TBURGESS

If you're just trying to measure progress then all you can do is look at where they are starting from and gauge whether or not they are headed in the right direction. We should be comparing our team against the other teams in the league this year, not against last years historically horrible team. If we'd gone 1-5 in the first third and 5-1 in the second third, then I'd say we are heading in the right direction and I'd be pretty pumped about our chances of making the playoffs this year. That's not what's happened. We pulled out some late comebacks in the 1st third of the season and we've been heading in the wrong direction since then, culminating in a bad loss to the former worst team in the league. That's way more important than how we look compared to last years losers. Quite frankly, this team isn't much better than last years team. Willy's the biggest difference between 3 and 6 wins and neither record is good enough.

The team needs to be held to a higher standard than better than one of the worst teams in Bomber history.

Picard is 100% better than Sorenson and was a move that Mack should have made. Taman outplayed Mack to get both Picard and Labatte thereby fixing a poor O line and upgrading the Canadian talent all in a single season.

I'm just disappointed that Walters has decided to sit on his ass & not bring in players to challenge the starters we have or for injury replacements. It's business as usual & I find that so frustrating as a fan. Management won't do anything to make the team better. It's almost like Wade Miller has told Walters to quit spending on the football operations side for this year & they've written the season off. Not saying Miller has but it seems strange that everything is status quo & we are on a 5 game losing streak. I didn't say I wasn't frustrated. I doubt they've decided to stop spending on football ops. Walters and O'Shea believe, rightly or wrongly, in the players they've brought in. They aren't going to make any real changes until the offseason when they sit back and go over the whole team again. You and I and others disagree with it, but it is what it is.

Mack did the best he could in the situation? Nope. He should have known which way Labatte was leaning. Lots of folks around here 'knew' that Labatte was going to sign in Regina. Mack should have taken Picard before Regina did and at least upgraded our center spot when he lost out on Labatte.

I disagree. This is already a competitive team and when healthy maybe even a decent team. What we need more than anything is depth so that losing a player like Moore or Wild doesn't leave the team without adequate players in those positions. Sure there's some places that could use upgrades, but to suggest that this team isn't competitive already is just ludicrous. They have been competitive in almost every game they've played this season. If we add 4 or 5 difference makers we're one of the best teams in the league. Or is that what you mean by competitive? Being one of the best is the only way to be competitive? Cause that's equally ridiculous. If you consider being in most of the games competitive, I guess we're competitive, but I don't look at it that way. I call top half of the league competitive and I sincerely doubt we will be there at the end of the season. Winning more than you lose is competitive, losing more than you win isn't. Losing 8 out of 9 games isn't competitive. We were great in the first third of the season, competitive for the first half of the season, but we aren't anymore and we're still trending downward. 4 or 5 upgraded players won't get us to top spot in the league. It will put us in the top half, which is where we need to be to not only make the playoffs, but have a chance of winning it all.

Losing interest? Nah.... I'm a die hard fan.

Willy wasn't playing well. He threw 3 INT's and 2 others to Ottawa DB's who didn't catch them. He wasn't going through his progressions. He was locking in on one guy and throwing it to him. He was getting hit over and over and over. Often the best thing to do in this situation is bring him to the sidelines and let him watch to see what the other team is doing. Sending out to continually fail isn't in his or the Bombers best interests and those last 4 minutes of reps weren't worth anything towards making Willy a better QB. Add in the wear and tear on the injured shoulder and the risk of more injury to our starting QB and it was really stupid to leave Willy in. Almost nothing to gain and potentially lots to lose.

Folks love to point to a few specific plays in each game and say: 'If these plays / penalties / turnovers didn't happen, we would have won". The problem is this team isn't good enough to stop making mistakes or stop turning the ball over or take advantage of the calls that go our way. We are so close to failing each game that any bad call or big play that goes against us or pick causes us to lose the games. We're just not good enough to come back from these things that happen in every football game. I couldn't care less if any of our coordinators are back next year. MB's average to below average. Etch's defenses are routinely owned by the run and are figured out by mid-season. Our special teams coordinator has been horrible. Going forward with any of these guys if there are any better coaches available is the definition of doing the same thing and hoping for different results. I'm not certain that O'Shea is the right guy for the job either, but I'm willing to give him another year to see if he can turn this around. We're 4 or 5 difference making players away from being a competitive team. A couple of O lineman, a receiver, a MLB and a DE are on my wish list. We need a couple of them to be NI's too. We need to use Free Agency to get better. If anyone will give us a 2nd rounder for Watson, we need to make that deal. In short... 6 wins are better than 3, but neither are good enough, even in yet another rebuilding year.

We're done for this year. When you can't beat the worst team in the league, you become the worst team in the league for at least a week.

That made me laugh. Thanks.

The game for Ottawa boils down to: Can the receivers catch the ball consistently? Can the O line give Burris time consistently? Can the D line get pressure on Willy some/most of the time?

Volny is not a starting RB by any stretch of the imagination. He'll probably be replaced in the off season. Stoudemire is on the 6 game IR.

Burris is a good QB. He'll be in the Hall of Fame. It's not his fault that the redblacks aren't winning. Without him, they'd actually look worse than they have. Ottawa isn't going to sit Burris and play their backup QB's. We don't need a weekly Burris watch on the Bomber forum.

