Mr Dee

It really is like getting to the oasis (bye week), dragging a few players the last few miles to shade and water. (rest) This bye week is sorely needed and I'm not using the sore word lightly. Perhaps, just perhaps, we'll have a somewhat healthy lineup in two weeks and a new outlook.

So, as long as they stayed in their gaps, and made their tackles, the run defence would work….sounds about right. So, what does that tell you?

Don't know what you mean even though you put it so eloquently. I just don't like fans putting words into our Coach's mouth, that eventually get repeated, when the actual words they use are not what O'Shea said in the first place.

Picking on the defence looks to be the easy thing to do, but we played an unspectacular game on Spec. teams, a below average game on Offence and BC didn't make any mistakes that we could take advantage of. In other words, they beat us, at home, and executed a pretty good game plan all game. They were the better team last night. Our guys do have fight…maybe this break is just what we need.

First of all, Willy not the QB you want if you think he's going to just let the game go and kneel. Nobody is thinking injury when you take the ball and run. He got twisted, and fell on his right side, just as the wall fell on him. On Brohm, I guess viewers expected him to come in, in a white horse scenario, slay that damn BC defensive dragon, and win the game. Hard to do without any reps against a fired up defence. 6/13 - 33 yards and I saw a couple of drops out there. There has to be time to have a look at your back up….to see if you do have a backup. He just looked OK last night. He looked bad to a few fans because he didn't do what even Willy also didn't do, rally the team to win the game.

Reluctantly I must give the game ball to Kevin Glenn. At one point he was 18/20 and finished 20/27 - 261yards He was focused, accurate and followed a good game plan to the letter. We bothered him somewhat, but not enough to through him off his game. And besides….he was closer to 250 yards than that running mouth back.

When the run game falls in the toilet, like the fourth quarter tonight, people start bringing out stuff O'Shea never said. He didn't say the running game isn't a problem, and he never insisted we are OK at handling the run. Listen to what he actually says and you'll understand. O'Shea has said, in the past, that he wasn't worried about the yards gained in those games he was asked about.

Wouldn't we have to lose the game too?

Oops, meant to add: CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE 2014 · GAME NOTES

Game Notes - Last 13 games - Lions 8 wins Bomber 5 (including 2 from last year) Avg. time of possession BC 30:53 Wpg. 29:27 Key injuries BC - Lulay, Hunter Steward, l.s. Jordan Matechuk Wpg. - Ian Wild, Zach Anderson, Nic Moore BC is 2-3 at home this year. The Lions have had 5 games decided by a touchdown or less in 2014 and are 3-2 in those games. For the last seven seasons, Jason Arakgi has been the league’s leading ST Tackler with 149 in that span. The Lions have been held without an offensive touchdown in each of the last two games. Andrew Harris: Averaged 111.6 yards from scrimmage in the first 7 games but since then (and due to an injury that slowed him down), he has just 55 yards in his last two games on 20 total touches. Through Week #11, Brown led the CFL in punt return yards with 445 and he had played only 4 games. He is averaging 111.3 punt return yards per game – the CFL record is 80.0 yards per game by Henry Williams in 1991. DE Alex Bazzie leads the league with 8 tackles for loss. The CFL record is 13 set by Henoc Muamba in 2013. Drew Willy: Led the entire CFL last week with 360 passing yards recording his FIFTH 300+ game of the season (tops in the CFL). No other CFL QB has more than two 300-yard games in 2014. He will be making his 16th career start and is 7-8, 1-1 vs BC. Winnipeg may have lost 4 of the last 5 but three of those defeats were by margins of 6 points or less. Last week was the same as Winnipeg came back from 19 points down to having two chances to win in the final 1:36. Both drives ended in interceptions and another loss by less than a TD. Winnipeg has 7 losses by 7 points or less in the last two years. The Blue Bombers have given up a total of 4 first Quarter points in the last 7 games and have not trailed at after 15:00 even once. Conversely, in the second quarter they have allowed 67 second Quarter points in the last 4 games including two games with 20 or more. Teague Sherman: Has come on of late making 18 of his 36 tackles in the last 4 games. He leads the CFL with 4 forced fumbles. Nic Grigsby: Through Week #11 led the CFL in rushing and with Brandon Whitaker (1,006 yard pace) are the only backs headed for a 1,000 yard season. Grigsby is on pace for 1,019 yards with 7 games left. Last time at BC – Jul 25/14: The Bombers won comprehensively 23-6 despite being outgained on the day. The keys to what was their second road win of the year were a 6-2 edge in sacks and a 4-2 turnover advantage. Winnipeg held the Lions without a touchdown and to two field goals in their Red Zone opportunities. 2nd down conversions: Over the last four games, the Bombers rate on converting second downs has grown steadily. Last week vs Saskatchewan the Bombers made 11-of-22 (50%), up from previous results of 43%, 28% and 25% in Week #8. Last week, Winnipeg converted on 7 of 15 second-and-long situations. CFL rookie kicker Lirim Hajrullahu needs just two points to reach 100 and leads the CFL through Week #11. He can become the 14th Blue Bomber player to record 100+ points in a season. The last Winnipeg rookies (first-year players) to reach the 100-point mark were Justin Palardy in 2010 (103) and Alexis Serna in 2008 (159). Don Unamba: With a couple of post-game stats corrections for ST tackles, Unamba has risen to #2 in the CFL with 14 in 11 games. Lirim Hajrullahu at 88%: He is on pace to set a Bombers’ all-time FG% mark having made 22-of-25 attempts this season. Two of those missed hit the upright and the other was blocked. The club record is held currently by Justin Palardy at 86.7% (26-of-30) set in 2010 and tied in 2012 (39-of-45). CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE 2014 · GAME NOTES

