TBURGESS

Not a huge surprise. Cotton looked good in preseason, but didn't do much in the regular games. Hasn't been on the game day roster for a while now.

Sure, other teams will stack the box against the Riders. They are already doing that. All Sunseri has to do is chip in with 150 yards and keep the turnovers to a minimum and the Riders should be able to beat the eastern teams. Sunseri needs to up his output to around 200 yards to beat western teams that aren't called the Stamps. I bet they win more than 3 games in the second half of the season.

That sucks. Good luck to him in his rehab.

It's not about figuring it out in 6 days. We've got 9 weeks left for new players to 'figure it out' and to learn our systems.

I'll reiterate what a few others have already said... even if we "airlifted" in 4 or 5 NFL cuts, the chances of even one of them playing and making a difference at this point in the season is very low... And... that's still a higher chance of success than going with the guys we've got.

We are getting bad press because we are 1-4 in our last 5 games. It's unrealistic to expect good press right now.

That sucks for Durant and for the league. It's certainly a downgrade at QB for Regina, but I think they can handle it because of their O line and their reliance on the running game. They don't need their QB to throw for 300 yards to win. 150 yards will do it against a lot of teams. I'll guess that the Riders win half of their remaining games, which should keep them in the playoffs.

That sucks for Lulay and the league. I suspect he's already played his last CFL game.

You don't have to divide everyone into factions. Besides, it'd be pure ignorance to don't act like you have your own posting tendencies as well. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't appreciate it if I started calling you the "OBTFITFHAOHJSTHHP" guy all the time, even though I'm sure most people here would say it'd be much deserved. Only believes the facts if they fit his argument otherwise he just spins them how he pleases. You gotta stop writing in that really small font. I'm too old to read it without getting my glasses. (Grabs his glasses and reads the small print) Meh... You've called me worse. I'm not dividing folks into factions, I'm just pointing out that there are factions. If you don't want to be called an IOSWT guy, then don't be one.

The general consensus around here is that we gave the game away. That's a pretty one sided view of what happened. No team plays error free football. If we were playing a lesser team, most of our mistakes wouldn't have been as much of a problem. For example, most missed blocks don't result in TD's for the other team. Regina takes full advantage of other teams mistakes because they are a pretty darn good team. We need to reduce the number of mistakes and the number of stupid penalties if we want to be able to beat the top half of the league teams. We also need to upgrade some personal. There have been a few guys available who could have really helped us out and we chose not to go after them, so I don't see that happening this year. We aren't going to change out our OC or DC because 6-5 doesn't warrant changing them. As we are mostly playing the top half of the league, I expect we will lose more than we win from here on out. As for O'Shea, the honeymoon period appears to be over. Consistently saying: 'It's not a problem' and then seeing that it is a problem in games isn't going to help. Sticking with his guys when others are available is great when we're winning. It doesn't go over very well when we aren't. There are IOSWT (In O'Shea We Trust) folks around here who only want to hear the positive about the job our HC is doing and will argue with everyone who disagrees with any aspect of it.

The Bombers made mistakes and the Riders took advantage of them. The missed block on the FG, could have meant nothing, a blocked FG with no return or a 60 yard TD. The missed hold wouldn't have meant anything if the special teams had stayed in their lanes and stopped Dressler earlier on. The bad snap cost us 2 points because Liram kicked it out of the endzone. It could have cost us a TD. The poor call, execution and throw at the end of the game ended up costing us a chance at a win. That play could have been a catch, a knockdown, or an INT. It was the Riders DB who made the play on the ball and turned a knockdown into an INT. What I'm trying to say is... We didn't give them the game. They made enough big plays to take the game, just like the other 2 times we played them.

Chamblin can pretend he heard the whistle and you can pretend you did too with that supersonic hearing that the tsn announcers didn't even pick up but fact is.. nobody heard the damn whistle so just give it a rest with the same posts after every game crap. It's getting old I heard the whistle. Everyone listening to the TV feed should have heard it too. I was surprised that the TSN guys didn't. Possibly because they were at the stadium and not listening to the TV feed. Chamblin heard the whistle because it was on his side of the field. The crap around here is from the folks who continually complain that the refs are against us.

The offense only needed to score 1 TD to win. Why does that seem to be so hard for some folks to grasp?

It wasn't a late hit Tom - again, you're off. Proves what you said last week as well (about the non PI call) that you really don't know what you are talking about. I heard the whistle live. However, none of the players did. I've seen this kind of thing in the past - usually in the NFL the umpire and referee (as they are the ones close to the LOS) will both wave their hands and blow their whistles if the players continue to play - and if a player (QB usually) is hit when they are doing that, they WILL throw the flag for Unnecessary roughness. I heard a whistle but did not see ONE official - and I only heard ONE whistle, until AFTER the hit, then we heard them blowing it again. Too bad for Darian - but he kept playing if had just stopped and stood there chances are he'd be trotting off the field with the rest of his teammates. He kept playing, so did the bombers. It wasn't the CFL's fines moment but it was the OFFICIAL's error, not the players, hence no flag. Late hit - are you smoking crack when you're watching the game? The play is dead when the whistle blows. It doesn't matter who hears it and who doesn't. Hit the QB after the whistle has blown and it should be a roughing play. EVERY SINGLE TIME. BTW: It's Terry, not Tom. Only the large majority of the players didn't hear the whistle, and obviously neither did Bradbury or else he would thrown the flag. Not a difficult concept. Quite frankly, if we lost Willy on a similar play after the whistle had blown, everyone around here would be rightly blowing a gasket.

