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I do. A player who relies on intelligence rather than pure athleticism would be a good candiate to become a coach, and those Ex-CFL players who are head coaches were good (not necessarily great) are in place in Saskatchewan, BC, Calgary, Montreal and now Ottawa. There will always be the odd anomaly.

It was Darryl Patterson who did a very good job when Osh & Walters gave him decent players to coach. Our DL in 2021 & 22 was excellent. .

Whether or not Willie takes a big pay cut likely depends on what other options he has.

Maybe this is the beginning of the end, i.e., we're all in on getting Gavin McKenna.

I'm thinking that given another shot and what he's learned as a coach he would be a more improved coach. Continous improvement kind of thing.

Khari hasn’t really had much success. Wouldn’t hate to see him here as qb coach tho. Here’s one. Mike Ditka. But there’s more who weren’t.

Reaves has never been tough. He’s a bully and it’s great seeing him humbled now.

They carrying 8 D with fleury. That’s not ideal. Now they down to 7 so they can call up another forward. Zhilkin ain’t top 6. He’s bottom 6. None of the moose guys currently are top 6. I like Yager and Chibrikov but ideally they 3rd line guys with a 4th line shutdown line.

Khari Jones if he gets another shot?

Jason Maas. Debatable on both aspects.

Dave Dickenson, Mike Oshea.... but yeah being a good player isn't a prerequisite for being a good coach.

That seems like a bit of an odd call up. He’s improved, but it’s not like he’s putting up great numbers. Not sure how he is at face offs. Gustafsson would make more sense to me, but maybe he would have to clear waivers, if he was sent back down? Salomonsson would make sense with Fleury hurt.

Oshea was pretty good.

Clercius has been exceptional in his extremely limited role. I've got no concerns with him pencilled in as the last wr and 2nd Canadian for this year. Now we do certainly need to draft some Canadian WRs behind that, preferably guys who can outrun slow offensive linemen. I think we can address this either with quantity picks or a quality pick. We could also take some swings on guys in free agency, bumping Clercius to a rotational role. Guys like Brissett, Gittens, maybe Ungerer, or Nield. We could take a flyer on Baker for depth. He hasn't been healthy, but that means he should be dirt cheap, and as a last wr/back up thats great value. We could bring back Bolo, again a low-cost guy who could slide back and forth between the last wr and the backup. I'd love that. We could also jump into the full-on reclamation mode pile with Bruggeling. He still has a tremendous combination of size and athleticism. Didn't we just go through this discussion, too? Am I crazy? Way more guys succeed in coaching who failed at their positions than all-time greats. Jake also wasn't always some awful mess of a player. He was a very good rotational guy and fringe starter at one point. Being as effective as he was at bullrushing and playing the run, in his prime, requires a lot of technique. The problem has never been his trade craft. It's been that he is so slow for maybe 3 years now; he is lucky to get in contact with an OL on a deep pocket when pass rushing. He's not reggie white or von miller or some thing, but those guys seldom become great coaches at the position.

lol. Name one. Honestly. One. Just one cuz I can name 50 who weren’t. including some of the greatest coaches of all time like bud grant John madden and some dude named Vince Lombardi who played never played pro football. I mean really. Buck. Dinwiddie. Steinhauer millanovich macoica. I mean 90 percent of the coaches In both pro football leagues were just average to below average players or not at all even. Andy Reid sure was a hell of a player eh, I mean really.

Actually yeah, I was thinking of Wheatfall. Point remains on Demski though, and our backup Canadian receivers currently being quite sub-par.

