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TheSource

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  1. 1 minute ago, bustamente said:

    Next week they may actually have to practice, not as good a team as they and we may think they are, you can beat the sad sacks of the CFL but you also have to beat the better teams or you are going nowhere.

    They area a bottom third team this year and have not shown they can beat the top third teams in the league yet.

    It remains to be seen if the team that Walters has assembled has the necessary talent to beat a good team.

  2. Nichols has never really had a good long ball, including previous years. Most of the time he comes up short, and when he is long enough, he just doesn't have the accuracy of a Mike Reilly, Trevor Harris, or BLM.

    Not sure if he is having mental issues though - it could equally be that the teams in the league just have his number now and/or have Lapo's number and know how his offence can be controlled.

    Bomber O has a huge weakness in that they can't go vertical down the field the way the good teams can.

     

  3. 5 minutes ago, AKAChip said:

    Bombers have a lot of talent at a lot of positions. On the whole, far better players than Ottawa. Penalties are killing them as is abysmal QBing. 

    At the most important position, Trevor Harris is a young star, while Nichols truly is a game manager because he does not have the arm or accuracy.

    Andrew Harris is better than Powell, but it is quite close.

    At receiver, the Ottawa receivers are better at every position by a long shot.

    On Defense, Bighill is better at LB, but after that, across the board Otttawa has better players at every position.

    Noel Thorpe only picks great players and knows how to use them.

     

     

  4. 50 minutes ago, J5V said:

    Regarding Nichols struggles with the deep ball in games, I assume he throws the deep ball just fine in practice. That would suggest it's not an injury thing but a mental thing. I think he needs to keep trying to connect deep and once he does, his confidence will build. For this reason I hope Lapo doesn't restrict him to short/intermediate throws only.

    This is exactly how I view it.

    Yes, last game Bombers went deep perhaps more than they should, although I believe this was because Hamilton was playing man, staying close to the line and blitzing alot, which makes going deep a preferred option in that situation.

    Normally Bombers do not go deep enough so I hope they continue with more than just 2 attempts per game even if it does cause some 2 and outs, just don't go overboard with trying it on every series of downs. 

    You have to have a deep game for a good balanced offence that is hard to stop and that is the one big flaw in Lapo's current system.

     

  5. At this stage we still cannot be sure 100% that the lack of productivity from Bowman was due to Bowman. In the offence that Lapo has been running they really don't target Bowman very much or send him down field more than 10 yards very often, and the same is true of Wolitarsky. That offence is more about sending out 3 or 4 running backs and/or short yardage receivers on every play. Harris and Demski get the ball 80% of the time and the only one going down field more than 10 yards is Adams, who they only target every once in a while as the token long ball attempt. This has its pros and cons in my opinion, but apparently, the majority of teams in the league still have trouble stopping it, and as long as its effective, it is all good.

    Regardless of the reason for lack of productivity, it is not a bad move to drop Bowman to save cap space, although I will point out that this reflects poorly on the off season efforts, and is another knock on Walters to go along with the Faith Ekakitie and Addison Richards debacles. I will still maintain my comments from before the start of this season that the verdict is still out on what Walters has been doing over the last 2 years. Are we on track to move forward, or regress? I think that will be decided over the next 8 weeks.

    It will be interesting to see if Kenbrell Thompkins has any better production than Bowman when he is inserted. If not, I'm more inclined to think that the lack of productivity at that position is by design in the Lapo offence, and not a shortcoming on any given player. If so, effectively two of the receivers are being used as decoys and blockers, not targets, which is pretty weird to see at the pro level.

     

  6. Didn't get to see the game yet, but did see the highlights.

    General comments are:

    The D is playing well enough now to win some games and despite its flaws, Lapo's offence is capable of putting up enough points to win against most teams in the league.

    Andrew Harris is definitely the Bomber star, the key to the offence, and is good enough to still be effective even though every team in the league knows he is the key.

    The Oline is consistently good, and although I thought the DLine started slow this year, it seems to be coming on now.

  7. Didn't get a chance to see the game today, but did watch the highlights and read the summary. Sounds like a very good day for the Bombers and Nichols shows that he is still the guy, if anyone was ever questioning that.

    Bombers need to follow this up with a sweep of Toronto in Winnipeg.