The Riders won all three games and their running was a big factor in each and every one of them. That's what makes it important. The fact the Calgary also has a great O line and a great RB and we play them twice means we probably get beaten by their run game too. BC's horrible O line will hopefully mean we don't get beat by their run, but you never know, Harris, Logan and Brown are still very dangerous.

It wasn't a late hit Tom - again, you're off. Proves what you said last week as well (about the non PI call) that you really don't know what you are talking about. I heard the whistle live. However, none of the players did. I've seen this kind of thing in the past - usually in the NFL the umpire and referee (as they are the ones close to the LOS) will both wave their hands and blow their whistles if the players continue to play - and if a player (QB usually) is hit when they are doing that, they WILL throw the flag for Unnecessary roughness. I heard a whistle but did not see ONE official - and I only heard ONE whistle, until AFTER the hit, then we heard them blowing it again. Too bad for Darian - but he kept playing if had just stopped and stood there chances are he'd be trotting off the field with the rest of his teammates. He kept playing, so did the bombers. It wasn't the CFL's fines moment but it was the OFFICIAL's error, not the players, hence no flag. Late hit - are you smoking crack when you're watching the game? The play is dead when the whistle blows. It doesn't matter who hears it and who doesn't. Hit the QB after the whistle has blown and it should be a roughing play. EVERY SINGLE TIME. BTW: It's Terry, not Tom.

The Riders were in coast mode in the second half and it almost cost them the game. They lost Durant on a very late hit that wasn't called. They tried our offensive plan of throwing deep, even though they were running all over us and they had their 2nd string QB in.

200 run yards against isn't called Working.

The CFL needs to get to the kids way before they hit their 20's. I became a lifelong fan when my 6 man football team played at halftime of a Bomber game. I was probably 8 or 9. A couple of Bombers came out to our last practice before the 'big game' and chatted with us. Getting some players and coaches out to some of the kids games or practices would go a long way towards building support at the lower levels of the sport. There's no sugar coating it... the CFL is minor league compared to the NFL. It's a better game IMHO, but the level of the players and coaches is significantly worse. It's not about NFL hype. I used to buy the Salisbury house endzone tickets as they were all my friends and I could afford. I'd like to see the Bombers bring that back in some way to allow the folks with less disposable income to attend some games. A student section with discounted tickets would be great too. Get the younger folks in the stands and some will become lifelong fans to fill up the expensive seats.

Calgary is the best team in the league right now, and in a category of their own. Edmonton and Regina are the second tier teams and I expect them to fight it out for 2nd and 3rd for the rest of the season. The third tier includes Winnipeg, BC and Toronto in my mind. Our 2 games with BC will probably decide if we make the playoffs this year as the crossover team. The bottom tier is Hamilton, Montreal and Ottawa. One of those teams gets 2nd place in the east and 2 don't make the playoffs.

Toronto and Vancouver are big cities with lots of other things to do. A lot of people from all over the world, most of them don't even know what Football is and they certainly haven't grown up following the home team like folks on the prairies do. Toronto wants to be New York and they will only support what they consider the best football league, the NFL, not the second rate homey CFL. Even then, I expect they will only support a winner. Finding an owner or group of owners who want to lose money owning the Argos is a very tough job indeed. Changing Torontonians minds about the CFL is an almost impossible job, yet the CFL has to do it to survive.

No complaints about the way O'Shea's turned the team around or his winning percentage so far. I'm happy we signed him, but... His 'What Me Worry' schtick got lame months ago. I've stopped watching his press conferences because there is no information being given out. Injured players are 'not that bad' or 'a week away' or 'I don't know'. Problems like our run defense aren't problems. Losing streaks aren't losing streaks. Winning streaks aren't winning streaks. Big games aren't big games. He won't even say who the starters are. Personally, I'd like some actual honesty and no, that doesn't mean throwing players under the bus.

Nice to get rid of Suber's salary since he wasn't playing. Would rather have Hall at DE than Gibson. I guess it doesn't have anything to do with not having a place for him.

The Esks aren't the same team without Reilly at the helm and they were playing the best team in the league in Calgary. I was surprised, how easily Calgary ran on the Esks D. I'm not looking forward to our games with Calgary.

Ottawa needed some CFL experience at backup QB. Personally, I think Elliott's better than Hall.