL coach. It's like the main criteria that the Bombers' look for when trying to build a winner is never have any sort of winning experience in the CFL. IF you've actually won in the CFL as a President, a GM or a Head Coach...we're not interested in hiring you. My initial thought is 'it's going on the cheap'. But then you give a QB a $400,000 per year contract ? But it fits the pattern, he's never achieving a winning record in the CFL. I love the Bombers, always will. But I am fed up with the way they try to build a winner. Their No. 1 priority is hiring someone who has no experience and has never been successful in the CFL. Mack, Kelly, Miller, Walters, O'Shea...no experience whatsoever in the positions they were hired for. What type of organization penalizes their loyal fans that way? And despite their disloyalty to the fans with their terrible hires, I will turn on the TV yet again and cheer for a team I was once so proud of.

I tend to agree with you, and seemingly Paul Wiecek as well based on his most recent column. There does seem to be an accountability issue with Willy. He felt he had nothing to prove this year when asked in an early season presser, despite a 10-14 career record with the Bombers and a $410,000 salary. And he could have been more invested on the sidelines as you suggest. It may not be in his nature, but a greater sense of urgency and passion would definitely serve him well.

Respectfully, I don't know about this being "in his own head". Maybe, just maybe, he is not all that good a QB to begin with. We signed him when he only had something like 3 or 4 starts and a sub-.500 record. He went 2-10 after a bit of a fluky and lucky start to his first season in Winnipeg (2014). He went 3-3 last year before being hurt and he's 1-4 this year while healthy. And if we're being honest, much of his yardage/TD success this year has been in garbage time of losses. It's a team game so not everything should fall on the QB's shoulders when a team is struggling. But the reality is Drew Willy is well-below a .500 QB during his CFL career. Yes, the Bombers rewarded him a $400,000+ contract, but that wasn't based on successful results. Willy will regain the starting role down the road if Nichols, pretty much a professional career back-up, stumbles as he likely will. But personally I think the Bombers' view of Willy's talent level is much greater than the on-the-field reality. I haven't given up on Drew, but there really doesn't seem to be any advancement in his play other than when the other team goes into a prevent defence mode. Maybe it's a "head/mental" issue as you suggest and the talent will surface. I hope you are right. Or maybe the guy is just not all that good and his well-below .500 record is the real deal.

Nice try bear, but it falls short. The topic is about 'Kent Austin winning with a second-stringer'. And a comment is made 'yea cuz they (Hamilton) have soo many more wins than we do'. The comment can't be interpreted any other way than 'so what, they have the same number of wins as we do'. So no, I'm not telling anyone "what they're arguing". I'm responding to a comment than minimizes Austin's efforts - which is fine. I just think some context should be given to the Hamilton record, i.e. one of the best QB's in the CFL remains on the sidelines.

Agree. He was cruising to his 4th Grey Cup in as many years as a CFL Head Coach (pretty amazing) until Collaros was hurt. He's an excellent Head Coach and as you say he can especially develop QB's or make good ones better. Man there are so many good HC's in the league and we have Mike O'Shea. Sigh.

They're still missing Zach Collaros. What exactly did you expect? Hamilton was likely the best team in the country last year until Collaros got hurt. As for suggesting Austin isn't that great a coach, which is what you're doing, that just isn't borne out by the facts. The guy has been a CFL Head Coach for 4 years (2007, 2013, 2014 and 2015) and he's taken his team to 3 Grey Cups, winning one of them. If Collaros hadn't got hurt, he probably would have been in the Grey Cup game all four years he has been a CFL HC. The guy is the best coach in the league, and his record proves it.

That's no big surprise. You have to look at results and if you throw out all the garbage yards Willy has accumulated, it's pretty obvious that he isn't getting it done. Nichols, if nothing else, will provide more of a spark as he seems more emotional and he isn't as predictable. It doesn't matter who we start, there's a tall order ahead as Edmonton will be snarly. They relaxed after half-time and basically gave a game away and they'll be fired up. I was hoping they would be complacent after a big win; no such luck. Good luck to Matt.

When a pass receiver feels he has been interfered with he pleads his case, especially in the last minute of a game. The HC also would go ballistic, whether he had a challenge left or not. There was a push, but the ball wasn't catchable and Williams and Campbell knew it. You can't have it both ways, feeling it was not PI on Ottawa because the SK pass wasn't catchable, and then ignoring that the Ottawa pass was not catchable either. We'll agree to disagree on this one.

The receiver didn't complain and Rick Campbell didn't complain. I get you hated Saskatchewan winning, but your bias is showing through on the Ottawa pass. It wasn't PI. I agree the call on the Saskatchewan pass was questionable. It didn't look like the ball was catchable. But we never were shown a closeup of the play, so it's tough to be certain. But on that one, I agree it looked like a real ticky-tack call.

That wasn't PI on the last-minute deep pass by Ottawa. The Ottawa receiver didn't even complain. It was just a badly thrown ball. As for what PI is, it depends on what referees are on the field. PI changes from game to game, with no consistency.