    Anything less will drop the team in the rankings generate more questions around whether they are as good as the last 2 years.

     

  8. 4 minutes ago, Floyd said:

    I think the hate passed a while back... now its more like rewriting Denmark's value...  guess he didn't 'lose' a step, maybe its just Lapo's offence...

    Could be.

    In as much as Lapo is creative and on most nights the Bomber O is good, the two weaknesses in his schemes seem to be that:

    1) On most nights he doesn't use all the weapons in the offence and tends to overuse certain guys (Bowman seems to be that guy this year who doesn't see the ball while Demski is the guy being over-targeted)

    2) He likes to go laterally on most plays too much and his offences don't take shots down the field enough

    Plenty of upside with Lapo, but for me those are the two bug drawbacks, and the reason why sometimes the Bomber offence looks terrible against certain teams who are good at taking away those things he likes to do.

     

  9. 1 hour ago, Tracker said:

    I cannot disagree with much of what you say, but the Bombers were schooled on Saturday night. Most of us had written Wally and the Lions off after the first half but that came back to bite us big time. The Lions made half-time adjustments and the Bomber coaches once again could or did not. "You are what your record says you are."

    Agreed. This is a 2-3 team not a 4-1 team. Record reflects exactly what this team is at this point.

    However, improvement is always possible.

    In as much as the offence has a real limitation in going more than 10 yards down field at a time, they are still better than how they played on Sat. Similar to how the defense was after getting cranked by Hamilton, they will rebound against Toronto, but the only thing is, Toronto has a great defense, so it could still be a tough one to win.

     

  10. 56 minutes ago, Floyd said:

    What's up with Bowman...  is Lapo just not targeting him or did we just pay $140k for 2009 Adarius...

    Guy hardly looks engaged in blocking and doesn't seem to be involved in any plays... ever...

    Really hard to tell whether Bowman is done or whether Lapo and NIchols are just not utilizing him right.

    Worst case is that it is these three things combined:

    1) Walters was dumpster diving for Bowman who was cut by the Esks, who always know what they are doing. Bowman is not the player he used to be, although should be still better than he is playing.

    2) The biggest weakness in LaPo offences of the last 10 years is that he does not go vertical enough, preferring to stretch defenses from side to side rather than down the field. In the CFL of today if you play against a good defense this is not getting the job done.

    3) Nichols has a quick release but is not a long ball QB. This is why LaPo and Nichols are a good fit, but Nichols is never going to be top tier because he cannot consistently exploit deep threats like BLM, Reilly, Lulay, Harris, and Franklin, who I would all rate as better QBs than Nichols. Nichols is much more like a souped up version of Kevin Glenn. Nothing wrong with that, but probably not going to ever lead a team to a Grey Cup without alot of help from a really good defense.

    I called this as a distinct possibility before the season started. At any rate, over the last 3 years it is very clear that the Bombers do not have the same deep threat offence as most of the other offences in the CFL, and teams are now defending the Bombers by not worrying about any passes going downfield more than 15 yards. Basically, to beat the Bombers if you can shut down Harris and Demski in the flats and up the middle, then you do not have to worry about anything else other than the occasional big play that Adams makes, who is good, but cannot do it on his own. With guys like Dressler and Bowman basically only making one catch a game at most, the rest of the Bomber receiving corp is a joke, and it makes for really boring games.

     

  11. 13 minutes ago, Mr. Perfect said:

    Agreed. This team has been "good", and content with being "good" long enough. 11-7 and a first round playoff exit is getting a little old, and at this rate, 11-7 would take a miracle. This team isn't going 9-4 down the stretch. Not a chance.

    I called this before the season started. 11-7 is not going to be possible and I will be surprised if they do better than .500.

    All the other teams in the CFL have improved and Bombers are not keeping up - definitely regressing from last year or the year before.

  12. I think that Bombers will have as good a chance as the defense allows.

    If the defense plays well, and limits the BC offence to less than 350 yards total and/or 21 points, then Bombers will win for sure.

    To me, this goes for any game this season.

     

    If Ginger-Snaps starts for BC at QB then chances of that happening will go down somewhat, because even a broken down Ginger historically has been able to beat any D Bombers have ever been able to field.

    Ginger just seems to always know how to destroy the Bombers.

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