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Gorgeous day in the river city... Should be close to a sellout if not quite there. Let's get back into the win column no matter how it looks. LFG Blue!!

If you want to better understand the modern coverages everyone is running, watch Lapolice's YouTube videos from a couple years ago. There's basically 3 main coverage shells (2 high "Cover 2", 3 high "Cover 3," Quarters "Cover 4") plus man ("Cover 0," "Cover 1") and then variations within...."match coverage" is basically playing different shells/concepts to field and boundary really trying to disrupt routes and QB's first read. Lapo has videos on all of it plus a lot of different passing concepts. Everyone runs all of those coverages. The variations are important and really the important part is the leverage they want DB's in at certain situations. That's what ends up giving more passive or aggressive looks. Example that Philpot TD...Calgary has one guy wide to the field, in-line tight end....to the field we have Griffin man up on the tight end, Kelly in middle hook/curl (he'd take any short crosser from the boundary too) and spying VA since he's got a view to the ball, Moxey PASSIVE outside leverage on Philpot he's at 15 yards and dropping straight out even as Philpot cuts, Nichols in a deep middle zone/inside leverage. Moxey doesn't even cross the numbers until Philpot catches the ball, barely even reacts to his post route. So we're in a Cover 4 shell that play (could be man to boundary because Calgary is running 2 verticals to boundary, we end up with all 4 of our DB's across the 45 yard line when Philpot catches the ball), passive, don't get beat deep....but we're 4 on 2 eligibles to the field, and the tight end blocks....so we've got 4 guys assigned to cover 1 guy running a route to the field. Kelly recognizes this and starts to hammer into the pocket on delayed blitz, Griffin stays with tight end. We have Moxey and Nichols just out there to guard Philpot and there's no recognition of that. Moxey should be able to read that and switch his leverage to get right onto Philpot's hip and go play the ball knowing he has deep help to the inside. You would think as a DB you'd want to go get the ball. And when we routinely have 8-9 guys in coverage there shouldn't be so much space underneath intermediate routes. We're not making reads and playing as a unit.

He had scrubs playing the DE position across the line last year & also had a monster (lol) in Jake Thomas playing beside him in a 3 man front. He has Ceresna now & the DL is much better therefore freeing him up.

I'll take the blame for Bryant. Without fail, anytime my wife buys a new jersey, that player is either traded, has a career ending injury or retires. She wanted to get a Bryant jersey 2 years ago and I told her not to because he still had gas in the tank. My bad - should have bought her one for Christmas and this whole mess could have avoided!

I think that coach Thomas...being not brought back as player Thomas has way more to do with it lol

I found it incredibly hilarious that everyone was being so respectful to speedie after he attacked GCn20 for always turning everything into an argument while referencing something that proved he was wrong. Then he doubled down on his own lack of reading comprehension. Absolute cinema. No notes. Chef's kiss.

Bombers D will have to be prepared for BC to go tempo and to defend RPO. Only way they are going to move the ball with Salter at QB.

I will just add this: look at the way Willie J is playing this year, with better players around him. Last year he would float around and look for knock downs, it looked like he was done. This is still happening at other positions.

3 things can happen: 1) We win in a blowout B) We win a pathetically close one (a la the Ottawa game) 3) We lose an even more pathetically close one (a la the Ottawa game if it had gone the other way) Praying for option 1... It's been awhile since I've enjoyed that kinda game at the ol barn (Ham last fall)...

This game could really set the tone for the rest of the year. No reason they shouldn't get things rolling against their Defense assuming they can shut down their DL.

As did io...said it in 2025....I mentioned pre camp that WJ can be judged when season starts and how he looks with actual talent around him, and playing actual DE and not relegated to what we had him doing last yr...and well...he looks like 4 yrs ago WJ...and thats cause he isnt out there too much..and has complimentary players out there with him

Very good chance they release him outright now. Non-disclosure of injury allows them to do so without a medical settlement.