I don't mind the media asking about O'Shea's practice schedule and how he conducts "Zero Day" practices because finally we do get an insight into why there are only two practices a week. I had wondered about that, especially when we had time for three. Now we know O'Shea prefers up tempo practices and doesn't want to exhaust his players….which he believes leads to mental exhaustion which leads to posts like Ω√∫˜µ≤≤ makes. mistakes. He prefers teaching and fixing errors, with some of it in the classroom. He feels it's working as evidenced by how much energy they still have in the 4th quarter. Hard to argue with that. What I don't get is there is ammunition (info) to be gleaned from these practices and backgrounds to every position on the team. But somebody has to do their homework. Ed Tait does, Randy Turner used to. They just have to pay attention to a certain position or positions each time and not only will they get their blurbs…they might learn something

Is this a media article? Geez, I wonder if I should comment on it?

C/mon Iso, that's not the way it went down. It's not the 1st time TBurg has jumped in with his media schtick comment. He knows darn well when a poorly written article gets printed, chances are there will be opinions on them, more deserved than not. That's not going to change. Why is there no fuss when we compliment good writing by the media? It's like Rich says…it's borderline trolling

Angus Reid - Vancouver Province Bottom line, for any offence to work you need a strong and stable offensive line. For a variety of reasons this season, the Lions just haven’t been able to find that, especially on the stability front. Saturday’s game will mark the 8th different starting offensive line combination the team has gone to battle with. That also doesn’t include multiple mid- game adjustments due to injuries. This belief, coming from an ex-Lion O-Line guy, and Harris's statement about 250 yards in tonight's game, just don't work well together….something that's going to occur in this game..with the O-Line and Harris.

In football there is such a thing as a penalty for piling on. You have so been flagged…for piling on…with the bullish_t.

Isn't it funny how when you pronounce Wiecek's name out loud, you get the way we feel about some of his pieces?

Clair Voyance is his aunt, ( Voyance is pronounced like Beyonce.) (Same butt too.) She refuses to pick the Bombers to win.

Lawless does ask a lot of the zero day questions and I think the other voice must be Sir Paul. Not that I want to post in yet another "flagged" thread about complaints about complaints of the media - I think I'm beyawn that.

Agreed. Our complaining is what raised his game. and by our complaining you of course mean that his game picked up shortly after Mike O'Shea said in a half time interview that the team was playing too soft right? Methinks MOS told him to grow a set and run like a man and he listened. I thought my sarcasm was obvious. Hmm, it was to me, but then again, I had just gone in for my annual carsasm checkup. (next week I go in for a dyslexia over go)

actually there was hardly any pressure on willy on that play. It looked like he made up his mind to throw it there before the ball was snapped. He didn't even look if his receiver was open before throwing it and he barely even looked long enough to know where his receiver was or how well covered he was, so it's no surprise the throw wasn't even close and the ball was easily picked off. Gift to the riders through a brain dead play from willy from top to bottom. Before the ball even left his hand I was screaming nooooooooo. You're going to have to look at the play again. Willy did know where he was going, he knew the play, he just under threw it. Why? Willy was slightly off balance because he was being pressured from the left side (slightly) but more so, pressured by Terrell Maze who was blitzing. On that play, Grigsby had already picked up another rusher, so Maze was free. If Willy planted better, his throw would have had more force. And you're in error about Denmark. When a receiver is partly into his route, he may not look open, but when the ball is thrown correctly, they run under it and make the catch. Such is the case here. Unfortunately, Kelly was crossing, open, over the middle, twelve yards deep and easily would have had twenty yards. Ah, hindsight.

