TBURGESS

With the 3 stooges in charge, you might just get your wish.

Joe Mack didn't hire Mike Kelly. Kelly was hired by Bauer in 2009. Mack was given the GM spot in 2010.

Wally may be cheap, but he did make Harris a very good offer. We basically matched it and Harris came home. Harris is giving it everything he's got. He's breaking tackles and making people miss. The problem is, he's having to do that in the backfield too often.

Yes, but it won't happen. No team wants Willy @ $411K.

Bowman

Drew being pulled was something that needed to happen, but I don't think it means we are done with Willy yet. He may even end up playing some in Edmonton if Nichols can't get the job done.

Reinebold's a good special teams coach. That's about it.

If Bomber management still thinks that O'Shea is part of the solution instead of part of the problem, then they need to be replaced too.

Every time the Bombers talked in the off season they brought up the fact that Willy was injured and that we were in every game without him and no, I didn't and don't agree with it. There were way too many other problems last year to put it all on losing Willy. If a win in '07 mean no Mike Kelly, then it might still have some validity now, but folks would still be pissed that we look like we're not going to make th playoffs for the 3rd year in a row under the Miller/Walters/O'Shea regime.

Folks are mad that we're in a 26 year slump but, having won a GC back in '01 or '07 wouldn't have anything to do with this year or last or even the one before that. Folks are rightfully mad that we suck yet again after 'winning' free agency yet again and signing the most expensive OC in the league. We were told over and over in the off season that the reason we were so bad last year was because our starting QB went down early last year. Turns out that's yet another load of manure as we are replacing Willy this week with 2 wins out of 7 starts Nichols. Looks like a ton of other changes this week and we're most likely to be 1-5 at this time next week. If you think the calls for O'Shea's head are getting loud now, just wait for next week.

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.