2024/2025 CFL (non-Bomber) Off-Season Thread

[Bigblue204]

19 minutes ago, rebusrankin said:

Not sure if this is a Bomber question or a CFL question. What do our draft experts think of U of M QB Jackson Tachinski, specifically his move to receiver? Worth a flyer in later rounds?

I believe it's pretty well a done deal with him moving to rec.

[Fatty Liver]

13 hours ago, wbbfan said:

I don’t think he got lucky in the wf, if any one was lucky it was buck. 
 I think he’s had two good strong games in the play offs here, and they are similar. He was able to get his deep shots. That’s kind of how it goes with Zach. He could score a td on every drive, or complete barely 10 in a game and toss a bunch to the wrong team. Hes always been that guy. Live by the sword die by the sword. I get rolling with that a few years ago. 
 

I don’t think zach is zach any more. I’m not expecting to see 3-4 td passes in a half or score on every drive into the 4th any more. I think his injuries from the past season and a half ish. I think he’s injured and aged to a point where he just isn’t that same guy. 
 

At this point, I would take other guys over Zach right now going into the season. Straight up, I’d rather bank this year and the future both on any of Dru/rourke/vaj. I wouldn’t be happy paying rourke that money, and I’m not sold on Adam’s maturity/culture. But I’d still take the risk on those guys. Even just for this year. The fact all 3 should play as good if not better next year is a bonus. 
 

Id love to be wrong, and I think the oc/ol changes and wr health will go far to help Zach. But at this point I kind of expect us to finish with another qb as our starter one way or another. 

Zach+Buck+success over time=satisfaction, resulting in lazy football, they stopped looking at being creative and relied on what they liked to do the most.  Hopefully Zach comes back with a jump in his step looking forward to a fresh start, if not he's just going to tell Hogan to stick to the old gameplan, cause it usually works.

[wbbfan]

17 minutes ago, Fatty Liver said:

Zach+Buck+success over time=satisfaction, resulting in lazy football, they stopped looking at being creative and relied on what they liked to do the most.  Hopefully Zach comes back with a jump in his step looking forward to a fresh start, if not he's just going to tell Hogan to stick to the old gameplan, cause it usually works.

The scheme certainly did get lazy. But I think the cause was a bit different. It seems to me like the last year and a half or so so a lot of frustration between zach and buck, and possibly the staff and buck. I think zach became a weak spot for buck just like nichols did for lapo.

 We saw a few games prior where the screen game and read option seam attacks worked brilliantly. But that is not how zach is wired. I think Buck wanted to rewire the offence to work around stuff that doesn't suit zach, and he got push back. So he pulled out the old wrinkles and let the offence flounder running just what zach likes.

 

[Noeller]

36 minutes ago, Fatty Liver said:

they stopped looking at being creative

Based on every scrap of info we actually have, that's not remotely true. Everything I've ever read is that the WBB QB room is constantly thinking about new plays to get in the playbook. They're constantly watching football of various leagues and then texting each other about things they see and how to implement them. 

You can argue a lot of things but I don't think you can say the stopped trying to be creative. 

I think what we might have seen last year was a terrible OL that provided very little time for the offense to get creative. 

[wbbfan]

7 minutes ago, Noeller said:

Based on every scrap of info we actually have, that's not remotely true. Everything I've ever read is that the WBB QB room is constantly thinking about new plays to get in the playbook. They're constantly watching football of various leagues and then texting each other about things they see and how to implement them. 

You can argue a lot of things but I don't think you can say the stopped trying to be creative. 

I think what we might have seen last year was a terrible OL that provided very little time for the offense to get creative. 

It’s entirely true of the product on the field. We took vanilla and made it bland gelatine. I have no doubt the room was watching and talking about stuff but virtually none of it made it to the field. 

[HardCoreBlue]

23 minutes ago, wbbfan said:

It’s entirely true of the product on the field. We took vanilla and made it bland gelatine. I have no doubt the room was watching and talking about stuff but virtually none of it made it to the field. 

From design to application, that's the key.

[wbbfan]

9 minutes ago, HardCoreBlue said:

From design to application, that's the key.

