Mike

You’re not wrong, until the stubbornness costs you the wrong game.

The one for me that I’m keeping an eye on is if we scratch Haba or Cole tonight. It needs to be Cole.

It’s not suddenly. I’ve been annoyed by it for years. Everyone thinks O’Shea is still the same rulebook wizard always gaming the system trying to find an advantage, still the same guy who was busting out trick plays, still the same guy who will do anything to get one up on the other team on gameday. He hasn’t been that guy for years. O’Shea is an amazing head coach and he’s going to have a spot in the Ring of Honour, Hall of Fame, statue out front, etc when it’s all said and done but his actual game day management has been questionable for a few years. But I get it. I don’t always love it, but I get where he’s coming from. I just wish he could find a balance. I understand the importance of making Tanner Cadwallader feel like he’s just as valuable to a winning roster as Willie Jefferson, but there is importance in putting a guy on your roster who is better than Tanner Cadwallader as well. You think the offensive and defensive coordinators are telling O’Shea they want less skill position players in the lineup in lieu of special teams crash test dummies?

Please identify where I said it has. I said at some point, it is going to in the future. It’s almost inevitable.

I mean is saying they expected nothing less of MOS when they were right really all that moronic? That being said, no we do not win in spite of him. But his roster management IS piss poor and it’s likely going to come back to bite us at some point.

Not having live stats to start the year is so CFL

Walker can’t be a designated National, but what they could’ve done is started Haba, DA’d Jeffcoat and then rotated in Caleb Thomas 23 snaps for Jake Thomas.

Nothing like providing an inaccurate depth chart to kick off a season with brand new confusing rules.

Maximizing this obviously isn’t their plan, considering they didn’t even deploy it on D.

Off to a great start. Super glad we’re rostering 47 linebackers to chase down kicks so that we can have 40% of our lineup change positions if one DB gets nicked.

It really has been. And just like I hinted at yesterday, the depth chart came out and he’s making absolutely no effective use of this new rule at all. The roster management has been awful and the talent has carried us. I like O’Shea a lot, but his roster decisions leave more than just a little bit to be desired.

This could (and I hope it does) turn out to be a wildly wrong take, but I really think there’s a chance this ends up being the year Bomber Nation starts to turn on O’Shea a little bit I think we’re going to end up very frustrated with how our roster gets managed this year. It’s been a weak point of his forever, but I think there’s a very good chance it costs us some games this year. If we’re trotting out guys like Gauthier and Maruo because we don’t wanna play dirty with the rest and game this system, we’re going to be in trouble. I guess we’ll see tomorrow how they play it.

I would assume our designation on O will be Bailey and Agudosi will start so then Agudosi can come in for Wolitarsky 23 snaps a game and then Grant will be the other starter and Wolitarsky can come in for Grant 37 snaps a game so that Grant can play for Demski on 12% of the snaps that Oliviera is on the sidelines so that Neufeld can line up at running back which will free up Schoen to play QB.

I can’t see it happening. Hamilton probably views us as direct competition and they’re hosting the Cup. They’re probably in zero mood to help us out.

I’ve just really disliked our use of the practice roster for a couple years now. I don’t understand the goal with it at all, we usually carry far too many offensive linemen and don’t have plans in place for any wildly unfortunate injury. Who plays if Oliviera gets hurt? Even if the answer is Augustine, we don’t have a backup on the practice roster. And if you’re saying Greg McCrae is listed as a running back, he didn’t take a snap there in the preseason so tell me how prepared the team has him for that. What happens if Agudosi gets hurt? A Canadian rookie? Shuffle guys around to put McCrae in the slot? What about Jefferson and Jeffcoat, especially while Hansen is out. What about Bighill? We don’t even have a fourth QB on there right now if something happens to Pigrome or Dru.

It has nothing to do with succession planning. We don’t need to find a vet. That’s the thing, everyone is talking about how Walters gets the trust and benefit of the doubt (which he does, don’t get me wrong) because of everything he’s done before. That’s my whole concern. It doesn’t feel like our normal roster plan this year. 2019, we added Janarion Grant … Rasheed Bailey … Lucky Whitehead … Stove … probably forgetting a few names, but those are all year 1 CFL guys that made a big impact for us. We’ve never rested on our laurels and this year, it doesn’t even feel like we have the option to do anything else. Where is the talent going to pitch in? Our practice roster has 13 names on it and of those 13, 4 of them are Americans at “skill positions” and 3 of those guys are at our deepest position groups. We have a grand total of 0 rush ends or linebackers on our practice roster and those were clearly our weak spots last year.

Is this true anymore though? Who plays if Bighill gets hurt? Or Jefferson/Jeffcoat?

Here you come with your regularly scheduled arguing of things no one is saying

I’m overthinking it because I’m irked that our problems from last year appear to be even bigger problems this year?

I didn’t catch much of him yesterday, but he did make one spin move that left the tackle in the dust.

The big decision we made this year that irritates me is we brought an entire batch of receivers to camp to take up spots, gave none of them any significant level of game or practice time with QB1 and then cut every single one of them. The only one that even made the PR is a gadget guy who is a carbon copy of a guy we had last year. If you decided before camp even started that none of them were going to get an opportunity to show out, why did we even bring them all in?

The problem is we appear to be banking on our impact defensive players to gain the ability to play MORE as they age through their 30s. That doesn’t seem like a safe bet to be making. Our offense looks scary good but honestly, our front seven rotation looks really ugly to me on paper this year. You’re not going to convince me that Ricky Walker and Jake Thomas is the combination that is all of a sudden going to let Jefferson/Jeffcoat run wild.

I wasn’t looking to cut Bighill or Jeffcoat or anything like that, that’s not what I’m after. I’m not even sure my complaint (more of a frustration, I guess) is even directed at the coaching staff although I think part of it is. It just feels to me like we almost wasted training camp. It feels like instead of finding some answers to the questions our roster has, we’re just banking on the questions going away and I don’t think that’s a safe bet with our roster getting older and older. Let’s not kid ourselves, we’re not aging into our prime here, we’re aging out of it.

Isn’t that the point we’re making though? We had these same holes last year (rotational LB and DE) and they’re only going to become a bigger issue this year as our players get older and we appear to have done absolutely nothing.

How many wins do we get in this year’s standings for any of that? You’re not wrong. I just don’t really understand the relevance.