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I've heard similar stories about Jonathan Toews. I like to give players the benefit of the doubt when I hear about bad fan interactions. Sometimes guys, young guys especially, don't realize how important it is to hide their bad days when dealing with fans.

That's what these guys here who profess to have played the game don't have a hot clue about when it comes to coaching. I suppose selfish, me first players might see it differently but they generally have very short careers. Guys who are truly professional and put the team first have no issues whatsoever with coaches that reward hard work and effort and it absolutely is key to building a winning culture. If you want to reward talent over character all the time you will have the Craig Dickenson RIders. A team full of me first guys that cannot win. Easy for us armchair coaches to sit back and say Player X is marginally more talented than Player Z and therefore that should be the only consideration, and that's why we are not professional coaches, because if that's your only consideration when making the lineup you will be the worst coach in CFL history. I coached for many years and had an open door policy with my players. Had hundreds of discussions with players about lineups and who was starting who wasn't. The overwhelming majority of concerns that players had if I was making a lineup wasn't about me dressing/starting a lesser talent. Quite the opposite, players would come to me and tell me so and so isn't working hard and his backup is busting his nuts, you should dress that guy instead. Players value other players putting in the work, and for the most part, their talent level is less important. That is as true a locker room statement as there is. Anyone saying different is either lying about being in a dressing room, or is oblivious and the guy that other players were saying should sit. Over the years I've had the opportunity to speak to a lot of JT's team mates. To a man they view him as their Rudy Reuttiger because he gives 100% all the time. That being said, he probably gets more reps than he should at this point in his career, but playing him is not as big an issue as some here make it out to be. He's a glue guy.

Let's not forget Dobson as well, and that's just one of a plethora of good young OL we have simply let go to market, while simultaneously over the past several years not drafting OL in the first round. This offseason we went scrap heaping with a fist full of dollars available. Makes no sense in a Grey Cup year. Before we even played one snap this year I was ready to take my pitch fork and try find Kyle Walters. Now I am just too sad to do so. Logan didn't really lose his job to Vaval so much as Vaval just took it from him when Logan was injured. Can't really blame the GM for that mistake, but at the end of the day a mistake is a mistake whether intentions were good or not.

Yea, all 3 were kind of duds. You lose Lawler you better bring in someone a heck of a lot better than Sterns/White/Mitchell. It's this kind of GMing that has cost us dearly this year. Over the past several years we have lost enormous amounts of top tier talent with B rate replacements signed to replace them. That has led us to this. Our complete lack of quality depth is also a big time issue. We haven't seen much in that regard since RIgmaiden left town.

Yea, there were two plays in a row that Mitchell, just half arsed his routes at a light jog, Frustrated? Doesn't matter. Unprofessional, and MOS and JJ let him have it. I would be shocked if we see him again, and this probably solves the 'mystery" of why he never saw the field much this year. It wasn't some bias by MOS as previously reported.

Don't forget a longer field, goal posts on the goal line, and a 25 yard end zone. All key elements to exciting football.

Don't forget the jet sweeps.

....or they could cut him. I can't see a universe where any team pays him 425k next year. None of his 3 year contract is guaranteed. He'll be gone before his bonus comes due imo. The guy outright sucked this year. If they try run it back with him and let Faj go they are complete idiots and deserve the 2 win season they will have. Cody has proven that Ford was completely inadequate by having a winning record with the same squad that Ford could only win one game with.

Yea....you looked it up and proved that MOS is onto something. Sitting back without context it appears to be a bad decision in theory. In actual practice you can't argue the results. Not just from the MOS led Bombers but overall. Yep. There are a lot of things we can question MOS about but this isn't one of them imo. I'll take wind in the 4th over first possession of the half 9/10 times. It's the smart play imo.

The guy hasn't played since last year. We are screaming up and down about what a goof it was to sign Dalton Schoen. Same thing really. I wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole right now when you factor in he is a wing nut. If we decide to move on from Zac, and I really don't see many better options, I would hope it isn't to sign him. Fajardo has led the Esks to the precipice of a playoff spot. Edmonton will lock him down. Ford is not the future there and they know it.

