GCn20

Ottawa is barely solvent. They had Desjardins doing cut throat contracts for the past few years now. They are not getting in a bidding war for anyone. Toronto...maybe...but for significantly cheaper I think they go Masoli.

Personally, I love it when Suitor pumps their tires in a win and makes excuses for them in a loss. It helps keep the delusions alive in Riderville and it makes it hurt more when we beat them for the umpteenth time in a row in the playoffs. That's when the reality sets in, and I like reality to set in at the same time as the pain for them.

Maybe he was asked what the RIders have to do to get out of the West this year. If so, he was just answering honestly.

I guess we will agree to disagree but I won't be a ****** about it. If you choose to continue to be one all the power to you. Hope whatever is bothering you gets resolved. I think it's absolutely laughable that you think losing Stove represents a giant shift in our defence. He is one guy....you are overselling this to the nth degree. I've played football, coached it for many, many, years and watched it the last 50 years of my life and am yet to see in all my years a team lose a stellar defence because a DT left town.

He probably learned to pee at some point I would think. However, as with all PED users, the question isn't can he pass several tests in a row it's whether he can pass them all, all the time. Maybe AC quit juicing, most guys who get caught probably do, but the impact of doing so will be seen this coming year more than it would have been last year. There is still residual benefit to juicing for a while after you stop and AC had that for the remainder of 2021. Will he be the same guy in 2022? Hard to say. At the risk of getting flamed badly, Harris was not the same guy in 2021 as he was in 2019. That could be age of course, but maybe his lack of supplements was part of the equation too. We didn't see a massive drop off in his ability to play the game but we sure saw him struggle with injury and a lot of guys juice not to build muscle but because it really speeds up healing.

True...but if they are re-signing them it kind of indicates they aren't trying too hard to do so.

I guess the Hall defence must have been horrible in the games that Richardson missed? I think your memory is a little cloudy. Pick one stat and yell it from the roof tops if you want to do so but we weren't involved in any high scoring games where the offence bailed us out. If opponents averaged 7 ypc against us when Stove was down does it matter at all? Not sure why you are banging this drum so loudly? We averaged less than 13pts a game scored against us and less than 5 pts per game in the 2nd half without Stove. He is not a must sign. We did just fine without him. I want Stove back as badly as anyone, but I'm not going to give into the premise that losing him would be problematic. I hope we can get him at a fair salary and that he is here. If we don't then it's on to the next guy and our defence will still be elite providing we don't lose Biggie, BA, and too many from our secondary as well.

Of course it's click bait. That pretty much describes 95% of today's media unfortunately. Oh geez....what now? Can this get any worse at this point. I suppose it could but I wish people would just get jabbed so that we could put this epic fiasco behind us. All this pandemic has shown is just how unprepared the world was for a pandemic.

Hey, I'm sure you've seen the worst of the worst as an addictions counsellor. I would be jaded too if I were you.

Collaros would be a huge loss and it would be tougher to win without him, but it's certainly doable. Heck we just about got there with Nichols.

If you think that getting a 100 yards average on the ground against us with a depleted LBer crew is damaging you are wrong. We gave teams the run so that they couldn't pass or score on us. I mean you say we got gashed on the run but the difference between Stove in the lineup and Stove out of the lineup was 30 yards rushing per game. Insignificant really and even less so when you factor in that the CFL is a PASSING game, and in Stove's absence we were the number one defence defending the pass in just about every category but most importantly a HISTORIC low for points scored against us. I'm not saying Stove is easy to replace, all I am saying is that he is the easiest to replace without hampering our pass defence and that is our bread and butter. Could we find lightning in the bottle and find two all star level DBs again this year....maybe but even with our excellent recruitment I wouldn't take that chance. We've lost Alford already and losing Rose or Alexander would be devastating. What? You are suggesting we go to a 5 man front without Stove? Didn't happen when he was out this year and won't happen now if we lose him. I am unclear where you even get that idea from? I don't want to lose Stove he's a helluva player but you are way overselling him. Our defence would be just fine without him if it comes to that.

I recall being 8-1 before RIchardson came back too. Can't play that card.

Based on your previous comments regarding marijuana, I don't think you would. Seems to me your mind is made up, Exactly. One does not have to go all communist and dictate mandatory vaccinations. A far more effective tool is to make non vaccination so inconvenient and costly that the choice to get vaccinated becomes the obvious one.

When was the last time you remember us having crappy DTs? I can remember very clearly when the last time we had a crappy secondary was. Winston Rose's do not grow on trees. We are only 3 years removed from Kevin Fogg being our shut down corner. Let's not forget that.

No thanks to Judge. Besides being a bit of a wingnut he is overpaid for his production. I wouldn't want him in our locker room. Richardson is an asset for sure. However, we have a TON of assets we need to sign and he quite frankly is probably the most expendable of what will be our big ticket D items. If he wants to stay on the low side of market value I'm all for it, but I don't think we can realistically afford him without potentially losing a player that would be a far greater loss. Can we lose Rose? That would be a much bigger problem...could we lose Biggie? Our defence would take a huge hit. Can we lose BA....our middle would be suspect. Can we lose Richardson? We give up 30 yards a game more in rushing and little to no difference in points against. Just saying. I'm not trying to dump on RIchardson but his loss, IF we have to lose someone, represents the least problems.

