TBURGESS

Mike has an opinion that he refuses to share, yet he calls me out on my opinion. Like most folks around here, I watched the games and formed my opinions based on what I saw. I didn't see a (m)any big plays by Waggoner. In fact he was pretty much invisible most of the time. I looked up his stats to see if anything stood out to change my opinion. Nothing did. 18 Games, 7 tackles. Nothing to see there. I stated my opinion in my very first post with Waggoner's name in it in this thread... "First Round Misses: Maybe Waggoner, but that's still TBD.". Strong opinion? Nope. Solid special teams player? Based on what? Lining up in a position that isn't a gunner? Simply being on the field? Your own observations that don't match mine? FUUUUUCK is right.

As you know Justin Medlock isn't supposed to make tackles, so what's the point your trying to make? I did read your post. I'm not backpedaling. I didn't say you shared an opinion on him. I asked how you got your opinion. If you're not going to even bother to read my posts then what's the point of replying to them?

I disagree with calling him a Strong Special Team player. How on earth do you call that a strong opinion? It's not like I called him garbage or said he wasn't doing his job or even said that he was a bad 2nd overall pick. Those would strong opinions. BTW: How did you base your opinion on him?

That's a true statement, how do you know it applies to Waggoner?

Actually it is what I said and what I meant. The number of tackles on special teams means something whether anyone wants to admit it or not. Waggoner showed up about half a dozen to a dozen times on the TSN game feeds last year and most of those were his tackles. I was wondering where he was for much of the season. You can infer his assignment from where he lines up but unless you have access to the wide angle 'tape', can follow Waggoner down the field on every play, and cross reference that to his assignment, you have little to no idea if he's playing well or badly or if he's doing what they expect of him. I doubt anyone on these forums has done that, so how do you form an opinion of his play? His only stat is 7 tackles or about 1 tackle a month. That's all we have IMO.

I never said or implied that every guy on special teams coverage is assigned the same job. I never said or implied that tackle stats are the one and only way to determine worth. Both are bogus arguments. Coaches give players jobs they can handle. In Hurls case, that's to simply fill a hole. In Waggoners case it's a 'position that isn't primarily responsible for tackling the ball carrier' (Your words, not mine). That's the connection I was trying to make, but was lost in translation.

Recap: The original poster called him a 'Solid Special Teamer'. I disagreed with that statement and provided tackle stats to back up my opinion. I was told that the stats were wrong on the CFL site (Which is possible) and that Waggoner had played every game. That made Waggoners stats even worse IMO. You jumped in and said his job wasn't to make tackles, but to take up the man opposite him, which I called the Hurl defence. That's not going in circles complaining. I never called him total garbage. I simply said that he wasn't a 'Solid Special Teamer'. Way to overreach. The whole argument boils down to the word "Solid". Folks around here think it means "Average". I think it means more.

The Hurl defense. He's filling a hole, he's not supposed to make tackles, but he's really good even tho the stats don't show it.

That's not what I'm saying at all. I don't think he's a bust or a star. If he played all 18 games and only had 7 SP tackles, then he's not a solid special teamer. It's that simple.

That would be worse for him because he'd have played 11 games without a single stat.

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.