This is the minimum salary, not the maximum you can pay a player. I'm sorry, but you are wrong about this. If the Bombers want to pay him 150k they can From CFLdb .Player salaries by position, age, years of experience or team are not known to the public. The CFL does not have a pay scale by position or experience, though it has introduced a scale for draft picks.

Are you deliberately obtuse? They've had a full preseason and 2 months of the season to do film work. Time to cut bait on the players who don't get it

He did. We should've flipped rando and vanterpool back then. But he did seem to take a big step forward last year. Taking a rookie imp in his first action and flipping him from G to LT is crazy work.

Manu lands on the non-football injury list after the first day of camp with the Lions. Not great for him as he needs to have a good camp to give them a reason to keep him around.

Moxey is playing field corner. If the guy in that spot is a net negative and it's not a spot you're trying to hide a Canadian (Matt Bucknor), that should be just about the easiest change to make on the entire roster. Moxey is a massive net negative towards winning. He hasn't made a single play this season other than a couple knockdowns late in games when we were already blown out. He's actively running away from making plays and bringing less than nothing. The effort level is embarrassing to watch as someone invested lifelong in this franchise. It's one thing to get beat, it's another to just visibly not give a damn or not want to compete. Hey there's a time when everyone is done. Get into coaching. We have 2 DB's on PR, 1 "LB." Make a move directly, Texada in at field corner for Moxey. Shift guys around. Put Nichols out there. He's clearly not up to moving/thinking fast enough anymore to playing boundary half, but I get he adds the vet presence, so stick him out at the field where he can isolate more on one guy and play downhill. Put Griffin at half, give more reps to Smith/Woodbey on D. Incorporate Vaval into some packages out there on D. We have a metric **** TON of players on D on this team. We have 24 guys dressed on the D side of the ledger for 12 on the field at a time. We need to play the guys who want to be out there, who will compete and execute.

I'm really hoping that Vanterpool can get the job done and that then Broxton can be moved to LT but I have zero faith that they'd make that move in-season.

We could start another American on O by sitting one of the two American's on D who get zero reps and "starting" another Canadian on D. We basically never play without 3 Canadians on D anyways, sometimes as many as 6 on a given rep last night. If we sat down the 2 DA's in the LB crew we could start 4 American OL and have another American receiver.

I really don't know about this team anymore. The offense has its issues but man alive Our defense is just terrible. Second and long is almost automatic for the opposition. We cannot be letting guys roam free for touchdowns either. Can the defense play mistake free?

I wouldn’t be worried about BC if Rourke was in.

Hoping for the best, fearing the worse.

This is the biggest gift of a free spot on the bingo card we’ve seen in ages. I can not imagine how we create a loss out of this game. even a close game would be a shock.

raw Talent it self is almost never the issue. Elsbury has no gap in talent behind any C in this league. Vaval is one of the most talented guys in the league but doesnt have a fit on D or O. With great coaching though, even adequate really, you make use of what you have. And bring out the best in your players. Almost no one is playing there best ball or even close to it. That isn’t a player issue, that’s coaching. We cut guys who other teams use. And often use better then us, despite us having had them in the room for a lot longer time. player quality is an issue at some spots, mainly because our roster is clogged with dead weight. One of the realities of scouting is the miss rate is high, and un predictable. Because of this you have to flood positions with new guys in order to find the ones worth developing. who will grow with coaching and reps. I think reese is one of those guys, but look at the volume of talented pass rushers it took to find him. The few guys with a real talent disparity are ones like korny who is at best a fringe player. Another major factor in recruiting, is you have to know the fit for your need. like we don’t need a speedy catch and run 5’8 170 lbs wr right now, if that’s all bring in you see screwed. And as brady said, the players don’t even know what the Os concept is supposed to be. This late in the season to not know at that level, you can imagine the position the scouts were in during the months leading up to training camp. Now, i’m not excusing walters or the scouts. I do agree we haven’t down a good job of bringing in guys who jump off the page. But when the systems on O and D are as flawed as they are, and you have log jams filling a good portion of the roster with old guys who can’t play but won’t lose spots, you also can’t fairly evaluate the job done by the front office. I’ve said it before, bad teams cut good players for the wrong reasons. And they cling to bad players for bad reasons too. Good and great teams find value in those cuts. Until we fix our systems, we will continue to fail at identifying using and developing players. We are a bad team, no matter the record or areas of success. We have no plan to create a win condition, and we have no tactics or execution to achieve those win conditions. On O or D. We are just fumbling through throwing random crap at the wall and hoping it will work. Our wins haven’t been created by us, they have happened to us. Same as unforced turn overs vs forced turn overs. The good news is that most teams in the league right now, are also bad. And frankly, atleast 3 are much farther from being good than us. Film study at this point is redundant. Both in the season and in the tenure of our systems/coaches. The fix, can be done with out film study. You could after today’s game, no matter it’s out come, begin installing changes that would drastically improve our team. We all know those changes, at this point. The mafia may not admit it, but they know it too. I look at how people are viewing our pass pro around the league. Talking about not having the time needed, but no one says big stan’s name. No one wants to besmirch his legendary career. Be it cjob, pregame with walby, the freep, 3dn, cfl.ca or tsn, no one is willing to say what is clear to be seen by even the most casual fan. He is brutal now. Hes getting almost 2 penalties a game, and getting destroyed with giving up pressures. He’s beaten with speed, power, technique, motor, every thing. Last year, you could beat him with speed, And some moves. But not with power, and not with motor. Not with any competent pass rush move. Now, he’s a free path to the back field. He’s not a turnstile, he’s a screen door from a trailer in a hurricane. No one from out side the team wants to say it, so they watch in relative silence. Waiting for the team to do, what any other team would’ve done long ago.

No game day thread this week? Are we that deflated? Lol

From CFLdb: The minimum player salary as dictated by the Collective Bargaining Agreement is $70,000 starting in 2023 for all players (American, National and Global players). See Section 9.01 of the CBA for full details. The 2019 CBA introduced a rookie salary structure for Nationals first contract consisting of 2 years plus a team option. Starting in 2023, a Max. Min salary (interpret as you will) is defined as $70,000 for the first two years of the contract, with a maximum housing allowance or signing/roster bonus of $7,500 per season and maximum 50% + 1 bonus based on snaps of $7,500 per season for a maximum earnings of $85,000 for first and second round picks in their first two seasons, with the third season base salary not exceeding the second year base salary by more that 10%. Third and fourth round picks have similar restrictions, except the housing allowance or signing/roster bonus is capped at $5,000 per season for a maximum earnings of $82,500. Fifth round picks and higher along with undrafted Nationals have the same restrictions except the optional housing allowance or signing/roster bonus for the first two years of the contract are capped at $2,500 limiting earnings to a maximum of $80,000 per season. There are no restrictions on the amount of contracts or bonuses for American players signing their first CFL contract. See Section 9.02 of the CBA for more details.

Willie J still has game, said it all offseason when everyone wanted him gone and I'm glad he has found his motor and motivation again.

Which is one of the best leadership qualities.

Interested to see what Bailey does at rb for the Lions. Comes from a pretty good college program and looked good in the preseason.

Identifying the problems with film work and fixing them are two different things.

Has anyone actually said, stop watching film? I think people are upset at what results from the watching of film…. Or doesn’t result.

There is a cap for drafted players, Global or Canadian. There is not a cap for American players, whether they are a rookie or not. You are mistaken on this.

yeah no excuse now...for excuses...Film work is fine and dandy if you can isolate and identify the reasons for the failing....be it scheme and or player performance. But we fail to recognize or admit sub par player performances or have the plums to yank them from lineup, so we keep trotting them out there...thats part of the problem

I think Willie probably had a pretty good look in the mirror this offseason as well and wasn't happy with the way the year went.

Stunned by this take, blown away, unexpected.

He needs to be great. Like, really great. He needs to come out and pants the guys in front of him. He's gotten kind of a knock for being soft off how long the injury lingered last year. Right when he needed to step up last year too, and got a chance. But an early non-football injury could be a pulled hammy from working out or something pretty minor. If he falls off early due to injury I think the chances he gets picked up by another team will go up too .

If you look around at Ds throughout the rest of the league, none are great. But I don't know if I'd say any are even good. The Elk and the Riders have been the best in the league. But outside of a different outlier bad performer in each defensive standing league-wide, the rest are actually very close. Especially when you look at it per game played. Our D gives up among the fewest yards per play on first, 2nd fewest passing yards again, one of the lowest completion %s, middle of the pack in YPC while one of the most run against Ds in the league, 2nd down conversion rate is in the few best, most sacks, most PKDs, 2nd most TFL, while opposing offences enjoy the best starting field position in the league. Despite all that, our D is pretty bad. The best Defence against CFL offences is the IR. That's the only thing slowing down scoring. To actually answer the question, the drop-back heavy match zone that Toronto ran back then is the backbone of what teams run now. Fronts and pressure packages are far more modular than back then, when the Argos ran a pretty strict 3-4, and SAM hasn't been an actual Lber spot for ages. So yes, it still works. Almost 2 years ago now, JY switched us to a mainly 30 front dime pack heavy D dropping every one back constantly. And that was our best D since then, and by far the most Argo like D the league has seen. You know, they made him sit longer than he wanted when he fainted a couple of years ago. And they made Paddy sit when he was too injured to produce. I shouldn't take hope that it will happen again, especially since we cut/sat better Ts and played Stan so long. But it feels like maybe the worm is turning here. Mos is taking the ball to start the last few games in a row instead of deferring could be a big deal.

At some point you gotta stop pretending that you can correct these mistakes with film work. It's been 8 weeks of the season, it is what it is. Either these players don't get it or can't execute it so something needs to change.

Yep, you need to tackle well, gang tackle, and make guys pay a toll to catch the ball underneath the zone. If you don't do that, you are at best playing speed bump.

When a single player is getting 100+ yards passing on his head every week, someone who can make a play or at least staunch the bleeding would be a very big move. What really turned around the 2019 season from being another meh 2nd-3rd place finish in the West to a team that could actually win the big games? Gaitor, Hecht, Rios out. Maston, Taylor, Mike Jones in. In September/October...Taylor started 4 regular season games, Maston 2, Mike Jones 1. But they dominated all 3 playoff games. We had a D that made plays at all 3 levels.

whatever it was lol touche Just tells me that the veterans are untouchable.

Giving up 52 points and then making zero changes to the starting defense tells me everything I need to know.

If Detroit cuts him, they'll have to pay out an injury settlement. Manu will have earned a little over $3 million USD. He's not going to be in a rush to head up here. He'll wait through another off-season cycle and see if he gets into a NFL camp next year which is pretty likely. He's a 6'8 guy with a 7 foot wingspan who can move his feet. NFL teams aren't going to forgot that even if Detroit has struggled to develop him so far.

Brady O

One is on a grey cup contender (Adams and playing well) 2 are on another Grey Cup Contender (until BLM got hurt) tho Garbutt is hurt and Fox is more than good there....We...are not a contender currently...says a lot to me....Teams better than us see/seen value I am more than happy tho with Reese, as well as Dixon..Surely Cersna as well if he starts to get full time reps so thats not an issue currently. maybe the coach should select better players out of the pool of TC guys perhaps??...there is that angle too ...cant just say he wasnt given good options...but based on end rosters that he did pick has a ver extensive resume of playing a lesser player over some of whom he kept...Cant deny that. I think our surrent issue is all on him...he allowed it to get to this point and now is having a hard time turning it around...or just doesnt know how to

Lot of those guys got opportunity with other teams though... Some of those guys as well, case for example were puzzling keeps after training camp as well so your list ain't exactly saying everything you think it does. I saw Devin Adams make a play for the riders last week so good enough for the team that is the defending champs but not good enough here? Guys like Fox and Garbutt were better than some of the stuff we trotted out game in game out too. You don't need to be an all-star to be an improvement. Those guys seems to me had some injury issues themselves. You have this idea that it's boom or bust... Sometimes small moves make outsized impacts in team sports.

a lot of those guys were not injury replacement or guys brought on to replace underperformers...they were coaches choices right outta the gate...and then some sure...replaced an original bad choice But I agree we have had not a lot of success choosing players...be it a bad coaches decision...or poor supply...But based on a lot of what we have seen...There is a lot of bad coaching decisions as its pretty hard to assess any player who for one...wasnt kept....or if kept never played As for our current dilemma how can we say Womack..Singer..Poncius...Texada..Shay..Jackson..Vaval (on defence..heck even receiver) Vibert...Oyelola..heck even Hazen are not good options or not quality?....They havnt been played We can say tho that a lot of our current starters havnt gotten it done...be it some due to age...some talent...maybe some a victim of covering for another player who is just not getting it....so to not mix and match...swap here or there...is basically either ignoring the issue...or not even seeing it

Holm was axed...wasnt deemed good enough...was only brought back due to a vet injury, and only then cause he was close in proximity...I believe hadnt even left city yet...and was started....and all of a sudden was lauded as this special talent with feet made in heaven....where was all this praise prior to being cut...nowhere...just a prime example of how we evaluate...and how probably many more guys have been dumped that were better, and could have become real good...He was also not a Rigmaiden find And sure you can say what worked before on a acquisition level but doesn't now, actually is more relevant to coaching...so you cant just hold it on Scouts. Scouts and GM are not making the bad decisions in games...scouts dont say who to keep...or how to play them...That's coaching and every coach has a shelf life...they just do....How long has Osh been here? Alot of times after 8..9 yrs it gets stale...old...and just doesn't translate anymore...falls right in line with Osh tenure... as I mentioned...and was a desperate bring back cause was the easiest guy to bring in...Osh cut him...decided wasnt good enough...and sure thats not is only gaff...He also just this yr Rostered Jenkins over Reese...soley because he was a holdover and wowed Osh in 1 game...and was outplayed in camp by 4...if not 5 other DE's but now he is relagated to the PR Imagine if Reese also said eff you I outta here knowinghe deserved a spot...Our dline production and really good play would not be what it currently is

you can recruit a guy to come up for a looksee and place there who is unemployed and looking to play somewhere...there are 100's and 100's if not 1000's of guys so it's not an impossible task. I know as well players talk..small community and it is well known coming to Winnipeg to compete for a roster spot where there are long tenured vets is also a waste of time and hinders recruitment...and isnt the best organization to come into anymore and get a true opportunity...Such is the case with some guys who looked really good and were asked to the PR in a lieu of a guy they knew..everyone knew they were better than..and said eff you I agree some guys have failed...but also was it a poor assessment of the talent kept?....poor coaching and prep once they were kept?....not given any chance ever until desperately needed making it seem inadequate talent?...I'd say that more likely than anything id those reasons...Everyone else finda new talent...and plays it...and most these teams scouting units are all interconnected in some way and have a lot of if not all the same contacts...Its a matter of what we look for..who we choose to keep...not a lack of talent and the funny part of that was we scrap heaped him from a bottom feeder team who saw he wasn't the best option and went with a raw rookie...who subsequently went on to win R.O.Y that season And part of our issue is yeah some guys who came off the bench didnt steal a job...but also were not really given the chance either...and if we are being serious with ourselves Osh fills his roster with guys who have zero potential and or ability to contribute on offence or defence...but are picked purely because in school...they were good on teams....but were not top players....A top player can also play teams as a rookie...2nd yr/3rd yr guy as they develop...possibly play it even even better and have growth potential and rotational ability/use...A guy we covet and over fill our roster with who can play special teams...but thats about it...well thats the issue here and has essentially made our depth and any transitional player/piece non-existant...hence the reason why in multiple Grey Cups we have rostered guys with no business playing due to injuries...and That hasnt happened just once

I don't think Eli is the answer, but he would allow us to start an extra American receiver, and thats a big advantage.