Defence is a team game, and a team net sum. I could honestly care less how many rushing yards we gave up in an 8 game span we were surrendering less than 15 points per game and a mind boggling 2nd half defence efficiency of less than a TD surrendered. I guess if you wanna pick a number and blame one guy in a 12 man group for that number being less than stellar than sure....have at it....Sayles sucks. But that is a pretty narrow view that lacks a lot of context imo. I am not suggesting Stove isn't the better DT, he is, but guys are trying to lobby pretty hard that there was something wrong with our defence when he wasn't in the lineup and I think that is some pretty revisionist history. I will take a defence that averages less 13 points per game surrendered, and just over 5 pts average in the 2nd half, and surrenders a 100 yards rushing on average every day, and twice on Sunday. We're really splitting hairs when we are calling any part of probably the most stifling defence in the modern era as being problematic, and it is especially insane to suggest that the fault lies at one players feet over an 8 game span. I really strongly believe that our defence allowed teams a bit of rushing in order to prevent the pass, and to limit scoring. The score sheet I think strongly indicates that whether intentional or not this definitely was the case. People are speculating about the potential impact of losing Stove. My opinion is that for half the season we were without him and our defence was stellar. That's the bottom line imo. There are other guys yet to be signed that I am not as confident we could afford to lose

They gashed us with DJ Foster one game and John White the other. John White was on a couple long runs but through the middle and DJ Foster was consistently going around the tackle and running into the flat. Briggs had a real tough game that day. What is lost in the stats was the first game where White gashed us we were running our LBers a lot in the secondary to shut down MBT which we did with great success. Sometimes you gotta give up something to gain more back. In that first game White gashed us for around 150 yards, with over half that total coming on two long runs. We bet they couldn't beat us by running and the fact we surrendered 6 points that game proves that our allowing them some room to run to shut down the passing game was a smart decision. Sometimes context is important and when people criticize our run stop they need to remember that our defence was amazing overall even without Richardson helping to limit the ground game. Even in the loss to the Argos, they ran about 75% of their offensive runs AND passes to the flat where Briggs was and we just didn't adapt well to it at all., I believe along with missing our WIL we were also short that same side half back that game and it was a disaster.

We weren't dead last but it was an issue. However, this was compounded by two really poor games against Toronto early in the season. They ran the rock at will against us and it really wasn't on Sayles. They were picking heavily on Jessie Briggs who was in at WIL those two games. When Rocquemore came back and replaced Briggs, Gauthier, and Brown at WIL our run defence signficantly improved even though Sayles was still starting. I would say the combination of the loss of Stove AND the rotating door at WIL and SAM early in the season were the factors that led to our run defence being poor over the first 6 games.

I don't think there is as big a difference between Stove and Sayles as you might think. Nevis was head and shoulders better against the run than Stove in his rookie year. Run stopping is usually the last thing a rookie DT becomes good at. There is a very real trajectory of run stopping improvement that Sayles underwent in 2021. His first few starts the Bombers got gashed pretty bad but after that the stats showed significant improvements over his final few starts against some very tough running backs. IF Sayles show improvement from year one to year two like Stove did than I don't expect much drop off at all. However, the best case scenario would be that we re-sign Stove...definitely.

Remember when losing Marcus Sayles and Winston Rose was going to cripple our secondary. In comes Nichols and Alford and we don't even remember Sayles anymore. My point is that I am ultra confident in our recruiting after witnessing the talent that is being unearthed the last several years in our secondary. I'm not so sure that run stop is all that big of a deal, nor was it bad in the first 9 games of 2021 before Stove came back.

I can live with losing Stove. We seem to do just fine in our recruiting of DTs. A lot of people were upset at the loss of Nevis before last year and Stove stepped up without missing a beat. Sayles was a rookie last year and played excellent and I expect that in year 2 he would be even better, and he was neck and neck with Stove already.

If a slug like Lenius can get an NFL contract then a stud like Alford was almost certain to get one too. Luckily, secondary won't be an issue for us. We are deep there and have the best recruiting in the CFL for DBs.

Booch is right and that was highly reported at the time as well. He wanted starter money to come back and had just over one game of playing time. He looked very, very good though and part of me still wonders if we didnt let a future HOFer walk off into the sunset.

In the North, availability of vaccine to 5-11 year olds has been very poor. It was supposed to run through the schools after Xmas break for much of the North but now kids are at home. Don't presume this is an issue with parents choosing not to get their kids vaccinated, it is a systemic problem right now in many of the rural areas. My son was to get his first shot this week through his school but that has been cancelled. I called for an appointment for him and was given a date 3 weeks later. (Called inbetween Xmas and New Years).

I don't think anyone said he didn't.