wbbfan

Kinda surprised but good for him

I think both rourke and zach will perform better than last years struggles. How much will be personal and how much will be coaching is gonna be a big deal for both teams futures.

Yeah, I saw that. Surprising but also a sign they are accepting mediocrity for now. I think highly of bobby dyce as a CFL football mind and leader. I haven't seen a glimmer in a long while of him translating any of that into being a good HC. And it's kind of late. I feel like he's best off as a positional/depth coach who can do a bunch behind the scenes. Good guy to help a younger Co or future co develop, QC for a co, help the scout team etc.

You’re right, it isn’t. Unfortunately, football and pro sports aren’t fair. And qb is one of the least fair positions in all of sports. Comparison is also hard, but in this case I think it’s true.

Vets other teams don’t much want, dyce has been around as a position coach. Hes been awful as a hc, which is a real disappointment. He’s a great guy. Not at all similar years. Brown didn’t have one awful game like Zach did for the first half of the season plus. Brown deserved to win his play off game too. Brown was exceptional far more times as well. ottawas offence is brown. It doesn’t even run through him, it’s entirely dependent on him dominating. If they traded places Zach wouldn’t have finished the year and his career would likely be over. With brown, we win a couple more games easy. Very good chance we win the gc with brown.

With calvillo in comparison, the difference is healthy. I’m not sure Zach is remotely capable of either continuing his norm or revamping due to physical limitations. Harris didn’t actually change, he just got out of the red hot dumpster fire. Even when he went edm to mtl from getting destroyed by us to besting us he wasn’t different or doing things different. Now blm was sitting in some serious injury stuff for a few years. Then he also played on a team where he got to pad stats with out the need to play to win the game last year. But that is a better comparison. But, he needed to bounce around and recover. Zach has no such luxury with time. Dru was carrying a pretty underwhelming offensive squad with a bad system/roster. Dru lead his offence and team last year. Blm, padded stats on a team with out a chance, zach was carried almost the entire year. You have to go off play on the field as every ones stats are pretty similar but they all got there a different way.

To an extent, it’s a good thing. The idiocy of denying water, hard ass two a days ending with wind sprints till you puke then forced ice bathes was awful. That said the pendulum has swung too far imo. I’d rather see an extra week, with 3 days 1 apart where teams do a full pads two day practice of about 3 hours each including one scrimmage. No stupid drills, but reasonable approximation of football game play. Stick the extra week before/in the middle of the pre season depending on the year for teams.

They do. 1 quarter and 1 half in the two games is standard and should be pretty close to it plus or minus a bit. honestly, with the failure to execute in the pivotal game the last few years, I’d consider running them out longer. It used to be a hand shake agreement with the hcs when you’d switch to rookies and how long vets would stay out. That doesn’t seem to be it any more. I might split up quarters of the first game, then let the best players of the first game play 3/4 together. Send a strong message to the locker room, every game is important and no one is taking a month off this year. Be ready be sharp or be replaced.

Like gm/football ops and president. That’d be much better.

It is. The lack of experience in football will hurt in areas like punishment, rule enforcement/adjustments, etc. it almost needs to be 2 jobs in reality.

Good athlete, big modern athletic build, he’s more of a project not a lot of experience.

Was a teammate of big Kev. Didn’t get a ton of catches or yards at uconn either. But he’s got a good release, smooth fast runner more than an explosive quick guy.

https://3downnation.com/2025/04/03/roughrider-foundation-invests-1-8m-in-saskatchewan-amateur-football/ riders put out a big investment in the grass roots game with some much needed equipment. We do this and a couple other teams do it every soo often. I’d love to see the league and the teams go in together on this stuff. If every team was invest 1 million bucks every 3-4 years like this, and grouped that money to make a single large purchase I’m sure they’d get a lot more bang for their buck. Id also love to see a compensatory pick round for the two teams that do the most each year to grow the game at the grass roots level.

Yep, the lack of progression is one of the biggest issues we had. We didn’t set any thing up. We saw a heavy reduction in the play action to set up deep shots, and we went from a team that ran every play in our book out of every formation we used to extremely predictable plays out of formations. The pa screen off motion / half boot was getting jumped soo fast even by bad Ds.

Same. I mean demski was that guy most of the time previously, and we threw all kinds of guys at it in the past new and old. If bailey can leg those out no one else has any excuses IMO. Agree. Zach is an issue, but buck was a big one.

