17to85

Ugh no thanks.

Cause there's always the right combination of desperate and dumb among general managers in the CFL.

Is Jerome Messam a thing again? Cause I am going to go with the safe pick and say him.

You would think they would know the guy's reputation for burning bridges. Guess they get suckered in with the promises of big pay days because he's such a hardass and won't let GMs run roughshod over the players. I feel bad for the player but I really love that the Esks are sticking it to that prick of an agent.

It's a Lapo thing to me. Not that they never take shots, it's that Lapo is a pretty conservative coach and will default to trying to not lose when some times they would be better off knowing when to take a shot to try and beat the other guys. I mean you don't want to be balls to the walls all the time, but you gotta identify when those moments to go for it are and I think Lapo overall doesn't excel in that area. He's more of a play it safe, try and win the field position battle kind of guy.

Beaten fanbase. We've had any fleeting success ripped away from us as fans for such a long time people just expect the worst.

Ray and Willy both suffered from the same problem, too much pressure in the pocket, difference obviously is that Ray has the ability to over come that, where as Willy got himself shell shocked and couldn't pull out of it.

Think back to some of the mid 2000s teams and think about the good linebackers and crappy halfbacks we had and see if you still hold that same line of thinking. No one has stood out at mlb in the last few years, even good players (though naturally outside guys not inside guys admittedly) so that to me indicates that the defense we are running isn't set up to make the mlb the playmaking star.

I think all this average talk really is meaningless, in the CFL there's really only 2 levels of quarterbacking, good enough or not good enough. If you have good enough you can win with enough support around the guy and if it's not good enough then you aren't going to do a lot of winning no matter what.

honestly at that point I might have been welcoming a giant space rock personally.

yeah the man was a prick of the highest proportions but damned if he didn't know how to win. It's always a loss when the CFL loses legendary figures like that.

well no but the third game, the third game he finally got the team to show some heart.... awwwwwww crap....

Decent in 2012? In his first game as hc in the easiest game to get players fired up for they got their asses handed to them. Burke was a loser head coach from day 1.

Or was it just a case of a guy is a very good coordinator but not qualified to be a head coach. Lots of examples of that

Because he cut everyone and brought in his own picks at qb. He has no one to blame for his qb situation but himself. He coulda had Kevin Glenn who isn't great but certainly wasn't crap at the time. Never mind that the guy he hand picked quickly got thrown under the bus and they had to resort to huck it, chuck it Michael Bishop to just throw prayers up and hope for the best. Kelly was brutal as a GM. As a coach he might have been able to make something work, but it was the way he managed the roster that ultimately torpedoed the team. I am also going to disagree with a previous post that Kelly had better talent. Mack brought in better players, he just hired poor coaches.

The question ultimately is whether or not Hurl is a better linebacker than Thomas/Ekakitie/Butcher are DTs and whether the american DTs they brought in are better than the american linebackers. That's the balance they're striving for and I for one will trust the coaches to make that call. Not like they don't rotate people in and out anyway, probably lots of plays with a canadian at dt and an american at lb and lots with a canadian at lb and american at DT. They'll make it work.

Yeah exactly, what in gods name makes anyone here think that Mike O'Shea doesn't know how to spot a guy who can play linebacker? If there's one thing he should know it's what a linebacker looks like.

Mike Kelly the coach was a hell of a lot better than Mike Kelly the GM. If he'd just been hired to be the head coach and had a good Gm with him we might remember his time here entirely differently, but as it stood Kelly was so determined to micro manage everything he ended up not doing anything well, but at least he got the players to play for him. Tim Burke on the other had is the worst head coach I have ever seen this team have. Teams under him were an entirely gutless collection of players simply going through the motions. The most embarrassing football team I have ever seen.

I think overly much gets made of the top teir qb stuff to be honest. Ultimately the only question is can you win with your guy at qb? And we know that this team can win with Nichols at qb. Like I said, he won't be the reason the team loses if they do lose. Does it matter if he's not a top teir qb? No not really, he's got the right attitude for this team and can do enough at the position to put the team in a position to succeed. After that it's still a team game and the rest of the team needs to take advantage of that. Truthfully I am much more concerned about the coordinators than I am the quarterbacking. If anything is going to hold this team back it's going to be the soft vanilla prevent defense Ritchie Hall likes and the conservative to a fault offense Lapo is in love with.

Yeah but every single team brings qbs up and cuts them, just because a guy doesn't work out doesn't mean the initial assessment was wrong. As I said in a previous post, they likely saw the physical tools and wanted to get an up close look and see if there was anything there to work with. After seeing the guy in a preseason game and through camp they decided that there wasn't. Happens with tons of players every single year in every city in the league.

Nichols is fine, he showed he can win games with the right support around him and he's got some fire in his belly. He won't be the reason the team loses games.

Is it really? Guy had tools so they brought him in and maybe discovered there was no toolbox. Not the first player to have that happen, won't be the last.

Not to mention that during the radio broadcast Bob and Doug were basically laughing at how bad he was... Seriously people a strong arm is nice but it takes a hell of a lot more than an arm to be a qb.

Easier for them to just show up and listen to what the coach has to say post practise and regurgitate his quotes than to actually write their own opinions on what they might see, or god forbid watch practise and ask some relevant questions afterwards. Instead they take the easy way out, who's hurt, coaches thoughts on mundane things, bang out their article for the day. Really a damned shame.