wbbfan

Yep. Platooning Smith and Shay (Shay starting and taking the largest portion of snaps) at one Lber spot would benefit us in soo many ways. Then the amount we played woodbey as well, making him our go to wil would only make sense. You can trade Jones for some asset, save salary cap over both jones and kyrie, gain a starting canadian on the ratio, and then you can have 2 lbers capable of picking up a wr in coverage or dropping back into a deep zone. It's like having 2 prime biggies in pass cover out of the 2nd level. We need a 2nd Canadian DL who can actually play. With that, we would have the flexibility to do any thing we want else where. We could go 3 full time imps on the OL with ease.

A few things happened. We stopped trying to retain Canadian OL in free agency with Suhk. Which wasn't a bad move to let him go, but we just hemorrhaged Canadian OL for years. That created a situation where it was only a matter of time before the NI Ol pipeline dried up. It dried up in part because of misses on the OL, but also because we shifted our drafting philosophy. We went from taking guys who topped out as teams players in the bottom of the draft, to pushing them up to the half way point and higher. 19 was an insane bumper crop of talent, and it was guaranteed we would not continue to replicate that. 21 in general was not a great draft, so that hastened the downturn. Then in 22 we ended up with only 1 pick in the top 4 rounds, Ford who had 1 really good year here then was gone. Then, 2023 was a bad draft for us. Even that great 19 draft, we lost Kongbo and Desjarlais pretty fast. So even when the influx of talent from the draft was very good, it wasn't here long. So we got left being married to scrap heap players. Now we've had strong drafts again in 24 and 25. We need to have another strong draft this year coming, but we also need to stop the loss of NI talent, and maybe find some in free agency. In the draft stuff the bombers showed, they clearly said the aim of this last draft was to pick up guys for miller on special teams. Luckily, two of those guys who were the best teams options were also the best defensive options with tons of up side. Now if we never actually give them a shot it will be yet another loss, as you can be sure those guys aren't up here to be lifers on teams.

“(In training camp) we repped a lot of things that we didn’t rep during the season. I didn’t get a lot of reps with the guys who were playing. My situation put us in jeopardy there with the suspension and trying to manage that. I think it’s getting reps — reps with the players, reps with what concepts do we like? On second-and-six, second-and-five with the game on the line, what are we going to call because we know we can execute the play? I don’t know if we had that this year, so getting good at something, I think, matters https://3downnation.com/2025/11/02/zach-collaros-frustrated-by-2025-season-but-plans-to-play-for-winnipeg-blue-bombers-in-2026/ That all tracks, but boy is that a pile of red flags. No wonder our go tos ended up being old holdovers from lapo/buck and why zach couldn’t build a repoire with any one this year. And yeah as has been said ad nauseam, the concepts we ran were trash.

on on doug was laughing at thomas on a play where he was in a 2 point stance, barely got out of his stance by the time the ball got out and still got turned and tossed on his butt. his scheme carried us from bottom of the standings to a home play off game last year. He’s shown some great ability to draw up plays that get pressure out of blitzes, but you just can’t blitz your way to victory in the cfl. you need to be able to disrupt the passing game with 4-5. I want to see what he can do with a good dl

not like we have a ton of horses to pair him with or protect him. Or some great farm to sell. That said, we need to do some thing and options are very few. His previous deals had very high guaranteed floors too.

I’d take any of those out comes over running it back yet again. As far as trading Id prefer to include manu than elgersma. I love manu, but I’d rather stack it up at qb right now. Retiring, Idk who to we would pivot to. I just hope not the pest from toronto

yep, he also said he has options, so maybe it means he is willing to be waived/opt out etc

only his first year, he played a few games while couture was out. Eli hasn’t been useless, he’s been so so as a guard when pressed into limited used, though he was good last night. He has been excellent as the 6th ol in heavy sets

hell no

oh 100%. I’ve run into way more of those than you’d think normal in my ventures into saskabush. stay as close to the border as possible drive in and out same day

Awesome list thanks! Was holms new deal only 1 year or was that 2 years ago already? The lists are soo massive these days. You really have to act quickly and decisively to prevent torpedoing your off season.

Kyrie was alright. But we need to go younger at lber and should flip the ratio to ni with the young guys there. Apparently zach said he wants to play next year with the current core. Doesn’t sound from the quote like the wants to be in a rebuild or tear down next year. He also said he has “options” for next year.

Lawler would’ve made us better, but our passing game /offence was soo bad I think he would’ve just been under used, like brady. I don’t think he would’ve put us over calgary or bc. Now if we fire hogan early or never make him oc, and keep lawler, then I think you are right.

I get using a DI on a killer teams guy. You can usually build a package on D with them in limited reps too. But, it’s very situational. When you use 1 di spot on a Kicker, and another on the kr, you just can’t use yet another on a cover guy. Especially not one who doesn’t play D at all. You also need to have a high level back up ni wr or db and probably 2 ni/global DL who can bring a lot of value in moderate snaps. Most teams are going two di’s on the dl already, and or a naturalized player. It’s even harder when your kr isn’t a back up wr or a viable db. If vaval could take that step it’d be huge. but I expect him to get an nfl look.

