TBURGESS

He played in 7 games and got a single tackle. Pretty low bar for a 'solid special teamer' IMO. Revised: Special teams tackles are in a separate column and are not added up. Looks like he got 6 special teams tackles and 1 playing on defence.

Joe Mack - 2010-13 2010 - Watson (9th), Smith(28th), Woodson(29th), Greaves(45th) 2011 - Muamba(1st), Etienne(4th), Dunn(17th), Swiston(24th), Volny(32), Mahoney(31) 2012 - Pencer(3rd), Poblah(4th(pick we used to get him)), Aprille(16th), Bilukidi(21), Stephan(23rd), Thomas(29th) 2013 - Mulumba(2nd), Robertson(11), Fitzgerald(20th), DiCroce(29th), Alli(46th), Pavopoulos(54) Hits: Watson, Greaves, Muamba, Thomas. First Round Misses: Etienne, Pencer, Poblah, Mulumba Kyle Walters - 2013-Present 2014 - Goossen(2nd), Briggs(17), Jones(29), Everett(47), Eisho(56) 2015 - Chungh(2nd), Richards(11), Morgan(15), Normand(33), Lattanzio(38), Warden(46) 2016 - Waggoner(2nd (pick we used to get him)) Hits: Goossen, Chungh First Round Misses: Maybe Waggoner, but that's still TBD

I don't measure his success via his late round drafts. They're mostly shots in the dark, if they stick it's just as good a chance that we got lucky rather than we made great choices. Quite frankly, I don't know enough to have an informed opinion on who to pick in the later rounds anyway. I don't like Walters second round picks though. IMO there were better players available, especially in 2015 where we had 2 2nd rounders. We chose Richards over Waud and Morgan over Durant.

I'll take Mack's scouting over Walters and it's not even close. I'll take Walters work in FA over Mack's and it's not even close either. Every year that Walters has been here, he's signed 7 or more FA's. Some are top tier. Some aren't, but all have proven that they at least belong in the CFL. His scouting and his drafting (Except for the first round) have been poor to say the least. He is certainly part of the problem. Lots of folks thought we were a QB away from being a good team before O'Shea. Willy is the best we've had in years and we still can't make the playoffs. Willy being hurt shifted the view to needing a good backup QB. Nichols is the best we've had in years, but that still didn't result in many wins. Blame the OC? Sure, but the HC who hired him and kept him on needs to take his share of that blame too. It's likely that the good assistant coaches had better choices than tying themselves to a rookie HC, with tons less experience than they had, who had to turn around a bad football club. The coaching graveyard scenario is far less likely IMO as there've been tons of teams who fired their HC's more often than we have and they still manage to hire new HC's, most with way more experience than O'Shea. Last off season I was saying make the playoffs or get fired because year 2 is the make it or break season 90+% of the time. This off season lots of folks are saying this year is O'Shea's make or break season. Personally, I'm worried that O'Shea won't make it past mid-season because of the way our schedule looks and replacing coaches during the season almost never works.

Dave Richie made the playoffs and won a playoff game in his second year. Even in 1999. his first year, he won 4 of his last 7 games which gave us hope of better things to come. (He also won back to back games (For Mr Dee)). Sure O'Shea inherited a poor team, but he had better talent than his predecessor right off the bat. He had a real QB (Willy), which is the #1 player you need to be successful, a top receiver (Moore) and a shutdown CB (Randle) that Burke would have loved to have, plus we added several other FA's. He surprised some teams in the first half of the season then won a couple of games in the second half. In year 2, we added another couple of top FA's in Bryant and Picard which was supposed to fix the O line and 5 other FA's. We got Westerman, an all star DE and Adams at CB. He got 3 of our 5 wins in the first 6 weeks then a couple more later in the season. Quite frankly, we should have done better with the level of talent we had on the field. I don't think that our talent level is anywhere near as bad as our record shows and O'Shea has been give the tools he needed to do better than our record. His choices of coordinators has been brutal. Thinking that Etch or Bellifool were viable in his first year was bad enough, keeping Bellifool for his second year shows incompetence IMO.

Of course you can say he's a bad coach when he loses twice as many games as he wins. What other criteria would you use for a bad coach?

On the way he dresses: The reason he won't change is the issue... I wouldn't care if all he wore was a 'Budgie Smuggler' (Speedo) if he delivered wins. On holding players accountable: I'm not in the dressing room or the meetings and I don't have a bug in O'Shea's office so I can't tell if he yells at them or shames them or anything else that folks might consider 'holding players accountable behind closed doors'. All I have to go on is there haven't been any consequences to bad play, just a bunch of public excuses. By consequences, I mean losing playing time or airlifting in players to compete for the spot or having the backup start or letting a young guy take a game to see if he can produce or demoting the player to a DI or off the game day roster or offered a PI spot instead of full salary or getting rid of them during the season. On not winning back to back games for a year and a half: I'll stop bringing it up when he starts winning back to back games. On best HC since Richie: Based on what?

