Mike

I mean, there's lots more than that but yeah obviously the emphasis is going to be placed on his striking since that's his gimmick. And his gimmick beats itsmuhyardimthebigdog any day of the week, especially when you add in all the power ups, poorly executed superman punches, running hugs and ... fist charges?

aaaaand then there's the BC game, which for as much as I love Medlock, I have to say you could quite easily almost single handedly blame on him. We can argue about the fake punt all day, but all indications are he was the one who saw a key in the alignment and called it which was an absolutely horrendous move at that point in the game and basically flipped every bit of momentum we had going for us and then he falls short on a kick that he needs to be making for the money we pay him. Medlock makes our team better. He's a great player. He hasn't had an amazing year.

His job is to make field goals. Let's isolate the Toronto game, since it's the first one I looked at: he's 4-4, we win by 8. He hit two massive field goals, neither of which were late in the game. Then he hit two routine ones each under 30 yards of the automatic variety. Ottawa game - he hit one big one and missed one 45 yarder, which flipped the field on us. The rest of them? Routine. Again - not sure why this is such a huge deal. He did his job. Saskatchewan game - longest field goal was 35 yards - again, a bunch of routine kicks. He did his job. Montreal game - he gave away 5 points on missed field goals, which one could argue essentially changed the entire script of the last six minutes of the game, since Bede kicked a field goal to put them up by (you guessed it) 5 at that point. Handing us the ball down 5 with 6 minutes to go led to a two-and-out, however a tie game easily changes the entire way we move the ball there (not speculating for better or for worse) so I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here. His best play of this game was a beautiful onside kick.

Not sure how someone could say NXT is boring compared to the main product. I'll take guys like Aleister Black over guys like Roman Reigns any day, to be honest. And now they're talking Reigns/Lesnar for WM34? Good grief. The sooner Reigns gets off my TV, the better. He's horrible. He's the new 5 moves of doom specialist, except it's more like 3.

Quit moving the goalposts on what you're saying. First you said he's making the key ones. I said not exactly. And now suddenly, every field goal is a key one. I get it - you want to spin everything in a positive fashion. That's fine. But I'm just discussing things here.

I like the second one, not so much the first one. Rutley makes things easier for Durant, imo

To me in the West, Spencer Wilson is the easy choice at one spot and then it's probably a toss up between Figueroa and Bryant.

Can't really agree with that to be honest. He's gotta be what, 50%? on the "key ones" this year? If the key ones were still there, we'd be 7-1 right now. And don't get me wrong. I'm a huge Medlock fan and I'm thrilled we have him. I'm sure he's not happy with his performance this year though, especially compared to last. He's having a good year, he's just not having the kind of immortal season he had last year.

If I'm voting on our player awards right now ... MOP is Nichols, MOC is Harris, MOL is Bond, MOSTP is Lankford, MODP is Randle and MOR is Thorpe. As for CFL all-stars, I believe we'd have a few at this stage of the game. Harris, Adams, Bond, Goossen, Westerman, Leggett, Heath and Randle all in the running.

No chance is Medlock even remotely in consideration for our MOP this season. His numbers are skewed because he's tried by far the highest volume of lengthy kicks in ridiculous situations (crosswinds, etc) but he's statistically the worst FG kicker in the league right now. Obviously not true, but he's not really having a very good year - he's just kicking a lot of volume because our offense is always getting into FG range. I mean really, look how well our offense is doing - he's tried 60 scoring kicks (FG + converts) and second closest is Paredes with 48. Nichols + Harris are the two obvious choices right now and really, IMO, what it comes down to is this: if Harris gets 1000/1000, he'll be the CFL MOP. If he doesn't, he won't even be our representative.

Except the intent of the play is not to put Nichols in a one on one jump ball situation. Nichols can have as much position as he wants, he's not a receiver. The intent of the play is that the D loses track of Nichols and he's wide open in the end zone. The fact that the half picked up on it means the play was pretty much dead in the water, unless you suddenly think Adams and Nichols switched bodies and Nichols is a red zone threat and Adams can put touch on the ball like a QB.

