Captain Blue

LaPolice working for TSN was absolutely great for his career. They constantly praise him despite the results... Suitor: Well Chris, LaPo is going to build an offense so his young quarterback can thrive. Bombers run Harris up the middle, resulting in 2nd and 9. Suitor: That one didn't work but it definitely got the defense thinking. The good thing about LaPo is that he's going to be creative. Streveler runs a QB draw for a short gain. Suitor: You can really see that Streveler needs to develop more as a passer. He's got some work to do. [next series] Suitor: Well I'm excited to see what the mad scientist Paul LaPolice will draw up here. Bombers run a screen to Lucky Whitehead for a short loss. Suitor: Look at how the offense stretched the defense there, that'll be setting them for up something later, I'm sure about that... Bombers complete an 8 yard pass short of the sticks. Suitor: This offense is dangerous Chris, that play was pretty close to making a first down.

We need to hope that these losses finally spur some changes. Gotta take some players out of the lineup after these two brutal losses.

Simoni Lawrence is a real dirty player. TSN doing a great job celebrating him.

Roster management has really come back to kill them, in my opinion. Bailey and Petermann need more reps, but we continue to use Whitehead and Demski. OL management remains a mystery. We've been waiting for Speller to return only to keep him on the bench and use Desjarlais - and then sat Gray too. Baffling.

What happened to our OL? They are brutal.

Two biggest concerns for me tonight remain the same from last week - defensive secondary is falling apart and the offensive play calling is garbage.

Streveler's first big mistake of the night. Game over. That'll get all the press and not the multitude of other errors by everyone else.

Whitehead is useless at receiver. Just a fast guy.

This offense needs more runs up the middle, they're great at wasting downs.

Literally been passing the ball fine all night but the answer is definitely to call more QB draws!

They need to replace Hecht mid game.

Running is so much more inefficient than passing. Emphasizing it way too much right now. Get the pass game going again.

Defense carried this team most of last year and a good chunk of this year early on. People made up their mind on Hall many years ago and never bothered to update their opinions when they were legit good.

Popular to blame Hall but his players have been missing tackles left and right. Bighill and Hecht are too slow.

Said it before and will say it again: I feel awful for Matt Nichols both on a professional and personal level. This is an absolutely terrible break for the guy. As it relates to the Bombers though, I think the bigger loss is Nichols as a backup. I would have loved to have him backup Strev the rest of the way. It sucks being one Strev injury away from going to our third stringer. Even before the injury, I thought Streveler gave us the best chance to win each week. Ultimately I think its best for the Bombers to continue to build the offense around him, hope LaPolice doesn't make him a glorified running back, and see where it leads us. I think we are still very much a Grey Cup contender.

Hate on Hall all you want, but he didn't call the "let the guy run free 50 yards down field" play. It was a breakdown, a mistake, whatever you want to call it. Somebody in that secondary blew it.

Thing is, Montreal never really did end up stopping our offense that much. It wasn't like they shut down Streveler at all. We could throw and run mostly successfully, except at the end of the game when it was far too obvious.

Watching the game again, it doesn't feel nearly as bad as I thought. Streveler was really good. This is someone we can really build around. He made one mistake all day and it cost us big time. LaPolice needs to let him throw more though. Once the aerial attack is going then you sprinkle in his running and he can't be stopped. LaPo called a QB run on 2nd and long when the Als desperately needed a stop and brought a blitz. Classic LaPo. Defense was also mostly really good, until about halfway through the fourth. The secondary had way too many breakdowns. Blitzes couldn't get anywhere on the last few drives so combine that with the secondary falling apart you get the quick scores from Montreal. I have concerns with the late game management, but ultimately we let them score a TD when they started at their own 16 with 1:03 left on the clock. Then we still had them on their own 30 with 30 seconds left. Secondary blew it on the chunk play again, which was really the only way to let them in it.

LaPo continually gets less out of the players he has. Inexcusable.

Gainey and the Riders sure do love to talk and get into faces despite getting absolutely destroyed.

He continues to get better and continues to reinforce that the Bombers should really try to stick with him and see where this goes. Completely changes the offensive potential.

Learned a lot about this team today. Very, very impressed. Streveler played well. Finally gave him an offensive design that helped. He isn't JUST a runner - we let him play QB today and it worked. You can have him on designed runs and still let him air it out a bit more. Inches away from a few more big plays too. If he can continue to build on this we'll be just fine going forward. This team is so much more dangerous when the offense doesn't completely stall for large parts of the game. I think we also learned today that we need to do a better job involving the talent we have on offense. Petermann steps in and looks fantastic. He just gets open and catches the ball - he needs more snaps even when Demski is healthy. Bailey steps in and makes a couple plays. Augustine is great in space. Maybe we need to spread the ball around more in the future. Defense and special teams remain championship calibre. Not much more to say about them. Jefferson continues to be dominant. Richie Hall has his group on fire.

I think Streveler is so far coming along just fine. We knew there were going to be more ups and downs than with Nichols. Whereas Nichols is consistently mediocre, Streveler right now fluctuates more between good and bad. I think when he's given time in the pocket, he does just fine passing the ball - we need to give him a better chance to succeed. Our protection has become a major issue lately. I honestly think if Nichols had played we would have been blown out. Sure he won't throw the interceptions, but he will also take way more sacks. Streveler is easily the best chance we have right now of developing a good QB. I'm more than willing to see how this plays out. Also: LaPo gotta go. Watching literally every other CFL team have more pass success despite worse talent, its hard not to think we could sub in Generic CFL Playbook and get more production than from LaPolice's gameplan.

First down, run up the middle with a RB that is better in space...short gain. Killed me every time (though they did get some nice gains). Follow that up with a Streveler rollout that cuts the field, giving him 1-2 reads only, leading to a throwaway or QB pressure. Classic.

Our coaches realized too late that Saskatchewan was (a) gaining yards easily and (b) running enough clock out to kill us.