My bad. PTSD I guess. Thank goodness, I thought this place had gone off the deep end once and for all.

Yea...I'm sure. Lapo would have control of his QB. Collaros can easily play a ball control style. He doesn't like it, but he could. I can't even believe that anyone would even entertain the notion of bringing back Mike Kelly. This is just insanity. I couldn't care less about his perviness, the guy was an absolute disaster as a coach, an even worse GM, and single handedly destroyed our reputation and made us the laughing stock of the league. I would rather hire the Saskatchewan guy who likes to poop in Winnipeg planters than Kelly.

We have supplied Hamilton with serious upgrades in talent. Not a single bit of that has been from our cast offs though. Unless, you wanna call Lawler and Dobson castoffs which they most certainly are not. The rest of the players that have gone there have made little to no impact. Roster fillers and/or injured most of the season. Still banging the Garbutt/Fox drum and that is sad. They suck.....1 sack combined. Yep....that will win the cup for Hamilton. Really...honestly...you think Fox/Garbutt/Hubert/Wolitarsk (injured almost all year)/BOLO represent any kind of missed opportunity by the Bombers? That just shows your overwhelming bias against our coaches. Those guys aren't why we are losing. Lawler/Dobson....yep,,,they are big factors in our **** season. They ain't castoffs tho. They are gone due to poor GMing. Man, what could have been if Walters had done his job.

Agreed, IF the Bombers aren't the team to win it all then I hope it is the TiCats. Personally, I will cheer for the Bombers though and think that they could still get to the Cup. Got to be consistent though.

Yep...hence what we have seen this year. Not saying it's going to happen, just saying it's what needs to happen. I think we may have been a lot better off hiring Lapo over Hogan. Lapo love him or hate him, would not have continually tried to put a square peg in a round hole.

Context goes against the hate agenda here. Here is the ultimate context, we went 17-4 in that span. Poor coaching indeed. Obviously, MOS would rather have the choice of field in the 2nd half vs getting the ball for one possession but that runs against the narrative here where criticism rarely comes with context. Everything MOS bad....that's all we need to know. The teams who have made the choice to kickoff twice have won by an almost 3-1 margin. Yep that Oshea is dumb alright. Now we will hear the drivel of we won in spite of the bad decision, but the fact shows that coaches who have done so have been enormously successful when making this choice, not just OSH. Yet here we go, after Derek Taylor gives us the ONLY way to judge whether this decision is sound or not, and people are still beaking off calling it poor coaching? This forum has taken a leave of it's senses this year. Pitchforks are out and not a lot is making sense anymore. Just blind hate for everything. Sad really. Guys who know football around here and should know the decision to kickoff twice gives us the choice of wind are just completely disregarding that because it doesn't jive with their agenda and it has completely dumbed down the conversation around here. There is no balance whatsoever, just cherry picking out of context. Get used to it. It's not going to get any better. We have an almost cult of personality developing here.

Zach ain't what he used to be for sure, but his arm is not cooked. He needs help around him, play calling that makes sense, a coach that will reign him in, and a little more self awareness. He isn't MOP calibre anymore, but he is still capable of being a lot better than what he has shown this year. Gone are the days of Zach taking control of a game on a consistent basis, but he can certainly manage our games a lot better if we can create the right conditions. That being said, his salary needs to reflect that if we are going to bring him back. There is no reason in the world he can't re-invent himself like Harris and BLM have done if everyone comes to terms with the fact he has to do so, including himself.

Totally 100% agree. Not to mention that soups are probably one of the best mark ups in all of the restaurant business and is still an actual drawing card for many because very few people offer it anymore..

Well until you guys have owned a crime fighting Private investigator dog I wouldn't expect you to understand.

He is guilty of poor roster management for sure but the logic people are extending here to the effect of that is mind boggling. Instead of just looking at the real cause for our losses, that being talent and depth drain in the trenches, they would rather fantasize that we had the talent here all along but it was on the bench. The second biggest reason is that our best players made some big time mistakes in each of those games....but nah....if we had dressed Miles Fox that would have overcome that. SMH.

