AKAChip

This league is already extremely veteran heavy. Most teams will start more than enough veterans even without this rule. It’s just stupid that a guy may get a spot solely because he’s a veteran. If that comes into play even once, it’s a stupid rule.

Let’s make it harder for young players to break into the league than it already is.

Brutal

Nice to see Streveler showing up to rookie camp to get those reps in.

He's already their best player.

That Eli signing is absolutely huge. Not sure why more aren’t talking about it.

Good lord, no. L’Damien Washington was one of the worst receivers we’ve given a legit chance in a long time.

He did nothing in preseason either. He’s the classic big and stiff receiver we’ve brought in a thousand times in the Walters regime.

Outside of the 80 yard TD, Washington was extremely underwhelming last season. Nelson was far better in his one game than Washington was in three. Granted, Nichols couldn't hit a deep threat to save his life last season and relied on the slot guys so it is difficult to fully judge him based on last season's sample but he was very unimpressive.

Rose-Sayles-Jones-Alexander-Humes Wilson-Bighill-Fenner Jefferson-Nevis-Bryant-Jeffcoat Bryant-Neufeld-Couture-Gray-Hardrick Matthews Nelson Demski Wolitarsky Adams Nichols Harris

Mitchell is the slot receiver we’ve needed for years. He’s tremendous.

Lol this is the diplomatic version of “he sucks”

He’s 32 coming off major injury when he was already in decline before he missed pretty much an entire season.

Tee Martin and his receivers were both terrible. Don’t feel bad for Tee. He did just as much to screw his career by being bad as any receiver did.

Elimimian and Arceneaux are both almost certainly done. Hughes, I’ll believe he’s still good until he shows otherwise. I don’t really get this move from O’Day. The Riders are going to be really bad this season and even Elimimian of 2015 wouldn’t change that.

Seeing the state of QBing in the league right now it’s no wonder.

Continuing to play a badly struggling QB is an even bigger recipe for losing than playing a raw rookie. I’m not saying Streveler is Ray but rookie QBs have won before and with the rest of the team being largely dominant, it’s not like he’d have to play hero ball to succeed. In fact, that even with a dominant team at pretty much every other position we couldn’t get out of the West is as big an indictment of Nichols (and Lapo) than anything else. Of course, Calgary as a very good team but Nichols essentially needed to be merely average to give the Bombers a chance to win and he couldn’t even be that. Streveler didn’t have to light the world on fire to be an improvement. Especially when the main concern with rookie QBs is turnovers and Nichols was turning it over at a rate as bad as any non-Jennings QB.

I think the logical thing to do if your QB is either too injured or too bad to not completely blow games by throwing the ball to the opposing defensive line is not to completely neuter your playbook but rather staple him to the bench and give a QB with some confidence at least a couple of games. The stubbornness with Nichols absolutely cost the Bombers at least two wins last season.

No QB is as good throwing to scrubs as he is throwing to great receivers. It doesn’t make him any less great.

Reilly is quite a bit better than BLM but they are both the only above average QBs in the CFL at this moment in time. Those who think Reilly is overrated are either jealous that we haven’t had a QB of his caliber since the 80s or just hate his stupid hat.

Unpopular opinion but Mack is an infinitely better CFL GM than Taman.

There is no chance he could hook up deep with Banks consistently enough and Banks would go ballistic.

That was long enough ago that in my mind he has to show that last season wasn’t an anomaly at this point. I’m not sure he deserves the benefit of the doubt when there is a promising QB behind him.

Has Nichols proved we can win with him when it counts? He has exactly one playoff win and he “beat” a Rider team without its QB and put up largely terrible numbers. Harris just took over the game. The following week he played terrible again, it was just against a team that was actually good so the rest of the team couldn’t overcome it. Nichols gets a ton of slack for a season and a half of good play. We’re very, very lucky to have the roster we have right now but it isn’t going to last forever.

I’m not convinced that Streveler is a sure fire great player in this league. He’s promising, but we’ve been burned too many times before. What I am certain of, is that it will be extremely difficult to win a cup with Nichols and his extreme limitations. Yes, teams have won with game managing QBs before (Crandell comes to mind immediately) but it puts us at a major disadvantage. And while the rest of our roster is strong, it’s not head and shoulders the best in the league which would lighten the pressure on him. Our receivers in particular aren’t dominant enough as of right now to make his job easier. I’m certainly not convinced Nichols is even league average at reading a defence. And his inability to do anything under pressure is close to bottom of the league.