Yep 100% 

[Fatty Liver]

54 minutes ago, Noeller said:

Based on every scrap of info we actually have, that's not remotely true. Everything I've ever read is that the WBB QB room is constantly thinking about new plays to get in the playbook. They're constantly watching football of various leagues and then texting each other about things they see and how to implement them. 

You can argue a lot of things but I don't think you can say the stopped trying to be creative. 

I think what we might have seen last year was a terrible OL that provided very little time for the offense to get creative. 

You're reminiscing about the Dru Brown years with Dakota Prukop, haven't heard a peep about the QB room since Brown left.  Rumour has it Dolegala mostly hangs out in the hallway cause he can't get past the door.

Still wearing frickin Rider green, cause it fits.

[GCn20]

I really didn't like the way that Buck almost completely abandoned all the pre-snap motion we used to have in our offence. I am not sure why that happened, maybe all the new receivers? At any rate I think it hurt our offence, particularly when Streveler was playing. I am hoping our new OC brings some of that back, It may lead to some growing pains early on, but we were so vanilla the past two years and not just in the play calling but it can be seen pre-snap. That leads me to believe this was way more of a Buck issue than a Zac issue.

Edited yesterday at 07:10 PM by GCn20

[Tracker]

49 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

I really didn't like the way that Buck almost completely abandoned all the pre-snap motion we used to have in our offence. I am not sure why that happened, maybe all the new receivers? At any rate I think it hurt our offence, particularly when Streveler was playing. I am hoping our new OC brings some of that back, It may lead to some growing pains early on, but we were so vanilla the past two years and not just in the play calling but it can be seen pre-snap. That leads me to believe this was way more of a Buck issue than a Zac issue.

Why can't it be both?

[wbbfan]

1 hour ago, GCn20 said:

I really didn't like the way that Buck almost completely abandoned all the pre-snap motion we used to have in our offence. I am not sure why that happened, maybe all the new receivers? At any rate I think it hurt our offence, particularly when Streveler was playing. I am hoping our new OC brings some of that back, It may lead to some growing pains early on, but we were so vanilla the past two years and not just in the play calling but it can be seen pre-snap. That leads me to believe this was way more of a Buck issue than a Zac issue.

Same. I mean demski was that guy most of the time previously, and we threw all kinds of guys at it in the past new and old. If bailey can leg those out no one else has any excuses IMO. Agree. Zach is an issue, but buck was a big one. 

 

 

[Stickem]

23 minutes ago, wbbfan said:

Same. I mean demski was that guy most of the time previously, and we threw all kinds of guys at it in the past new and old. If bailey can leg those out no one else has any excuses IMO. Agree. Zach is an issue, but buck was a big one. 

 

 

We have/had become one track and it's easy for opposition D's to pick our schemes apart when you become too pragmatic....I can't remember when we through in a 'change of pace' play in, or a 'fake'  of any kind....I think back to the old days when we used to implement the ol fumblerooski' to throw the opposition a curve....Guess that would be too radical for the current regime...or dare I say 'imaginative'

[wbbfan]

8 minutes ago, Stickem said:

We have/had become one track and it's easy for opposition D's to pick our schemes apart when you become too pragmatic....I can't remember when we through in a 'change of pace' play in, or a 'fake'  of any kind....I think back to the old days when we used to implement the ol fumblerooski' to throw the opposition a curve....Guess that would be too radical for the current regime...or dare I say 'imaginative'

Yep, the lack of progression is one of the biggest issues we had. We didn’t set any thing up. We saw a heavy reduction in the play action to set up deep shots, and we went from a team that ran every play in our book out of every formation we used to extremely predictable plays out of formations. The pa screen off motion / half boot was getting jumped soo fast even by bad Ds.  

[17to85]

3 hours ago, Noeller said:

think what we might have seen last year was a terrible OL that provided very little time for the offense to get creative. 

And I think what's happened is collaros has gotten dinged enough he's past his best before date. He was running away with the MOP award 2 years ago and then was awful and was out performed in the same scheme as Brown, last year collaros struggled hard most of the time too. Now whether it was collaros or buck I can't say for sure, but I really do believe that the problems are that collaros can't adapt anymore and he's making everything else look.worse as a result.

[wbbfan]

https://3downnation.com/2025/04/03/roughrider-foundation-invests-1-8m-in-saskatchewan-amateur-football/
 

riders put out a big investment in the grass roots game with some much needed equipment.  
 

