GCn20

I think he succeeded. Hey, if O'Day can be that easily swayed off of a superior candidate by a sales pitch (because that's what a 1-2 hour interview is) then right on for us. They will suck for the next 3 years.

Mitchell Blair tweeted that as of yesterday morning the word in all the insiders was their was basically confirmation it would be Buck with a presser to come today to announce it. We now have 3 known media insiders that are fairly reliabe suggesting Buck may have walked away, or been lured back by the Bombers. Then we have Stronson, who is a self claimed Rider insider with an atrocious record or being correct claiming Mace was the guy all along. Who to believe....who to believe. Sure is sounding more and more like Buck walked away. Numerous media reports now from some pretty good reporters suggesting that the Bombers lured him back. We may never know for sure, and I was a bit hesitant before in believing that entirely, but now some real heavyweight CFL reporters are all in lockstep on this.

I agree. I have my opinion others have theirs and I don't think anyone is convincing anyone else of anything at this point.

Nah. MOS was widely known to be 10x the leader of men that Mace is. Mace is a good coach don't get me wrong, but anyone with a set of eyeballs could see MOS was the top choice. In this latest competition I don't think many would have considered Mace the top choice.

If they didn't then they are idiots. If they did and didn't get him then they are losers. I mean let's break it down. What could Buck offer them? Well, he instantly brings the gold standard in culture reset to the Riders. This is probably more than anything what they need. He brings a top notch offensive system that features the strongest run game and red zone attack in the CFL, Dru Brown (probably) to solidify their QBing for the next few years, (if rumors are true), an ability to fix a brutal OL., Jordan Younger who could abosolutely transform their putrid pass defence, and Buck is another coach that guys would run through walls for. For these reasons I find it pretty unbelievable that the Riders would pass that up, I mean it's possible that O'Day could not see that because he is not a particularly good GM but it is far more likely that he went with Mace because he was uncomfortable with the planned changes by Buck at QB.

At the end of the day, we all know Buck was by far and away their best bet. IMO, this was more a matter of Buck interviewing the Riders than the other way around.

Maybe. Hard to say. All depends on whether or not a GM is going to actually let him carry out his plan with the players/type of players he wants. Seems to me that at the end of the day something with the Riders broke down, I would wager big that it was O'Day and Buck not being on the same wavelength in respect to roster/roster priorities/ player retention/types of players to recruit. I am sure Buck wanted to carry FIFO over to the Riders, and a team first approach to player recruitment/retention just doesn't seem like something O'Day values very highly. He is like Joe Mack, he likes to bring in the skilled guys with sketchy characters and hope they change. It's a losing approach as we all found out. O'Day, like Mack, just can't keep his eyes of the shiny baubles no matter how toxic they might be.

Rider Stronson lmao. That is about as authoritative as talking to Gainer the Gopher. They lick his boots over there and tend to completely ignore that he is wrong on his insider info about 80% of the time.

I agree Pierce, and to a lesser extent Mace, are both very solid up and coming coaches in this league. That's the pool to choose from.

For sure. Contract negs have to be very taxing on these guys and getting a deal done a huge relief.

Pretty much every connected media person in-the-know had said so. I'm not buying that Mace was necessarily their first choice. I think Buck was with conditions attached by O'Day that ultimately Buck couldn't get behind. Buck is happy here though and if you read his interview from last year when he turned down Ottawa, it is very clear he is in no rush, The situation for him to go to HC has to be just right and there would be nothing he would love more than being HC here. We all know that. I agree that the media is notoriously unreliable, but in this case everyone seemed to be in agreement on what they were hearing...and that is rare. I do agree that the HC in waiting angle by Ball seems like a long shot though.

There was a tweet yesterday by a Rider media person that Buck was the choice and that the Bombers were making a pitch to keep him by promising him HC in waiting. It was pulled down an hour later but there are screenshots of it online. My personal belief is that Buck wanted Brown, and O'Day was squeamish to stake his job on a rookie starter.

I feel that in the end O'Day was not comfortable with Buck's plan to scrap Harris and go with Brown. Stronson can scream from the rooftops that Pierce loved Harris, but that is just purely spin and meat shielding Mace for agreeing to go with Harris to get the job. Buck would have brought Brown to the Riders with him. He LOVES Brown and Brown looks to be ready. Any noise about Buck doing cartwheels over a 38 year old has been coming off an achilles injury is just absolute nonsense, and quite frankly an insult to everyone's intelligence.

Problem is for them they need OTs and those are very tough to find these days. NFL hords them like they are a leprechaun protecting their pot of gold. If you believe that nonsense from Stronson then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Buck never said a public word to anybody about Harris. Purely Riderfan fiction. I can bet big dollars Buck's plan was to bring Brown with him, and at the end of the day O'Day was the one betting on Harris by hiring Mace. This will likely cost O'Day his job after this year.

