Blue Bombers - 2024 Regular Season - Discussion Thread

[GCn20]

3 minutes ago, CrazyCanuck89 said:

I doubt Detroit will give up on him this fast.  He hasn't even played a game yet.

I would speculate that if NFL politics are against him and he gets no real shot he is still at least 2 NFL seasons on the PR.

[GCn20]

11 minutes ago, CrazyCanuck89 said:

I watched him play as both a Bull and a Bomber.  He's very underrated by Bombers fans.  His nastiness is needed in the run game.

I'm a real football fan, not an occasional one like some fans here.

I hope you didn't mean that as harshly as it came across.

[JuranBoldenRules]

Manu has a football lifetime of NFL PR opportunities ahead of him if he doesn't crack the roster.

Would be very surprising to see him in the CFL.

Remember...there's about 600 PR spots in NFL.  1700 active spots plus injured lists.

Lots of room.  3000 guys plus the next thousand waiting by the phone week by week.

13 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

That's politics with our Head Coach. Kola is "his guy".  Eli is the guy on the outside looking in. 

And Speller was his guy.  Couture was his guy.  Kendall Randolph is his guy.  Liam Dobson is his guy.  Geoff Gray is his guy.

Eli gets in and isn't even a speed bump in pass pro, can't get his feet going.

[GCn20]

37 minutes ago, JuranBoldenRules said:

Manu has a football lifetime of NFL PR opportunities ahead of him if he doesn't crack the roster.

Would be very surprising to see him in the CFL.

Remember...there's about 600 PR spots in NFL.  1700 active spots plus injured lists.

Lots of room.  3000 guys plus the next thousand waiting by the phone week by week.

And Speller was his guy.  Couture was his guy.  Kendall Randolph is his guy.  Liam Dobson is his guy.  Geoff Gray is his guy.

Eli gets in and isn't even a speed bump in pass pro, can't get his feet going.

Gotta agree. I have not liked what I have seen from Eli so far.....and I hate this "his guy" crap. We, as fans, tend to vastly overrate backups....it's just the nature of the beast. HCs put out the players they think give us the best chance to win. We have no all-stars being denied their shot because the HC is oblivious to their talent.

[Bigblue204]

1 hour ago, Pete said:

The money saving as previously posted is overstated. Because of the large bonuses we gAve out to save cap space bit us, so the savings is only the prorated portion of the balance. Often it costs us more when we pay a replacement player if they dont stay on the full 6 game

I'm not disagreeing totally with you. But theres no way for any of us to know of ots overstated or not as none of us has access to salary information. 

I was just pointing out that Lawler and schoen aren't costing us money right now. They're salary could be much higher and impact would be similar. They brought in 1 wr that would potentially cost more in Lucky, the others are on entry level deals likely.

[Bubba Zanetti]

1 hour ago, JCon said:

[wbbfan]

Ol do not get long term stays on prs. You don’t find mbt esq ol who have bounced prs for a decade. He will have a lot of teams interest while he holds interest down south, but when it passes, it’ll be all gone fast. 

[JuranBoldenRules]

26 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

Gotta agree. I have not liked what I have seen from Eli so far.....and I hate this "his guy" crap. We, as fans, tend to vastly overrate backups....it's just the nature of the beast. HCs put out the players they think give us the best chance to win. We have no all-stars being denied their shot because the HC is oblivious to their talent.

The whole league had two years to sign the guy and he came back here on a 3 year deal.

Even Jacob Ruby got signed immediately when he was eligible again.

I don't see it as a talent evaluation problem in this case.  The guy who is biased for Canadian players all of a sudden hates a Canadian player?  Gotta get the narratives straight.

22 minutes ago, wbbfan said:

Ol do not get long term stays on prs. You don’t find mbt esq ol who have bounced prs for a decade. He will have a lot of teams interest while he holds interest down south, but when it passes, it’ll be all gone fast. 

I mean that's not true.  I was just at Vikings camp and half the OL they have in there are in their 30s having bounced around PR's and barely played NFL games.

Edited August 7 by JuranBoldenRules

[17to85]

37 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

Gotta agree. I have not liked what I have seen from Eli so far.....and I hate this "his guy" crap. We, as fans, tend to vastly overrate backups....it's just the nature of the beast. HCs put out the players they think give us the best chance to win. We have no all-stars being denied their shot because the HC is oblivious to their talent.

Before the vaccine issue Eli was ahead of gray on the depth chart... then upon return he can't get ahead of anyone? That doesn't make sense, especially knowing the limitations kolankowski has. 

[ddanger]

1 hour ago, GCn20 said:

In the case of Lawler he received 150k of 285k upfront. That leaves 135k in salary.  Assuming that he comes back after his 6 game stint the savings amount to 45k minus 6 game min CFL salary of 23.3. We have saved a total of 22k against the cap with Lawler out. In the case of Schoen he received 105k upfront, leaving 130 remaining. However, he has 35k in team service in his contract that doesn't count against the cap. Therefore, his cap hit remaining is 95k. Total savings of Schoen being out will be around 20k after replacing him with a rookie salary. So roughly 40-50k in cap room freed up by these 2 guys being out. You are absolutely right....this is not some huge salary bonanza freed up. I would barely call it a silver lining. We did free up a bunch of cap space out of the sheer number of guys out on the 6 game that are above league minimum but it is not some huge massive honey pot that will give us all kinds of extra space next year. It maybe turns into one high end player retained/signed that we otherwise couldn't. Therefore I agree with your take on this and it is why teams often hold out a player an extra week to get the full savings. There seems to be a tipping point most of the time (with the exception of QB or a position group ravaged by injury necessitating it) that if a guy misses more than 3 games they are going to miss the full 6.

Thanks for sharing this. I am guilty of being a guy who thought it was going to be a " huge salary bonanza". 

[bearpants]

1 hour ago, JCon said:

What's up with that??

[GCn20]

1 hour ago, wbbfan said:

Ol do not get long term stays on prs. You don’t find mbt esq ol who have bounced prs for a decade. He will have a lot of teams interest while he holds interest down south, but when it passes, it’ll be all gone fast. 

If guys like Shepley can mainly PR for several years so can Manu. 

1 hour ago, 17to85 said:

Before the vaccine issue Eli was ahead of gray on the depth chart... then upon return he can't get ahead of anyone? That doesn't make sense, especially knowing the limitations kolankowski has. 

A lot can change in a couple years, you may have noticed the guy he was ahead of on the DC is no longer with us either. I'm not a Kolo lover and was all aboard the Eli train too, but he has been god awful when given reps this year. Last week he was just whiffing on every block attempt.

1 hour ago, ddanger said:

Thanks for sharing this. I am guilty of being a guy who thought it was going to be a " huge salary bonanza". 

Never is what we think it's going to be.  Also, of the 13 guys currently 6 gamed only 6 of them represent any possible SMS savings as 7 of them are on rookie contracts. Not sure about how much savings, if any, Neufeld/K.Wilson/Lawson represent because their up front money is unknown but I would wager all 3 combined would constitute minimal savings at best. I would not think that Wilson or Lawson are pulling down big money, and I would wager that Neufeld took down a healthy portion of his contract up front.  Even if Collaros were to go down the SMS savings would not be as grand as one would think.

Edited August 7 by GCn20

[JohnnyAbonny]

16 hours ago, Mike said:

Legit question - have you ever actually watched Gabe Wallace play a game of football or did you just see he’s Canadian and determine that he’s amazing?

I’d be impressed if anyone on here legit watched a U of Buffalo game 

[Arnold_Palmer]

1 minute ago, JohnnyAbonny said:

I’d be impressed if anyone on here legit watched a U of Buffalo game 

Mr Canuck AKA a “real fan” not one of those fake fans who don’t watch U of Buffalo games will educate us peasants on what it means to be a true fan; we simply aren’t worthy. 