We do this and a couple other teams do it every soo often. 
 I’d love to see the league and the teams go in together on this stuff. If every team was invest 1 million bucks every 3-4 years like this, and grouped that money to make a single large purchase I’m sure they’d get a lot more bang for their buck. 
 

Id also love to see a compensatory pick round for the two teams that do the most each year to grow the game at the grass roots level. 

[Noeller]

20 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

And I think what's happened is collaros has gotten dinged enough he's past his best before date. He was running away with the MOP award 2 years ago and then was awful and was out performed in the same scheme as Brown, last year collaros struggled hard most of the time too. Now whether it was collaros or buck I can't say for sure, but I really do believe that the problems are that collaros can't adapt anymore and he's making everything else look.worse as a result.

And the West Final tells me that's not entirely true. I'm not saying he's FOR SURE still capable of being that guy full time, but he IS still capable of being that guy...

[17to85]

2 hours ago, Noeller said:

And the West Final tells me that's not entirely true. I'm not saying he's FOR SURE still capable of being that guy full time, but he IS still capable of being that guy...

The sun shines on every dogs ass now and then. 

Games like that are the exception with collaros these days.

[Bigblue204]

2 hours ago, Noeller said:

And the West Final tells me that's not entirely true. I'm not saying he's FOR SURE still capable of being that guy full time, but he IS still capable of being that guy...

I definitely think he can play at an all star level. But it would need to be with a great running game. I'm not sure he can be the guy to carry a team for a season.

[SpeedFlex27]

6 hours ago, Noeller said:

Based on every scrap of info we actually have, that's not remotely true. Everything I've ever read is that the WBB QB room is constantly thinking about new plays to get in the playbook. They're constantly watching football of various leagues and then texting each other about things they see and how to implement them. 

You can argue a lot of things but I don't think you can say the stopped trying to be creative. 

I think what we might have seen last year was a terrible OL that provided very little time for the offense to get creative. 

I think Buck is very conservative in his play calling. He had a qb & two wideouts (Lawler & Schoen) who could stretch the field. When he lost Schoen for the season we couldn't do what we used to do, even after Lawler came back. I didn't see a lot of innovation or imagination with our passing attack. It'll be interesting what Buck does with Rourke. This might be a case of oil & water.

Edited 18 hours ago by SpeedFlex27

[Mark H.]

13 minutes ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

 It'll be interesting what Buck does with Rourke. This might be a case of oil & water.

Agreed. It'll be interesting to watch how all of that develops. 

[SpeedFlex27]

1 minute ago, Mark H. said:

Agreed. It'll be interesting to watch how all of that develops. 

If you follow qbmotion on Instagram, then you could have watched Rourke work out every day since New Years Day. The guy has put in the work this off season & he looks ready to go.

[SpeedFlex27]

Also, you can watch Chris Streveler on Instagram @cstrevy5. I've been following his off season workouts & I don't think I've seen a pro athlete work as hard as Streveler, not only to overcome his knee injury but also to keep working on changing his fundamentals from the old "linear" to the more modern "rotational" qb. He looks ready to go as well.

[Noeller]

1 hour ago, Bigblue204 said:

I definitely think he can play at an all star level. But it would need to be with a great running game. I'm not sure he can be the guy to carry a team for a season.

I KNOW he can.... Just a matter of how often. I'm not arrogant enough (*waves*) to say for sure that he's done or isn't done.... But it's still in him. I really believe that if he has a VERY good OL, he'll have the confidence to go out and be that guy more often than not.

[17to85]

4 minutes ago, Noeller said:

I KNOW he can.... Just a matter of how often. I'm not arrogant enough (*waves*) to say for sure that he's done or isn't done.... But it's still in him. I really believe that if he has a VERY good OL, he'll have the confidence to go out and be that guy more often than not.

No OL in the cfl is good enough to protect a qb who holds onto the ball for a long time but can't escape anymore. Collaros used to be able to dodge pressure and make things happen, now he gets buried by pressure.

 

It's sad, but the dude is not the same guy he was when he first got here. Age is a mother f'er 

[Goalie]

They made a mistake letting the young guy we developed go and sticking with Zach. Huge mistake.