I know that he doesn't hold his players publicly accountable and you really don't know if he holds them privately accountable. Kuale was one example, not the only example... how about Romby Bryant and Greg Peach?

You don't think that means he believes he's right? I submit Kuale and Hurl as examples of players who weren't performing that he wouldn't get rid of and he made excuses for.

O'Shea is just another in a long line of Bomber rookie HC's that's in over his head. Comparing him to Dave Richie, our last good HC is a joke. Richie was a GC winning HC with 5 years experience, who'd never missed the playoffs when we hired him. He missed the playoffs in his first year as a Bomber HC then made them for 4 straight years including a GC run. We were 7-10 in 2000, but 5 of the wins were in the last 8 games and we lost one of them by a single point. O'Shea's has a .333 winning percentage, most of his wins are in the first half of the seasons, hasn't made the playoffs yet, lost more games in his second season than his first even tho he had a better backup QB and hasn't even won 2 games in a row for more than a year. O'Shea won't change and that's part of the problem. He believes he's right even tho the results say otherwise. He won't hold his players accountable. He won't get rid of under performing players. He'll make excuse after excuse for sub-par play. He won't even change the way he dresses because then people will think it's because they complained? Really?

Expected both of these guys to be gone. Good luck to both of them. IMO: They'll have to take pay cuts if they want to continue their CFL careers.

IMO... Coaching is a full time job and every time you give more than 1 full time job to a coach you're making them work twice as hard and dividing their focus. I'd rather a rookie receivers coach to handle the day to day with PLAP doing the top end work than PLAP doing both jobs full time. Same goes for O'Shea as the HC/STC. BTW: Yes... I know other coaches do it at a high level, but I'm not convinced that either PLAP or O'Shea are able to do 2 full time jobs.

Every OC works with his receivers on a regular basis and they still need a receivers coach.

OC/Receivers and HC/STC. Any more 'slash' coaches?

OK... worst suit I've seen since the '70's.

Yikes! That may be the worst suit I've ever seen. He looks like a black Bobby Vinton.

Based solely on what's happened so far... Teams that look like they'll be worse this year: Edmonton, Hamilton, Calgary, Ottawa Teams that look like they'll be better this year: Winnipeg, Regina Teams that look to be around the same: Montreal, BC, Toronto

You're right. His dumb agent was himself.

What kind of stupid agent does he have? It's Wally's job to get players for the least money and he plays hardball. It's the agent's job to get the best offer for his client. 3 years at league minimum? That's all he could get?

I'm old school. When you sign a contract you've completed the deal. Wally should (probably will) offer him more money for extra years on the contract because that keeps everyone happy, but he doesn't have to. If Jennings holds out, he can't play anywhere and won't make any money until the contract is over, unless he is traded and there's nothing in it for BC to trade him. 55K is a lot better than zero now and maybe starters pay in 2 years time. Players love to say, 'I had a great year. Tear my contract up because I deserve more', but I've never heard them say, 'I had an off year. I should take a pay cut even tho my contract says I don't have to'.

I'm not sure this year is any different than the last couple of Free Agent seasons. Working mostly from memory (Which I admit isn't what it used to be, so feel free to update)... Players taken in FA or traded for in FA and signed: 2015 D Adams I Brown M Dile T Cronk S Hurl S Bryant D Picard J Westerman - NFL reject, not exactly a FA 7 Players 2014 J Feoli-Gudino M Bucknor D Willy N Moore C Randle D Alexander B Banks 7 Players In both off seasons we signed a lot of free agents who were big upgrades and wanted by other teams, but it didn't help much in the win column. We did it again this year and look better on paper again. The real question is will that mean more wins this year.

Heck, I wouldn?t have written the above preluding many of the seasons I?ve been here. But something you develop over a long period of countless hours in the sports business, is a strong sense for what feels right or wrong heading into a new season; knowing when things are actually on the right track, or when they aren?t. - Rheanne's been the Bombers Social and Digital Media manager for all of a year and 4 months. She manages the social media accounts, she doesn't write the blogs. She likely posted it. Not likely she wrote it.

Just the on-field stuff? You mean winning? That's more important than anything that was in the 'article'.

Randle's one of my favorite players. I hope he's 100%. I'd prefer to see him with the DB's than the LB's.

Darren Cameron, Director of Communications and Media's job in part is to write pieces that spin Bomber stories in the best way possible. He isn't a source of unbiased opinion. He's a source of which spin the Bombers want the fans to see. That's fine in and of itself. Where the same group of folks go off the rails is when they take Cameron's articles as facts and then use those 'facts' to take shots at other groups of fan.