TBURGESS

Masoli had a record setting second half against Edmonton. No surprise that he's getting a lot of kudos around here. He's only had 1 and a half good games this year, but that's 1 and a half more than Willy has.

All off season the Bombers were selling the idea that we lost so many games because Willy went down early. If we'd only have had Willy last year, they'd say, we would have made the playoffs. 5 Weeks in, Willy is demoted to promote old 2 wins in 7 tries, Nichols, who according to the idea they were selling hard in the off season, wasn't good enough to get us into the playoffs last year. Yup, that ought to save us.

I've been calling for a change at HC. I doubt changing to Nichols will accomplish much of anything. I don't think he's a starter or even an upgrade over Willy. I SUSPECT this isn't O'Shea's call either. It's more likely IMO that it's Walters/Miller's way of making a big change without canning O'Shea outright.

Congrats to the Bombers. No one will ever be able to call you cheap again, now that we've got the most expensive backup QB in the league. BTW: I hope Nichols does well against Edmonton as we have to put up more than 30 points to beat them.

Hold the team accountable for their failures. Stop buying tickets. Stop buying merchandise. Stop supporting the failures. Start demanding a turnaround. Start by firing O'Shea if he loses to Edmonton.

Sadly, Lawless might be right. The team is so dysfunctional that they aren't even thinking about making a coaching change. We're 1-4. We haven't won 2 in a row or put up more than 30 points in 2 years, but there're not even thinking of making changes. (Where's the facepalm emoji?) Interesting that it was 90% no last week and It's 50% no right now.

We have an all choir boy team from the GM on down. Good teams have the right mix of a$$holes and choir boys.

We're going into the 'easiest' part of the season after Edmonton. Assuming 1-5, canning O'Shea after this week gives the new coach the best chance to start off around .500 in the next 5 weeks.

Apparently, they can't call penalties, just comment on them. No use in having them, if they can't even fix obvious mistakes.

On Walters: He's brought in some very good talent in FA and most of that talent was better on the teams they came from. That's up to coaching and systems not GM'ing. Last night, we lost 2 more DB's in game and the backups did well. We also lost a couple of O lineman and had to use a DL on the OL and we didn't become much worse than we were with the starters. Not sure how you can say we don't have any depth. Walters biggest mistakes were hiring O'Shea, hiring some below average scouts and paying Willy like an elite QB when he clearly isn't. I expect he'll be given a second chance at making he HC decision just like O'Shea was given a second chance at hiring each of his coordinators. On O'Shea: Keeping him around doesn't accomplish anything. Firing him doesn't mean we have to keep the interim HC next year or Walters, no matter how often you say it does. O'Shea has become a cancer on the team. We should fire him for the same reason you cut out any cancer... to start the healing and the sooner we do it the better.

This will be a weekly topic until O'Shea is fired or the Bombers win 2 to 3 games in a row. As they haven't done that for 2 years now, I can guess which one we're waiting for.

We hired Reinebold, Kelly, PLAP and O'Shea in off seasons and all of them were busts, so it's not a problem of promoting coaches during the season. The problem lies in hiring potential instead of HC's who've been there, done that, with a good record.

A lot of the replay's that have been overturned this year were the really close ones that could go either way. Quite frankly, most shouldn't have been overturned as challenges should be for the obviously bad calls IMO. Rewarding the HC's on the really close calls makes them even more willing to throw the hankie out in the first place.

In the last 10 years, we've replaced one HC, PLAP with Burke mid-season and gave him the job the next year. Back in '04 Daley took over from Ritchie and got the job the next year. In '98 Hoffman took over from Reinebold, didn't get the next year as HC and we hired Ritchie who had won a GC and who had never been out of the playoffs as a HC, so you don't have to keep the interim HC on. It's about who you hire as the HC in the off season, not who you appoint as interim HC.

I guess you've been wrong for 10 years then. Moving on from a bad coach, and that's what O'Shea is, can make a big difference. It can make players worry about their jobs that gets them out of their comfort zone and maybe makes them play better. Players may have 'tuned out' the old coach and may not be able to 'tune out' the new one. The new coach may pull the QB when he's not being effective. He may call the game more aggressively. He may demand changes from the coordinators to match his philosophy. He may sit players who aren't pulling their weight. He may change the way practices are run. He may want to bring in his kind of players from the NFL cuts. He may take the gags off of the players when they talk with the media. Keeping a losing coach just because you made the wrong decision to keep him at the end of last year doesn't do anyone any good and you only lose 2 seasons if you gift the new HC the next season AND he doesn't do any better than the fired one.

If you actually read what I typed, you'll see that I expect that things would stay pretty much the same over the end of the season but they need to sell hope which they can't do with Mike 'win every 3rd game' O'Shea. As I've said before, if the GM even suggests keeping the interim HC on, he should be fired too. The appropriate time to fire O'Shea was at the end of last year, but they decided to ignore CFL history and keep him on even tho most HCs don't get 3rd year out of the playoffs and the couple who did never amounted to anything. There's no reason to keep him on for the rest of the year unless he manages to turn it around RFN. Sometimes the Devil you don't know is better than the Devil you do.

The old fatalist 'lets do nothing cuz it won't get any better anyway' argument, read in your best Eeyore voice. Might as well call it what it is the 'lets keep my guy around cuz I like him' argument. Three things can happen if we fire O'Shea, better, worse, or about the same. The highest probability IMO is about the same, but management will have to do something to try and win back the fans if we go 1-6 and they can't fire the whole team so firing the HC as good as gets. No... that doesn't mean we have to keep the Interim coach or the GM or even the CEO for that matter. It means we should have seen this coming last year, but we did't.

Maybe that's why Willy's taking less hits. The coach is yelling "DUCK!". Personally, I think it's stupid to have an open mike during the play. Let the players play and the coaches coach.

O'Shea should have been fired at the end of last season, but they'll give him more time even if we lose bad this week.

We agree that GM and coach are two very different things. You lose me when you bring up Mike Kelly's record as a coach.

Sure, but Jones had a winning percentage of 72.2% as a HC, coming into the season. He's been successful ever since he got to the CFL in 2002. He's won GC rings with 4 different teams including one last year as HC. Maybe we should revisit this at the end of the season to see if it's still true.

I'd happily take Jones and his ego over Walters and O'Shea. I'd also take Carter with his ego over any receiver. I could go on. My point is the best generally have big egos.

The way the 'Eye in the sky' official works now is next to useless, but if they were in charge of all things challenge-able, they could make a huge difference. Of course, the HC's wouldn't want to give up control or another way to change the outcome of games.

Chris Williams

You may be crazy, but that's not a bad idea. I have a couple more: Take the ability to ask for a review away from the HC's and give it to the Eye In The Sky official. That should result in significantly less challenges. Put a clock on challenges. 30-45 seconds. If it can't be overturned in that amount of time, then go with the original call. Slow motion and enhanced video should only be used for 'in or out of bounds' calls. Interference challenges should only happen on the obvious ones, not the 'too close to call in real time' ones.