johnzo

Been watching the league for more than thirty years and I don't think I've ever seen team lose the turnover battle 5-0 and still win the game. Plus, a new combined yardage record that overshadowed a bunch of other great performances. Suddenly, Don Unamba is playing like Moe Leggett? See ya in the playoffs, Redblacks.

I'll be sad to see Wally go. He's like Don Matthews, a CFL legend, and he kept half the league supplied with quarterbacks during the late nineties / early oughts. 20 playoff years in 22 years plus more Grey Cups on his resume than the entire Saskatchewan franchise. To top it off, open-heart surgery in the middle of it all. As a fan of the Bombers I was intensely jealous of his success, as a fan of the league I thought he made it better. If he does step aside, then congrats to him on an amazing career and a well-deserved retirement.

Yeah, I remember Buck Pierce totally getting pancaked a few times while Bloi-Dei Dorzon looked on. When I've been watching games lately, I've been looking away from Nichols at the snap and watching Harris. Several times a game, he'll save Nichols' ass with a split-second leap into a blitzer's gap. Or he'll line up on one side of the formation and when the free man comes from the other side, he'll throw himself across the formation just in time to chip the blitzer away. If he were a half-step slower, Nichols would be road pizza. Harris is just as important when he's not getting the ball as when he is getting the ball.

That was just an example of their game vs. us from a couple weeks ago -- at the start of the game the TSN guys mentioned that Williams was hurt and Hazelton was starting at WR instead. Hazelton made some plays in that game and totally looked like he belonged. During their 7-0 run they started White, Perkins, and Van at RB and each of them was effective.

That injury bug is going to show whether the Bombers are a great team or merely a winning team that's been lucky on the injury front. Greats keep on winning no matter who they roll out. This is the time when the entire football department is put to the test: does our bench have enough talent, and do the coaches prepare the subs well enough? This is my one beef with the 2017 bombers, that our subs, especially receivers and DBs, look like they're in over their heads. You look at Edmonton, when Duke Williams was hurt, they rolled out Hazelton and there wasn't a lot of dropoff there. Plus they've had that parade of running backs, not one of whom has looked out of place.

Ah, yes, here it is, from the week 18 stats PDF. We're second-best at 2-and-outs, and if you look back to past weeks, we were the best until a couple of games ago, right around when Flanders got hurt. We're second-best in offensive touchdowns, too. That is definitely the hallmark of a failed, too-conservative offensive coach who is too concerned about winning the turnover battle (we're second in giveaways, too.) If Lapo doesn't play to win, he's pretty crappy at it.

How do the Bombers stack up against the rest of the league in terms of 2 and outs? Do we go 2-and-out more frequently than other teams? Didn't we have a game with zero two-and-outs earlier this year? I wanna say the game that snapped the Edmonton winning streak....

Furthermore, I think the Bomber coaching is fine. Win the turnover battle = win the game. That means sometimes conservative offence and soft D so that the playmakers are more free to fly around and do their thing. It's frustrating to watch at times, but it works.

How many fourth quarter game winning drives have Lapo and Nichols put up in the last two years? Would've had yet another one against Toronto if Medlock wasn't slumping. I think "controversial" is a flattering word for this opinion. I'd go with "disappointing" or "underachieving" because I expect you to say smarter things.

How many times was Denmark open?

My crew just did the first livefire of a new giant-ass rocket engine. 550K lbs of thrust, designed to change the heavy launch game. Still a long long way to go before we can bolt this baby onto a vehicle, but this was the cumulation of years of work and so we are pumped. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/blue-origin-has-successfully-tested-its-powerful-be-4-rocket-engine/

I can't shake the feeling that Harris is really showing the effects of all the tough miles we've put on him this year. BC was ganging up on him but teams have done that all year. It seemed like that last few percent of explosiveness and power that makes him so great was missing against BC. I'm with greenland: hopefully we beat Toronto, clinch, and then we can give him a rest. 1K/1K is cool and all but against a Grey Cup, not that big a deal. ...tho I don't know who we'd line up in his stead. The only other guy listed at RB in the entire org is a little guy named Zach Bauman, an import who doesn't even have a headshot on the Bomber roster. Normand has played Harris' position, right?

Shouldn't that be the Cardirts vs. the BoLevis?

I think this is just good babysitting. You run him hard, tire him out, he makes no trouble and falls right asleep at bedtime.

(double post)

My favorite Hip song. Aimed straight at heaven.

I really loved that sequence last game where we ran the exact same HB blitz with TJH twice in a row. First time was a sack, I think the second was a hurry. It was like a kid in Madden spamming an overpowered play.

I've gone to 10-15 live bomber games since I moved from Ottawa to Seattle in 1999. Couple games in Winnipeg, mostly games in BC, one in Montreal. They are 0-fer in those games. In fact, I have not seen a Bomber win live since 1996, when the Bombers beat Ottawa in the very last Rough Riders home game. Was certain that they'd break my personal streak this year in BC. Goddammit, Medlock.

Yet another example of O'Shea's stubbornness. Whenever he sees Arnold_Palmer in the stands, he's like "shut 'er down, boys, we're phoning this one in."

Sure love the look of that DL, especially since Okpalaugo seems to be settling in...

Doesn't matter as long as they can pull together!

I would wear an Obby Khan jersey with pride. He played after losing a few feet of large intestine, and he played through Ramandan and kept his fast when he was younger. His potato chip prank on the Fabulous Blue Bomber Show was hilarious. Dude rolls hard and makes tasty shwarma. To the OP: Last year my answer would be Battle. This year it's Leggett. Moe has been Battle-level special since he moved to SAM and I hope he's a Bomber for a long, long time.

It's amazing, given the relative size of stars and planets, that we can distinguish between a planet-eating star and a non-planet-eating star from 320 light-years away. Astronomy is bonkers nowadays.

In "mars ain't no place to raise a kid" news, here's an older story about the improvised life insurance of Apollo astronauts: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/08/30/160267398/what-the-apollo-astronauts-did-for-life-insurance

Safe travels, DoD!