TBURGESS

There are no consequences throughout the team. Win 5 games, no winning streaks not even 2 in a row and we give the GM a pass who gives the HC a pass who gives most of the coaches a pass who give the players passes. Want to create a winning atmosphere? Fire the folks who aren't doing their jobs quickly and bring in folks who can do them.

The Bombers assumed that Willy would have a breakout season this year and paid him for it with a $425K salary next year. He had a contract in place for this season. I doubt he'd get anywhere near $425K if we were negotiating a new contract now. FA QB's this year will be one of Ray or Harris, Lulay and Nichols. Glenn reportedly has a deal with Montreal in place but he could go to FA too.

More than one choice could be picked in each category, but the question is what's the biggest factor. The biggest factor IMO is horrible hiring decisions. I'm not sure if that's because we continue to look for the cheapest options or if experience isn't weighted high enough or the people making the decisions don't know what they are looking for or if we have a bad reputation, but we never seem to get the best candidates to sign with us. When we go into competition with other teams for the top GM's or Coaches, we lose. Same holds true for players unless we're willing to pay them the most like Moore, Westerman and Bryant. If we want better players then we need better scouting and a better GM who has better contacts down south. If we want to maximize the potential with those players then we need better coaching and better schemes. Once we start winning again, we need to retain the best as much as possible and continue to bring in as much new talent to push the old talent.

No Stoudermire or Washington... Who's returning kicks?

It's comical the depths people will go to as a means of trying to justify their points instead of realistically considering the impact injuries have on a team. Acting like they don't have an impact on one's season (Look at Hamilton's offence as it is now for example) only makes one look foolish. The big difference between us and Hamilton's situation was the timing. Collaros already had Hamilton easily in playoff position, while for us Willy's injury happened in mid-August. Five weeks is a big difference in a football season. I did realistically consider the impact of Willy's injury (Check back just a few posts to see it) and I was told that that's not what the OP was talking about.

My Predictions: MOP - Burris MODP - Bighill MOC - Westerman MOL - Perrett MOST - Logan ROY - Walker

All good choices. Pretty much what I expected.

So the game is what if Willy stayed healthy the entire year and played as well as he did when we won, while 6 other team's QB's went down to injury? Yup... that's realistic. What's the point? To make up a scenario where the Bombers could have made the playoffs this year? To what end? To say we were better than our record so we can say that the 3 stooges (Miller/Walters/O'Shea) should be kept on because they're on the right track?

Moore's a good receiver being paid like a great one. I'd love to have him back at a #2 or #3 receiver salary, but I doubt he'd take it. He'll go where he gets the most money.

I like Willy but I don't think he'd have made as much of a difference as a lot fans around here. His slower release would have meant he tooks takes a bunch more punishment than Nichols who throws the ball away instead of taking the hits when he can. He'd have worn down through the season like he did last year and we'd still send him out at 95% then 90% then 80% then as long as he could hold his arm up and limp to the huddle because of our backup situation. We wouldn't have traded for Nichols so every time Willy went down, Brohm or Marve would try in get the win with pretty obvious results.

By that you mean you agree with him.

All I ask is that he looks better than Brohm so we can get rid of him without worrying about losing his CFL experience.

Good news. I'm interested to see what the kid can do.

If they drop Picard and Moore, they should have a bunch of money for new 'Big Name' FA's.

My List (Highlighted are the must signs): P Lirim Hajrullahu - Gambled and lost. I'd sign him for as little as possible and wouldn't complain if he signs elsewhere. SB Nick Moore - Not worth the money we're paying him. I doubt he'll sign for #3 receiver money, so I'll guess he's gone. LB Graig Newman - Bye Bye QB Matt Nichols - Wants a starting job or at the very least competition to be the starter. We shouldn't give him either so I doubt we sign him. LB Chris Randle - One of our best IMO. DB Demond Washington - At the right price sure, but not that big a deal if he doesn't sign. DB Lin-J Shell - Thanks for filling in. No need to resign. DE Louie Richardson - Sure for the right price, but that's not very high IMO. OL Selvish Capers - Nope OL Jace Daniels - One of our best tackles before he was hurt. DE Thaddeus Gibson - I sure hope we can do better. FB Michel-Pierre Pontbriand - OK soldier. Draft someone else. RB Cameron Marshall - Re-sign him, but he's not top of the list. RB's should be a dime a dozen.

As part of the over 50's set.... I don't know any of Fall Out Boy's songs and I'm not complaining about them being the halftime show. I'll be taking the ribs off the BBQ and pouring some more drinks during halftime anyway.

I'd settle for mediocre at this point because we're so far from it right now.

For me it was Randle and it was pretty easy. Nichols is way better than our other backups, but I don't think he'll ever be starter material.

He was. He was out of the pocket when Lawrence hit him, which made that play legal.

Not bad when we're missing #1 weapons on offense and the lines need upgrading... seems to me that it's not a core you like it's the supporting players which is what gets you 5 win seasons. I'd also suggest that the depth pretty much blows and injuries screw this team hard, and look at that, been lots of injuries this year and we've needed that depth. So I guess we can say that the middle part of the roster is ok but we need more on both ends of it. Your definition of not bad doesn't match mine. 5 wins is terrible and terrible is exactly what we were this year and most of last. The lines have needed upgrading for years now. Walters threw money at the problem and still didn't get the results we need although he did hit a homerun with Westerman. I'll give you depth as a problem. That's a drafting/scouting issue. Better players would make our coaches look better and better coaching would make the players we have look better. It's the old chicken and egg story. IMO we have enough talent to win more games than we did in the last two years. We had more talent this year than we did last year and it resulted in less wins. That leaves coaching and scouting as the biggest and easiest places to upgrade.

I'd be sad if Lawless is right on it and I'm fairly sure he is.

Westerman will be an all star. Bass and Adams have an outside shot. No real stars after that although some very good players like Leggatt, Adams, Randall, Bryant, Moore and Denmark who are all guys who would be picked up right away by other teams if we let them go (maybe not for what we're paying them, but that's an issue of having to overpay because we've been bad for so long). We're missing a #1 receiver a #1 running back (Marshall's not an every down back) a couple of O lineman on offence. We're missing a couple of D lineman and some Canuck replacements for Bucknor and Hurl and maybe a new DB and Safety to become a pretty good defence. Better talent acquisition through scouting, drafting and free agency is definitely needed, but the core really isn't that bad IMO. Better than the 5 wins we've got IMO.

I don't care if ANY player returns if we have an upgrade. The point is that we have a lot of good players on the team.

Just go into an Incognito window in Chrome and you can read as many articles in the Sun as you want to. (Resets the counter to 1 every time). For the Sun, go into your settings and remove the cookie that the Sun installs and you're back to 0 articles read. For the Free Press sign up with an e-mail address and you get a free trial period. When that ends, sign up with a different address and you get another trial. A bit of a nusience but I've been doing it for the last several months with no problem. I did the nuisance new email address thing for 3 iterations then got tired of it. You could try the Canada News Sites Paywall Bypass extension for chrome. It says that it bypasses both the Winnipeg Sun and the Winnipeg Free press paywalls, but note that I haven't used it myself.

They were last year and the year before that. They were stupid enough to keep Mack and Tim Burke around for an extra year and to give PLAP a new contract so he wouldn't be a 'lame duck' coach then fire him 8 games into the next season.