First question, that's why I think we are in this situation where he hasn't resigned. I think he will need to go to free agency to see, teams are willing to overspend on ends coming off career years, not ones off multi-year career slumps. Now, he and his family are deeply entrenched in Winnipeg. I don't think they want to leave. The initial knee-jerk reaction of "I'm not taking a pay cut!" gives way to the reality that his career is soon to end, and his family is cemented in this area. He likely has some cushy post-playing gigs lined up here, leaving now to chase some cash could really cost him in his post-playing life.\ We did the exact same thing to Jeffcoat. He thought he would get much better offers and didn't, despite coming off a strong year; his limited games scared teams off. He chose to retire rather than play for cheap. We also played hardball with key DL free agents like Sayles, Nevis, Stove, Kongbo, etc. I would take any of those guys and Jeffcoat at the point we let them go, over WJ today. I'd pay more for those other guys than WJ, and WJ earned more than any of those guys would get. For the 2nd, I can't say for sure, as much as I would love to know the answer to that. Previous to this year, the thought of us walking from Jake and Kola was a pipe dream. The DL is on a rebuild, we need to bring in an outside FA, and we have some hungry young talents. Also, when our D was at its best, WJ was on limited reps. 19/21, we rotated the DL more than anyone does currently. We carried essentially 2 full DLs, and they all played meaningful snaps. And that is how the rest of the league runs their DL now. We built the paradigm, then lost the keys. Really, we lost the bodies, and our staff decided it's better to carry 7ol and a FB for short yardage sets that we never struggled with, rather than carry a full DL and rotate those guys in to take meaningful snaps.

The O tackles in the NFL tend to drop back a yard back. Their helmet has to be inline with the centre or something like that. Essentially they leave a yard space between them and the DE/RE.

Flat out, does anybody here seriously think that WJ is going to take a cut from $200,000 to say $120,000-$140,000? Secondly does anybody see the club actually limiting him to 50% of the snaps if here?

We haven't seen disciplined WJ in a long time. But when JJ was here with the support inside both needed, WJ struggled when JJ wasn't on the field. Media types tried to invert that, because WJ was the guy who got credit and MODP nods. But post JJ, wj has been the worst version of him self, save for 2-3 games. Jeffcoat had 8 sacks in his last season here, where he played 14 games. WJ had 11 that year. Since then, WJ has played 35 games and totaled 9 sacks. Wj has always struggled with discipline. Once the ball is snapped, he relies heavily on instincts and gambling. This is most visible in how frequently teams have run read option off him and just torch him routinely, also his inability to get contain on most QBs, and how frequently he misses tackles on the QB when he gets into a good position. Despite his age and success, he has always been low on field discipline. When he was most effective in the past, he wasn't allowed to play rover. But seems to have been able to do it as much as he wants the last two years. What he has always needed to succeed is 1-on-1s. With guys like Sayles/Stove/Drake and Jeffcoat in the past, WJ didn't see a ton of double teams here. But ever since we moved on from Sayles and JJ, WJ has been the focal point of blocking schemes. And teams have realized that if you double him and get him roughed up, he will stop driving his rush lane. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. Teams are going to run read option on him in the run game, and double him with the pass. The way to make him the most effective he can be is to take away the other team's ability to game plan for him. The easiest way to do that is to take him out of the starting lineup. Rotate him as the 3rd end, and move him around. The only other way would be to surround him with ideal talent that requires double teams and support blocks. But that won't release him from his deficiencies in the run game. Could he be effective as a standard DE? I don't think so. He could've when he was younger. But I don't think he could now. He doesn't have the motor you need to fight through and keep pursuing disruption in the back field. We could make a useful role that is not a rover with him. It would have to start by limiting his snaps, though. This is really late for WJ not to be resigned. I suspect it's going to be a Jenarion Grant play. Let him hit FA, see where the market is, then try to get him back on a discount.

I'm thinking he never played anything with anyone. On an unrelated note, not a big fan of DM.

They do with being a yard off the ball. Plus the field side DE has alot more space to cover to contain the QB. Not to mention DEs drop into zone coverage more frequently in the CFL.

I think it has to do with the fact that a DE can take on a lesser role... when you're talking about aging vets at S, LT, MLB, and QB... those are guys taking 100% of snaps... an aging DE can be employed in a lesser role as a rotational player... I believe that's where most of us see him now... This is probably nothing more than a gut feeling... but Jake strikes me as exactly the kind of guy that was an average/below average player but will make a great coach... Also, O'Shea did go straight into coaching... I believe he was in a sales gig when Toronto brought him in to coach ST.... but point still stands I'm confused.... do you genuinely think this is true?... there's literally dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of bad players who have made great coaches...

Sure, but that wasn't the argument being made. Tracker said they were good at their positions. Danny M never even played pro.