Agree with a lot of that. I’d tend to be ready to tear down more of the old guys. Id only bring wj back on a dirt cheap deal to be the Nat-am back up end and play very limited reps. Parker has had moments and about as many good as bad, and missed a ton of time. I’d move on from him. We also have to look at guys who might wanna leave us. Haven’t seen our pending free agents, but if they can I could see wrs not named demski, all the dl we don’t cut, ayers, nichols and maybe even brady taking a long hard look at leaving. Guys like that don’t usually wanna sit around a rebuild, they want to sit on a bad team that won’t decide to rebuild even less. I think atleast one of mos/walters should go. Most of our offensive coaches outside of marty and a few of the defensive positional coaches. Time to let jy build a D staff, and build the roster on D around him. Rather than having him build the D around our sorry ass dl.

Bailey was on the pr all year, same with cobb. Woods was before him, and so on. Doesn’t say any thing other than that we a suck at roster management. Talent, is the last issue in the world with adam lmao. Pr doesn’t exist any more btw, they both finished last year on the pr too. After the one game we brought person in and had great pressure rotating guys, we stopped using person more than 5-6 snaps a game and stopped having pressure. No one makes plays with out snaps. We literally had no pressure all year except the couple of games where thomas’ snaps were heavily limited. Every game we lost on D, is heavily to due with jake thomas. hes also had few and infrequent snaps. Instead of having him di and come in for 10 or a bit more snaps a game, where he can produce and learn, we starve him for reps and sit him 3/4 of the year.

yup. handicapped our self out of championships, out of contention and out of being good. If we had played a hard, tough game and lost to a more talented team or slightly better coached team that’d be fine. it’s not that we need to crush titles every year, we just need to not be blue collar. play physical, play a full game, don’t get blown out of the water physically etc

I think that was an organizational approach, not just walters. We chose to spend that money on full pr pay, extending the pr with the 1 game ir, and with wilson. Just like drafting only for teams with the value picks this year. Walters should be making stronger lead the franchise choices, but he isn’t. that’s his biggest failing imo. Both guys have performed at a level where they deserve a boot, but i think walters is the one you can do more with and get more out of.

So you don’t think we would’ve beat montreal with those changes, or been in it vs hamilton? Idk how you can look at this game and say lawson, thomas, kola off for griffin, imp, imp/eli doesn’t cover the spread when we took the lead as is. Hard to believe that take, especially with the lack of pressure and kolas wild snaps alone.

going to 3 straight gcs and losing, especially in the brutal way we have to back up qbs isn’t a win, it’s a loss. You’re right though, to clean house and upgrade right away is hard for that to happen and the team to improve right away is even harder. We also have to face the reality that we likely will lose guys we don’t want to and have a lot of holes to fill. If we pick one, mos is the worst of the two by far imo. But he’s hard to replace. If we got dinwiddie with walters that’d give us a chance, but the roster rebuild could leave us any where first to last. we spent a lot retaining guys. the previous team had a lot of guys playing on rookie scale deals or back up deals. After the increase came, we should’ve been aggressive. especially in that situation. that was a major failure of the franchise

from ages before with no one in the org that worked with him little on had worked with in recently. He’s been more than pretty good as a teams coach and as a co at multiple levels. He was also good as an ast hc before coming here, which is why he got the job. The life style didn’t fit him and that’s why he didn’t go back to try and be a hc again. He got offers in hamilton and in the ncaa. He was never cut out for a gm role, and almost no one should do both jobs alone full time.

The franchise, and football era is nothing like either of those times though. The worst part of those moves is 1) we didn’t do our due diligence to realize kelly was crazy and awful, 2) that reinbold shouldn’t have been doing both jobs. He would have been ok as just a coach imo. Both of those messes also lead us to build the mafia as ritchie eras. We need Ol upgrades and changes no matter who is playing. Over the hill gangs time is done.

You gotta get to sask bud, Those games are a riot. I enjoy montreal a lot too even though the stadium isnt great.

Do you think we win/contend if we made the following changes? We started 9 canadians, if we take thomas off the ar and lawson backs up adams/woods. Then you take lawson jr off for griffin. Kola (who had an absolutely brutal game not just blocking but snapping) off the ar vanterpool on at G eli at C. Nat imp wj, and dress either jenkins/jaworski for a pick em of imp lbers/dbs lets say ayers. With that line up the als aren’t getting gaps they can drive a truck through, or 5+ second pockets. We get solid consistent pressure instead, and when we got pressure on davis by play design we did much better on D. Imo, that line up doesn’t fall multiple majors behind in the first half. We win, and stand a very good chance vs hamilton. yes 5 snaps maybe. I had him making 2 big stops at the line on runs, but they ended up as gang tackles and credit went elsewhere. I know jones cleaned up one tackle i think kyrie the other. They got the stats (this happens a lot especially on the road)

And too early, that’s a legit knock. Year to year I get it. I mean while i’m well past ready to move on from zach, who do you get this year that you can improve on zachs upside? I don’t see much opportunity. Also, I do get the free agency approach. We had more gaps than we could fill and couldn’t afford top tier replacements so we tried to go with volume. It was a sound approach imo, but when the cap went up we should’ve swung for the fences. As ugly as our wr core was to end it, i don’t think lawler is the difference for us.