JuranBoldenRules

Ottawa is the only Canadian team that doesn't sell out all of their NHL games too.

That's a great lookin field! Too bad it's 24,000 instead of 33,000 like ours. I think for Ottawa that 24k is a good number. Don't understand why the CFL isn't bigger in Montreal & Ottawa. I can understand Southern Ontario as they feel they are NFL material but Ottawa & Montreal clearly aren't. They should be routinely able to draw 27-30,000 every game & have bigger stadiums. Ottawa doesn't support any sports teams consistently and their CFL teams have been awful since the late 1970s. I visited my friend from Ottawa last summer, and we drove by their beautiful baseball stadium and got into an argument about the quality of independent baseball. They had two independent teams and a intercounty team since they lost their AAA team but Ottawa wouldn't support them because they weren't affiliated with MLB, even though indy ball is 50x more entertaining than having a AA team (which some people have been angling for, getting the Blue Jays affiliate) where your players move through all the time and your manager has zero control over who plays, who stays who goes. Indy ball you can actually build a winning franchise, like the Goldeyes, and not be stuck developing players for someone else. They wouldn't even give the indy ball teams a shot.

Seems pretty straightforward, they will be using a DI spot for the backup RB, who will get some amount of returner duty. Perhaps all. I don't think anyone will dispute that 2011 Messam is a better RB than Volny. Who knows what he is now. He can't hold a job despite being a potential ratio-breaker, so he's probably not really a ratio-breaker anymore. However, for the sake of argument, let's say his superiority over Volny is not in dispute. I don't think anyone will dispute that Volny is a better ST player than Messam, since Messam doesn't play teams. So if Volny is not likely to touch the ball as a RB more than twice a game all season (rewarding the worker bees) but plays 18 snaps a game on teams, which Messam can't replace, and Messam is unlikely to get any more snaps at RB because our DI is outright better, then yeah, Messam is a waste of a roster spot. If his last name was Etienne you'd all be losing your minds about how big a waste of a roster spot he would be. Unless they want to DI a guy like aaron woods for returner and still have a good RB on the roster OShea is saying he's using one of those spots on a backup RB. That's why upgrading Volny to Messam is irrelevant. It accomplishes nothing. Cotton needs a rest, Ford goes in. Not Volny. Looks like our NI DB's will be playing a ton then, assuming a DI is used on a returner, one will for sure be used on Zach Anderson, one on Kuale/Wild.

Something we have not had emerge this year is a pass rusher who engages two opposing linemen, and we are going to miss that- badly. I think you'll see Turner and Anderson getting a fair amount of double teams, but there's no such thing as a DL who takes up 2 gaps at the CFL level.

Canadian vs import. Crappy vs exceptional. Start a Canadian somewhere else. where? CFL rosters are always built by slotting in your top canadians then filling imports around them and given the injuries we've had Thomas is one of the best we have. I personally think we would be better off with 6 on offence and one at field corner I'd rather have a consistently good OL this year. The DL are going to rotate either way, and Thomas is going to play significant snaps, neither he or Anderson would play every down.

Says he was looking at a role this season potentially as a tight end, likely speculation, much like the speculation in the article that the Bombers would be interested in him. Everyone assumes 6'3 245 means good blocker, but a guy who's 5'7 155 has a better chance of blocking someone if the 6'3 245 guy isn't interested in blocking and doesn't have any technique. If he's not going to start, he needs to play special teams. We're better off dressing another NI LB or DL who can add to our special teams over a guy who has no interest in playing football if he's not carrying the ball.

Not much of a difference. Greg Peterson, the former all star safety of the Stamps was talking about padded practices once. He played with Calgary from 1981 to 92. He was saying in his day they were in pads nearly every practice & they did hitting & tackling drills nearly everyday to work on fundamentals. That isn't done anymore. So, the players get rusty & sloppy. That is when the injuries happen. Could this new rule have unintended consequences? Even in padded practices they hardly have any full contract drills aside from the linemen. That's been going on for years, back to Don Matthews.

Will Ford can't catch punts, and Paris Cotton didn't show any ability to do that on his returns either, he let them hit the turf. I don't think either will be the primary returner, the only way having 2 IMP RB's on the roster works is if someone like Demond Washington returns punts. I think we'll see one import RB to start the season with Aaron Woods in a DI spot, if the RB goes down, the NI's take over and it'll be all passing on offence.

In the bare forest?