What obvious changes would have won any of those games. Show your work. To say add this guy and subtract that guy would have won is not provable in any way. We could have made those "obvious" changes and lost even worse. None of us can say otherwise. To say we definitely win if this guys starts and this guy sits is not fact, it's opinion, and one that couldn't be proven one way or another. In all of those Grey Cups I watched players that were indisputable to be in our lineup make mistakes that gave the other team points and momentum. Maybe we should have sat them too? That's an inconvenient truth in all of this. Last year we lost mainly because our 1st and 2nd string QBs were injured. We had nothing but ham n' eggers left to play or a QB trying to gut it out. Those were our options. Anyone thinking Dolegala comes off the bench to lead us to the Grey Cup against that defence is dreaming in technicolor. We had one shot and one shot only at victory, Zach Collaros being able to gut it out. He couldn't but that doesn't change the fact he was our only option at victory. As was Montreal the year before.....and it doesn't matter who we had rostered, it was always going to be that way. We didn't have the horses. The Montreal game it was a calamity of errors by some of our best players that cost us victory not roster usage. Last year we simply could not compete with them in the trenches no matter who we dressed. 2022, again, our strength was our secondary. ELITE secondary all year that gets completely run over by Chad Kelly. Not roster usage there either. Big time players make big time plays. IF those plays are positive we win.....our best players were the ones that cost us in all 3 of those years. Plays that should have been made were not. For 3 years I have been talking about our talent erosion overall, and guys around here are beaking about how Jake Dolegala or Miles Fox would have won us the Grey Cup? The myopia is strong with this roster usage thing, probably because the drum has been banged so hard on it. Wanna know why we lost the last 3 Grey Cups? Their talent made plays and our didn't....and yea we got whupped in the trenches all 3 years because our talent has eroded on both sides of the ball in the trenches. Those are the REAL facts. Self inflicted wounds? Sure...by the players themselves not manning up when it was time to do so.

I played, not pro, but high level ball in the US. Never once did any of my team mates ever view a winning season as a failure. I can honestly say that to a man NONE did because we got rid of those kind of poor character guys in training camp. So don't give us that bullshit. Every single guy went to war with each other each of those years and are proud of them. You saying otherwise either shows that as a player you had a piss poor attitude that likely was the reason you couldn't stick in the pros, or you are completely full of **** about that in the first place. Quit talking like you da man and have some kind of deeper insight into how a football team operates. You don't. Sick of this bullshit on your part already. You don't speak for every pro player out there and how they think. You only speak for how YOU might view it, and like I said that would get you an awfully short pro resume.

Whatever man, just glad I don't share your outlook on things. Success by one's team is a terrible thing to waste.

This is ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. I don't like that we didn't capitalize on our last 3 Grey Cup appearances, but dismissing the fact we got there as meaningless might just be the dumbest thing I've read on this forum in quite some time. There is nothing remotely the same about missing the playoffs and winning your division 3 straight years and advancing to the championship game. My gosh some people here have a sense of entitlement that makes Rider fans look good. The only failure that I'm seeing is a complete lack of cognition and reality by some of the fan base around here. These guys played their asses off for us, show a little bit of class. Saying they were no better than the RedBlacks, or the Craig Dickenson Riders is so far out to lunch I am gobsmacked. You guys are trying so hard to hate right now that I feel sorry for you. I used to ridicule Rider fans for comments like that. Makes me sick that some here are echoing that behavior. Pure hubris and entitlement. The last 5 years has seen a historic run of success for our franchise and some here don't appreciate it at all. I guess these guys missed the 90's and 00', and 10's where we truly were bad. Getting to the Grey Cup is a failure that 7 other teams would have been excited to call their own.

Why does this surprise you? The whining started in 2023 and we've won our division twice and went to two Grey Cups in that time span. The agenda is strong here and wins won't get in the way of that. We could have pitched a shut out and people would be complaining how the defence could have not only secured the shut out but scored points if Jake Thomas didn't get his twelve snaps in that game. Nah....we had the same whining in 2023 and 2024. It's just baked in now.