johnzo

watching the tsn banjo bowl promo with the Rod Black voiceover saying "it's the day of deliverance!" over a bunch of banjo picking fans, mostly Bomber fans. uh has Rod Black ever seen Deliverance?

So this is a play you run with an 21 formation, right? 6OL + 1TE + 3WR + 1HB + QB, and the TE is to the trips side, with four options on the play: 2 run options that the QB calls at the line, QB choose R/P after the snap, then reads the pass play if necessary. Does the pass play have a set reading order, like always read Lawler first and then the trips side? Or is the QB going to decide who to read first based on what he sees at the line? Is this a typical level of complexity for a CFL play? The QB has so many decisions to make, when you break it down it's astonishing that a QB can start and win for a team on just a few days' practice, like Bishop and Collaros and Clements did for us. Are you always going to run the trips to the field side? Or would you run the trips on the boundary ever? What does the HB do on the pass option? Harris is going to influence the D heavily during the entire play, so do you have him flare out to the boundary to draw guys away from the trips side? Or maybe you screen it to him behind all the trips blockers? Seems like that could bring too much heat to the trips side though. Or do you need him as an extra blocker in case there's a bust up front or an extra rusher? Also, can you call those audibles in a fired up mosaic stadium? So many questions!

"Quick Six horse is bored" needs to be in a haiku, thank you.

I go the other way. Have never seen a QB singlehandedly win a game like Reilly did against us in 2014. Dude has a gift for being able to carry a team. plus, Reilly is so dangerous running, and BLM doesn't really have that tool, he can do okay but he's not someone you have to game plan around. At his height Reilly would destroy teams that didn't spy him and I think that's a pain in the ass for defences to always have to sacrifice a linebacker just to watch what the QB does .. especially against a team with a great passing game. No rust on BLM, I think he's a great athlete and he belongs in the Hall of Fame based on his won-loss record alone -- you can say what you want about how good the Calgary program is, but it all starts with him and during his glory years I think he was full value for that win-loss record. But if I get to draft first overall in the twenty-teens I'm taking Reilly.

what play do you call on O there? the other team likely has their heavies in as well, so it's not a giant mismatch unless you're passing, unless I'm missing something.

Labour Day Classic fave Bomber DB? hard to say; I'll go with the mosaic goalposts pretty!

Really? I've been impressed with Ambles, it seems like he's helping his qb out with good contested catches and lots of YAC. And Huff is leading the league in receptions though he had a terrible terrible fumble at a very bad time against us.

yup, answer is I'm probably missing something. again, thx for correction.

no, for sure, he could be the next Ricky Ray who is elite thru his entire career. the vibe I get from tsn is that he's solid way beyond his years but that's TSN, they're going to pump the tires on any promising QB. wbbfan just wanted examples of guys who put up a dominating few games at the start of their career and then busted later and it seemed like those guys were the obvious examples.

thanks for the correction. I missed him moving back to corner. My comment still stands, it seems like I'm not hearing his name very often and I wonder if I'm missing something there too or if teams are shying away from testing him.

yup, 100%, you wonder why he's known as a playmaker? Because teams figure it's worth the risk to throw at him all game, it works out more often than not. speaking of that, since Mike Jones has moved to LB he's getting less love from the camera and the stats man, he's not accumulating the hits and highlights like he was as a DB. Is he locking his area down? Are teams not throwing at him? Much as I like to see him bring the wood on the Bankses, I like the idea of Mike Jones Invisible Shutdown Cover Man even better.

oh man can you imagine Collaros hucking up those high-trust 50/50 balls to Burnham? You look at the crazy contested catches that Lawler has made, and then think that Burnham (at his best) is even better at those... now that I think about that, sacrificing OL depth for a Collaros / Burnham bomb show would be high-risk, high-reward fun to watch, at first, anyway.

LMK if you want any help pulling video of specific plays for that post. As a lifelong fan who's only ever played mens league flag ball, that Xs and Os stuff is fascinating to me too. there's so much art and science in it that's impossible for me to understand at game speed, and the commentators are only rarely helpful. I thought that Lapos' segments on the TSN panel where he broke down plays in detail were the best thing that TSN ever ran during halftime -- wish Jim Barker would do something like that, although Lapo strikes me as a better teacher. this is why I don't have a lot of patience for the "Lapo always calls a five-yard pass play on 2nd and 10." thing that we'd hear here back in the day. Lapo didn't have an xbox controller wired to Nichols' brain ... if Nichols was always checking down after going through his reads, either our receivers aren't getting open or Nichols is having trouble making his reads from the pocket.

Jennings had a string of 4 300+ games in 2016 -- after he had three games of film on him as a starter, which counts for something. Casey Printers looked like freaking Warren Moon in 2004 -- no guff, at his best the guy was a beast surgeon with a gift for finding the most open man on every passing play. Watching him toy with the Bombers was one of the most frustrating things I've witnessed as a bomber fan, and why I take grim satisfaction in watching Deon Beasley end his CFL stay. The worst numbers that Printers put up in any of his first few starts was 286. Neither of those guys could turn around a crappy program, tho. Only QB I've ever seen thrive on a crappy team is Mike Reilly, and he pays a price for that.

oh man I do not want to mess with our OL depth. How many teams can lose their starting center like we did in late 2019 and keep on trucking? Especially the way our OL beasted at the Grey Cup... One of these days I need to run the numbers to see how many OL a typical CFL team will start over the course of the season. I'd guess it's at least eight and for a team that has an unlucky run of injuries or underperformers, that number can get higher quick. I remember bomber games where 3/5 of the starters changed from week to week.

have a question -- what's a run blitz? after the Toronto game people were talking about how the run blitz was effective against us and TO used it to good effect against Brady O and Collaros in their win. from watching it seems like a blitz where everyone is disciplined about their lanes at first and once they figure out it's a dropback then they go at the QB. Is there more to it than that?

I was surprised at how the Riders underutilized their biggest asset on O against us -- Powell. Toronto showed that our run D wasn't perfect .... if Powell puts some runs together that could loosen up the passing game enough for Fajardo to succeed. Don't know if that green OL can run block any better than it can pass block though.

totally agree -- he threw a wide side out against us that really caught my eye Usually when a young QB throws to the field like that I'm expecting six the other way, but he threw an absolute laser safely away from the DB and right between the numbers of his receiver, just past the first down stick. He had some heat on him when he threw it too, and it didn't look like the out was his first read. Real pretty play. Not a Stamps fan but as a fan of the game I cheered that play a bit.

wasn't there an anonymous insider take from Ottawa that said that Nichols was physically healthy but that his throwing mechanics had gone to ****? that sound like the harshest possible thing you could say about a pro QB...

I think BLM is a redblack before the end of the calendar year in a Taman style deal, with a couple Ottawa first rounders going the other way. Dude is making over $500k and is signed thru 2022, and he hasn't been himself for awhile. The stamps reload and get cheaper while Ottawa can sell tickets and hope with a guy who is (or was) legit MOP material. mind you, I was also certain that Hufnagel would do a Wally Buono and move on from BLM after Arbuckle showed well in 2019, so I am terrible at predictions.

****, we chased Hajrullahu out of town after a shaky month, and since he's been good enough to earn some NFL looks.

wonder how quickly they'll roll out Roosevelt ... will be interesting to see if NR breaks the bomber veteran receiver free agent curse.

I'm loving how our O is closing out games. Not seeing many of those fourth quarter 2-and-outs that plagued us during the Lapo years.

Cody Fajardo beaten like green pinata! Bombers want candy

Drew Wolitarski escapes fieldside limbo, makes Superman catch