Our O basically stopped using Brady in the 2nd half, and we had 3 drives into the red zone resulting in ZERO points. That's basically what lost us this game. BC was in max protection for most of the game and we were still dialling up blitzes. Hall and Buck were outcoached. LMAO. I will give you the same challenge as SpeedFlex. Show me one instance, one indicator in the footage that shows our defence being gassed. I've watched it 4x and do not see any indication of it. In fact I was very impressed with the motor of Jeffcoat and Jefferson still at the end.

Then you haven't read every post. There were people on here suggesting that Walters either dictates roster usage to MOS or fire him.

You seem OK with our QB and running back turning the ball over 3x in the red zone, you seem OK with our coordinators calling an atrocious game. Sounds pretty frikken stupid right....I am not ok with us aging out. I just have seen no proof of that happening yet, I haven't seen us losing anything year to year either. Our last 2 years we have been pretty dominant imo.

Please tell me where you saw any of our guys out of gas in the GC. I didn't see it and I watched the game 4 times. High motor right till the end is what I saw. You can go back and look and if you see one guy with his hands on his hips or showing signs of fatigue let me know and I will rewatch it for a 5th time.

That's weird because we ranked 2nd overall in sacks and QB pressures, and tops in the league in passing yardage against. Your argument does not hold up to the stats. Obtuse....not at all. Was roster management a problem in our defensive decimation of BC in the WF? What was different that game do you suppose? Was it in 14 out of 18 games this year. No. Obtuse...you are the one being obtuse by measuring roster management impact solely on 5 out of 20 games. Look at the whole damn picture before you call me obtuse. Our defence led the league all year in just about every meaningful category despite the roster management. So if it was that problematic...I'm just not sure where that showed up. Look, I'm not defending the roster management quirks of MOS. I'd love to see him change that. However, I'm not ready to run him out of town with a pitch fork either. It's odd roster usage but minimally damaging imo and it is being vastly oversold here as some kind of huge problem.

That's not grinding tho. That's doing your job. If you are going 2 and out as you should, then your defence is fresh as a daisy all game long without needing a huge rotation and roster management is a moot point. That's what I'm getting at. The games we lost this year is because of one of two reasons, our offence was going 2 and out, and our defence was allowing long drives. Sometimes it was both. Did not having fresh bodies complicate things...yea....I have never suggested it didn't however only after we shat the bed.

Who grinds out wins on defence? We grind out wins on offence or we are probably not going to win regardless of lineup. The biggest part of a defence getting tired late in the game is because they were on the field longer than they should have been, meaning they are not playing well. It is my belief that if we win TOP, as we should with our offence more times than not, and our defence is playing to their level that roster management is a completely moot point. If we are in trouble because the defence is getting gassed the game was lost even before that.

Yea..it's kind of strange for sure.

It's actually true. Only the 46 man goes on the cup.

Right? I hated that Grey Cup loss as much as anyone but we lost that game a heckuva lot more than the Als won it with the roster, depth, and age that we dressed. I firmly believe that 95 times out of a hundred the roster we dressed and played that day wins that game. No one will ever convince me otherwise. The keys to victory that I stated somewhere in the week before the game were. 1. Protect the football - FAILED 2. Score when the opportunity is there against their tough defence. FAILED 3. Don't let Fajardo get flukey. FAILED. (and yes, I do very much believe there were a number of over thrown and under thrown balls that if our DB has proper position would have been incomplete or intercepted.)

At no point did I say it wasnt. I stated that it was way, way down the list of reasons why we lost and I stand by that. FACT: That was a winnable game with the roster we had dressed. FACT: Our own mistakes cost us that game. FACT: Buck and RIchie Hall did not have very good game plans. FACT: 3 red zone turnovers took a potential 21 points, and a guaranteed 9 points off the board that would have secured us victory easily. When you add all that up, where does roster management stand in all of that. Very low in the order of importance. It would be different if the Jeffs looked gassed, or Biggie was completely ineffectual, or we were not able to drive on the ALs...which we did...just turnovers cost us points. However, we did all that and made some key mental and ball security mistakes and it cost us the game. I get that some of you guys really want to pin this on the roster management boogeyman that we have been hearing ad nauseum about all year, but it simply was not the case in the Grey Cup. A very small contributing factor....MAYBE...can not even say that for sure. What I can tell you for sure is that when you turn the ball over 3 times in the red zone against a D like the ALs...you stand a very good chance of losing that game and we did. Not sure why everyone is so myopically fixed on the whole roster management thing that you are forgetting football 101.