TBURGESS

This game comes down to our O line vs their D line. If we can protect Willy and open some holes for Grigsby, we'll be fine. Montreal will show our inexperienced O line every type of blitz in the book and they can also get pressure the old fashioned way from the front 4. Pressures + Hits + Sacks = Mistakes | Turnovers. Greaves has been our best NI O lineman this year. Now that he's hurt, I'm pretty worried that Montreal's D line will win the battle and win it big. Montreal's O isn't great. Smith, for all the hate he gets around here, is better than any of our QB's last year and probably better than everyone except Willy this year. Smith could probably hurt us with his legs more than his arm and Whitaker can do some damage too. They also have some big play receivers who could hurt us deep.

Sucks for Durie and the Argos. I've always liked the guy.

Any idea what the conditions are and which draft picks may be involved? Very interesting move on both sides of the deal. Did Regina get tired of Anderson's antics? (What ever happened to the assault charges?) Who's spot does Anderson take in Toronto?

Rankings this week should be (imho) Calgary - I can't move them down just because they didn't play Winnipeg - Done nothing but win and looked good doing it Edmonton - 2-0 should put them above the 1-1 teams Toronto - Horrible loss followed by spectacular win over the Riders Saskatchewan - Looked great in the rain and horrible in Toronto Montreal - Great defence, below average offence. Ottawa - 0-1 is better than 0-2 BC - Bad O line. Too many turnovers. Would be on the bottom except Hamilton looks even worse Hamilton - Thought they'd fall a bit this year when they got rid of Burris. Didn't think it would look this bad though. I know this isn't the way it will look when the rankings come out. It's my take on what they should be.

WOW. WTF's going on with Toronto and Regina?

I keep reading about the adjustments that Etch made, but no one is talking about which adjustments he made. Honest question here... what adjustments did you see?

Bye Bye Banks. We hardly knew you.

I think your trying to downplay the significance. It may have happened, but I can't remember any team taking 20+ penalties for 150+ yards and winning the game in the entire time I've been watching football. Lets say the odds of that happening are slim to none. If the Bombers took that many penalties for that many yards we would have lost the game and everyone would be rightly pointing to the penalties as a big reason. The same should hold true for the Argos. The penalties may not have been directly responsible for the first 17 points, but they are greatly responsible for the Argos not being able to get back into the game. There is no way for any team to come back when they are getting a penalty every other down and giving up chunks of real estate for free.

I've got no idea of how well either Ottawa or Winnipeg will play tonight. I think of the first 2 games as the last 2 pre-season games. It should be interesting though. For Winnipeg: Was last week a blip, the new normal, or somewhere in between? Will we be able to beat a team that doesn't spot us 24 points and doesn't take 23 penalties? Will Etch's D look great again or will it have a down day? Will our receivers be able to get open vs zone. Will Willy be able to read as quickly when he isn't getting (bad) man coverage all game long? Will our running game look as good? Will the loss of Turner and Anderson's injury mean lack of pressure or weaker against the run? Have we tightened up our special teams coverage? For Ottawa: Will the fact that they are playing their first game mean anything? Will Burris get time to throw? Will their receivers get open? Will Walker run all over us? WIll they send tons of pressure to see if they can throw Willy off his game? Will the be able to stop the run and force Willy to win it with his arm? Will our ex kicker come back to haunt us? Will JJ? Gotta say.... I'm really looking forward to finding out the answers tonight.

We had a too many men penalty on a punt.

When you say ONLY, your saying that Willy's career night is not only the new normal, which it isn't, but the new lowest expectation we should have. From here on out, Willy could get better, worse, or be the same. That's the reality The 'Debbie Downer' view would be he's already played his best game and he will ONLY get worse. (Read it in a Eeyore voice to get the full effect.)

I picked the Bombers but it's been the best bet in CFL for years to pick the Bombers to lose after a win. Ottawa has an extra week to prepare for us and has seen what we did to Toronto. We don't know what Ottawa will do in a regular season game. It's also the first game for the new Ottawa team so they should be sky high. We need to get to Burris early and often. They need to run on us. We need to protect Willy. They need to pressure him. We need to win 2 in a row for the first time since the first half of 2011.

