All Activity

You need to atleast be able to create pressures and push/collapse the pocket with your front. That also ensures that if you send extra rushers, the pocket time will be very small. Defence these days are heavily reliant on disruption. We aren’t doing that nearly as much as we did last year. We’re running a lot of 4-2 and 4-1, 3-2 is pretty limited.

But in comparison to the rest? I stand by my statement. He's the most noticeable. Really? Jake hasn't needed to take the kind of snaps he has for several years. Osh was always going to play him more than he should.

Agree. Korny too. Just doesn’t make sense. That’s true, but it’s also hard to project stats at DT. It’s not a high volume tackle spot in high reps. 2 tackles a game at dt in high volume is really good. 2-3 is extraordinary. The volume of our pressures and sacks thatve come with him in the field is crazy. Especially when with Lawson.

Yeah but collaros also sucks at the underneath passing game....

I think that where Mitchell would help as opposed to Sterns....Sterns isnt really gonna be a deep threat contested ball guy, nor do I see him excelling at crossers in the mid to intermediate area...or really as the trusted second down conversion/chain mover guy....Clercius has that covered Mitchell would garner attention and stretch things out a bit...and not just over top stuff, and with Demski and Schoen working their bread and butter prob leave Wheatfall with a lot of man to man stuff....Mitchell has the potential...and history of breaking stuff from anywhere....Don't really see that with Sterns....he's kind of just out there...and redundant....we need a twitchy/ burner type or a bigger physical guy who can win battles in contested situations and help in run game...Sterns does neither said all along too...Banking on Schoen as being the game breaker and your A1 guy again was a fools game barely a yr from ACL reconstruction. And paying him as such...which thankfully we are not would also been as about as dumb as re-upping ZC before seeing a good 6-8 games outta him

Our most impressive lineman athletically is Adams. Not sure we have a ton of evidence to give him flowers. He's got stats on like 2% of the snaps he's played. 0 sacks, 0 TFL's. He's not some unstoppable, transformative force even if he's an impressive athlete. Not disagreeing that he shouldn't get more reps, but not exactly willing concede to him playing more = more pressure from DL, more big plays from DL. So far he's an alright CFL player.

Our receivers are great if they are wide-open. Schoen looks quite limited. Only guys that really fight through contact are Clercius and Demski. Easy to defend us. Kill the vertical stuff, force our receivers to make plays underneath and beat zone. We can't.

Yup. Is anyone surprised when you see Thomas has over 50 more reps. I mean honestly it’s sad seeing Thomas trotted out like he’s some all star. Dude is single handily making us worse. And with Jefferson and his total lack of effort at times, this is no surprise. O’Shea puts all his faith in these guys and it appears they take advantage of it. I’d cut a couple to send a message. Jefferson might be top of the list honestly cuz if I’m another player seeing him coast most games, I’m not sure how I feel. I get 60 less reps but try my hardest every time. It’s kind of crazy. I don’t understand. This isn’t community club football. Not everyone deserves a spot. I always thought the idea was to dress the best 45 or so guys. We don’t do that.

I honestly didn't think Jake would be playing this much once Lawson was ready. Absolutely wild the snaps he's getting.

Your best lineman is adams and he's getting so few snaps. Embarrassing.

Just caught up on snap counts for the season...folks had asked in a different thread. 211 defensive snaps (including penalty plays were the play wasn't stopped early): Vaughters - 189 Jefferson - 182 Thomas - 144 Lawson - 129 Adams - 117 Kornelson - 26

Oh sure, but that's justification for the numbers only, not when you try and account for the age of the DEs. 3 or 4 years ago sure run those guys as the only 2 but now they don't have the legs to be out there all the time.

I'm going to build on @JuranBoldenRules points. Name a successful CFL or NFL team that didn't generate a lot of pressure and by extension sacks? We did in 19 and 21, Toronto did it in 22 and 24. Eagles just won a Super Bowl in part because of this.

I’m not defending that, nor do I like having 30 dbs/lbs and only six receivers in the lineup. That’s roster mgmt, which imo is different than direct player to play comps at the same position.

And jeffcoat missed a lot of time to injury so moving on wasn't necessarily wrong... but they definitely didn't put in a lot of effort trying to replace the DEs. Nor DTs. Trotting out Jake as if he's Doug brown ain't cutting anything. Jake was a depth guy at his peak and he's well past that now.

The justification is the scheme. With Younger they have no commitment to rush from the edge. They are disrupting QB eyes by challenging their reads in who from their D will be managing which routes and potentially who/where pressure might come from. They'd rather have a guy like Griffin out there as a hybrid at 3 levels than have 4 DL driving into the pocket/off the edge on a potential passing down. We're basically running a 3-4 defense in this era where DB's are LB's. Our only true LB out there is Jones or Gauthier if he's out there....It's basically a 3-1-8 if you're thinking about who might do what, for the most part those 8 are coverage players but they also will rush aside from the corners.

Biggest mistake they've been making from 2022 on is Willie Jefferson. Great luxury piece to add to one of the greatest CFL D's of all-time if you have the cap space. It worked for 3 years amazingly when he played about 2/3 of snaps. But he's not a building block. And especially as he reaches his mid-30's. Jeffcoat was the building block and they've never replaced him. They misread who was dominant, but I mean the whole world does with Jefferson because he's out there and obvious. Not that Jeffcoat could still play, but the role they needed to replace in the scheme to be dominant. Instead, Willie has got paid at each time his ticket has come up as his play is less and less effective without that dominant core in the front 7 around him. I am not a fan of Younger's scheme in comparison to Richie Hall's. We hardly turn the ball over, and we rely on coverage which is foolish. Even when you watch our DL play there's no attempt to get pressure from out side. Vaughters will rush B gap, Jefferson will twist sometimes and end up B or A gap, but from the edge they are just reading the QB to disrupt passing lanes. Any DE we've dressed for the past 2 seasons. It's basically a coin flip every week if it's going to work, but you see how even 1 or 2 guys having a bad game in the secondary sinks this scheme. Pressure is how you build championship defense, and if you're going to have one without the other, consistent pressure is way more impactful. If you have good players in the back end you'll probably never be worse than .500 with this scheme. But it's not a scheme that's going to beat another team that is in rhythm and playing at a championship level. We make no attempt to be aggressive at the line of scrimmage and are mostly trying to disrupt QB downfield reads while that QB basically knows they won't be pressured. Our team stats look decent right now, but we played the worst quarterbacked team by a longshot (BC) twice and Tre Ford.

I knew this would be the first argument brought up... and there's some validity tonight, but the 1s have looked very similar in the regular season compared to preseason and we can pretty much nail the roster that'll start as soon as camp opens so that shows me that osh has it written in ink from day 1 and it won't change. Honestly I want to see one person provide a good solid justification to having Ayers, a linebacker, as the only DE depth on the roster when our starters are 34 and 32 years old.

Quality of competition matters in preseason. Looking good for a quarter or half of a preseason game isn’t the only factor in who plays. None of us saw any camp to know how they looked over a few weeks of reps. They might be better, but the definitive takes we’re getting on this site are a little much. @DTonOB, do you have any pressures stats for last year and/or this year?

Brandon Alexander & Collaros was hurt as well. However, I get starting Collaros even with a bum ankle. Posters here going after the members they think complain too much & then they throw up shade making excuse after excuse actually keeping the merry go round going. The coaching decisions cost us those Grey Cups. The 2023 Grey Cup with all the injured players, especially with Biggie playing on one leg, Schoen barely able to run & was a non factor...etc, etc. Last year playing Collaros with a severed finger on his throwing hand. That's all coaching decisions.

Yep. Our wins have been heavily skewed by the fact that we had a ridiculous talent edge over the rest of the league. Look at how our DL dominated; we ran every alignment imaginable, with every single combination of players. Everything we did after we started, Zach worked. With every sub and roster change. That team is among the most overpowered in league history. The fact that much of the core is still competitive speaks volumes to that. Mos has done a lot of great things here; we could've won with almost any HC. Not any coach could've turned us into that squad, not any coach could've come back from last year's start. But a bunch of coaches would have more GC rings in his place here. Your claim is that absurd. We see outstanding rookies at every single position in the CFL now. Even QBs here n there. For real though, who did Kornelson out play and how? The backup QB is the most popular guy amongst the fans. The thing is, we have several below-replacement-level guys like Kola and Jake. Would you like to go do a head-to-head comparison of forced into action PR back-ups vs those guys in film? Can show real clearly that some guys we play are average PR or below guys. Funny thing is the same thing happened last year in PS too. On top of that, our brutal useage of biggie, feeding him to OL to prevent double teams, caused his precipitous downfall and injuries. We battered the poor guy into a career grave. We were not first in pressures last year, which aren't openly tracked or released on a reliable in-season basis. Classic distraction technique. Teams often track it themselves and quantify it. He tried to say at one point last year that Jake had the most pressure in the league. The gap is actually widening in terms of pressures as well, between us and the rest of the league. Teams like Sask, To, and a couple of others are running much more aggressive fronts, doing basically the opposite of what we did last year. The riders have had an absurd amount of pressure on opposing qbs this year. More real pressures than we had all last year. Very few.

It's very telling that Mike Oshea never actually retired from playing. He would not ever quit and he's not going to tell one of his guys to quit.

I don't think receivers are really the problem on this team. Qb and OL are where I see problems.

Osh didn't move on from those guys because he felt there were better players available. The injuries forced him to. If Biggie could play at 45 years of age & run a 6.5 forty & have a vertical jump of 9 inches then he'd start.

Ok how many pressures are the DL generating this year? Cause it is usually a linebacker getting pressure. First in those categories last year is one thing but what about this year?