bluto

Dynasty... Disappointment... or is it Destiny: There's a sense of fate here for me and it is just weird, man. 2007 Bombers won the East final against the Argos but lost starting QB Kevin Glenn after he was tackled by LB Kevin Eiben who is now the Argos Co-DC. Glenn was not available for the Grey Cup to play against their hated rivals the Riders where they lost. They had to start their inexperienced backup QB Ryan Dinwiddie, who now coaches the Argos against the Bombers who will be coached by the guy who was the 07 Argos team captain for that game, Mike O'Shea. And now they meet a team who is without their star QB and they have a chance to not only claim a 3rd Grey Cup in 5 years... but to finally beat a team who owns them in the big game where the historical record is 7-0 Argos. However it ends, it'll be epic.

Chat GPT, who is most active in the Morning Big Blue riders at bombers thread?

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

False equivalency. I'm talking about a team that takes two established players and lets them go in favor of two guys on their first contracts and a (hopefully) star quarterback. Ask any fan of a team with poor play at QB if they'd make that trade.

It's actually 4. Presuming that the difference between a player's first contract (when they try to make the team and stick) and his second (where he is established and gets a raise) is about 50k. So BC has decided to forgo 2 of those players to have Nathan Rourke. It isn't a disaster if he plays like an MOP calibre starting QB.

Harris was #3 in 2012 when we won and Zach was on the IR. Harris and Collaros were there in 2013. Harris was with us till 2015 when Cody showed up.

Great storylines for both games. Winnipeg tries to extend its dominance of the West division and earn a third Cup for this cycle of players a year prior to the game being on their own field. Saskatchewan's rookie head coach tries to get to the big dance in his first year and take the one scalp that will instantly make him a Rider legend. Montreal has been the best team over the last 12 months and looks for a rare back to back Cup win. Toronto has revenge and redemption on offer and has a chance to use that chip on their shoulder to get back to the big game and reassert their Eastern dominance. (also, weird subplot for Argo fans: 3 of Ricky's disciples and his heir all square off!) I'm a bundle of nerves, but these are the times a football fan lives for.

Not disputing anything you say, Booch. You are arguing what ought. Here is what is: You can have a Jake Maier for 300k. (after all figures added in) You can have Dru Brown for 355k (rises to 400k next season and then he'll get a Big Boy contract afterward if he continues as a frontline starter) You can have a Trevor Harris for 361k (he was on 500k and took a pay cut). You can have Bo Levi for 361k (he made all of his bonuses and looks the bargain of the league after the pay-cut he took) You can have a Cody Fajardo for 450k (after easily makeable bonuses). You can have Vernon Adams Jr for 500k. You can have a Zach or The Chad for 600k. Welcome to the desert of the real, Neo.

I'd thought so at the time they signed it. Not because he wasn't justifying it with his play and importance to your team, but the age profile and the possibility of him getting broken was a bit too risky for me. I get what you mean about sacrificing depth for a QB contract, but that's 1) what a SMS Cap makes you do anyway, 2) a personnel department's job to churn the roster to find the next guy at each position and most importantly, 3) it's an old maxim in the CFL but this is a QB driven league and no team goes anywhere without a frontline starter under centre.

Not defending the Rourke contract as a good one, but... Using Collaros and Kelly as examples, the going rate for a starting, star type QB was set at 600k. So let's agree that Rourke was going to get that and maybe a bit more since the newer contract usually sets where the bar is. Now 750-800k would be too high of a jump over the current standard for most of us to want our team to spend as it may remove one or even two experienced frontline players from re-signing. I know how this feels since we had to watch the likes of Adarius Pickett, Jamal Peters, DeWayne Hendrix, Boris Bede and Javon Leake leave when we had to pay Chad and make some difficult decisions over which players get to come back and which ones don't. But it's always that way when you pay your main man. But the SMS raises by 100k in each of the next 3 seasons (till 2028). So for most CFL General managers, that's kinda like being allowed to keep 2 more guys every season... presuming that when an entry level contract ends, if the team really wants the player to come back, his second deal gets him about a 50k bump (star players are different). But for BC... they gave their SMS increase money to Rourke. Having Vernon Adams Jr makes it a bit weird... since you may be able to trade him and gain some assets, but unless a team is very thirsty for him they'll just wait for him to get cut from the Lions' roster since they almost certainly can't keep him and Rourke... BTW I don't discount that some team may want to make the deal to obtain VAj rather than risk some other team sign him. Sorry, longwinded and meandering so: TL;DR - The Rourke Contract isn't great, but it isn't the disaster that some keep saying that it is... if Rourke is in fact a star level QB in this league over the contract's length