It's dumb because it's such an inconsequential thing to change, and then to basically change it to a different words meaning the exact same thing. I could see if they switched non-import to Canadian, that would make some sense. Wonder how that brainstorm happened, "our officiating is consistently incompetent, but I'm really concerned about the terms we use to classify players!"

Here's to hoping that we don't finished tied for last in the league and lose (or win I guess) the tiebreaker for the 1st overall pick like 2012. Let's be good losers, work hard, be competitive, scare some people.

As long as it's not spelled P-A-L-A-R-D-Y we're good.

I'll take him 8 days a week over Rene Stephan, a guy who makes Cauchy Muamba look like a serial killer in terms of aggressiveness.

Can't play special teams, can't block. If we gave Volny the number of carries the last couple years that Messam has got he'd have the same numbers. We should look at other top 2011 RB's like Cory Boyd.

Kind of a vague way of explaining the injury, are his tibia and fibula both broken? If so, it will be one hell of a feat to make it back into a CFL game. Best wishes to him.

Hajrullahu is actually spelled exactly how it sounds...just turn the i into a j, and oo in hoo to a u. Hai-rull-a-hoo.

Maher was good, not exceptional. His punting was not very good, he has a big leg, but clearly still needs to learn how to place them, both Hajrullahu and Renaud especially were/are better in that respect. Placekicking he was neck and neck with Hajrullahu. I'd be surprised if Maher gets picked up, most kicking jobs are spoken for, many teams are two deep at kicking spots with a veteran and a prospect. Wouldn't be surprised to see him on our practice roster.

Brohm threw 16 passes, Hall threw 14. They both had a chance. I wish we could get a middle ground of the two. Brohm throws a heavy fastball on short-intermediate routes a lot of times, and Hall throws curveballs (unintentionally) because his lower body and feet are always moving in any direction but towards his target in his throwing motion. It's weird that Hall was about to be a QB coach and he can't settle his throwing motion down.

Sacks are the second most useless stat after tackles. I'll let you know after week 1 if our pass rush sucks.

What about last year? Unless you really like Isaac Anderson.

Urrutia didn't really get a good shot in Calgary IMO. Hall underthrew pretty much everything at him. I liked his work vs Toronto, but we haven't seen him on a deep route in either game, which is kind of odd. I'd think one of Urrutia or Kelly would be starting game 1, hopefully Urrutia. Would be nice to give Willy at least one big target, otherwise Cory Watson is our only big body receiver. I do like Jaymar Johnson though, when he hits the break in his routes he gets a ton of separation, he's very quick, hopefully the drops vs Toronto were an anomaly. Bert Reed looked to have some attitude and hands, too bad we only saw him for about 5 minutes. I would think Reed and Johnson are pretty good PR bets, and everyone else among the imports outside of them are outright cuts, Barnes, Kemp, Tarver, maybe Kelly if they take Urrutia over him.

It's not that hard. Basically he'd get a DI spot that would otherwise go to an extra IMP DB/LB. Just a matter of whether there are enough healthy Canadians to backup on D, if Briggs, Sherman, Alexander, Bucknor and Jones are good to go it shouldn't be an issue. I'm assuming we'll use 1 DI on offense/returner, 2 on D, 1 on Maher, or 1 on offense/returner and 3 on D.

Our defense hasn't been good for most of the last two years. I don't get the "we'll have to win 41-40" stuff when guys who will mostly be cut or otherwise not on the game roster just gave up 46 points in 2 games playing extremely basic schemes. I think we can pump the brakes for now on the panicking.

I think the chances of Blake long-snapping for us in game 1 are zero after tonight. Multiple screwups by long snappers don't usually result in roster spots for them. Also see Woods on the roster as a receiver/returner, and Unamba and Grigsby are PR at best IMO. Plus can't see them sacrificing Goossen at guard. He might make the game roster as the 6th or 7th OL (if we use the last Canadian spot on another OL). Yeah Goossen or Neufeld... Not sure what options are besides Blake - haven't heard of anyone else practicing LS... and I think I still might be short one 'National' BC cut Tim Cronk. Wild could do it for a bit while they search for someone else.

We sucked in the preseason last year. People were worried and it turned out they had every right to be worried. We lost by a total of 7 points combined and our starting QB appears to be pretty good. I'd say we're miles ahead of last year at this time. The fact that our QB actually played in the pre-season puts us ahead of last year.