deepsixemtoboyd

Gotta say, don't see what's funny about domestic violence.

OK, that is some interesting research. However, please don’t confuse us with the facts. Especially when those facts don’t fit our victim narrative. They call us “fans“ for a reason; it is short for “fanatics“. 🙂

It’s too early to draw any firm conclusions about whether we keep Zack C. around next year or not. That said IMO, if he wins anything… We keep him around to compete with the other guys. And even if he doesn’t win anything but shows reasonably well… Heck, just based on what he showed yesterday I think we probably keep him around to compete with the other guys. If he absolutely craps the bed, well, that’s another question. I would certainly say that - for me – it’s absolutely no slam dunk that Nichols or Streveler are a better option than Zach C. Neither of those guys have won anything meaningful and - in Matty’s case – he’s been around, what? About 8 or 9 years now in the league? Zach, on the other hand, has taken a team to the big game and also shown a MVP type ceiling, albeit in the past. But, again, neither of the other two guys have ever shown that yet so…

Man, are we a bunch of ******* losers, or what?

Be sure nice to score here and punch ‘em in the mouth.

Yes

Yeah, whereas all the other OCs have been so successful in keeping their quarterbacks healthy… Your Lapo fixation really knows no bounds, does it?

This is an excellent post. And it gets at the very heart of the problem. Which is Michael O’Shea. It also gets at the heart of the solution. Which is to treat pro sports, well...like pro sports. Just win, baby. Win or you’re gone. That goes for quarterback and, above all, especially for the position of head coach. Oshea has repeatedly, consistently demonstrated stubbornness, rigidity, and/or flat out stupidity. Call it what you want, but the **** he pulled last week is consistent with his historic leadership style. Leaving Streveler in gets to the core of the Winnipeg problem. Loyalty and mediocrity and/or just unbelievably crappy judgment (remember the 62 yard field goal attempt vs 3rd and 4 gamble in playoffs, anyone? and that’s after his kicker told him his very top range in the dome was 56 yards?) over appropriate risk management and the possibility of excellence. Hey, maybe Mike will surprise me and get us a birth in the Grey cup game…which would represent actual progress. Miracles do happen. If he does that, he absolutely gets another year. If he doesn’t and I am the fake GM, his ass is absolutely gone.

Oshea on why he doesn't go for 2 like the other team: "Well, they're just doing that to try to get you to chase the points early...No, we've got our formula and we'll stick with that." Yeah, how'd that work out for ya, Mike?

This. Once again, O'Shea demos his dumbness. So, his QB is hurt. Clearly hurt. And as a thrower, he's been unable to make reads quickly and - even when totally healthy - hasn't averaged more than about 150 passing all year, right? And - yeah - we're at a point in the game where we gotta "get big chunks of yardage in a hurry", to quote Suitor. So, you know what...let's do it anyway, cuz...cuz, well, that's just what we do as the bomber brass. Yeah, let's just leave an obviously very hurt, poor-throwing, "happy feet" QB in and see what happens. And then - lo and behold - after the game-ending sack on our seriously lamed pivot, O'Shea pulls his "disappointed dad", "aw shucks", dumbass face out. As if to say, "Oh, shoot. That's kinda disappointing." Yeah, it is. It is kinda f(*&^ing disappointing, indeed. But not for the reason you think, dumbass. Dumbass O'Shea.

Well, you’re getting pretty nuanced there. But since you’re going there…🤓 It’s a timing thing; corners are going to break off coverage once it is clear – and that’s an intuitive thing – that the quarterback has moved too far to be able to get into a throwing motion and that occurs a split second or two BEFORE they cross the line of scrimmage. And that is what occurred here. QB was given a severely unfair advantage; he was allowed to break the rules at which point you can no longer blame the corner… Just my opinion. We may have to agree to disagree.