I'm going to celebrate with a coffee and a Danish.

Coach O'Shea, in his presser, was talking about injuries being tough on the players who get injured…Durant, Lulay and Anderson. It's pretty tough on Zach because he loves playing football, and now he can't. "It's always about the player" I know we all feel bad about injuries of this sort, but I can't imagine what the players feel. Real tough. Mosely and Booker will alternate in Anderson's place. O'Shea also addressed the penalty issues we had last game and told us they now have a flogging room. I think he was kidding. We were the least penalized team..we may be #2 now. Actually, day zero as they call it, is a non practice day but the players do come in and the first thing they do, as a group is review the penalties..in front of their teammates. That's the flogging. Renaud was punting…not in game shape…won't be in on Sat. O'Shea was asked how he draws up the practice schedules and how many etc. and he gave a nice explanation stating that when they 1st got their schedule, he basically drew it up then, based on days between games, prior opponent, future opponent, where we're at in the season. On the question of they only have two practices sometimes, he answered…that he maintains "fresh is best" - keeping guys physically ready to go that "allows the guys to do their jobs." Works under the adage that "when you're tired, the 1st thing to go is your head" "Physical exhaustion leads to more mental mistakes" More classroom work because the type of practice they run is high tempo, they want them to practice at an extremely high level - by design. So they give them more classroom time for more focus and a little more rest. Day zero is set aside for this…penalty review, as a team, then they do special teams, then they go their own way, or under the coaches…walkthroughs, film review, game planning..pretty interesting stuff. Somebody asked Kuale if he has to dial it down to avoid penalties and he replied he has to dial it up. Coach O'Shea replied it's good as long as it's between the whistles. He doesn't want to bridle a guy or hold him back because the has to play a certain way to be effective…. So much for benching him. By this conversation and yesterday's, I found that MOS stands firmly behind Kuale and most fully and completely, behind Etcheverry. "They are still going for it all, and the best is yet to come." Gotta believe.

Glenn, naturally, gets the start. The Vancouver Province calls Glenn's work - inconsistent and careless. But, now that Lulay has been erased from the scene, for who knows how long, does that translate into Glenn finally getting that big contract as a starter? Buono's got some thinking to do. Ironic that Lulay was the answer to an injury-familiar QB named Buck Pierce…. It's been reported the BC has the #1 defence in Yards per game against. Bombers, in their only meeting so far - 250 yards passing and (close your eyes) 50 yards rushing (Grigsby 19 yds. on 15 carries) We did hold the Lions to 100 yards rushing (Harris 8 carries for 38 yds. - Logan 8 carries for 32 yds.) And, we did get 6 sacks that game. (from 6 different players) And speaking of the Bombers, didn't they look fabulous in those uniforms last week? Now the reason we did well against BC reflects directly on their offensive line and according to the Province they still have grave concerns as to the actual lineup. Mike Benevides confirmed the club will pull Jermarcus Hardrick off the six-game injured list to play left tackle, which is a fairly strong indictment against Cory Brandon, who was available for practice Wednesday. It also appears as if Kirby Fabien will be replaced by Cam Thorn, a second-year non-import who may well get a chance to be worked in at centre, another indictment of some degree of Matt Norman. Against Ottawa, the Lions effectively started two left-side rookies in Cory Brandon and Kirby Fabien, with sophomore centre Matt Norman and Cory Husband, who had not started a game in two seasons, at right guard. Nobody excelled. Even right tackle Jovan Olafioye was responsible for a safety. Manny Arceneaux had suffered a finger injury serious enough to get x-rays but they revealed nothing and unless it swells badly, he'll play. Mike Benevides is trying to act somewhat stoic what with these events including Lulay, and simply says,"we're gonna go win". To that I say…..That's absolulay ridiculous.

Iso, no offence, but I don't want you speaking on behalf of Kyle Walters.

Like conspiracies do you? If it's all you got stick with it. No, I'm not into conspiracies at all, unless it involves a movie, then I'm interested. It's is a curious fact and that is all. Penalties called or not called are very irritating but all officials have a very tough job and will never be absolved no matter which way the call is made. It still doesn't change the fact that a team, that gets called for holds more than anybody, as per your information, suddenly has no holding calls. And that's all I said.