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I would agree with the "fantastic" part- fantastic means not real, just imagined.

Marouf is an odd duck- his physique is not like your prototypical d-lineman who is built like a fridge with arms. Marouf looks. ...proportionate. Maybe that's why the Bombers took a flyer on him.

Wild still has to win a spot, so the contract may be moot.

I suggest that the answer is to review the game tapes after the game and suspend the offender for s long as it takes for the victim to recover.

No coach is without some redeeming skills (ok, maybe Burke as head coach and a few others) but the bottom lines is the bottom line, the defence that he is responsible to oversee wasn't good enough to win a playoff game. You are certainly correct in that few, if any of us, know what goes on behind the curtains, so all we have is the record of the defence. Q.E.D.

Good publicity for the league if nothing else.

I would like to see a Canadian quarterback be counted for the NI ratio, and a total of three successful challenges but only one failed one during a game.

With all due respect, that hasn't worked well for us- look at our history over the last 12 years and the coaches and GMs who have come and gone. Many of those were epically bad and I would wager that when the majority opinion was reached here that a given player, coach and/or GM was irredeemably incompetent, the axe fell on that person and rightfully so. Managers, coaches and boards are human and thus fallible. On the other hand, there have been those in this forum who defended Mack, Reinbold, Daley, Willy, Kuale, etc. right down to the moment when the blade reached the necks of these.

It is simplistic to dismiss criticism of Hall as a personal attack on him and just hatred. I'm pretty sure that any of us here would love to have a coffee or beer with him but that does not explain or excuse his track record- not just here but elsewhere. Our defence was bad last season despite some darned good talent and I suggest to you that the Argos had lesser talent but still won the Cup. Hall has been given time and has been found wanting, and that has nothing to do with his personality or if he is kind to small children and pets.

Agreed. I cannot see how the Bomber defence is going to get any better with Hall overseeing it. O'Shea said he was going to be more involved with the defence, but if it seems to me that if I had an employee in a critical position who, after three years in the job, still had to be supervised more closely, I would be asking myself why I was keeping him around. Barring any big changes to come, I suspect that we will be having another "ok" year ending with the locker room being cleared early. O'Shea has obviously made a decision to live or die with Hall, and even if Hall is fired halfway through the season, O'Shea will be gone at the end of the season.

Well, it sorta worked that way, didn't it?

And only half do.

That is a reasonable supposition, but the real question is why he wasn't replaced long ago with someone who had potential. Are the picking that slim?

We do not know if O'Shea or any of the assistant coaches are saying that the people they have are good enough therefore there is no need to bring in anyone to push them. Scouts won't bring in anyone if they are being told to stand pat.

I'm not at all sure that the offensive scheme had anything to do with the horrid basic QB skills shown by both Davis and LeFevour.

And how many playoff games won in the past three years? And where does the defence stand against other defences?

At some point in every athlete's career, the fire goes out.

If you don't come here for trivia, then why are you here at all? LeFevour did it well, but I suggest we do a lot better for less than a one-trick pony.

Agreed- status quo is just not good enough. Much as detest I Chris Jones, he is reasonably astute when to comes to football, neither Calgary nor Edmonton are likely to get worse and Wally in Vancouver is still mostly Wally, so the Bombers had better hit the ground running. If the Bomber defence is as poor as it has been for the past three years, we will be boned again.

By no means am I well versed in football skills, but it seems to me that the same ability to take a handoff cleanly would be almost identical to taking a snap from center. Moreover, if a running back cannot read blocking off a snap, how the heck could he read blocking well enough to stay employed as an RB, period.

There is every reason to believe that neither Davis nor LeFevour are worth keeping. If we need a short-yardage threat, why can't one of our fullbacks learn to take a snap and plough straight ahead or make a cut off-tackle?

Or " feminine logic". ( I hope the wife doesn't see this)

Three of five O-linemen aging out of their jobs cannot be very reassuring for a QB- Dyakowski and Clark were barely good enough last year and Labatte is almost there as well. Sask's receivers are darned good, but if Collaros has come down with a case of the yips, the odds are against him. Their defence will probably be OK, so overall I would bet on a .500 season for the Greenies. None of it will be Jones' fault, of course.

With the Riders' creative financial management of the salary cap, does it really matter?

Avs playing better than the Jets. Is the rest of the team waiting for Buff to carry the day? If so, it ain't gonna happen.