Wiecek Article: Pressure Mounts On And Off Field For MOS

[DR. CFL]

Bad coach, bad team, bad scouting, bad management.....or any combination you like. This entire group has had their fair share of mulligans. It's time to produce or perish.

[BigBlue]

Why is Wiecek focusing on MOS's family issues? Is he Ted Cruz or Donal Trump? Is "crying" a real football issue? Or is this just more headline grubbing by the incompetent, as Trump might say?

I am not sure about MOS's leadership .... he had one of the best examples of a coach anywhere in Pinball Clemons .... He has witnessed some of the best in football .... but why isn't it translating? Is he too authoritarian or its opposite? Was the team divided or cohesive last tear? I really can't tell.

Has the whole problem been (1) a lack of talent at the critical positions and (2) player leadership?

Is it (3) the lack of support from above?

Who has the diagnostic tools to actually nail down what the problems have truly been?

Yes how our BELOVED BLUE perform in the first 6 games in a very challenging early schedule is going to be the measure of MOS's  manhood, in the football sense. By game 8 we will know whether he has the right stuff.

But what his family life has to do with BOMBER-MANIA I can not fathom.

Edited March 27, 2016 by BigBlue

[Taynted_Fayth]

I think it was to showcase what is on the line for MOS, it's not just a nonchalant season that win or lose can or will be shrugged off.  In all honesty I didnt even know MOS had a family.  the focus has mainly been on him as a coach and him as a former player. It definitely gives it a different perspective as to what he's got at stake this season

[kelownabomberfan]

1 hour ago, Taynted_Fayth said:

I think I'd draw the line at mu mu lol

[IC Khari]

23 hours ago, kelownabomberfan said:

I wonder how many times Bud Grant cried during an interview? That being said if Grant were interviewed by Wiechek he would probably break down in tears at how far the quality of journalism has fallen in Winnipeg since his era.  "I knew Vince Leah. Vince Leah didn't wear earrings!!"

[tacklewasher]

On 2016-03-26 at 1:45 PM, TBURGESS said:

By consequences, I mean losing playing time or airlifting in players to compete for the spot or having the backup start or letting a young guy take a game to see if he can produce or demoting the player to a DI or off the game day roster or offered a PI spot instead of full salary or getting rid of them during the season.

Gotta agree with you here. Lackluster play has not led to enough time out of games for the last 2 years. Don't need MOS to toss players under the bus like Burke, and don't want the extreme of the Rider coach who benched players for every fumble, but there is a happy medium and MOS isn't there. He needs to get there. He also needs to realize this and change. I'm concerned he doesn't get it.

[IC Khari]

Burke's style vs MOS's style, happy medium required ...

Burke: Under the BUS with YOU!!!

MOS: I sent you a text ...

Edited March 28, 2016 by IC Khari

[JohnnyOnTheSpot]

9 hours ago, BigBlue said:

But what his family life has to do with BOMBER-MANIA I can not fathom.

Just glad to see a Bomber related article in a slow football news period.  They used to write whole articles about Daley's dog so...  fair game.  We all read it right?

[SPuDS]

On March 27, 2016 at 10:35 PM, kelownabomberfan said:

pretty simple when you boil it down - keep Willy healthy and we make the playoffs.

Nichols with a full tc and preseason makes for a legit backup with actual games and wins under his belt.. Granted on a different squad but he is the best backup option we have had in eons..

[17to85]

23 hours ago, TBURGESS said:

Of course you can say he's a bad coach when he loses twice as many games as he wins. What other criteria would you use for a bad coach?

Dave Ritchie lost a hell of a lot more games than he won his first couple seasons in Winnipeg, did that make him a bad coach? Or just a guy who walked into a team with a lot of holes on it? 

Can we honestly say that O'Shea has been given the tools to succeed here? Yeah he might have some problems of his own but to my eye the problems with the talent level of the team are a far bigger problem than the coaching. 

[TBURGESS]

8 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

Dave Ritchie lost a hell of a lot more games than he won his first couple seasons in Winnipeg, did that make him a bad coach? Or just a guy who walked into a team with a lot of holes on it? 

Can we honestly say that O'Shea has been given the tools to succeed here? Yeah he might have some problems of his own but to my eye the problems with the talent level of the team are a far bigger problem than the coaching. 

Dave Richie made the playoffs and won a playoff game in his second year. Even in 1999. his first year, he won 4 of his last 7 games which gave us hope of better things to come. (He also won back to back games (For Mr Dee)).

Sure O'Shea inherited a poor team, but he had better talent than his predecessor right off the bat. He had a real QB (Willy), which is the #1 player you need to be successful, a top receiver (Moore) and a shutdown CB (Randle) that Burke would have loved to have, plus we added several other FA's. He surprised some teams in the first half of the season then won a couple of games in the second half.

In year 2, we added another couple of top FA's in Bryant and Picard which was supposed to fix the O line and 5 other FA's. We got Westerman, an all star DE and Adams at CB. He got 3 of our 5 wins in the first 6 weeks then a couple more later in the season. Quite frankly, we should have done better with the level of talent we had on the field.

I don't think that our talent level is anywhere near as bad as our record shows and O'Shea has been give the tools he needed to do better than our record. His choices of coordinators has been brutal. Thinking that Etch or Bellifool were viable in his first year was bad enough, keeping Bellifool for his second year shows incompetence IMO. 

[17to85]

42 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

Dave Richie made the playoffs and won a playoff game in his second year. Even in 1999. his first year, he won 4 of his last 7 games which gave us hope of better things to come. (He also won back to back games (For Mr Dee)).

Sure O'Shea inherited a poor team, but he had better talent than his predecessor right off the bat. He had a real QB (Willy), which is the #1 player you need to be successful, a top receiver (Moore) and a shutdown CB (Randle) that Burke would have loved to have, plus we added several other FA's. He surprised some teams in the first half of the season then won a couple of games in the second half.

In year 2, we added another couple of top FA's in Bryant and Picard which was supposed to fix the O line and 5 other FA's. We got Westerman, an all star DE and Adams at CB. He got 3 of our 5 wins in the first 6 weeks then a couple more later in the season. Quite frankly, we should have done better with the level of talent we had on the field.

I don't think that our talent level is anywhere near as bad as our record shows and O'Shea has been give the tools he needed to do better than our record. His choices of coordinators has been brutal. Thinking that Etch or Bellifool were viable in his first year was bad enough, keeping Bellifool for his second year shows incompetence IMO. 

I am not sure I completely believe that. Yeah Willy is better than the qbs before him, but he has been hurt a lot since he got here which does impact things. Moore is good but again, hurt a ton. Mack found a lot better american players than Walters has managed to and I think people tend to have this hate on for everything Joe Mack that they don't recognize how much he actually brought to the team. So Walters brought in Randle (who was hurt all last year) Mack brought in all sorts of dbs too, plus he found DL and linebackers and receivers and running backs. 

The biggest flaw for O'Shea is probably his assistant coaches but we've discussed that a ton too, was he handicapped by not being able to lure assistants to a coaching grave yard? Seems there's a good argument to be made for that. 

To me Walters is still a bigger problem than O'Shea is and until the pipeline of american players improves I will keep saying that. It's nice to "win" free agency but we've seen how that really impacts things the last couple years. 

[kelownabomberfan]

All right, fair points all.  Let's give OSH this season.  He's had two now to learn.  Year three is proving ground time.  If Willy stays healthy all season and we still miss the playoffs, it's time for OSH to get the boot.  Fair to say?

[bearpants]

It's rare that most of us can agree on something... putting aside one's opinion on whether they should have even been given a third year... we can all, more or less, agree that this is a make or break year.... if the team is not significantly better, it's axe time...

[TBURGESS]

19 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

I am not sure I completely believe that. Yeah Willy is better than the qbs before him, but he has been hurt a lot since he got here which does impact things. Moore is good but again, hurt a ton. Mack found a lot better american players than Walters has managed to and I think people tend to have this hate on for everything Joe Mack that they don't recognize how much he actually brought to the team. So Walters brought in Randle (who was hurt all last year) Mack brought in all sorts of dbs too, plus he found DL and linebackers and receivers and running backs. 

The biggest flaw for O'Shea is probably his assistant coaches but we've discussed that a ton too, was he handicapped by not being able to lure assistants to a coaching grave yard? Seems there's a good argument to be made for that. 

To me Walters is still a bigger problem than O'Shea is and until the pipeline of american players improves I will keep saying that. It's nice to "win" free agency but we've seen how that really impacts things the last couple years. 

I'll take Mack's scouting over Walters and it's not even close. I'll take Walters work in FA over Mack's and it's not even close either. Every year that Walters has been here, he's signed 7 or more FA's. Some are top tier. Some aren't, but all have proven that they at least belong in the CFL. His scouting and his drafting (Except for the first round) have been poor to say the least. He is certainly part of the problem.

Lots of folks thought we were a QB away from being a good team before O'Shea. Willy is the best we've had in years and we still can't make the playoffs. Willy being hurt shifted the view to needing a good backup QB. Nichols is the best we've had in years, but that still didn't result in many wins. Blame the OC? Sure, but the HC who hired him and kept him on needs to take his share of that blame too.

It's likely that the good assistant coaches had better choices than tying themselves to a rookie HC, with tons less experience than they had, who had to turn around a bad football club. The coaching graveyard scenario is far less likely IMO as there've been tons of teams who fired their HC's more often than we have and they still manage to hire new HC's, most with way more experience than O'Shea.

Last off season I was saying make the playoffs or get fired because year 2 is the make it or break season 90+% of the time. This off season lots of folks are saying this year is O'Shea's make or break season. Personally, I'm worried that O'Shea won't make it past mid-season because of the way our schedule looks and replacing coaches during the season almost never works.

[Mike]

39 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

I am not sure I completely believe that. Yeah Willy is better than the qbs before him, but he has been hurt a lot since he got here which does impact things. Moore is good but again, hurt a ton. Mack found a lot better american players than Walters has managed to and I think people tend to have this hate on for everything Joe Mack that they don't recognize how much he actually brought to the team. So Walters brought in Randle (who was hurt all last year) Mack brought in all sorts of dbs too, plus he found DL and linebackers and receivers and running backs. 

The biggest flaw for O'Shea is probably his assistant coaches but we've discussed that a ton too, was he handicapped by not being able to lure assistants to a coaching grave yard? Seems there's a good argument to be made for that. 

To me Walters is still a bigger problem than O'Shea is and until the pipeline of american players improves I will keep saying that. It's nice to "win" free agency but we've seen how that really impacts things the last couple years. 

Considering we know for a fact his first choices for OC/DC were Jason Maas and Rich Stubler, I'm not going out of my way to bash him for his preference in assistants yet. I'd like to really see what O'Shea does now that he has something to work with. This staff (on paper) is solid. The talent (on paper) is the best we've had yet. If Drew stays healthy, there are zero excuses if this isn't a playoff team.

[Mike]

3 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

his drafting (Except for the first round) have been poor to say the least.

To say that is ridiculous, if you ask me. What you're really trying to say is "his second round drafting has been poor", which I'd tend to agree with. But considering it's been two drafts, I'm not sure how you expect to really measure his success in the later draft rounds. Derek Jones as a fourth rounder is probably capable enough to start in the same role as Bucknor at this point - that alone makes his later round drafting a success to me. 

[kelownabomberfan]

Let's see what Captain Hairdo aka Addison Richards does this year.  I really hope he's not Jade Etienne 2.0.  That would suck.

[Jpan85]

There are 8 guys that Walters drafted on the roster who is the last gm of this team that had that many.

[17to85]

40 minutes ago, Jpan85 said:

There are 8 guys that Walters drafted on the roster who is the last gm of this team that had that many.

Probably Joe Mack. GMs draft players and put them on the roster. That in and of itself isn't really a statement about their abilities to draft. 

[Jpan85]

Most he had was 6 and I included Pencer and Dunn. Walters in a two year span he has drafted 2 starters 2 guys who can come in and start. A FB of the future and 2 really good special teams guys and WR who could be a good rotational player. Mack selected Muamba.

[Mr Dee]

As far as I remember Mack's draft record is not something to put out there as one of his strengths...

[17to85]

11 minutes ago, Jpan85 said:

Most he had was 6 and I included Pencer and Dunn. Walters in a two year span he has drafted 2 starters 2 guys who can come in and start. A FB of the future and 2 really good special teams guys and WR who could be a good rotational player. Mack selected Muamba.

OK but you know what I'm saying right? Just because you have guys you drafted on the team doesn't mean you're great at drafting, it could be as in the case of the Bombers simply that your depth is so lacking that guys you draft just walk right onto the team. 

[Jpan85]

1 minute ago, 17to85 said:

OK but you know what I'm saying right? Just because you have guys you drafted on the team doesn't mean you're great at drafting, it could be as in the case of the Bombers simply that your depth is so lacking that guys you draft just walk right onto the team. 

I get that but the Canadian depth was complete crap when Mack took over and he was not able to get any significant players on the roster on through the draft other than Muamba

[TBURGESS]

1 hour ago, Mike said:

To say that is ridiculous, if you ask me. What you're really trying to say is "his second round drafting has been poor", which I'd tend to agree with. But considering it's been two drafts, I'm not sure how you expect to really measure his success in the later draft rounds. Derek Jones as a fourth rounder is probably capable enough to start in the same role as Bucknor at this point - that alone makes his later round drafting a success to me. 

I don't measure his success via his late round drafts. They're mostly shots in the dark, if they stick it's just as good a chance that we got lucky rather than we made great choices. Quite frankly, I don't know enough to have an informed opinion on who to pick in the later rounds anyway.

I don't like Walters second round picks though. IMO there were better players available, especially in 2015 where we had 2 2nd rounders. We chose Richards over Waud and Morgan over Durant.