mbrg

yep, having 3 qbs that can play is part of the reason why Calgary has been as successful as they have been. Don't piss away the depth just because. As we've seen you can be down to your 3rd stringer in a hurry in this league. Considering we're the team that's already been down to our 4th stringer twice in this short decade.

One of the things this site could use - an FAQ section. Mine would be about how to put the gifs in the posts. There are so many facepalms needed right now. A facepalm parade. It's not too late to act. Won't somebody please think of the children?

One of the reasons he played for so many teams is because the guys backing him up were often thought to be better. He lost his job to Michael Bishop. Twice. He was smart and mobile. As a passer he left a lot to be desired. 23 seasons in the CFL - he passed for over 4,000 yards 4 times and 5,000 once. He passed for less than 3,000 yards 8 times. He was a decent combination of a game manager and a running QB. He did these things well enough to carve out a 23 year career, so no, that's far from average. It's pretty remarkable. As a passer, being average for 23 years will eventually get you to 70,000 yards. I respect him and his accomplishments, but when listing the top QBs in CFL history his name will never come to mind, and I don't think that's an oversight.

Marve is certainly the most exciting QB on our roster. Doesn't make him the best, but when you're 6-9 and down by a few TDs to the best team in the league, it's nice to know the last 20 minutes won't be boring.

And how are we going to protect Brink, Elliott and Goltz in the upcoming expansion draft? It's an embarrassment of riches!!!

Cotton scored a touchdown by running thru a hole in the middle of the Oline. Once again, Cotton scored a touchdown by running thru a hole in the middle of the Oline. Not by bouncing it to the outside or by slipping into the next layer and catching a screen. Running thru a hole in the middle of the Oline. No one's claiming we just witnessed the second coming of Walby and crew, but if people need to work that hard to come up with reasons why the Oline wasn't better Saturday night, even just slightly, they made up their minds before the game was ever played.

Well listen to O'Shea's interview. First thing he said is he wants bigger guys there to stop the run. OShea tends to speak diplomatically about all his players. Giving a positive about Unamba rather than a negative about Dunn would be how he prefers to do things. I didn't take "bigger" as a positive. But maybe that's how you interpret it. It's an answer to the question that is both valid and doesn't speak negatively about one of his players.

Well I appreciate the positive outlook - that Brohm will play so well that a QB controversy should be discussed. I hope it happens, since I'll have to sit there and watch whatever performance he puts up. But no. If Willy is healthy he will play almost every remaining snap this season. He's a first year starter and needs the reps.

Well listen to O'Shea's interview. First thing he said is he wants bigger guys there to stop the run. OShea tends to speak diplomatically about all his players. Giving a positive about Unamba rather than a negative about Dunn would be how he prefers to do things.

While I think he could have handled it better, I neither pretend to know things I don't know or fault a player for choosing more money. If money had become part of the issue, which I don't know or pretend to know, then I don't fault him for choosing to look after his family. Although I still think he handled it...not well.

We can't say that until Cotton actually gets a chance to run with the ball. Against Edmonton he split time in the backfield a lot and when he did get the ball. Look at the first two hand offs to the guy, one was that stupid outside run they do where they give him the ball going parallel to the line and never block for him so he's met by 3 or 4 defenders before the LOS, the second the OL got completely destroyed and he was hit almost immediately. I think he got one other handoff in the first half. That's hardly giving your running back a chance to show what he can or can't do. Grigsby got 14 games to show what he can do. I am left with the impression that Bellefeuile just doesn't like Cotton because they never commit to using the guy when he's in there. Limited handoffs, giving him the ball running sideways too much. Running backs seldom get a chance to put up big numbers when drives aren't sustained. If the offence is in a rythym and converting downs then the ball gets fed to the RB. If we're 2 and out all the time, then opportunities are reduced greatly. And if we're down my 37 at the half... On the marches down the field earlier in the year when the offence was firing on all cylinders, Grigsby might get 5 carries or touches in a possession. And that's part of the reason his numbers have dropped - our offence is sputtering in all facets, not just the run. Both Cotton and Grigsby would look better if we converted more downs like we had been earlier, and that's not just on them to do.

If only the media had access to the assistant coaches. That's the problem.

Fascinating stuff. All moves with medium to large potential upside, small potential downside. Thumbs up. Other than Willy off, of course. There was bound to be a week where he couldn't Astar-the-robot his way back from an injury with the beatings he takes.

Fair enough, but the term "scrap heap" would only apply to a minority of the 13 guys you bolded. I would not give Walters an A+ this year but I appreciate many of the things he's done to change this team and his approach. And not all of the moves that I've liked have worked. We have yet to see any reward from bringing in Alexander, and after the swath of NI injuries we've had you think he'd somehow make it onto the field in a more significant role. The draft picks are still more going out than coming in. Import incumbents need more and better challengers. He's taken some swings and missed. Part of the business. He's very safely in the "pass" zone in a pass/fail business right now.

