johnzo

agreed but worst-to-first turnarounds are not unheard of in the CFL and with everyone on one-year deals the league basically gets a talent reset every offseason. that said I would be super surprised if Ottawa manages to do so, you look at the trouble they've had retaining free agents and wonder if firing Desjardins is enough to remedy the talent issues there ... and I don't think of Lapo as a guy who can coach up an undertalented roster like C-**** or Mass have shown. (I know nothing about coaching football)

I was thinking that Richie Hall would get a look at the HC job in Edmonton, given the ludicrous D he's coached up for us. Then I remembered he's already been fired as a head coach in Edmonton, tho that was a decade ago. I suspect Ottawa is too cheap to pay Lapo to sit on his couch so they'll wait and then fire him in a panicky midseason move next year.

There was a training camp QB who had an ... uncle? ... on here ... IIRC the QB made a splash in a preseason game and was very briefly the next big thing, but I think he got cut...wish I could remember his name. I think this was early in the Canadian Mafia era... Edit: Justin Holland. It was his dad, not his uncle. That was in freaking 2007. Fourteen years ago. good lord I'm old.

astonishing thing about Fajardo is that he's .750 as a starter and he showed in the western final he's got a lot of ability to rescue broken plays. Gotta respect that. Think he's a good match for a team whose QB is going to be under duress a lot. A pocket passer would get killed behind that green OL. Long as your line is so leaky, you might as well roll with Fajardo.

this is content I can use.

such a headsup play, and decisive. A pick there and we lose, I think.

love Collaros but they got it wrong; Castillo is the MVP today.

doing great here, man. full remission and a championship to celebrate!

holy crap you guys, I couldn't sit down, I was standing and pacing in front of the TV for the entire fourth quarter. Good job Hamilton, you gave us a hell of a game. Castillo MVP.

damn, a holding call from Proulx in OT!

I felt that too! right after the missed FG, I was like, okay, we got 'em now, and we scored right away. but then there was that fluky bad-traction TD by spitty mceyegouge ... I'm thinking holy cow we are in for a nutty 2019-style Western Final finish that's gonna put me in the heart ward. But no, the fourth quarter started and, like we do, we ground em up like calzone sauce. 11:15 time of possession in the fourth! That's a freaking ludicrous level of ball control. No team in my 35+ years of following this goofy league has been able to ground and pound like the bombers. hilarious that the big turnaround rider play happened at exactly 0:00 of the third, the last possible moment before the iron gate was scheduled to slam shut.

did Jones play in the WF? I see he was on the gameday roster but he doesn't appear on the stats sheet... pretty sure I heard one bomber yell "Don't touch that!" at another bomber during the presentation.

The Neufeld trade was the first move towards creating the modern, dominant Bombers.

Thought it was a pretty textbook play by the Riders, first man in wraps up, second man goes for the ball. Bailey doesn't help by struggling so hard for an extra six inches or so. I kinda hate seeing receivers petermanning like that, sometimes it works out like on Bailey's TD, but most times it's just giving the DBs time to rally for a fumble.

I gotta say that outside of his complete miss to Williams and the strip sack, Fajardo played better than I expected him to. His wide-side out to Williams was a great throw, one I didn't think he could make, and he had some nice point guard passes under duress and he got up and kept going after taking some nasty shots. Our first sack seemed to hurt him pretty bad but he shook it off.

block of the game: Adams sealing the corner on Harris' 20-yard run. Completely erased his damn man from the play.

from the Ed Tait recap: Holding the ball for eleven minutes and five seconds while coming from behind in the 4Q. Awesome.

Did they expand Tim Horton's for the Grey Cup? Or is it still 24K?

My hit of the game was Collaros knocking Bouka out of bounds on the Wolitarski fumble. After running about 80 yards downfield (and from the far hashmark to the sideline!) Zach beat two blockers and saved a TD (for a minute or so anyway). Hell of an effort. Never say die. Love to see that kind of Lobendahn play from a QB.

Blue offense: complete some passes downfield early. I think this is the entire key to the Blue offense, that quick-strike ability. Every one of our receivers caught deep passes this season, even field-side exile Wolitarski. Force the green D to cover the entire field, force them to take men out of the box, leave them shorthanded against our ground assault. Blue D...play good contain like you would against any mobile QB, don't let Fajardo run around, punish him if he does. You want a template for this, look at what the Riders did to Streveler in last year's final, he was a beast in the cup and in the semifinal, but the Riders did a great job against him ... though I bet that Faj has a way deeper playbook than Streveler had so maybe that's not a good example. question for football people: would it be a good call to dedicate Bighill to spy Fajardo? We do so many things with Bighill in coverage that it feels like we're giving away a lot to shackle him to the QB like that. Could the spy duties be handled by any other linebacker or even Alexander, who moves around a bunch? Or is our DL strong enough and disciplined enough to corral the slippery green QB without any special arrangements?

Saskatchewan's entire thing for several seasons now is that they win games they oughtn't with talent that oughtn't win games. I mean, ****, they are 24-8 with Fajardo starting. A .750 win percentage is up in Bo Levi territory. Given the recent history between the two sides I feel good about our chances but the Riders are a team that defies all reason, a vortex of green madness and insanity with demonically good luck, they seem to get a lot of breaks...makes me just a bit nervous.

total nerd thing I noticed ... TSN shooting onfield shots with real narrow depth of focus, really popping the foreground player.

I'm an Adams fan, he's been good for a long time for us, but he's got to got to make that catch. Hate seeing a veteran crap up a raw teammate's first shot like that.

Not me. This game is all about getting 12 some live fire and seeing what he's made of. If we need a dagger drive or a comeback drive in the 4Q I want to see McGuire in there, figure out if he can deliver the goods when the chips are down. Saturday forecast in mtl is cloudy and 10C with no rain .... pretty clean conditions for November ... so SMc looks to have some nice weather to work in.

On rewatch: crunch of the game was Stanback absolutely trucking Alexander in the second half. I know it was for the bad guys, but it was some smash mouth business that made me go wow.