17to85

Messam is not worth all the fuss. That he's found a situation that works well for him (riders offense vs. bombers defense) doesn't mean he's still actually some great runningback. I bet people wouldn't even be talking about him at all if Etchevary even tried to take him out of the game.

now stop for a second, go back and read what you wrote there and maybe you'll understand the other side of the argument. In the situation that plays out the blame shifts from O'Shea to the defense! Once you stand up, remove your head from your ass maybe you'll see the big picture. No matter what you call you have to execute it.

This isn't a development move, this is about getting someone with some experience as your backup since your actual backup is on the IR for the season. Surprised he went with Elliott over Hall since Hall more recently had played but you had to think a move like this was coming.

Speed isn't the issue for either player, I don't see the problems everyone else does with Dunn, I think he's just a whipping boy because he's not Ian Wild making tackles all over the field. As for Kuale, he is the quintessential million dollar athlete 10 cent brain player. Got a great set of physical tools, not smart enough to figure out how to be as effective a player as he could be.

it's not that, he got their early, the review showed it. Would be a lame call to make at game speed, but when you review it how can you not say that he got there early? It's exactly why the idea behind challenging PI is utter nonsense. It's all still a judgement call on review and that makes reviews impossible to be worth while. In slow motion he got there early? Is that what we want the standard for overturning a non-call to be? I don't think so. I do agree, however, that PI challenges are utter nonsense. He got there early at regular speed too. I have no problems letting it go when the ref is watching live, that's part of the judgement call, but when you review something and you see the infraction occur why isn't it over turned? The fact that the review process is still subject to discretion means it's useless. We have seen wildly different things overturned or not over turned on PI this year. Drop the system now because it's a joke.

It's not about size, it's about plugging holes and being better than the guy across from you. Etchevary was still trying to out think the Riders when the Riders took thinking out of the equation and said "Turn around, hand the ball off and run to the hole" Put a guy in the hole and see if he can make the play or not.

I don't understand how you can say a receiver gave up on a ball. That would imply that the ball was catchable and the effort wasn't there. I would disagree. Those three long ball throws were ever so close to being game changers, so I don't mind the aggressive play calls. We were playing to win. Coaches get criticized all the time for doing this and not doing that, so I can understand disagreeing with the play calls, but as I said, saying the effort wasn't there, is just wrong. I agree that the receiver didn't give up on the ball...but this is the 2nd time in 2 games where we were 2nd and 3 at important times in the games, and a long pass which does not have a high probability of being completed was called. At this juncture of this game...it should have been all about ball control and first downs and it wasn't! Would you have rather than handed off to Grigsby and got stuffed after a 1 yard gain? There's nothing wrong with taking a shot downfield. Bottom line whatever play you call you have to execute it.

One team said we're going to play the game simple, we're just going to pound the ball right up the middle. In that situation you don't mess around trying to outsmart anyone, you just line up and beat the guy across from you. Etch though doesn't believe in playing D that doesn't try and confuse people. Confusion only works when the other team isn't trying to just play smash mouth football.

To me Willy is the best thing we've had since Khari and there's a lot of similarities between the two. They just keep popping up after taking a beating, the game is never out of reach with them at the controls. Just wish we had a Stegall and a Roberts on this team to give Willy some more support.

One thing you are forgetting here is the intangible. O'Shea keeps saying how much faith he has in his team but when the crunch comes he throws his faith in away. We can't say they would have scored because it never happened but they would not have had the time they got to do it. I don't think your comment was appropriate. This is a forum. How did he throw the faith away? He said to the team, Ok take the lead and defense go win the game. He showed complete trust in his defense to win the game. They failed. Maybe more of a misguided trust in Etch by MOS to call the right defense & get it done. Players don't scheme, coaches do. And if they are playing in a defense that isn't working or has players playing out of position & not to their strengths, that's Etcheverry's fault. The failure to not stop the run the entire game is on his shoulders. Listening to Doug Brown talk about it on the post game show multiple weeks now you can tell he does not like the Etchevary defense one bit. He's said more than once that he's not even lining up guys with a chance to stop the run.

it's not that, he got their early, the review showed it. Would be a lame call to make at game speed, but when you review it how can you not say that he got there early? It's exactly why the idea behind challenging PI is utter nonsense. It's all still a judgement call on review and that makes reviews impossible to be worth while.

