James

Messam can be the change of pace, big body, short yardage guy that can move the yardsticks.  He'd also mean we wouldn't need to DI a change of pace RB so we could use that for another player.

it's not even that Stubler didn't come here. It's just that Etch is a known commodity and I didn't like his defenses in previous stops so I didn't want him here. I'd have rather given an unknown a shot than go with a guy who I know I don't like.

It's not that I want Etch fired... it's that I wish he was never hired in the first place. 

In 2010 Etchevary's defence in Saskatchewan was dead last in the following categories.
Fewest first downs rushing, fewest yards net rushing, avg yards rushing per game, avg gain per rush, lowest pass % completed, most interceptions.
He was also second last in fewest points.
He was third last in net offence per game and avg yards offence per game. He was also third last in QB sacks with 38.
He does have decent stats against the pass(which I suspected from watching his defences in the past, and because of the way he lines everybody up), but it certainly doesn't make up for how terrible he is in every other area.
My "panic" Is not from the pre season games

Etch's D (like almost all Ds...) succeed when their DL gets pressure, not necessarily sacks.
 
In Sask, he had Chick, Baggs, Chunky Adams, Shologan, Jones...  Etch may not focus on the DL but he sure benefitted from some major talent.  Not to mention he walked into one of the best LB cores in the league.

Firing Etch now would be idiotic.  Hiring him in the first place was too, but nothing we can do about that now.

I was very disappointed when we lost out on Collaros and Burris. But the more I see of Willy, the more I'm happy he's the QB we got.

Things I liked:

1. Drew Willy overall
2. Paris 100% Cotton
3. Brent Maher
4. O'Shea's cool on the sideline
5. Bomber solidarity when Newman went down
6. Lack of turnovers

Things I disliked:

1. Sloppy special teams tackling and positioning
2. O-line getting consistently over-powered
3. Receiver drops on routine catches
4. Soft zone pass coverage
5. An erratic def. coordinator supplied with inferior personnel

lets keep the conversation focused on the defence for now. Quite frankly I'm very happy with the offence and where they're at after 2 pre season games.   What concerned me the most was our run defence in the first half when we were playing starters against starters.  The Stamps run the ball down the gut with ease and we didn't appear to get a hand on the runner until he got thru to the secondary.   I didn't once see the front 4 get any type of pressure on their own.  
 
So I'll wait and I hope I'm wrong, god I hope I'm wrong. But I wasn't happy with the hiring of Etchevery in the first place and so far I've seen nothing to disprove my opinion.  

gentleman we finally have a qb who looks above competent, i am cautiously optomistic:}

Every team plays vanilla defence in the pre season.  Ours looks way worse than most.

He had a pretty rough outing.  Could have made a couple first downs by pulling the ball and rolling out on the zone read instead of leading the back into 3-4 defenders, by my count he made 2 good passes, underthrew one completion that Carter snagged off the turf, and over or under threw everything else.  Wasn't bad apart from a few throws is basically a bad night when you're only making a few throws.  He looked better to me live than when I watched the game again, but I wasn't paying much attention live. 
 
Brohm was equally poor.  Only tossed a few catchable balls, a couple of his incompletions were on the money but total rockets that nobody could catch.  He's got a gun but he might need to spend some time on the range getting it under control.

Bottom line is that Knapp has been better than Jones this year so far. Last year is pretty irrelevant at this point.

That's because the Bombers always get raped in Calgary. 

Every time I read one of your posts, I feel like I'm getting dumber.

Considering who he was playing with, I thought Hall was fine last night. Undoubtedly #2 in my mind, at least until we get a larger sample size from Marve.

I'm sure he meant RT for Neufeld.  Maybe he miss spelled and meant Newman at MLB??  Which wouldn't work out well imo.
 