[JCon]

8 minutes ago, JohnnyAbonny said:

I’d be impressed if anyone on here legit watched a U of Buffalo game 

Ugh, I do. My son will put on any football and the MAC usually has games Thursday night (and others). Can't say I remember anyone, though. 

[Mike]

51 minutes ago, JohnnyAbonny said:

I’d be impressed if anyone on here legit watched a U of Buffalo game 

I do because I’m a Bills fan and now I just pretend I know everything about Buffalo but I’m not going to pretend for a second I ever watched the OL.

[Noeller]

1 hour ago, Arnold_Palmer said:

Mr Canuck AKA a “real fan” not one of those fake fans who don’t watch U of Buffalo games will educate us peasants on what it means to be a true fan; we simply aren’t worthy. 

The irony of a Riders fan coming on here and telling us about real fans vs bandwagoners.........

[JohnnyAbonny]

43 minutes ago, Mike said:

I do because I’m a Bills fan and now I just pretend I know everything about Buffalo but I’m not going to pretend for a second I ever watched the OL.

That’s fair. I mean, I follow NDSU but I couldn’t tell you how their linemen would translate to the pros. 
 

1 hour ago, JCon said:

Ugh, I do. My son will put on any football and the MAC usually has games Thursday night (and others). Can't say I remember anyone, though. 

I’ll have games on for background noise too, but I mean for someone to say they sit there and watch MAC (or in my case FCS) games and have intimate knowledge of their o-line without being an actual scout for a living? Come on, who’s got that kind of time? 

[Atomic]

5 hours ago, 17to85 said:

Before the vaccine issue Eli was ahead of gray on the depth chart... then upon return he can't get ahead of anyone? That doesn't make sense, especially knowing the limitations kolankowski has. 

So what are you suggesting exactly? O'Shea just has a personal vendetta against Eli? Why not cut him at the beginning of the year if he hates him so much? Or even advise Walters not to sign him at all? This thought that O'Shea hates certain players on his roster is just nuts to me.

[SpeedFlex27]

5 minutes ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

https://www.facebook.com/531173312/videos/371359115986572/

Mike O'Shea takes out Jeff Garcia on the sidelines. He played with the same attitude as Adam Bighill with his hit on Shea Patterson. He was tossed out for that play which he never should have been. Move the bench further back.

Edited August 8 by SpeedFlex27

[Fatty Liver]

3 hours ago, Atomic said:

So what are you suggesting exactly? O'Shea just has a personal vendetta against Eli? Why not cut him at the beginning of the year if he hates him so much? Or even advise Walters not to sign him at all? This thought that O'Shea hates certain players on his roster is just nuts to me.

Because O'Shea wants to destroy him slowly, grind him down till his career is nothing but dust.  BTW he's using the same tactic to destroy Booch's credibility.

[SpeedFlex27]

10 hours ago, JuranBoldenRules said:

And Speller was his guy.  Couture was his guy.  Kendall Randolph is his guy.  Liam Dobson is his guy.  Geoff Gray is his guy.

Eli gets in and isn't even a speed bump in pass pro, can't get his feet going.

And an undersized Kola who blows his blocking assignments & gets blown back 10 yards into Zach's face on a bull rush is any better? At least Eli is younger & can only improve with a higher upside if he plays. Kola is 32 years old & his potential has reached his ceiling. He'll never get any better than he is now. Eli needs more playing time but doesn't get it. 

Edited August 8 by SpeedFlex27

[Rod Black]

39 minutes ago, Fatty Liver said:

Because O'Shea wants to destroy him slowly, grind him down till his career is nothing but dust.  BTW he's using the same tactic to destroy Booch's credibility.

Reading that….made me blow another snot bubble. 

Edited August 8 by Rod Black

[Mark H.]

Kola has been better the last couple games. The OL has improved quite a lot.

[SpeedFlex27]

19 minutes ago, Mark H. said:

Kola has been better the last couple games. The OL has improved quite a lot.

Better isn't saying much when the bar is set so low at Center.