Yep 100%

It’s entirely true of the product on the field. We took vanilla and made it bland gelatine. I have no doubt the room was watching and talking about stuff but virtually none of it made it to the field.

The scheme certainly did get lazy. But I think the cause was a bit different. It seems to me like the last year and a half or so so a lot of frustration between zach and buck, and possibly the staff and buck. I think zach became a weak spot for buck just like nichols did for lapo. We saw a few games prior where the screen game and read option seam attacks worked brilliantly. But that is not how zach is wired. I think Buck wanted to rewire the offence to work around stuff that doesn't suit zach, and he got push back. So he pulled out the old wrinkles and let the offence flounder running just what zach likes.

That’s a good point. The ol is for sure an entity all its own. They Maybe the greatest anachronism in all of sports. Especially the Canadian ol up here. May as well still be the 70s with them in many ways. It’s kind of funny too actually, ol are more athletic and trim now like they were back then. Still gigantic human beings these days, but the middle of the late 80s through early 2ks we saw a ton of heavy none athletic guys. Think he was banged up to end the previous year too. Being a tall guard who turns 37 this year and has played some 140 games mostly starts will make it hard to stay healthy. And slow down recovery

Honestly, camp isn't nearly what it used to be. The limitations on impact, banning of junk like Oklahoma drill, length, etc, have de-toothed it significantly. It isn't like the old days where the 2 a days had guys re-tapping raw skin and doing 2 full run-throughs of full contact and high exertion. The off season for players is also far more active, and you don't need to do nearly as much reconditioning. Now that said you still have to be smart, not like chris jones blowing out a half dozen guys ACLs per day for the first few days. Frankly, I don't care if the vets sit half the day or every other day or what ever they need to. As long as they can be ready to play 1q of the first preseason game, 1 half of the 2nd, and be at full pop for the first regular season week. Aside from injuries in camp and guys coming back from injuries, if a vet can't consistently do that, they are probably done anyway.

I think he’s a high level business side guy for this position. I do have concerns though with the fact he has no experience running a league or team, in football, and that his tsn ties could be a conflict of interest with the upcoming tv deal renewal. Maybe for us maybe for them. I don’t know. Jbr summed it up perfectly. In whelmed. I don’t think many people want the commish job.

All the vets need to play half a game in the last pre season game.

I don’t think he got lucky in the wf, if any one was lucky it was buck. I think he’s had two good strong games in the play offs here, and they are similar. He was able to get his deep shots. That’s kind of how it goes with Zach. He could score a td on every drive, or complete barely 10 in a game and toss a bunch to the wrong team. Hes always been that guy. Live by the sword die by the sword. I get rolling with that a few years ago. I don’t think zach is zach any more. I’m not expecting to see 3-4 td passes in a half or score on every drive into the 4th any more. I think his injuries from the past season and a half ish. I think he’s injured and aged to a point where he just isn’t that same guy. At this point, I would take other guys over Zach right now going into the season. Straight up, I’d rather bank this year and the future both on any of Dru/rourke/vaj. I wouldn’t be happy paying rourke that money, and I’m not sold on Adam’s maturity/culture. But I’d still take the risk on those guys. Even just for this year. The fact all 3 should play as good if not better next year is a bonus. Id love to be wrong, and I think the oc/ol changes and wr health will go far to help Zach. But at this point I kind of expect us to finish with another qb as our starter one way or another.

The thing is his bad games have very largely been in the post season with all kinds of teams around him. That kind of consistent struggle is worthy of criticism. Sport performances are biased towards play off success. From Marino to big shot bob. Expectations are higher in the play offs, success and failure are amplified justly. We’ve seen similar loses our self here like with Kelly off the bench. The chances for a qb other than Zach winning that game was real low for us. But the chances of post injury Zach winning it was zero.

I think we could potentially look at one of the two who have been in camp with us and are candidates to switch to wr, late late in the draft. A wr who can be a short yardage guy, holder potentially, maybe run option pack etc and be an extra qb as a Canadian offers a lot. 6th round type thing. I see no chance we take a qb that high. We are really well poised to get some depth guys with lots of upside in the exact spots we can use them. Makes no sense to go after a qb, even if we thought rourke was the guy and would be here soon. Which he certainly won’t be here any time soon, and I’m not sold on him.