johnzo

Riders starting to rally ... Esks lacking killer instinct...

Wanna put in a word here for Thomas Mayo. Leading receiver tonight, made clutch catches on the dagger drive, and separated himself from our other depth receivers

People keep saying that Jones is doing a Mike Kelly act...but I think the Roughriders are sinking out of Mike Kelly territory .... and into Tim Burke territory.

Despite that being a scary hit, I thought this was funny:

Want a Saskatchewan win, to put some distance between us and the Eskimos... Ouch, that was a loud hit that Durant took on that 1st down run. Don't drop your head like that, man, you'll lose it.

Great game, really loved the Nichols and Harris game-sealing drive. Thing I wanted to mention in chat but my stream was 2mins behind so I didn't: I noticed that Couture wears #70, I wonder if there might be a play on sometime with him at TE at some point in the future...

Lefors hurt his shoulder in game 3 of 2009 but started game 4 anyway and he stank the joint up bad. Then Michael Bishop parachuted in for game 5 and Lefors was told to renegotiate or be cut. I don't know if Lefors ever spent time on the injured list -- I remember him holding on field goal attempts after Bishop's arrival -- so his injury might not have been "official". Here's a column with the timeline laid out (content warning: Friesen) http://www.winnipegsun.com/sports/columnists/paul_friesen/2009/08/19/10508166-sun.html

It seems like there are fewer beefs with the officiating here on MBB, now that the Bombers are upwardly trended. I think the league really has to do something about bullshit desperation challenges on late game-deciding plays, but those are offseason changes, you can't change the rules right now. Will be interesting to see what happens this offseason.

You ever meet Larry Smith? Smith makes Cohon look like Ron Swanson. (I met Smith a couple times when I was in in Ottawa. He was super weird and manic and had this creepy grin that he would not turn off. Gotta have some sympathy for the man, though, being the commish of the CFL in the nineties would cause anyone severe emotional damage. I wonder how Larry's doing nowadays.) The league moved forward while Cohon was in charge, we got a nice bump in TV revenues and a bunch of new stadiums, we returned to Ottawa. The Cohon era was the most stable the CFL has been in my 30 years as a fan. So I liked his tenure. But I agree with Noeller -- commissioners are like pitchers and goaltenders and presidents, they get too much credit or too much blame. And I don't want the commish to be the face of the league and I don't think they need to be out there pumping tires all the time. I want guys like S.J. Green and Ian Wild and BLM to be the faces of the league. No one ever went to a CFL game because they liked the commissioner. The only time I wanna see the commish is when a big public decision needs to be made -- I want him to pop up, make the decision, then go back to quietly running things. Orridge has been pretty good in that regard, settling the Ottawa-Edmonton coaching thing quickly and suspending Duron Carter within a day or two of his misbehavior. (and yes, the Carter appeals process is endless, and that's not Orridge's fault, that's the CFL CBA's fault, and Cohon was the guy in charge when that was negotiated anyway.)

Yeah, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw Goalie's post -- that this was a move that a guy like Kelly or Popp would make. If memory serves, the LeFors situation was a bit sleazier. Didn't he have a shoulder injury when his contract stuff went down? This is why I always root for the players in football labour disputes: pro football contracts are bullshit.

Yeah, I love listening in to that kind of stuff, especially if the commentators are on it and translate it a bit. Wonder what Dave D. and Austin think about all the viewers (and opposing teams!) eavesdropping on them. If I recall right, Lapo wasn't a fan when they did a similar thing in preseason a few years back.

The CFL and TSN will have extra on-field miking for the Calgary / Hamilton game this weekend. Details are light, but the QBs and head coaches will be wired for sound. http://www.cfl.ca/2016/08/25/cfl-on-tsn-announces-first-ever-live-mic-broadcast-of-a-regular-season-cfl-game/

The Bombers glory years OL was all-Canadian. Bastaja, Bonk, Moors, Nemeth, Walby, Bauer were all non-imports. (Bastaja was born in London, but went to school at Simon Fraser)

FFS, Austin, get Collaros off the field. Stop risking your meal ticket.

Nik Lewis, chubby old guy, still getting it done.

Been liking the playbook series TSN is running at halftime. All those guys are good explainers, esp. Stegall and Climie, and the video clips are well put together.

Frederick is looking like Rod Hill out there. Sitting him down feels crazy. Given the way things have gone so far, the injury bug will answer the cornerback question for us.

Love "Jonestown." Nicely played, Darrell Davis.

Are we for real? I think we've been pretty lucky, in three of our wins, our opponents completely self-destructed. Even in the Edmonton game, our final dagger was an interception on a ball that Reilly just shouldn't have thrown. The good news is that our team is good enough to create and capitalize on these opportunities, but I'm really curious to see if we now beat the teams that, on paper, we should beat -- the upcoming three games against the weak sisters of the league feel like trap games, especially Labour Day, when we historically underperform. You look at a team like Calgary, it's very rare they get upset by a bad team. I've gotta say that our depth in the secondary is totally unbelievable and Loffler's emergence as a surprise national starter feels absolutely huge to the Bombers' turnaround: his play upgrades both the secondary and the OL.

Who, out of Keeping, Couture, and Neufeld, should be our 6th OL when all those guys are healthy? I'd guess Couture would be that guy, but O'Shea does love his veteran players...

Is Adams 100% in terms of conditioning? I recall reading he was gassed badly in his first game and he drew into the lineup way faster than the team wanted because of crazy receiver injury spree.

This year's Riders look like the 2009 Bombers would have if Kelly had cut not just Kevin Glenn, but also Edwards, Johnson, Brown, LaBatte, and Reid.

Rod Hill picked five passes in a single game in 1990: