johnzo

Yeah, that's my thought too -- especially with Ray getting the final week of the season off. Is he still gonna be in sync with his receivers after all that downtime? I just hope that both teams compete and the game's well-played. I've watched so much shitty Bomber football this year, I feel kind of entitled to some good CFL playoff games.

Here's the ones I can think of: Dunigan Lancaster Milanovich Hufnagel Jackie Parker Trestman (a QB in college) Any others? Dunigan was a failure under bad circumstances and Lancaster was initially a disaster but became a Grey Cup winner in Hamilton (edit: and Edmonton). The others all have been pretty good, though Parker didn't win any Grey Cups as a coach.

I've got a feeling about Hamilton. Burris has played well vs. the Argos this year, the game is indoors, Ray hasn't played in three weeks, and the Argos have zero rushing game without Kackert. The Western final is gonna be the game of the year. The Stamps are the class of the league, but Durant looked fantastic last week and I think Cortez is the best OC in the league. I think both road teams will win and we'll have a 1989 rematch -- Hamilton vs Saskatchewan. Austin, Burris, and Fantuz ... that's a lot of ex-Riders to boo.

In other Eastern playoff news, the Argos have opened up seating on the upper deck of the Rogers Center due to high ticket demand. Bluto has often said that the Argos' poor attendance is due to crappy scheduling of home games. This is a playoff game on a Sunday afternoon against a regional rival so it'll be interesting to see just how much the Argos' attendance climbs under these more ideal circumstances ... though I wonder if Saturday would be a better day for this game because it's not against the NFL on TV and in Buffalo? http://argonauts.ca/article/argos-to-open-additional-seating-in-500-level-for-sundays-eastern-final

His last two games for us, he was playing with a pretty severe injury too -- his shoulder, I think. Dude got a raw deal. Was rooting for him to come back into a better situation, but can't blame him for wanting to move on.

The 2010s Blue Bombers are starting to resemble the 1980s Ottawa Rough Riders -- especially with the stories making rounds of neglist players refusing to play in Winnipeg.

+1 for Casey Bramlet. Similar level of cluelessness to Boltus. Mike Quinn stank too. Sammy Garza would've been a Grey Cup winner for the Bombers if you subtract a couple of Blaise Bryant fumbles that put us in a huge hole early. He was no star, but in an era where we won Cups with Sean Salisbury and Tom Burgess, he was certainly good enough.

Wow, there's a good measure of how messed up this season has been; we've been so bad this year that by the end of the season 17to85 had a kind word for Mike Kelly.

"If you were wondering what it would be like if Tim Tebow came to the CFL, Goltz is doing a hell of an impression right now." - Doug Brown (@DougBrown97) https://twitter.com/DougBrown97/statuses/376838158823866368

The Argos blitzed 7 men only three times during the whole game. They were rushing 5 or 6 about half the time, but we were protecting with 6 the majority of the time, so it was rare that the Argos brought more men than we had in protection. Hall was completing passes at about the same rate regardless of how many Argos were rushing him.

You keep saying he was inaccurate -- how many passes did he throw that were off the mark during the first half? You seriously think our second half pass protection was above average?

Well, there was the one drive where he bounced a TD pass off of Corey Watson's abs... I don't know. How many passes did he throw that were way off target? What was his completion percentage in the first half, anyway? What about the first drive toe-drag sideline pass to Watson? That was perfectly thrown ... as was the slant pattern to Watson that got us out from under the goalposts later in the first quarter ... as was the quick out to Edwards with three rushers in his face, just before the three-minute warning. Look, I'm not saying the guy is the second coming of Danny McManus or anything and I have no idea what his ceiling is, but Hall was a hell of a lot better than dreadful. He did a bunch of good things out there.

okay, this season is no longer mere tragedy, it's now gone all the way to comedy.

Dreadful is too negative. I'd say his first half was a mixed bag. Hall did some good things, with the biggest blemish being the fumble.

Kohlert is a free agent. If he were signed for 2014, I'd definitely agree with you. There's probably no use in protecting Suber and Stewart. Since we can only lose one import, it's not going to be a free agent. Maybe substitute Ford and Mainor in for Suber and Stewart. Mainor makes little sense to me. We bring in DE's off the street, let them practice for a week and they are as good or better. Yeah, our ninth and tenth best imports seem like they're awfully replaceable, which is why I was thinking of putting free agents there originally.