Bringing them in is bringing them in. If Mack gets lambasted for completely refusing to look at players from other teams or using free agency, why wouldn't Walters get credit for doing the opposite? Looking at good players on our roster that Walters brought here and saying they somehow don't count - that's silly.

I'd agree. Smith can make plays. Some good. Some very bad. I suppose Higgins wouldn't seem all that paranoid if Montreal and Saskatchewan met in the Grey Cup. Odds: 1 in 400,000.

January has been horrific this year and has zero trade value at this point in time. I've read/heard that he's been injured for most of the season though. He's been pretty good the last few seasons, so I believe there must be something up for him to be so bad this year. I've been wondering about that. I'm not a throw players under the bus kind of guy, but he's looked awful in the last few weeks. He likes to battle and sure hasn't looked like he has much fight in him lately. And the Ottawa game, guys were zipping past him. That would be a disappointing end to the season for him.

With an effective running game and more threats in the long to mid-range passing game...this would not have been possible. It's clear that teams are keying on sweeps, hitches, outlet throws et. al. Basically anything where the QB gets rid of the ball quickly. Early in the season plays like that were going for first downs and even touchdowns (eg. Denmark in BC). Those options have been taken away and the Bombers can't really respond with anything because they can't consistently give the QB enough time. He did a great job early on of sliding to spots where the linebackers didn't have a good angle to close on him. He created space with great positioning. If teams adjusted for that, ya, he wasn't offering much out of the backfield.

SIGN HIM!!!! Sorry, I thought that's what we do every time another team releases a player. Apparently so does Bender.

I've had my suspicions that sometime in the offseason we're going to hear about January having played a big chunk of this season with a strained or partially-torn somethingorother. He hasn't looked right. Say what you want about whether he's good enough to get as many all-star nods as he has - he's a better player than this. That said it's not like he had 10 years of football left in front of him. Would be a sad way for him to go out.

Wait for it...

An Oline does not need to be 5 all star players, although I'd gladly take 5. If you have a couple of A's and B+'s on your Oline, a guy who's probably not better than a C can fit in and do a fine job - he's surrounded by players who make him look better. They have enough talent and cohesion as a unit to do the job. The best Olines in the league, the A+ crews, are not made up of 5 A+ guys. Their play as a group is elevated by the presence of a few superior individuals. We have a couple of B's surrounded by C's. As a unit, they play like a D. No one is surrounded by enough talent that their flaws can be masked. Instead they all manage to make each other look a little worse. Their play as a group is torpedoed by the presence of a few average individuals and zero superior ones. Whoever did the colour commentary on CJOB Monday made a telling statement - he said he couldn't figure out why the Bombers let Justin Sorenson go, he looked fine in Edmonton this year. Justin Sorenson could have looked "fine" in Winnipeg too, if he'd been surrounded by better players, like he is in Edmonton. He is completely average, and playing here would probably have looked anywhere from unspectacular to awful. So yes, I agree, we only need to make a couple of changes to get greatly improved play from our Oline. We don't have to upgrade every spot, but the spots we upgrade have to be with premium players. Replacing Morley with Neufeld and Sorenson with Morley might technically mean 2 spots were slightly upgraded from the year before, but without at least 2 powerful swimmers anchoring this line, this unit will continue to drown.

It isn't too many. Without going thumbs up and down thru each name, the likelihood of overhauling the roster to the point where we're only keeping 8, 12, however many players and having the team get better is remote. Even switching out 30% of our roster and maintaining some positive chemistry in one offseason is a huge task. More players will stay than go. More players should stay than go. Oline is huge, but a lot of other things are simpler switches, like Sherman dropping out of a starters job like you suggest. Graig Newman getting healthy might be all that's required to upgrade that position, and Sherman remains a valuable player in certain packages. But we also need more Graig Newmans, so we aren't completely screwed after one NI starter gets injured. There's talent on our current roster. It just needs to be supported by more talent, and surpassed by other talent. Jake Thomas is a keeper, but that doesn't mean he should be a starter.

A team desperate for a back like Hamilton might take a flier on him. 6 teams will make the playoffs. All will want depth. He'll land a job, maybe before the end of the day. And he'll probably look better too, behind a better Oline.

Well this is an unexpected turn of events. That's just...dumb. Seriously, if you're watching the game and see it isn't going well, isn't there a decent chance you're getting your job back next week? These guys all have generous egos (combining them with twitter, a match made in me-first heaven) but there has to be some kind of realization that pouting like an 8 year old has a lot of potential downside.