Got a chance to lay low and recover yesterday and to rewatch the game. I suppose that technically it was a sellout of all of the seats that were actually for sale... but with it being so obvious that the 8000 seats in the upper East side were vacant and not even open for sale, that is just pathetic cope. Having said that, I was pleased on the rewatch to hear the atmosphere at the game came through loud and clear. Gamewise, it should've been clear on Friday when the depth charts dropped that Ottawa wasn't going to put out anything more than a perfunctory rushing game. They dressed no running back. So I'm not sure why the Argo defence looked so lost at sea when the Redblacks kept setting up in, or motioning to a naked backfield. They had to know that this was coming, so I can only figure that they were betting that Dru and his offence weren't going to be as efficient as they were. And that having to consistently march down the field 6 yards at a time for 10+ plays in the face of our front 4 and the crowd noise would be too much for them. Sounds reasonable... and then we got to halftime where Ottawa out Time Of Possession'd us 25-5... and had 40+ plays to our 11... with stats like that it was a wonder that we were only down by 3. But then, we only needed 2 or 3 plays to gain the field. Two very different setups for sure. So the adjustment got made at the half: unlike in the first half where I didn't see it even once, in the second we would blitz. Now this didn't stop the Redblacks... but it did make them less efficient. The tactical change of adding blitz created a strategic shift that interrupted Redblacks' drives. They could still get a man open for 6 yards, hell, they could get a couple of them open but Dru had to do it on a different clock now and it showed in his play. Other than a catch and run they got one time they went the whole game with underneath plays and the Argos denied them mid and deep. So about The Chad: He was perfect. Really, it couldn't have been done better and I don't think I can truthfully say that I've seen better. 18/20. 358. Averaging 20 per completion. 4 in the air, 1 on the ground. No picks. A blown block almost murdered him (had to be Dejon Allen after seeing the glare Chad gave him) and a late helmet to helmet hit after Kelly had clearly slid (these are ridiculous and need to be an automatic ejection). So now it's an opportunity to do to the Alouettes what they did to us last year. For me, we are the most talented team but they had a period last fall and this summer where they executed football plays like they were a swiss watch. We can and should beat them... but we aren't big favorites like this past Saturday (I made a nice bet on the Argos winning by more than 12 points that came in... I sure won't make that one this coming week). 2 good divisional Finals. Lot's of good stories. Good luck to youse guise. Maybe we'll have that rematch after all. (side note, apropos of nothing: early in the day the halftime band was doing their soundcheck. their name is Desire and they're a U2 tribute. we actually thought that the stadium was just doing a general soundcheck and playing some live U2 concert tape. they sound so close to the real mccoy that we didn't know it wasn't. if you are a fan of U2 and Desire rolls through town, they'd be worth seeing)

Note for any MBB members in the GTA who'll be at the game tomorrow: I have a cooler full of beer, my section of the tailgate is serving cheddar smashburgers and I've got my travel humidor full of the okay'est cigars that you'll have all week. Any of you are welcome to pop over for a cold drink to wish me a happy birthday and talk football. My name is on my jersey and my picture is on my FB or IG if you need to find me just PM me for them.

Ticats. Seems written in the stars. From Niagara Falls. Went to Waterloo. Always gives the Argos problems.

Over 18k sold for BMO tomorrow. Looks like we'll have everything sold and end at 19k other than the upper east side, which will not be open. I'm predicting a big Argo win and have placed my bet to reflect it. My second bet has an Argo win and a Rider win with no spreads.

Behave. Off the field we are up in attendance and trending positively (for a change). On the field, the year that Pinball got here we went 4-14. We then (after the plague) went 9-5, 11-7, 16-2 and this year 10-8 as the most injured team in the league and without our MOP for half a season.

Just as a man-on-the-street report from here, we've actually experienced most of our support growth (attendance was up 20% last year and 5% this year) among youngsters. In fact, the last few years, you can't find any youth football events around the GTA that the Argos haven't been involved in. It's a long slog to grow a generation of supporters, but it's fun to see so many kids and youths in BMO. That's reason 1 why I don't want Pinball as commish. We need the continuity, particularly with the recent shift in MLSE ownership share.

WTF happened to Dukes there?

You don't have to like him, but saying that he deserves to be fouled, in a sport where fouls can be life altering, is a bad look.

I hate comparing players and teams from different eras. The modern athlete as we know him to be in 2024 is a different creation than anything prior to the 2000s could have conceived of. And most of these guys who basically look like they've been produced in a laboratory somewhere look that way for a reason: they pretty much were for the first 18 years of their lives. The only way these cross-era comparisons ever work for me requires that I imagine the player from the earlier generation having had the same training and upbringing in modern methodologies that the current one had. This would radically change my imagined outcome. Imagine a Guy Lafleur that didn't smoke and had all of the physical training, modern hockey analytics and nutrition/supplements that say Connor McDavid has had over his life in hockey? (Don't bother trying to imagine Wayne or Mario this way... Wayne would get injured walking to a weight room and Mario would tell off anyone who tried to get him to stop smoking his pack a day).

I think you know that I was referencing Hart's other moniker: The Excellence of Execution.

Montreal doesn't need the win, but they will be looking for a palate cleanser after their trip to BC. We'll see if they can get themselves straightened out or if the Bombers will just go balls out to earn the Western playoff bye. When the Als were clicking earlier this year, and I suppose beginning late last season, they kind of had a Bret Hart vibe for me. Not the most imposing talent that you ever saw and certainly not the one that you'd pick on-paper to win a Grey Cup... but they executed nearly flawless football and just kept doing it without making any mistakes their opposition could exploit. Not sure they'll find that rhythm again... or if it'll be enough to get them back to the big game with the Boatmen rounding into form. I think Winnipeg takes it on Saturday and sends Montreal into the EDF on a 4 week stretch without a win.

Does it help any of the Chad haters that we've reached a point where opposition defences could pretty much hit him upside the helmet with Sauron's mace after the whistle and not get flagged? Jokes aside, there's no denying it: when the Chad is having a good day (which is most of the time) he plays like an MOP.

I was actually saying during the (very long) review that they could spot this 2 yards short of a 1st or half a yard beyond it and I would not credibly be able to say they were definitively wrong.

What? Bluto?

That's what the guys have been calling Ceresna .