It's not about life without Calvillo. Montreal found out what life without Calvillo was like last year. It's the perfect storm in Montreal. They took forever to sign their HC. They fired the OC in the middle of TC after the offence had been designed and partly implemented. The gave the OC job to an unqualified Dinwiddie who doesn't look like he has any understanding of how to run it. Smith got injured and couldn't practice or play in the first pre-season game. They start on the road against one of the top 2 teams in the league. It amazes me how many folks complain about young QB's being inconsistent. Smith will be inconsistent just like almost all first time starting QB's are, especially those with only 1 TC under their belt (Ray is the only one I can think of who wasn't inconsistent in his first year). If he doesn't improve his accuracy he won't become a good starting CFL QB. If he does, then Montreal will be fighting for 1st in the east.

Allen

How is berry going to teach him touch on the ball and not to overthrow his receivers by 10 yards? He'd use the running game. He'd give Smith easier passes to get his confidence back. He'd tell Smith to use his legs more. If he could keep Smith on the field more by getting a few first downs, Smith would calm down IMHO. Smith looked better last year than he has this year. A bunch of the problems are the loss of the OC during TC, a TC injury and moving Dinwiddie into the OC spot. None of that should downplay the fact that Smith needs to be more accurate, but it could limit the damage.

got a simple question for you, you seem to like to stick up for every other team all the time, what are you gonna say when drew willy has a bad game? How do you take "Smith had a horrible game" as sticking up for Montreal or any other team for that matter? I expect Willy will have bad games this year. I'm probably going to tell folks who are jumping off a cliff: "That's what happens with first time starting QB's."

Not sure I get your point here. In his prime, Korey was a halfback yes, and Milts' first year on the panel he actually picked him as his first player over a QB in some mock draft they were doing (I believe it was if you were starting a franchise and you could have any one player in the CFL as your first player who would it be). Obviously, Milt felt he was the best DB in the league he had to play against, so high praise indeed. But I remember that, because that season, Banks struggled in the DB position, and after that year, he started transistioning to LINEBACKER. And when the bombers signed him, they signed him as a LINEBACKER. In the preseason games, he played as a LINEBACKER. When he didn't play in game one, his replacement - Johnny Sears I believe it was - played LINEBACKER. So what does the comment of our DB's have anything to do with Banks? Our outside LB's are DB's.

Yup, the cost, in Winnipeg of all places where the cost of players is hotly debated because we expect to get more for less.

The average fan sees we went out and got a great vet in Banks (they don't know he was on his last legs, they just know the name), that Banks looked to bleed Blue and Gold from day 1 and now he's on his way out the door. They see tweets and probably an article or two that say 'Don't piss off O'Shea' and they wonder what's going on. As long as we keep winning, they won't care. If we don't and we have DB problems, then they will wonder out loud if Banks was really the problem. So yes... I do think optics matter.

Smith had a horrible game. Not going to try to deny that. Gotta expect good and bad games from first year starting QB's. I still think Smith has all the tools to be a good starting CFL QB. If you replace Dim-Witti with Berry at OC you'd soon see the same Smith that won games for the Als last year.

It probably cost us 65-70K (50K Bonus + 15K CBA + Pay) of SMS room. The Optics are horrible. I raises GM competency questions. It brings up O'Shea or the highway or locker room problems after the first game of the season. It brings up lying to the media (I know lots of folks think thats the right thing to do). IF Banks is a locker room problem and/or he's was beat out for his spot, then just say it and cut him. He's hasn't got much if any trade value anyway.

It's one game folks. Glenn threw a stupid across his body ball into the endzone that got picked off, then he just lost it. He'd been playing pretty well before that. The last INT didn't matter. The game was already over. If he'd connected in the endzone on his second last ball, which was very close, he'd be a hero not a zero. If we'd had Glenn all these years instead of the parade of bad and oft injured QB's, we'd have had much better seasons.

Poor game all round. Smith couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. Dinwiddie called a horrible game. Hebert's hit was dirty but he wouldn't have been thrown out of the game if it wasn't Cornish. Calgary should have won by more points.

I don't have any problems with replacing Banks if he's being out played by younger/cheaper players. In fact that's the way I think a team should be run. I do have a problem with giving him a $50K bonus, a raise and paying the CBA bonus then losing the investment before he plays a single game. If Mack or Kelly or Taman did this, they'd be raked over the coals, but because it's Walters, it's an astute move. Quite frankly, Banks has zero trade value. Wally said there weren't many takers when he was being shipped out of BC so he took Kito as that's all he could get.

Aside from a few energetic tweets and interviews in the days after the deal, what else has he done exactly? He was the talk of the town when we hired him. He bought into the Bombers day one. IIRC he called FA's to sell the Bombers. He immediately assumed the vet leader role that we were completely lacking. He was considered our biggest pick up until Willy, even though Randle was the best DB we signed. I was/am expecting him to get a starting spot or at least DI.