USABomberfan

What does this have to do with anything?

Yup, O'Shea is right. He's got a game to prepare for right now and the media should be smart enough to realize that. You don't quit preparing for games till the season is over and Mike O'Shea is focused in on it. Besides, he just got done saying the team needs to get better, he doesn't need to go give a big old breakdown at every position trying to triangulate what should be done just yet. Finish the season first, then address areas. Plus it's stupid to say he or Walters are not gonna make any moves at all to address areas. They will, but you worry about those situations in the office, not at the Press Conference.

I thought you said enough of the blame game? Hypocrisy blatantly stated by a tool in that post. As if it's Wade Miller's job to fix the O-line lol

This is what I was saying and implying in that 3 RB set protection thread I had brought up. At times our OL has been beaten by a 4 on 5 matchup or less, but teams have run plenty of blitzes on us where either a RB was not there to pick up a guy, a safety valve to check into, or that one extra blocker that could've been used to buy that extra second. In this league, you're gonna get plenty of rushes coming at you, but that one extra second can make a difference. As other threads have stated, Willy acknowledging that he didn't get the ball out when he should've speaks to why there were 10 sacks given up last game, many of which the O-line did what it was supposed to do. But I do think this highlights areas of where Bellefeuille has not made adjustments against the blitzes or pressure. Make no mistake, the guy has put some offenses together that have made big plays and have put on high scoring games even, but looking back at it, protection issues certainly were visible.

I get the sarcasm. The big thing is, even though we aren't leading the league in Grey Cup trophies, we are leading in Grey Cup appearances. I don't know when the last time the Leafs even made an appearance at the Stanley Cup.

I have never heard of the RB coach making gameday personnel decisions in any league, and I doubt Buck had the final say over who our starting RB was.

I don't think the should-be Hail Mary play is one that should be used to measure anything against Willy. Even if he gets the pass off, there's about a 0.00001 percent chance it's caught with that many defenders in the endzone, so the point there is proably moot by any standard. And there was pressure coming in on him that he had to evade on that one, but moot point as it is. I don't think Willy should be scapegoated, but like Crunch said, he did admit he didn't check it out to his 3rd or 4th option when he should've. And like I said, I applaud him for that, it means he at least is willing to admit where he went wrong and make improvements in what he should've done. If I'm a coach, I don't lose my cool at him, I just simply tell him hey, gotta trust your receivers to make the catch and pick up yardage and it's good to make big plays when you can, but no need to go hitting the homerun balls all the time.

Why wouldn't he be able to stay healthy this offseason? Well, guess I was meaning like through training camp and then preseason as well, though I guess that doesn't count as offseason. It just seems like for the last 4 years or so we've had a different RB starting our season opener than the one we had finish the previous season: Ex 2011 - Fred Reid 2012 - Bloi-Dei Dorzon - started because Chris Garrett our new found star got injured 2013 - Chad Simpson - he always seemed to be on that injury cusp year in and year out 2014 - Nic Grigsby - got the job because Cotton was out. I don't know, I know probably about every team goes through a RB turnover more often than not at some point, but it'd be nice to see some continuity on our part in that department this next year with Cotton full ready to go week 1.

Good, glad somebody at least sees it that way. Tried telling that to the venereally diseased people on the other site and they got no clue whatsoever. I did happen to notice though that Dave Ritchie had only 6 wins his first season here too, and even his 2nd one when he made it all the way to the East final, he only had 7. But yeah, 3 years in and he finally got the 14-win season, our most successful since Riley left. I'm not saying O'Shea is Ritchie, but give a coach time and he can get the job done, not to mention Ritchie inherited a mess probably about as bad as the one O'Shea was given. Also, we gotta remember something. I hear everyone talk about talent infusion. That's important, but more so than that, we gotta get cohesion, that's something that takes a year or 2 to infuse. I'm for letting it play out to see If that can be done.

why not? He's got a good future written on him in terms of playcalling. I see no reason he can't start drawing up plays and adding his own version of the offense, so hey, give him the shot. I think he's a better football brain than Dinwiddie, maybe not Cortez yet, but he'll get there.

