TBURGESS

Yup. Looked like Frederick was locking them down. I'd like to see him at DI instead of a LB this week.

Bowman against the Riders D seems like a lock to me.

Why would he want to go to the dumpster fire that is the Riders if he can make as much money and have as good a shot at starting elsewhere?

We won't be trading Willy this year. No one wants him at $411K, let alone give us a good player and take on his salary. We'll likely hold on to him for the rest of the season then ask him to take a pay cut to less than half what he's currently making. I'd rather sign Franklin and let Willy go, but I doubt management will see it that way.

Still less than Willy's making.

We should be able to get a starting QB in trade for Willy? SMH.

Calgary, BC and Ottawa are the only teams above .500 right now. i'd call them top tier even tho Ottawa lost big this weekend. Calgary's only lost to BC this year. BC will go as far as the inexperienced Jennings can take them and that should be good enough to beat most teams. Ottawa's confusing right now. They haven't looked that good since Burris came back, but it was enough to beat Edmonton. In danger of falling out of the top tier to be replaced by Hamilton IMO. Wpg, Edm, Ham and Tor all with 4 wins are the middle tier. Kilgore is Brink bad. He was 7-14 for 41 yards with 2 Ints. He's thrown 10 ints in less than 3 full games. I doubt that Toronto wins another game until Ray gets back, then they still have to fix that passing defense. In danger of falling down into the bottom tier. Hamilton with Collaros is a different team. Sure they got lucky on the first TD yesterday, but they turned 6 TO's into 53 points against a very bad Riders team. In a couple more weeks, I think they will have moved up to top tier. Edmonton can win games on offense alone and the defense is looking better, although playing against Kilgore leaves that up in the air. In a fight with us for the last playoff spot for the rest of the year. Winnipeg's won 3 in a row for the first time in years based on leading the league in takeaways and all 3 facets of the team playing well at the same time. Montreal is in the tweener tier. Not quite good enough to be in the middle tier. Not so bad to be lumped in with Regina. If they win next week, they'll be at 4 wins which puts them in consideration for the middle tier. Regina's in the lowest tier. Hard to put anyone else in there considering how bad they really are this year.

After watching the games this weekend, I've got to say If we don't beat the Riders in both games, we don't deserve to be in the playoffs. They are way worse than I thought they'd be by this point in the season especially considering they still have Durant.

Edmonton's not top tier this year. They've got one of the worst defenses in the league and they've won less games than we have.

More like the monthly attack the poster, not the post.

I see your point but, I don't think taking away two turnovers at the end of the game tells the real story. The rain delay game was won/lost in the first quarter. It was pick 6 on Masoli's first throw, 2 and out, great punt return, 12 yard TD pass and we're up by 14. Ham has a 5 play drive ending in a fumble. We have a 7 play drive ending in a TD and the route was on. The last 2 turnovers in the rain delay game didn't have any effect on the outcome, because we were already so far ahead, but IMO, we wouldn't have been that far ahead except for the 4 turnovers that had already happened in that game.

Randle > Roberts Loffler > Macho Adams played great last year. Frederick has played great this year. Personally, I'd want them both on the roster and reduce the LB DI's by one.

I'm not missing your point. I'm saying you're wrong.

Neufeld can't stay healthy and his replacement is outplaying him by a large margin. He's a very expensive 6th OL, but I'd still keep him around this year because of his passport. I hope we can find better in the off season and get something in return for Neufeld.

We got 6 turnovers in each of 3 games so it would 2 or 3 be out of 18, not out of 12 and we likely don't get into garbage time without getting so many turnovers in the first place. For example... If Masoli doesn't throw a pick 6 on the first play of the game we likely don't score 21 points in the first 10 minutes to start the rout. I use things from the past to explain my negativity in the past. Ignoring the negatives just so you can be positive isn't objective. Any thinking person would be negative when the team doesn't make the playoffs for 4 straight years and then goes 1-4 to start this year. I didn't even go negative until we fired Berry and replaced him with Kelly and it's been mostly horrible ever since. I certainly understand why you don't accept the obvious. If you did, you couldn't use your 'positivity' as an excuse to call me out on my 'negativity' and that's a big part of your forum persona. It's pretty obvious that you care deeply about my level of negativity, because you post about it all the time.

I'm have trouble figuring out the point you're trying to make. Do you think that beating the other teams in the turnover race by 4 or 5 a game is sustainable or that every turnover was simply a great play by our defense that had nothing to do with anything their offense did?

No it's using the facts to justify the viewpoint.

You fail acknowledge, or maybe to realize, is objectively speaking, the Bombers have been a horrible team for the last 4+ years and the first 5 games of this season. The perceived negativity is therefore a fair and reasoned response to that environment we've been in.

It is as it has always been around here. Some folks would much rather argue with other posters than talk about the thread topic. Take the focus off of 'Is it real' and turn it into 'You're negative'.

Of course I look at both sides of the coin, but I understand where you don't see it that way. Unfounded negativity would be bad thing, but negativity founded in facts isn't IMO and I don't consider it negative to look at how we got where we are anyway. It would be much better to actually discuss the issues rather than focusing on the perceived level of their negativity, but that's not the way it works around here.

Nichols, Bond, Loffler, and Denmark are new starters rather than backups. When they get healthy, Adams, Randle, Dressler and Smith at a minimum will get their jobs back from their backups.

Have the Bomber played better of late with their backups in? You bet they have. Have they done it against backup QB's, sub .500 teams and got bunches of turnovers? You bet they have. Them's the facts, but some folks only want to discuss the positive and call anyone who looks at both sides of the coin negative, like that's something bad.

Your'e half right. I don't care when we almost win because close doesn't count in the standings, but I'm not 'clearly making excuses for teams we beat' and we haven't "almost lost" either of the last 2 games. I'm simply looking at why we won and that includes the backup QB, the turnovers and the sub .500 teams we've played as well as the way our team played.

I don't care if it was a close loss or a close win. Wins are the stat that matters most. In fact wins are the only stat that really matters. I've never said that I don't care how wins or losses happen tho. Folks love to go on and on about 'if we'd just done "A" we would have won" or "If the refs hadn't screwed us" we would have won or "If these 3 or 4 plays had just gone the other way" we would have won. I don't buy that any more than I buy "Them playing their backup QB doesn't matter" or "The number of turnovers didn't make the difference" or "It doesn't matter that we played below .500 teams". It's all talking about what happened in the game. None of it changes the fact that we won or we lost. I am cautiously optimistic. I expect us to win 3 out of the next 4 games to go 7-5, because we're better than Regina and Montreal and should be competitive with Toronto even with Ray. I expect us to win 1 or 2 of the last 6 games to end up with 8 or 9 wins because 5 of those 6 games are against the top 3 teams in the league.

I never once said or implied that we should apologize. I was simply trying to discuss whether we are for real or not. Kinda the whole point of this thread. Looking at who we beat and who they had at QB is part of that process. I didn't use 'but' in my post at all. I didn't negate any 10 yard runs or anything else for that matter. Not sure what you're reading, but (there's one) it's simply not there.