That is exactly why I said before the season even started challenging PIs was a stupid idea. Guarantee it's out of the game next season. It's too subjective. By the definition in the rule book it's a penalty.... but in reality that's the kind of play you can justify letting go. But if you review it you should be going by the book.

We have collectively been beaten down too much, and with how little life the team showed and how when the first thing went wrong they'd be totally lost people are just jumpy. Takes a long time to get over being abused like that.

If you're not getting better you're getting worse. If they aren't looking for players to push other guys and make the team better then Kyle Walters isn't doing his job.

We got to labour day with out ever a question being raised about who was going to start at qb for us, and then in what looks like a serious injury he comes back in and runs around as well as he ever has. It's just such a refreshing thing to not have to worry about the qb being done for the year after one hit. That being said he's one beat up dude already at this point in the season, I hope he doesn't break at some point.

One thing you are forgetting here is the intangible. O'Shea keeps saying how much faith he has in his team but when the crunch comes he throws his faith in away. We can't say they would have scored because it never happened but they would not have had the time they got to do it. I don't think your comment was appropriate. This is a forum. How did he throw the faith away? He said to the team, Ok take the lead and defense go win the game. He showed complete trust in his defense to win the game. They failed.

Holding is a reputation call in the CFL these days. Because the Riders o-line is known to be good they have a lot (nd I mean a LOT) more leeway with regards to how blatant is has to be to be called holding. It's not a conspiracy, it's just that the refs in the CFL are really bad.

You're a ******* rider fan, what the **** do you expect to happen when you're hanging out with a bunch of Bomber fans? Worse you're a patronizing rider fan who is trying to get along with everyone, it's annoying as all hell. I'd rather deal with trolls than people who patronize us as a fanbase. It's quite frankly an insult and represent everything that is wrong with that fanbase.

Slow down there bud, there's no HATE for O'Shea. I think most of us are in agreement that he's brought an incredible sea-change to the Bombers. That's not to say he's perfect or doesn't make mistakes. Fans questioning or complaining about a call they don't agree with isn't hate. I sure as hell hope we don't fall into another IMWT crapfest, O'Shea ain't perfect but he's best breath of fresh air we've had here in quite a while. And there's no need to call fans morons who disagree sometimes with his judgement. Totally agree with you. But too much of that provides fodder for the negatrons....who have typing Diarrhea after a loss at the best of times. and based on team philosophies the Riders are probably one of the tougher matchups for the Bombers. They're the team that is most committed to running the football (they had 3 different RBs take handoffs) while Etch is the least concerned with stopping the run.

People had high expectations last year and he didn't live up to them so therefore the only possible explanation is he had a bad attitude.

Why assume the Riders didn't make adjustments after the first TD drive? Further to that, we stopped going to those short passes that were successful early because of our absolute lousy field position through the second quarter. I love the new guy Stoudermire, but that one mistake of catching the ball deep, instead of letting Sask. get a single, cost us big time. it was one of many things that cost us. Giving up 2 safeties cost us (one intentional one because of a poor snap) taking penalties cost us, a busted coverage cost us, a few narrow misses on catches cost us. Trying to pick out one thing is a fools errand.

Now it's not all on him, but to me it seems like Jarvis Jones did a hell of a lot of good things for the line today... how the hell has he been off the roster the entire time?

On the one hand it was great to see them shake off the adversity and come back and take the lead until the end... but it was also a lot harder to deal with the loss after seeing them claw back in front.

Considering that the team was pretty good on D all game and has been decent throughout the year and the teams biggest weakness is being able to get the hard yards when they're in short yardage I think you are assigning too high a % for success. Remember this team has failed to convert 3rd and 1 multiple times against worse defenses than the Riders. Nothing is guaranteed in football, all you can do is make plays when you are put in a position to do so and the defense utterly failed at the end of the game. I would have gone for the 3rd down gamble personally, but that's just my attitude, I didn't have a problem with O'Shea taking the lead and trusting his defense to win the game for him. They had many chances to make it happen and didn't c'est la vie.

I would suggest that with the **** show going on last season that judging a player based on that is not the best course of action. I would suggest you are wrong. Lots of players weren't disinterested and continued to play as well as they could. and by lots of players you mean 1 or 2? Cause I saw a team that at the first sign of adversity would pack it in and just let the other team walk all over them. Then I guess you need new glasses ... or I haven't forgotten just how bad things were last year....