Gotta be careful about what we read into other people's posts. So far I haven't seen anyone disagreeing that Willy did the wrong thing, everyone's posts I've seen at least for the most part are acknowledging Willy did not get the ball to available reads. But that being said, I think you gotta give Willy props here for acknowledging he didn't. He knows he should've been smarter and I expect if the coaching staff gives him another shot to get it right he will. 1. He didn't throw his teammates under the bus in this one, he took responsibility which is something you like to see out of a guy who does that. 2. Things can change from game to game. 10 sacks is unacceptable, but Willy knows he can avoid those next time, so before we get too Marve crazy, let's not boot him out the door just yet.

Back to the topic at hand though I hope to god Cotton can stay healthy all offseason and be ready to go come next year. Because if there's one thing we can hang our hat on, it's a new threat at RB we have now. I'm all for having multiple backs ready to go too to spell him off and keep him from burning out, but I like what we got with this guy. Despite our problems on the OL, having a threat for defenses to deal with coming out of the backfield can help give them a boost. It is a shame it took our coaching staff this long to see what all he could offer, but hopefully they stick with the guy next year, good to see something positive though after this rough season.

Yep, BC didn't cover our receivers or anything like that. Unless there are busted assignments, there is nearly always coverage. Some of those balls if Willy had thrown might've gotten picked, but I'm not of the belief that was always the case last night. But it's been addressed before, either Cotton needs to be ready to optionally release out of the backfield if the sack clock is winding down, or there should at least be some kind of safety valve player to get the ball to under the circumstances. If there is none of the above for Willy to check it down to, that's on Bellefeuille for not giving him those options personnel=wise, but if Willy is ignoring those, than he has gotta learn not to try to always hit the homerun ball on longer passes.

I'm wondering what would happen if we handed the entire playcalling duties to Buck Pierce?

I don't think it was just that he was doing it only when someone was open, but it really seemed like he had this mentality going that he needed to do way more to win this game than what he should've. What bothers me about that is it seemed like tonight I was having flashbacks to the old Lapolice days.of our getting stuck in that constant mojo of getting away from stuff that worked and then doing stuff that was just silly and going too conservative and soft in our play calling, almost as if Lapo was getting in that drunk state of thinking he was all the sudden going to see about 50 million tackles broken by his receiver catching that little dink dunk pass. This would be going on too for almost entire first halfs and even into 2nd halfs, it was like he didn't wake up until we were down by 3 scores, and then it was ..... wooops my bad boys, let's get aggressive now. Drove me ****ing nuts, and seemed like that's what Willy did tonight with his QBing. I think what the main point that gets driven home should be not that you should throw one set of plays out the window completely, or that you should go all aggressive or all conservative, but you just cannot continue doing stuff, whether you're the QB or OC that's just stagnating your team to the point of just being grass smoking. If you're getting in a rhythm with stuff that's working, don't go away from it, stick with it and keep riding it. One bad similarity to this stuff and the Lapolice era was that Chris Garret when he came on the scene was a beast, and dare I say he was heavily underutilized, except for that game against Hamilton. Cotton's been a gem on the scene and I say it's the same thing, heavily underused.

Yeah, I can get behind this. Right now, it's a situation where I want changes to the way some things are done with this team, and O'Shea certainly does need to learn from mistakes that Smokin' Blue is pointing out. But I do agree though that we gotta be committed to doing things the right way around here. I'm a fan who certainly does not believe anyone setting foot in this door as either a HC or AC is above firing, but at the same time, it is still possible to give up on somebody prematurely. Obviously, I'm disappointed we didn't stick with Cotton sooner or get the O-line in as good of shape as I might've liked to have seen down the stretch, but also, despite the losses, a lot of them have been close ones, so I guess then you ask yourself is this team in any way comparable to 2010? That year was bad, no sugar coating stuff, but yet we came out with no firings at the end of that one. It's a tough choice imo. I'm probably not gonna go call for the whole organization's head on platters yet, but I certainly think the rope should be getting tighter as far as next year is concerned.

