johnzo

gonna give a weird answer and say 2005. I was too young and broke to see any of the Bomber wins in person, and the one Bomber Grey Cup appearance I saw live was 2011. Unlike tacklewasher, I remember the game all too well. We got exposed by a far, far better team. 2005 was an amazing game. Ray vs. Calvillo both in their prime, BC Place was sold-out and rocking, then overtime! A real showcase for the CFL.

Gotta send out an attaboy to Lirim --goes from the Bomber scrap heap to the grey cup-winning kicker in a couple short years. Love those redemption stories.

How on earth do you play receiver with a broken hand? His hands looked just as soft as they always do. Damn, that is warrior.

I think that Proulx is way more chill about holding than the other CFL refs. Now that the CFL is publishing more stats, it'd be interesting to run some numbers on the officiating teams -- whose crew calls holding the most? Whose crew is overturned most often? etc, etc.

Washington had some rookie boners (Suitor criticized the depth of his routes a couple times) but he looked a lot better than he has all year. Got open and caught the ball. And hell yeah, Coates looked real good out there -- we've thrown that deep shot down the wide rail to JFG like four times this year and come up empty each time, but Coates snagged it. Nichols protected the ball real well. I was expecting picks from him, since he was stuck in the pocket all day and was going to see pressure, but he played his usual squeaky-clean game with zero picks on 48 attempts.

Playmaking LB, depth at QB, better import receivers, y'know, same as everyone. Assuming Bond is headed for the NFL for at least half of next year, I'd also like to see us add some national hog depth and roll out three Canucks on the OL. Is Davis going to be back next year? After three years as the designated QB of the future, I was shocked when he didn't start against Calgary. Figure Denmark has gotta be done. When we needed him most, he was invisible.

Yup. Had a great time watching the Bombers this year, had a great time celebrating victories on MBB. Thanks to the gang here for their thoughtfulness and enthusiasm. Didn't like the way it ended, but I am pumped for next year!

Yeah, it'd be cool to merge the assorted spleen vents into a nice clean thread here. Make this thread the Australia of MBB.

https://www.google.com/search?q=nelson+skalbania TLDR: Skalbania killed Als V1.0 and very nearly killed the Lions as well. Then he went to jail for real estate fraud. The Glieberguys, while a big joke, didn't kill the Rough Riders -- there were two owners that followed them (three, if you count the CFL, which paid most of the Riders' bills in 1996) . Feterik left the Stamps in okay shape for the next owners. He paid his bills. And Wettenhall is the guy who saved the Als in the nineties and presided over years and years of success afterwards. Team is falling on hard times now, but he's a long long way from worst owner ever.

Nice pick, TF. Never seen the Maidens but damn from that video they look legit. Sad to see such a limp crowd tho. Here in Seattle we've got Hell's Belles, like the best AC/DC cover band going. They've been at it for almost twenty years now and their singer has some hella pipes.

Speaking of our DL, I think losing Westerman was addition by subtraction. Seemed like when we lost him our DEs got a lot better at playing contain and keeping QBs in the pocket. Especially critical this weekend ... if a guy like Reilly can get outside the pocket and roam around in space, he'll kill us, either with his legs or by extending the play long enough so one of those great receivers of his can shake free downfield.

Naw, gave that one a pass. Figured that BC vs. Toronto might resemble a football game, though.

Been a while since I've seen a team phone in a game like BC just did. No focus, determination, execution. Just some guys running around.

My Happy Honker goes to Jake Thomas, who swept up the field goal kicking area before every Medlock kick. Wins are made of little details!

Been watching the league for more than thirty years and I don't think I've ever seen team lose the turnover battle 5-0 and still win the game. Plus, a new combined yardage record that overshadowed a bunch of other great performances. Suddenly, Don Unamba is playing like Moe Leggett? See ya in the playoffs, Redblacks.

I'll be sad to see Wally go. He's like Don Matthews, a CFL legend, and he kept half the league supplied with quarterbacks during the late nineties / early oughts. 20 playoff years in 22 years plus more Grey Cups on his resume than the entire Saskatchewan franchise. To top it off, open-heart surgery in the middle of it all. As a fan of the Bombers I was intensely jealous of his success, as a fan of the league I thought he made it better. If he does step aside, then congrats to him on an amazing career and a well-deserved retirement.

Yeah, I remember Buck Pierce totally getting pancaked a few times while Bloi-Dei Dorzon looked on. When I've been watching games lately, I've been looking away from Nichols at the snap and watching Harris. Several times a game, he'll save Nichols' ass with a split-second leap into a blitzer's gap. Or he'll line up on one side of the formation and when the free man comes from the other side, he'll throw himself across the formation just in time to chip the blitzer away. If he were a half-step slower, Nichols would be road pizza. Harris is just as important when he's not getting the ball as when he is getting the ball.

That was just an example of their game vs. us from a couple weeks ago -- at the start of the game the TSN guys mentioned that Williams was hurt and Hazelton was starting at WR instead. Hazelton made some plays in that game and totally looked like he belonged. During their 7-0 run they started White, Perkins, and Van at RB and each of them was effective.

That injury bug is going to show whether the Bombers are a great team or merely a winning team that's been lucky on the injury front. Greats keep on winning no matter who they roll out. This is the time when the entire football department is put to the test: does our bench have enough talent, and do the coaches prepare the subs well enough? This is my one beef with the 2017 bombers, that our subs, especially receivers and DBs, look like they're in over their heads. You look at Edmonton, when Duke Williams was hurt, they rolled out Hazelton and there wasn't a lot of dropoff there. Plus they've had that parade of running backs, not one of whom has looked out of place.

Ah, yes, here it is, from the week 18 stats PDF. We're second-best at 2-and-outs, and if you look back to past weeks, we were the best until a couple of games ago, right around when Flanders got hurt. We're second-best in offensive touchdowns, too. That is definitely the hallmark of a failed, too-conservative offensive coach who is too concerned about winning the turnover battle (we're second in giveaways, too.) If Lapo doesn't play to win, he's pretty crappy at it.

How do the Bombers stack up against the rest of the league in terms of 2 and outs? Do we go 2-and-out more frequently than other teams? Didn't we have a game with zero two-and-outs earlier this year? I wanna say the game that snapped the Edmonton winning streak....

Furthermore, I think the Bomber coaching is fine. Win the turnover battle = win the game. That means sometimes conservative offence and soft D so that the playmakers are more free to fly around and do their thing. It's frustrating to watch at times, but it works.

How many fourth quarter game winning drives have Lapo and Nichols put up in the last two years? Would've had yet another one against Toronto if Medlock wasn't slumping. I think "controversial" is a flattering word for this opinion. I'd go with "disappointing" or "underachieving" because I expect you to say smarter things.

How many times was Denmark open?

My crew just did the first livefire of a new giant-ass rocket engine. 550K lbs of thrust, designed to change the heavy launch game. Still a long long way to go before we can bolt this baby onto a vehicle, but this was the cumulation of years of work and so we are pumped. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/blue-origin-has-successfully-tested-its-powerful-be-4-rocket-engine/