I'd like to see us start 4 NI on the OL.  If we're lucky enough to have some progression  from our NI OL we could go  January or Jones at LT, then Greaves at LG, Goosen or Morley at C, Morley or Swistun at RG, then Neufeld or Pencer at RT.    Look...we're going to suck this year (most likely anyway) so why not throw the Canadian Hogs out there and see who develops.  We have 1 reliable CDN WR (Rory) and one very good CDN WR in Watson but he isn't reliable health wise (as everyone on here already knows).  Add that to us not having any CDN difference makers on D at all and we're struggling to field 7 quality NI starters.  Alexander will have to start somewhere on D. (I prefer to see him at field corner as I'd like to have some scary hitter at Safety)

I'd like to see us give our Canadian Lineman a lot of reps as well. Im not sure why everybody is so up in arms about Floyd wanting us to try and get more development time in for our Canuck Oline
 
Also, can we please drop this whole 3 Import Oline talk, It's just not going to happen. Maybe if we still had Muamba, but we don't... We just don't have the horses on the other parts of the team to make that even remotely possible. We're going to be weak enough as it is, never mind forcing us to start Neufeld at MLB with Thomas at DT lol. That would be a joke.

I'm here right now:
Bob Wylie is here, which is interesting because I thought he had coaching clinics most weekends. Pencer and January both back practicing today.
Brohm looking better today.
Again it seems like the starting OL has 3 imports with January, Knapp and Jones, with January and center and Greaves at LG. Looks like Neufeld and Goossen both practicing with the second team.
Nick Moore catching everything today.
Paris Cotton is FAST.
Marty Market missing a lot of assignments today. Etch in his ear lots.
Graig Newman looks to be playing one of the outside LB spots.
Dan Knapp is a physical freak. Some players were running half field sprints and Knapp destroyed them all. His upper body is insanely huge and all muscle.
Hajiralahu and Maher both looked good today but Maher isn't separating himself so we will be going with Liram and Renaud this season for sure.

PM me if you are interested and we can figure out a way to meet / deliver

Trade Hamilton for the rights to Evan Gill immediately. He'd play here.

I'm very surprised they don't have Anderson locked in beside Turner. Only reason I'm nervous about zach is because they're letting Etch have so much control over the personnel on defence.
Not sure why Etch wouldn't like Anderson though, he's got a crazy motor, and he's as fast as a LB'er! He can fly to the ball and is ridiculously athletic for his position

I agree with a lot of what AKAChip said.  Honestly I mostly  watched the QBs and the receivers.
 
QBs - Willy looked pretty good.  Good zip on the ball.  Quick decisions.  Nothing overly flashy but I thought he was throwing the ball accurately.  
 
Hall was his usual self, decides where he's going to throw it, and it may be into a swarm but he does get it there.  
 
Marve may have the tools but he was showing a lot of "deer in headlights" not knowing where to go with the ball at times.  
 
Would say that Brohm had him beat out in that respect, but a lot of the time Brohm was just making the easy throw (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).  I think Brohm also comes off as the stiff, sit in the pocket NFL QB, but I may be wrong.
 
WR - Mario Urrutia was getting a lot of throws and looked fairly shifty and speedy with the ball in his hands (especially for a big guy).  Agreed that he had some of the better hands today.  
 
I would say C.J. Tarver had pretty good hands as well.  He is a very interesting player.  At times it didn't even look like he was trying to outrun people, but was still outrunning them.
 
Kemp, well, let's just say Mike that you didn't stay long enough to see some of his good work.  I know what you mean though, early on he was flat out dropping balls and didn't look super great.  But in 1 on 1s he looked dominant against some of the DBs out there.  Ran crisp, fast routes and made some of the DBs look silly.  But also dropped one in Skelly late.
 
Taylor Renaud looks to be one of the depth guys that could stick around.  He had more than one good catch out there today.  But again, the level of competition he was facing wasn't exactly stellar.
 
I don't know if I have any more to share, but I'll let you know if I think of something.

Sears was definitely one of our best players when he was on the field, i remember watching several games.. i recall one in particular though.. a couple seasons back now against hamilton, chris williams was just absolutely making Jovon Johnson his beeee all game long, coaches i guess had enough and put sears in, sears didn't get beat once by williams.Sure, it's just one example but there are many others. I honestly thought sears was our best corner back every time he was on the field, rarely did he get beat. Rarely. DB's will get beat for sure, but sears, not so much actually.
 
 

Before he was injured that one year Im pretty sure he was top two in the league in knockdowns despite playing only a portion of the games, plus he had three picks, so I'm going to disagree on your assessment of his CB ability