That's really too bad. Best returner we've had in years.

So let me get this straight. If Mike O'Shea stated on the radio that the helmet speaker stopped working, you think he's lying and is trying to cover up for some screw up on their part. But if Lawless, Wiecek or Friesen say anything...OMG IT'S THE TRUTH!!!! HOW CAN YOU GUYS NOT BELIEVE THE MEDIA, AS IF THEY WOULD LIE TO US!!!!!1111!!! YOU GUYS ARE ALL CONSPIRACY THEORISTS! Seriously man, this is why people question the things you say. Because you believe the guys who just want to bash on the Bombers, but you won't believe the head coach when he said there was a malfunction. Your not drawing me into yet another media argument. This one has absolutely nothing to do with the media. Is it possible that it was just bad luck and bad timing at a critical part of the game? Sure. Probable? Not in my opinion. Worth arguing about? Nah. If O'Shea fed you pablum and called it a steak, you'd not only believe him, but you'd argue with everyone else that is was the best steak you ever ate. Yeah, because we're just sheep that believe everything he says and does and have never argued about some of the choices he's made this year. My point above doesn't have has anything to do with the media, it's the fact that you make no sense in who YOU specifically choose to believe in your posts, so it dirties your rep. What would make you think O'Shea is lying to everyone about this? It's not like he walks around telling everyone a bunch of BS all the time. But according to you he's making an excuse, or in fact lying to everyone, to cover his butt. Yet you choose to believe practically anything the media says and defend them at all stakes. The comparison I made is not media vs O'Shea, it's about how you interpret who is telling the truth and who is BSing you. MOS is a very matter of fact guy who seems pretty down to Earth. I don't agree with him on all his choices (run defense, starting certain players, etc...), but I can't see what the point would be for him to lie about this. His team already made enough mistakes all game, there's no reason for him to lie about this one thing. He didn't even mention the bad calls the refs made during the game. That right there shows integrity. Even though he knew they were wrong he didn't go around calling them out on it. I don't always believe what players, coaches, management or media say. Years of experience lead me to believe that all of them lie or massage or spin the truth or give a version of the truth that puts them in the best light. They all go through the same media training. O'Shea's never going to blame a player or coach or any of the management team for that matter in public. It's been his MO since the day he took the job. He's never wavered from it and I don't think he ever will. If a coach didn't get the play call in in time, O'Shea wouldn't call him out. If Willy didn't get the play off on time, O'Shea wouldn't call him out. If other players didn't get lined up in time, O'Shea's not going to call them out. If a player or coach was supposed to be watching the clock and didn't do it, O'Shea's not going to call him out. O'Shea's not calling the plays, so he can't fall on his sword and take the blame, which he's done on other occasions. Blaming the tech is an easy way out. O'Shea is hardly up front about most things in the media. He keeps stuff behind closed doors. Lots of folks around here have commended him on that, but they still want to believe that everything he says is gospel. You can't have it both ways IMHO.

So let me get this straight. If Mike O'Shea stated on the radio that the helmet speaker stopped working, you think he's lying and is trying to cover up for some screw up on their part. But if Lawless, Wiecek or Friesen say anything...OMG IT'S THE TRUTH!!!! HOW CAN YOU GUYS NOT BELIEVE THE MEDIA, AS IF THEY WOULD LIE TO US!!!!!1111!!! YOU GUYS ARE ALL CONSPIRACY THEORISTS! Seriously man, this is why people question the things you say. Because you believe the guys who just want to bash on the Bombers, but you won't believe the head coach when he said there was a malfunction. Your not drawing me into yet another media argument. This one has absolutely nothing to do with the media. Is it possible that it was just bad luck and bad timing at a critical part of the game? Sure. Probable? Not in my opinion. Worth arguing about? Nah. If O'Shea fed you pablum and called it a steak, you'd not only believe him, but you'd argue with everyone else that is was the best steak you ever ate.

The speaker in the helmet works for the whole game, heck the whole season, except for the one play we take a stupid time count. That doesn't make you go Hmmmm?

Folks believe that helmet speaker stopped working on the one play we took a time count violation at the end of the game? Sounds more like an excuse to me.

If the Riders can Cortez for stubbornness, we should hire him right away. Huge upgrade over MB.

Those yapping penalties are completely within the players control. Don't want to take a penalty? Don't taunt. Don't blame the officials for those calls.

Great to see the Esks own the Riders last night. Sunseri's worse than I expected him to be. Telegraphing his throws. Taking too long to make his decisions. Nothing to like about his game at all yet. The Eskimos would have won this game even if Durant was playing. They owned the Riders at the LOS. 300 rushing yards? Holy cow. Still, they didn't put it away until the last TD late in the 4th quarter. Stamps and Esks are the two top teams in the league right now.

I picked Montreal and Edmonton. Ottawa couldn't win a game that was handed to them last week and Montreal is hungry. Riders looked pretty bad last week and just squeaked out a win against the worst team in the league. They are facing much stiffer competition in Edmonton.

The quality has been dropping for a long time. This site should be about football, but it's become more about petty arguments, whining, and attacking other posters and thats not just the rider fans. It's a tough slog to find any actual football talk these days.

Toronto's coming together at the right time. Should have beaten Calgary last week. Easily beat BC last night in BC. If they can stay relatively healthy the rest of the season, they will be hard to handle.