Here's the play-by-play I put together: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiLFGLZnbIP9dHhRT29DV3ZkbnJQZC1xVnVlUEJfaHc&usp=drive_web#gid=0 Here's how I bucket the hits on Hall: 2x Argos pass rush outnumbered Bombers protection, a blitzer came untouched and Hall ate it. 3x Bomber protection outnumbered Argo pass rush, but a Bomber was beaten one-on-one. 2x Bomber protection and Argos pass rush were even, but a Bomber was beaten one-on-one. 2x Ford was in pass protection, guarding one side, but the Argos blitzed on the other side. 1x January got distracted by #6 Argos, who was not blitzing, and let #92 come unblocked to obliterate Hall. This one looked awful, it was at 2:53 of the 4Q. 1x Jones helped inside and let two rushers go by him, leaving Ford in a two-on-one. Yeah, I noticed that Hall didn't take any sacks at all. He doesn't like to eat the ball, looks like. If I could stand to watch this game again I'd take a closer look at Hall because my impression is he didn't move much laterally during the game, he just stood directly behind center and completed pass after pass while the Argos teed off on his ribs and jaw.

Kohlert is a free agent. If he were signed for 2014, I'd definitely agree with you. There's probably no use in protecting Suber and Stewart. Since we can only lose one import, it's not going to be a free agent. Maybe substitute Ford and Mainor in for Suber and Stewart.

Non-imports (1st group) H.Muamba* Watson Greaves Neufeld Swiston Pencer Non-imports (2nd group) Sorensen* Renaud* Kohlert* Etienne* Labbe* Morley* Imports Washington Wild January Suber* Turner Denmark Sims-Walker Stewart* Sears Dunn

Maybe the BB know what they have in Etienne and want to evaluate Foster at game speed so they can make an Etienne vs. Foster expansion draft decision?

He's sort of like the Tim Burke of quarterbacks. He'd be a great one if he could throw the ball. Not sure why Toronto went heavy blitz in the 2nd half. Sit on routes and you are pretty much guaranteed that Hall won't complete many passes for first downs because he can't place the ball on intermediate routes, and chances are pretty good you'll be returning INTs. That said, I guess you can't quibble too much with a gameplan that limited the opposition to 20 points. It didn't seem like Hall was having too much trouble completing passes before the half. He was 11/18 at halftime and he was a Cory Watson brainfart away from being 12/18 with a TD. His only pick came when he was hurried by the rush (and he got creamed as he made the throw) How deep is an intermediate pass? As far as I recall, Hall hit passes at all depths yesterday.

Sometimes our protection was getting physically beat, sometimes the rushers stunted free inside (Mitchell did this a couple times) and sometimes extra passrush came from well outside the tackles and there was no Bomber blocker on that side to counter. At work now so I can't watch to provide more details, alas.

Today I rewatched the Bombers / Argos game and took some notes on the pass protection, to see what was going on when Max Hall was getting belted. Didn't see anything that'll surprise anyone here, but here's how I counted it: * Hall dropped back 50 times and was hit 11 times. 6 of those hits came in the fourth quarter when Jones started rushing 6 and 7 regularly. Prior to the fourth quarter, the Bombers had kept Hall reasonably clean. * The really awful stat is this: only two hits came on plays where the Argos brought more rushers than the Bombers had in protection. * The other hits came on 6-on-6 (3x) 6-on-7 (2x) 5-on-5 (1x) 4-on-7 (1x) (!) (Lange beat Greaves) 4-on-6 (1x) (!) (Mitchell beat Sorensen) 3-on-6 (1x) (!) (Mitchell beat Morley) So, nothing different here than anyone was already saying, our protection really doesn't appear to be particularly good. * Wil Ford was held in to block 36/50 times and the Bombers also brought in a TE or a SB to block 7/50 times. The extra blocker didn't help much. Of those seven plays, three were hits and two were hurries. * Hall was better than 50% passing (6-11-1) on plays where he was knocked down. Solid work there.

Prior to this year, I thought the post-Calvillo Als would simply implode. Very impressed to see that three other quarterbacks have won games for them this year. (assuming they hold onto their four score lead today)

Yeah, Chris Jones likes to get tricksy with his goons ... but I want to see what the Bombers were doing to try to counter that in their protection schemes ... or if they were always just depending on Hall to get the ball away before the pass rush got home.

I like Hall but it's horrifying to see how much punishment he's taking. Why is he taking so many shots? It seems like our schemes weld him into the pocket, he doesn't roll, he doesn't change the launch point and buy an extra second, he just stands there, delivers the ball and then gets smoked. I'm going to rewatch the game and count how many times he was facing extra heat, how many times our OL got beat one-on-one, etc.