AKAChip

And yet Jennings is exponentially worse.

Even after all these years, Rod is still confused about how penalty yardage works.

That’s the third time in 5 minutes that Rod has mentioned that Pipkin hasn’t played since game one and was knocked out due to an ankle injury.

It certainly feels like Rod Black gets stupider every week.

In similar news, Arceneaux looks exactly as done as we all expected.

Nichols has far more weapons and still looks worse, I completely agree but I’m far from sold on Fajardo. Maybe he ends up being legit and just needed to get an extended chance in the right system but he still has a longer history of being bad than good. We’ll see. Either way, he’s still young enough that he has the chance to end up being good, while Nichols isn’t getting any better than he is now.

Says more about Nichols than it does Fajardo. Neither are particularly good options.

The HC makes the final call on QB changes. Sure, I want my HC to grant autonomy to their OC so they aren’t neutered but while the playcalling fiascos are solely on Lapo, pulling Nichols when he’s struggling is O’Shea’s responsibility.

In game because the QB was struggling? Franklin, Fajardo, MBT, Adams and Jennings have all been pulled mid-game. All very bad QBs, sure but it’s not like this doesn’t happen. And that’s not even covering all the reps Streveler logically should have had in massive blowouts but didn’t.

O’Shea is a good coach. Not flawless but who is? His special teams are always excellent. When is the last time we were called for a no yards? And we have maybe two illegal block calls on returns this year? His teams are always well disciplined. He struggles with roster management and his handling of the QB situation is poor but I’ll take it given he’s still the best coach we’ve had since the early 90s.

Bighill is at the age where a player can fall off a cliff at any moment. He has been poor and fairly invisible all season. There’s time to turn it around but Wilson was much better in the games Bighill missed.

The first part has nearly happened to this team so many times, is it really a surprise? The Edmonton game was almost a carbon copy. It’s no coincidence.

With a league this week, every game doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Losing to this Argos team is unacceptable on a number of levels but better to happen in August than November.

I don’t want to create something that isn’t there and maybe it’s completely meaningless, I just find it odd.

The thing that’s the most telling is that we do often have games where Streveler plays a reasonable number of snaps. They also usually are the games where Nichols is in a groove and playing reasonably well. He gets almost nothing in games where Nichols is struggling.

This is the kind of thing you either live with when Nichols is your QB, or you have to make a change. He’s not suddenly going to become a different guy at this point in his career. He can have good games and is certainly capable but the fear always was that this team is too good at too many spots to leave it up to a QB who frequently isn’t good enough and will rarely, if ever put the team on his back. I don’t expect changes this season, and Lapo shares a ton of blame for this, but games like this will be an issue for as long as Nichols is the QB of the Bombers. And you have to hope he gets them out of the way when the games don’t really matter.

Argos are a better team with Burks in over Wilder. They’re still terrible but we’d be better off with Wilder in there.

Rios is apparently healthy and could come off the 6-game early. Certainly a better option than Leggett.

I’d give the PR guys first crack if Alexander is out for awhile. No need to panic, especially if he will be back by playoffs. We have the luxury of both depth and a fairly soft West division.

You can believe what you want to believe. Watch film of Matthews from his rookie season and last season, the two seasons he's had meaningful reps in the CFL. He largely succeeds when lined up outside and does not when lined up inside. Don't know what to tell you.

As a slotback, his poor agility renders him ineffective. He has literally never been an effective slotback in the CFL. He's been good to great at various points of his career, but only out wide.

I have a couple of thoughts on this. One, the CFL gameday roster is far too small to design your roster to account for possible injuries. Would it have been nice to have Matthews available for when Darvin went down? Absolutely, but even after the play of the receivers yesterday, I am confident that Lawler is a better slotback than Matthews ever will be. All of Matthews' success at the CFL level has been at the spot that Adams currently occupies, so you either play him at slot, where his relatively poor agility renders him fairly ineffective and wait until Darvin gets injured, or play him at the Wolitarsky spot, where he'll get maybe three balls a game. I also have absolutely no problem with O'Shea randomly sitting healthy guys as load management this season. The Bombers will cruise into a playoff spot easily and I'd rather not have guys heading into the playoffs heavily banged up. Harris is a big one who should probably sit against certain crappy east division teams late in the season. It just sucks we have Ottawa and Toronto out of the way after next week. It sucks to not be undefeated anymore but a road loss to Hamilton in week seven is fairly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

This season, there are so many terrible teams that every team has a relatively soft schedule. We're a third of the way through the season. Even if they blow out the argos and lose the following week to Calgary, it still isn't really a big deal. This team will make the playoffs easily and while the bye is important, almost nothing that happens in week seven and eight is going to impact anything in the playoffs.

I didn't see a physically dominated team. The defence was poor on the first possession but almost every other point the Ticats got was essentially handed to them on a silver platter. All five of the meaningful turnovers in that game were inexcusable, but that's mental error and not physical. The argument could be made that if Charles Nelson plays last night, we win even with Nichols having the exact same performance.

Darvin is obviously imperative to the success of this receiving group. He and to a lesser extent Lawler are the only guys who can both have the speed to get downfield at a reasonable rate AND have a chance in a jump ball scenario. Once Wolitarsky was out too, we essentially had no shot. Walker and Lucky are gadget players at this point in time and while I like Petermann, he thrives at most 10 yards beyond the LOS at this point in his career. I wholeheartedly disagree with Lapo not even calling anything to give these receivers a chance to make a play downfield but it was smurf show + Lawler by the end of the game.