johnzo

Oh man, what a great picture. There's these two viking-looking dudes who are dressed up in Road Warrior shoulder pads and face paint every game, the TSN cameras love them and show a reaction shot from them every game. Where do those guys sit?

Don't have any numbers to back it up, but my impression is that Proulx doesn't flag holding as often as the other refs.

OP was asking about regular season records, tho. Lucky the 2011 team had enough points in the bank to coast to 1st in the East and then beat Kevin Glenn in a cold weather game to get to the cup.

I was talking about promising bomber teams -- like the 2011 team (7-1 before LDC) and the 2014 team (6-3). Those teams came unglued after the LDC.

10-8. A big loss on Labor Day by a promising Bomber team is usually followed by a decline in the second half of the season.

I've been sending secret messages through Walters' Alpha-bits for years. SIGN HAJRULLAHU is the one I'm proudest of. Not a lot of J's in your standard bowl of Alpha-bits. I really wish that Walters was an Alphaghetti man, this would be easier.

Yeah. How many officials would be willing to flag an injury when there's a chance they could be wrong?

Good on Chris Jones for finding a way to counter Lapo's tempo within the rules, but boo on Chris Jones for making the game uglier, slower, stupider, and more phony. The integrity and quality of the game is more important to me than a single rivalry game loss -- I hated PI replay challenge even when the Bombers benefited from it, and this is the same kind of thing.

I doubt Austin is gonna swap away a battleship for a rowboat like Neufeld unless there's something else serious at play ... contract status, locker room attitude, etc. Simoni Lawrence for Neufeld would be a total Madden trade. And people have been talking that Bond is indeed gonna try his NFL luck next year.

Love me some Luke Tasker but oh man I do not want to trade away any Canuck OL. We're finally building national depth on the OL and if we can start three Canucks there next year then we can start three imports at LB. The upgrade from Thorpe or Denmark to Tasker isn't big enough to warrant trading away depth. Though when I think about getting Lawrence ... upgrading on Knox might be enough to get me wanting to eat the seed corn...

Okay, so the way I understand it, we run a tempo offence to prevent the D from substituting -- like say we convert a 2nd-and-short against a D that's got extra beef up front, then we go tempo so that we can call a pass against that heavy lineup. But if tempo happens when the D will naturally want to substitute, there's always going to be a defensive player on the field who's going to be coming off anyway, and that player can alertly take a knee to allow a substitution. The only cost is losing that player for three snaps, which ain't nothing, but it ain't a huge thing. Seems like the injury rules make the tempo offence pretty useless. Be interesting to see if more coaches counter tempo this way.

Yup. How many consecutive two and outs did we have in the third? Right when we needed the O the most, it took a vacation. Can't see what was happening with the coverage on TV but Nicholls would not stretch the field at all, with only a few exceptions he was not willing to throw to his downfield reads. D wasn't great, but the average Rider start in the first quarter was somewhere around our 25 yard line.

My guess: if the Riders can keep Glenn clean, they win. That quick release of his really matches up well against that soft Richie Hall D. Gonna be interesting to see how the Bombers secondary plays against Carter and Roosevelt. Do they move Randall and Heath around to keep them matched up with those two big dogs? Or do they just trust their scheme and their players and let the Riders come at em? Pumped for the game! Labour Day is always better when both teams have something to lose. Hoping for a Bomber win, an entertaining game, and no significant injuries on either team.

Wow, that thousand year-old Chinese starmap is beautiful.

Could we just sub Dressler for Lankford and let Flanders handle kickoff returns? We'd be without our backup kicker, but it's been seven years since we've needed one...remember Louie Sakoda?

I'm a believer in second chances too -- but earned second chances. Dude is in a unique position to change football culture and start hard conversations and if he did that then I'd be rooting for him to get his career back on track. But I don't get that sense from the reporting on him at all, his actions since have seemed more self-serving.

That game has to be the least entertaining Grey Cup in history ... but I'll still rewatch the half of it when the Bombers were on D. Gavin Walls was a fire breathing monster in that game.

And it's not just the Diversity Is Strength messaging that looks like a joke here .. the Lions and the Bombers both have anti-DV programs that they hype pretty hard.

From that article: "Clearly, some serious mistakes were made along the way " Ah, "mistakes were made." Pretty much the ultimate weasel thing you can say about something that's ****** up. Hopefully the Commish invites Mr. Briles to rehabilitate his career in some other league. I do have to wonder, given the NCAA's reputation, how many coaches have the same kind of stink on them. Mike Riley did, back in the day:

couple things -- 1- Really digging Lapo's cute sweep fakes, where they bring a receiver across the formation and fake a shovel pass to him. They've run it three or four times the past couple games and it's stalled the DL every time. 2- Weird stat about Denmark the Invisible Receiver: he's on pace to make 62 catches this year, comparable to his career year of 2014, when he had 65. The thing is, his catch average length was 16 yards in 2014, but is only 10 yards this year. That's life in Lapoland, I guess.

Matty Ice is playing smart, safe, clutch football. His TD:pick and win:loss ratios are both BLMish. He's been great to watch. But no way Harris is not our MOP. He's been special. Teams know we're going to feature him, team key on him, and he still makes his plays, game in game out. Countless times we have been second-and-short and the entire stadium knows he's getting the ball and we make the first down anyway. Been ages since we've had a player able to impose his will like that. And I love the way he forces the D to respect play action and other fakes.

Game next week just got bigger. Love it when rivalry games aren't just grudge matches, it's pretty rare that both the Blue and the Green have something to lose coming into the LDC. Previous good-looking Bomber teams (2011, 2014) have fallen apart after a Labour Day loss.

Painkillers in the NFL: http://thelab.bleacherreport.com/nfl-toradol-use-players-survey/

y'know, I've met TiCat fans in Ottawa, Montreal, and BC for the Grey Cup. They love their team but they've also been good folks to hang with.

Loved how our tackles handled Odell on Friday. No somersaults for the mayor. Does Couture get reps? Glad to hear you're bullish on him but I haven't seen him out there a lot aside from short yardage.