Certainly agree with you about how TSN handles controversial replays that will show the incompetence of the league. However, can’t agree that the corner needs to continue to cover receiver once the quarterback has breached the line of scrimmage. Having played corner many moons ago, you’re always in a tough position once the QB has broken contain, which VA jr. had… But the job becomes impossible when the officials are incompetent and allow him to throw the ball when he’s clearly passed the line of scrimmage.

Oh, I would guess that the dog would be about on par with Osh in these areas. Seriously, most successful head coaches have demonstrated that they are capable of coordinating an offence or defence successfully in a prior gig. A good number of them continue to multitask, coordinating a major area while serving as head coach at the same time. Osh has nothing like this on his resume, ergo he is incapable of providing direction in these critical areas or at critical points of a game when direction is needed. And - no - coordinating the special teams for Toronto for a few years is not on par. His lack of experience in these areas might go someway to explaining the lost look that inevitably appears on his face and as well as his tendency to go mute when the bombers are getting their asses kicked or falling apart ((you know, at the exact time of the game when other more accomplished head coaches actually kick into action and get active with teaching or redirecting or re-energizing their troops). Yep, the more I think about it the more i agree that the lab and Osh are pretty similar… Both fiercely loyal, neither too flashy, and both simply not sharp enough to be in charge of a successful football franchise.

Did you read my last post? O’Shea’s record indicates that he is not better than Dave Richie. Them’s just the facts. And, despite that, Richie STILL got a much shorter leash. And even the indisputably great Cal Murphy was removed only six years after his last Cup win. And that’s really the core issue. Why should the current coach get such an extraordinarily long leash compared to any predecessor in any era on any CFL team? Are all other franchises who’ve existed in the history of the CFL simply nuts with the way they’ve gone about their business? Or is the current edition of the blue and gold leadership – “the Canadian mafia“ - simply too cozy and therefore out of step with the way a pro sports franchise is run? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. 😀 It is the latter. OK, nice chatting with you. Gotta go to work.

Besides, to this point, O’Shea hasn’t even matched Dave Richie. Dave took us to a 14-4 season and to the Grey Cup. He also won multiple playoff games in convincing fashion.

Wow, you’re really parsing this, eh? A “couple of decades” takes us to 1999. Cal Murphy finished in 1996. That’s 23 years ago. Again, I ask, why so eager to protect O’Shea? He’s not good enough to be compared to the greats in our history? It’s OK to compose rhetorical flourishes that talk about “the best in decades“ but 2.3 decades is… ‘No, now you’ve gone too far!?’

I’m not sure on what basis O’Shea earns these accolades. The best in a couple of decades?? What has he accomplished, actually? Compare him to Cal Murphy. Murphy took the Blue to winning the Grey Cup in his second year. He did it again four years later and again two years after that. That is success that should buy you a long leash, and it did. Cal was here until the end of the ‘96 in one capacity or another, a total run of some 14 years. Again, though, that’s with three cups captured, five appearances in the big game, and multiple trips to the divisional final. And even for Cal the rope eventually ran out, just 3years after his last Grey Cup appearance in 93. As blue and gold pointed out on the weekend, I think you will be hard-pressed to find any coach in the entire history of the CFL who has lasted into a 7th year without winning a division and – if the bombers stumble again in round one – with just one playoff win! Yes, as do or die says, the lack of adjustments are frustrating…but the coach bears responsibility for that pattern too. They are his hires. And if he doesn’t know enough about O or D himself to make those adjustments just what the hell is he doing here? 5 years with this type of defense?? Would’ve never, EVER happened under Cal Murphy.

So, are you just saying that this is what they will do? Or are you saying it is the right thing to do? Those are two totally different things, right. Because, of course, you’re right - given that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour - this organization will probably do exactly what you said. But that doesn’t make it the rational or appropriate thing to do.