Never said it was a big deal. Just because I feel it's worth mentioning doesn't mean it's "such a big deal", just that it's worth discussing. Nothing is to say any single play has a 100% chance of success at any given time, but the trick play was a bad call. Plain and simple. You can point out all the positives you want (it wasn't a turnover, we still got points, we still won, we still have a great offense) and they're all correct. But that one stupid play call was like letting the air out of a balloon, it took the energy out of the crowd entirely and no offense to you Spuds, but if this was any team other than the Bombers, you'd be saying the exact same thing - I've seen you do it.

Mike O'Shea considers every player a starter, he's said it multiple times. Jones from Loffler would be a downgrade no matter how you paint the picture.

Sounds like Loffler may be out.

NXT awesome Summerslam terrible

There's a pretty clear difference to me and it's not just a matter of saying "oh, a trick play see he's not conservative!" I'm a big Lapo fan and I don't give him as much of a hard time as some others may want to, but that play call was horrendous for so many reasons. We marched the ball down the field at will in front of the biggest crowd of the year, coming away with a touchdown on our first possession of the game would've put an exclamation mark on things for a crowd that was dying for an excuse to go nuts. Our yardage on each play of that drive (not counting the short yardage play) was 9, 8, 12, 9, 16, 6, 5 - we were first and goal on the 6 yard line. 7 plays consecutively with positive yardage, not a single incompletion and we land ourselves in striking distance. We were KILLING them and we just gave it all back in one stupid decision. Here's my issue with the call: even if you want to call it, call it on second down. Calling it on first down basically killing two downs at once because now we're in goal 14 yards out and Edmonton essentially just had to play the line of scrimmage. Call the smart play on first down and if THAT fails, get creative. Don't piss away an entire drive to give yourself a chubby because you made a fancy play call. It took the energy out of the building entirely and it was just unnecessary. There's a difference between being conservative and being smart and I'm sure even LaPolice would look back on that and know he made a bad call. It happens, every OC does it. That doesn't mean it WASN'T a bad call.

Not sure how I feel about Montreal, to be honest. On paper, they're a pretty bad team. On the field, they either seem to be right in the mix or completely out of it. They never just seem to do "okay". That being said, Durant is obviously not the same DD anymore. They're a team that I expect is going to get worse as the soreness and injuries pile up, their team is way too old to handle it the same way a younger team can. They don't have that *elite* playmaking type of guy that can take over a game and I'm hopeful that we can avoid giving up the big play. As much as Montreal should have beat us the last time we played them, it was a tricky game for us. Medlock missed two kicks and that in itself can change the scope of a game entirely. That's not likely going to happen again. Montreal also hasn't had to face the two headed monster we have in our backfield, which has entirely changed the look of our offense. I also feel like their offense without Rutley is a little less potent (even though he's the backup) and I feel like putting Sutton in instead makes DD worse, as he's not able to rely on that checkdown since Sutton is miserable out of the backfield as a receiver - it's no coincidence Durant has had his two best games of the season when Sutton was out. Quite honestly, with them on a short week, playing old and beat up ... I think we handle them quite easily.

He could and I don't like Lankford that much so I hope that's what happens, I just don't see it.

I have to wonder what happens when Dress is healthy. Part of me thinks Denmark is going to sit. We can't bench Flanders. And as far as what I see out there on the field, we have plenty of weapons among the tops in the CFL. Harris, Dressler, Adams ... Thorpe and Flanders are incredible complimentary pieces. There's really no denying it. We have an elite offence.

I meant he needs to beat a team viewed as "elite", Edmonton wasn't that kind of team last year.

Gone. Have fun BigBlue!

Both teams are lucky to have such star players. Edmonton and Winnipeg are both going to be forces. That's good for all of us.

You want elite numbers, Ripper? And you want to know how and why Nichols has better numbers than Glenn? Nichols has put up 40 points more than Glenn - that's nearly 6 a game. Nichols has turned the ball over half as often as Glenn. He's first in the league for points scored for crying out loud. Nichols has elite numbers. The only thing preventing me from calling him elite is he hasn't beat Calgary yet. Or, I guess .. Edmonton. If Nichols comes out and hammers Edmonton tonight, I may have to just change my mind once and for all.

Got two upper deck tickets for tonight's game. PM me your e-mail address if you want them - first come, first serve.

I keep ignoring this stupid comment, but you continue to make it. If you want to argue numbers, Nichols IS elite. His statistics are elite statistics. It's everything else that has me questioning it. Drives me nuts when someone is supporting their reasonable argument with terrible points.