GCn20

Nothing is as clear cut as TB would like to pretend it is. He won't acknowledge that their is inherent risk to letting that ball fall to the ground.

Totally agree. However, with Montreal's defence stacking the box is what they felt worked best yesterday because of the conditions. Hard to argue that as we had trouble getting traction against it early in the game. We went away from Brady because their defence dictated that we go elsewhere with the ball to be high efficiency. They trusted their bend and don't break to hold us to FGs and for the most part it did.

You are not wrong. It's been that way for 50 years now.

Thing is that in order for a RB to be a clean 1v1 in the gap in a loaded box means that every OL has executed his blocking assignment perfectly. That is unrealistic to expect and those 1v1s are often impeded and then it is big advantage to the defence. There is a reason teams stack the box against the run. It's because it's effective. When a D is doing that the smart play is to pass against them and force them out of the box. We just weren't consistent enough in our air attack in the first half. In the 2nd half we got some traction in the passing game and the box loosened somewhat.

Especially in the West. Both teams that may challenge us are deeply flawed and exploitable in their overall team build. A GC against Montreal and Toronto is still a very winnable game but it will take as you described.

Riders stadium is not a great viewing or fan experience. Too far from the field imo.

Not particularly worried about either of them. Both have soft as butter defences. We just need to do our thing and we should be fine. The real GC challenge will come out of the East where Montreal and Toronto can match defences with us. Toronto seems to have gotten their stuff together now, and have a very deep and talented roster. Should be a slobber knocker in the East.

I would have liked to see Pinball, but I think he tarnished his image with the whole Kelly debacle. Wade would be the best choice they could make imo, IF he's interested and I'm not sure he is.

There were at least two games I saw on TV where the stadium looked half full.

I don't know what's going on over there, but there attendance has been mediocre at best this year, a year they were actually competitive. Heard rumblings of the club price gouging and charging ridiculous fees on top of ticket price. Not sure tho. Fair weather fans imo.

Yep. they couldn't beat Calgary yesterday and had a very Toronto-esque crowd watching.

It matters. As an elite running team you may have occasional success against a loaded box, but for the most part they are giving you the pass to stop the run and any OC with half a noodle in his head is going to call the game that way. BO wasn't running a lot because Montreal loaded up the box and dared us to beat them with passing on a windy and cold day. If I am going to pick apart any part of Buck's play calling it wouldn't be his lack of using BO, it would be for not taking a few deep shots earlier or using some sweeps and throws to the flats in the game to open up the run by forcing Montreal to abandon the D game plan of loading the box. For BO to get touches yesterday we needed to force the defence to spread out and we didn't do that until the 3rd Q.

Yes it is the same thing. We had 2-3 plays in the game yesterday where if players make the right read/decision they are punting instead of scoring. You are just purposely CHOOSING to ignore the first 57 minutes of a 60 minute game because it doesn't suit your argument. Part of every loss EVER is the opposition making mistakes at wrong time. You keep putting up the 61 yard FG as one such mistake when every KR ever is coached to field a short FG because they often take extremely unpredictable bounces and are a live ball.

If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle. You could literally take every football game decided by one score ever played and what if each team to a 10 point victory on 2-3 plays. Every what if you trot out a Bomber fan can do the same and argue we should have been up by 4-7 points.

Tough to demonstrate dominance in a 30 front.

Both Montreal and Toronto have very good teams and depth.

All teams have the same problem vs Montreal hence their record this year. It's what Montreal does very well. How so? Montreal's record over the past season and a half speaks for itself, as does Toronto's with the sex offender under centre.

If it bounces backwards, as many kickoffs do, they are pinned inside their 10.

Montreal has a good team. Full stop. We went into a very tough place to win, and won. It was a road game against the league leading defending Champs. Not sure why anyone would think this win would or should be pretty, or why one would lose confidence in our team because of it? Against a very good Noel Thorpe defence in a cold weather windy game. This was prototypical fall weather CFL football.

Not as bad a look as being a sex offender. If Kelly was even a little bit willing to quit acting like the pond scum that he is, I might be more inclined to not want to treat him like pond scum. I really have no use for the guy, and really wish the CFL would have had the balls to stand behind it's violence against women stance and get rid of him. Had he been on any other team they may have. Read the room here. Hoping a perv like Kelly gets his just desserts is not the bad look around here that you think it is.

Comparing eras to each other is a fool's game. One has to look at the dominance within their own era to determine all-time ranking. It would be ridiculous to suggest that any athlete from the 80's/90's would excel in the current era if they had a time machine. However, given the benefit of the advances we've seen in training, physio, etc. etc. I believe a guy like Flutie or Gretzky would be equally as dominant coming up through their development with the same massive advantages. You are exactly right. Put the best hockey players in the world now into 70's era hockey skates and sticks etc and watch how they fare too.

Sure...that could be said about many QBs. When they are playing the top of their game they are playing like an MOP. What makes an MOP is consistently doing that. As for Kelly getting what he deserves, too bad. Exactly. If HOF was awarded for the first year and a half of a QBs career then Casey Printers and Jon Jennings would be shoe-ins as well. Offensive risk taking philosophies were night and day to what they are now. QBs were not only allowed to, but offences asked them to, throw balls that would get them benched now.

Prep is on the players. I'm not going to defend Hall's defensive play calling in last year's GC. It was bad. However, we had guys simply blow coverages at key moments, and ZC making errant throws and that is NOT on coaching...ever.

It was a factor in our losses for sure. The only factor? Nope. There were multiple reasons we lost that game and most of them were not on the coaching. My objection is that you guys say that with better coaching we would have won...and it's only partially true..we also needed about a half dozen brain cramps, busted coverages, and poor QB decisions, back as well. Had we played a clean game up to the level of our lineup we had it's quite possible that roster usage may not have mattered

One could easily argue that because you are trying to compare two different eras of QBing. Compare Kelly to his peers, and compare Flutie to his and then you will grasp what people are saying about Kelly. Kelly has won exactly zero championships and stats wise was the 2nd best QB last year, and is very average in comparison to his peers stats wise this year. No one here is saying that Kelly isn't a good QB, but he is absolutely no shoe in for the HOF either.