The above gets at the very heart of my post yesterday. The one where I rhetorically queried why the head coach gets a free pass (from some) while his coordinators wear it. This led somebody to ask "who you would have hired" in the off season etc etc. My point was actually not so much about the need to fire the coordinators but rather the need for the head coach to own his decisions over 6 seasons. There has been ample evidence for a long time that the defense (esp) has not been good enough and - for me - the fact that O'Shea has stubbornly (there's that word again) stuck with Hall for this long is evidence that he lacks the wisdom and/or whatever quality it is that allows more successful head coaches to make timely changes. I'm also 100% with the posters who suggested: a) the current regime is WAAAAAAAAY too much 'we're just one big happy Blue family' here (i.e. they are too tight with one another to wield the accountability that goes with pro sports everywhere else) and b) that it is certainly not the job of fans to figure out who should replace O'Shea or Hall or Lapo or all three. This feels like the equivalent of my sister-in-law who likes to ask my brother - when he critiques the Jets or Bombers - "do you think you could do better?" If a surgeon continually botches their surgeries, do you ask the suffering patients to perform surgery on themselves if they think they're so hot? Mike O'Shea is the reputed football doctor in the house. But his team seems to get sick most years about this time; right when they need to be in peak condition. Now I'm no doctor but I can certainly tell when somebody appears ill and it's only responsible to, at some point, ask: "Hey, maybe you should get a second opinion? Maybe you need to see a different doctor?" For what it's worth, my view is that we've seen the Ritchie Hall **** show enough times now that he should have been gone at least 2 years ago. Lapo (though many here will disagree vehemently) gets a longer leash from me because - overall - the Bombers have scored more points during his tenure here than most other franchises and I think he has consistently been working with a QB (Nichols) with a lower ceiling and considerably less athleticism than the "biggest dogs" we gotta compete with (i.e. Calgary, Hamilton, Edmonton, and now Montreal and Sask). So for me it comes back to O'Shea. He hired Hall and has stuck with him. He (unlike the other most successful coaches in the CFL - e.g. Buono, Dickenson - who have had success and won championships with different coordinators) has been unwilling to pull the trigger on a switch when needed. I think he is a very likeable and fiercely loyal guy whose players love him and that's great and all...BUT I don't think he's nearly as sharp as the other guys I just mentioned and I have certainly come to doubt whether he will ever get us the holy grail. So for me - like Blue and Gold said - anything short of a Grey Cup appearance and his head's gotta roll. Way too late for him to change coordinators now and save his skin.

And what about their boss? Does he get a free pass? You know, the guy who keeps bringing them back for more mediocrity?

As always.

Even if it was done to ridicule the riders, what a seriously ODD time to choose to do it. I mean, down by 14 pts in the 4th quarter and you finally made ONE fackin' play - one single, solitary meaningful play - and you choose THAT time to break out your "sense of humour"???? Brain dead.

C'mon, man! When has O'Shea ever supplied anything but? Year one it was always..."Can't say, I haven't watched the film." He did that for that entire abysmal year. Then, I can only assume someone in upper mgmt told him to fackin' stop saying that. So he did. But he's never replaced it with anything meaningful. He has also been ridiculously slow to acknowledge problems throughout his 6 year run. First year the Blue gave up outrageous run yardage and he informed us (via Bob I.) that run defense doesn't matter (only running counter to a 100+ years of football logic). Now, yesterday, he sorta admits stopping others in second and long might be a problem...14 games into the season? C'mon, man!

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you write above except for after the ellipses... As in, totally flat out unacceptable… But why do you give our coach a pass and focus only on “the MO from our OC/DC”… Isn’t it also “the same ole crap” from the MOS team? I mean he’s the facking guy in charge!

But, with all due respect, who cares if he is “aware” and the same **** continues? Who cares if “the players love 0SH” and yet they fail to finish? The point is to win a championship. I mean, that is the measure by which every other pro sport coach is evaluated and the failure to deliver on it ultimately gets every last one of them fired… Eventually. So if that championship isn’t achieved, it can’t reasonably go on, forever, can it? And, once you concede that point, the question is just how long should it go on. I say anything short of a trip to the Grey cup this year is that point.