Mike

You are correct.

The practice roster is what makes me more frustrated than anything, to be honest. The use of it is just horrendous. Historically, here have been the past couple years looking at our American PR August 2022: OL Witt, OL Lofton, K Mourtada, DL Wilcots, WR Harrison, DL Mack, DB Holm October 2022 (post expanded PR): OL Witt, OL Lofton, OL Fornadel, OL Muljo, K Mourtada, WR Harrison, WR Heiligh, DL Adams, DL Massie, DB Texada July 2023: OL Ivy, OL Richmond, DB Muhammad, DB McGhee, DL Fox, LB Cole, WR Jones, FB Jackson October 2023: OL Richmond, DL Haba, DL Garbutt, DL Fox, WR Alston, DB Lawrence, DB McGhee We’ve been carrying a ton of OL on the practice roster since 2022 and it’s netted us absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, we’ve carried literally one linebacker, zero running backs, no receivers who have amounted to anything (mostly due to not ever getting an opportunity), a kicker that was absolute trash, a fullback and usually a DB or two. Obviously these are just snapshots, but the formula isn’t working. Look at the turnover and look what it’s amounted to. This is not how we should be using this part of our roster at all.

I really just wished they didn’t treat the 45 man roster and the practice roster as if they are two separate entities. The gameday depth chart should not be our week to week depth chart. We should not be using JA as anything beyond a gameday backup to Brady, if Brady can’t go one week then there should be a player on the practice roster ready to fill that role as a starter. Same with Gauthier, Ford, etc. I swear if Jake Thomas got hurt, we’d be starting Kyle Samson the next week. This is not the way the team should be operating. Our practice roster use continues to be so frustrating, we should be employing players who can develop their skills so that when they are called to play, there’s a shot you may have an immediate impact player not just some ham and egger who can do enough to get by.

Brown/Dukes/Powell in that order

Toronto Montreal Saskatchewan Calgary BC Hamilton Edmonton Winnipeg not ranked: Ottawa

I want to be fair with the last comment I made though: I don’t think our young players were the big problem this past week. It was definitely on the veterans.

Seeing what Toronto put out on the field yesterday was so frustrating. Do they have weak spots? Sure. But the young talent pool is impressive. They lost so many pieces and more just step right up - not necessarily rookies, but guys they’re recruited and developed and now asked to play bigger roles. Brinkman, Pierce, Dukes, Williams, Franklin … they do a good job of talent assessment over there for sure It’s not all on Zach though. A lot of it is, but not all of it. It’s crazy how in preseason, you were ALL OVER Booch and I for saying some negative things that ended up being entirely true but now that we’re one game in, you’ve got completely off the deep end on the other side of the argument. Our preparedness on offense left a lot to be desired. Zach wasn’t making throws, but those throws also involve rhythm, timing, understanding of blocking assignments, chemistry and a lot more. The whole offense was out of sync and Zach is a big part of that but he’s not entirely to blame.

I’m not giving up on these guys like Mitchell as options at KR. let’s be fair about it, we just spent the whole week saying the team looked unprepared and like they were not ready to play. Mitchell is the exception, he just stinks?

So kick returners and receivers are a weak spot despite us bringing in two of the best players at those positions that the league has seen in a decade?

So flip it to American. We start 817 Canadians.

I don’t read too much into the Feltmate add beyond they took the opportunity to add a good player who was available

We didn’t recruit him

Tony Jones was good for Edmonton in limited time last year but this annoys me because it just is another example of how we don’t want to ever recruit

You’re welcome

I mean, what’s unfair about what I said

Honestly what I’m worried about most is that he’s going to do something stupid while he’s injured. If he stays out of trouble, he’ll be back for the games that matter

It’s not injuries though. It’s coaching and decision making within the locker room. There’s been a laundry list of questionable decisions being made over the past year and the talent is no longer enough to overcome them. O’Shea needs to be more of a coach, which is what got us to the point we were at, and be less of what feels like a chaperone at times.

For a team that made it their calling card for so long, they’ve been lacking in preparedness pretty consistently in recent times

This doesn’t get talked about enough because it’s always lost in the overall success of the club but O’Shea hasn’t been making good coaching decisions for quite some time now. The shine is going to start coming off this year. You can tell.

To be fair we didn’t really start ten. The lineup said we were going to, but we didn’t. Jake Thomas played far too much though

Oof

Omg lol I just read this imagine being like “yeah I wish those guys who predicted this got some CTE instead of me being able to admit maybe I was blowing smoke up the wrong ass”

He never will this is literally the exact same dude who was crying about some of us stating our arguments and then making the exact same argument for us only posts later He’s absolutely lost as a poster

1st star Booch 2nd star me 3rd star the fans who stick around to watch this festival of diarrhea

This is the **** that costs people jobs