Let's remember, the thread title says both Bellefeuille and Willy, it's 50/50 on the both of them for this one. As to why Willy holds onto the ball longer, QBs, and I've seen them do this plenty, usually like to hit the deeper bigger plays over the shorter and intermediary ones. I really think Willy was trying to find deep options there instead of going with shorter options or safety valves when their should've been a clock in his head telling him that that was his best option. Sure the line was getting pushed around a bit, but the protection was there long enough to have something to check down to. As to no players being open, Suitor was trying to show no WRs open on that one play as Crunch said, when I coulda swore I saw the BC defenders backed at least 5 yards off of those receivers. And like I said, Willy all the sudden started getting that ball out quick once we went down 11, I don't think the playcalling was all that much different for him to all the sudden realize, oops, wait, maybe I should get the ball out quicker. But again, nobody is holding Bellefeuille blameless for this either. You don't take Cotton out of the equation when he plays as good as he did, and you certainly don't take away his pass blocking either. Thought the playcalling to open the game was pretty good, but going away from it was doodoo on his part, so yes, he does blame. But our QB is not without fault in this either. I'm not going to try and suggest any radical solutions or anything crazy to fix this stuff, but our personnel and situational management is definitely lacking right now.

The only thing I really pin on the coaches for this year was that they at one point relegated Cotton to the PR. I don't know that he would've won us all those games we lost, but he kept getting switched in and switched out when he should've been playing more would've given this team a lot more of a boost. Really no reason to have had him sitting all those weeks.

Yeah, I hate to see it, but he was looking almost exactly like old Buck Pierce this last game, and that's nuts. I could maybe partially excuse some of those bad sacks last year because Gary Crowton was garbage in how he ran this O, but this one should not have had that many sacks taken at all. Willy is gonna need to be under a shorter leash at least to a point where he decides to get that ball out quicker instead of taking those unnecessary sacks.

Yup, this coming from a guy who normally has been off of Bellefeuille's jock, but this one is on both him and his QB. I really don't know what Willy was doing in that 2nd half, but there is absolutely no way you can tell me with all that time he had in that pocket that he did not have options he was ignoring. I'm gonna say it for real, he was getting greedy and believed he needed to hit nothing but deep shots in that 2nd half, just no other way around it. He could've easily gotten rid of that ball and completed more passes, his last TD drive once he realized we were in trouble he did, so there is no reason he is not at fault for this loss. Bellefeuille, I don't know what you're doing not giving Cotton his carries in that 2nd half. If that D doesn't show they can stop your running game, you stick with it and make them have to hone in on Cotton. They did not and you had no reason to go away from him. I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to turn on MB, way too many opportunities were there that were blown. We can learn from them, but this cannot continually be repeated. I'm not gonna say bench Willy just yet, but he has gotta be more smarter than that. I say stick with him, but if he doesn't improve, move the leash in tighter.

Those sacks are the fault of both Drew Willy and Marcel Bellefeuille, each taking 50/50 responsibility for them. Part of that is on Willy because he had plenty of time to find checkdown options on plays where his WRs were downfield and he got too greedy trying to look for big plays. There's no way though that he couldn't have not had other options where some 3rd or 4th reads were not open. The other is Bellefeuille's fault because not sticking with Cotton who was running right through that BC defense that 1st half was a dumb idea. When your running game is tearing it up, you stick with it until the opposition shows they can stop it, they did not in this game. No reason to go away from it whatsoever. Normally I'd be on the O-line for costing us games and giving up plays, but this one is on Willy and Bellefeuille for not sticking with what was working.

Well, so far Cotton still tearing it up. Who misses Grigsby now?

Still trying to play 1 vs 12 I see

I would say let's not even think about the playoffs right now. Let's play and win for a sense of pride for the team. Regardless of getting into the playoffs or not, that should not be the measuring stick of whether or not the coaching staff gets a pass or not, it should be the overall direction of the team in general. 7-11 after what we've taken recently would seem like a huge step in that direction.

Just watching the game now and I"m bewildered as to why there was no review?? or challenge in response to no review? It was reviewed. All turnovers are automatically reviewed. About that no-challenge or non-reviewed would've been interception on that ball that bounced off the Als' player's shoe and got picked. Problem was the refs didn't rule that as an interception, hence why it was probably not automatically reviewed. Should've been Ottawa ball though.