17to85

lots can change between Labour Day and the end of the season. I suspect there will be a cross over though for one simple reason.... too many wins for western teams when the Riders are sporting the record they are.

so the insider who needs to be censored all the time has to be Kent Austin right? You just know a guy that angry has a potty mouth on him right?

This is exactly the point. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. It's a classic case of deflection. Why look at the real problems when you can blame an outside influence? Oh no we made a great move giving Cate Blanchette (had to steal it, too good a line) to Jones, it's just that damned Orridge and the rest of the jealous teams in the league conspiring to keep us down!

I'd trade Notley for the decomposed corpse of Ralph Klein

Don't hate him just cause he's more honest than you are

Willy didn't even play THAT poorly in the Calgary game. Yeah there were some misses but there were busted running plays and dropped passes that led to punting as well. The real problem in that Calgary game was that the defense was absolutely useless all game long. They couldn't stop Messam and they couldn't stop BLM. They let the Stamps own the ball and couldn't get a stop. The O got bogged down and didn't get back on the field because the D was giving up long drive after long drive. The Stamps didn't punt until the 4th quarter I am pretty sure. That's bad, real bad.

Especially when you can clearly see the defense improving before the change was made at quarterback.

Making the situation even better is that I do think Jones is a good coach and if he'd kept his head down and just worked on rebuilding the team he likely would have got the job done sooner rather than later, but he went ahead and created a circus and now he's burning bridges and making himself look foolish, barring a quick and impressive turn around he's likely going to wind up being run out of town. So many similarities to Mike Kelly it's not even funny. Kelly could have been a good coach but the ego cost him, same happening to Jones right now from the looks of things.

We talked all offseason how we wanted to see the situation with Jones in Saskatchewan blow up and now that it has it's glorious! Rider fans are falling over themselves trying to explain how this could happen and they've landed on the most ridiculous of things to pin it on and the amount of mental gymnastics going on to try and find proof for that point is highly entertaining. Bombers in the mix for a playoff spot and Rider fans showing how truly and utterly insane and deluded they are... best CFL season ever!

You can occupy the space and prevent the receiver from coming back, but you can't use your arms to block him out. I never said Dressler had a prayer for catching the ball, in fact I even said if you will read that I thought it was a poor throw. What I am laughing about is that Cox put himself in a position to take a penalty with the arm across Dressler when the reality is that he didn't need to do it at all. He keeps his hands to himself it's an interception and no one says a word, but he had to get the hand on the arm and then put the arm across the receivers body and give the refs all they needed to see to throw a flag. Poor throw, db in good position, but he needlessly put himself in a position to take a penalty and blow the game for his team. No conspiracy, no missed call, just a guy getting too physical in a situation that he didn't need to. It's dumb **** like that from players and coaches that have landed the Riders in the mess they are in.

Well it's easier to point the blame elsewhere when you can spin it to make it look like the commish isn't willing to come, the Riders must be unhappy that it's out now that it was the Riders who told him to stay away. More work involved for Rowdy Roddy Pederson to spin this as the big evil commish having it out for the Riders.

I agree, Adams and Holley was more of a swatting at each other with hands, the one at the end Cox grabbed on for a bit then put his arm across Dresslers body to prevent him getting back inside and that's all the difference in the world. For Adams to be called he would have basically had to start water skiing behind Holley but when the ball is thrown underneath you can't really block a guy from trying to come back. Watching it again it really wasn't a great throw for Nichols to be making.

it really is the grab on the upper arm. if they were hand fighting and the only grabbing was hand or wrist I bet it would have been let go (like the Adams one earlier) but to grab a guy on the upper arm is a pretty blatant no no. And further to that after firing up the pvr to watch that play again it's the arm across the chest too. Those two things are what got the flag. Soft as hell call but you do that you are just begging the refs to call it. He didn't even need to do it which is what makes it even funnier.

players don't like to always be looking over their shoulder for the hook.

but it's two upgrades out of 5 positions on the offensive line. Bond is better at LG than Hardrick and whichever one of Hardrick or Foketi plays RT is way better than Neufeld was. So you straight across improve 2 positions and not only that, you don't have the young NIs isolated like they were. Goosen has big bad Bond next to him now and makes his job easier, Chungh has a better right tackle next to him rather than a liability. You strength the entire line making those two choices and the results speak for themselves. Nichols and Bond came in at the same time and the difference in the OL play was night and day. Nichols gave things a spark to be sure and he wasn't dealing with the mental issues Willy had but the single biggest difference is the improved play of the offensive line. The defense got a hell of a lot better from those first couple weeks of the season as well and that really didn't have much to do with the offense. The D sucked ass against Montreal and in Calgary weeks one and two and then slowly improved. They had a big turn over night against Hamilton and they won the game, they played real well against Edmonton in a losing effort and then the changes happened to the offense and boom, 5 game win streak.

I still remember a half time segment that Matt Dunigan did explaining how the Bombers basically made the defense choose if they were going to double up on Stegall or Bruce and Khari was just putting it up to whichever one had single coverage. Not a bad way to go about things.

And I do believe that he will look like a different player if he gets back in, but I don't see how he gets back in unless Nichols all of a sudden starts turning the ball over a lot or gets hurt but the OL is keeping the qbs a lot cleaner so he's not as likely to get hurt.

You know I knew that Rider fans were fair weather and band wagon fans, but it just bottles the mind to see them reacting like they are this season. Your team sucks and has since day 1 of the season but the only possible explanation is that the league is screwing them over... not the way Jones took a hatchet to the roster? Not the side show like atmosphere he's fostered there with the short rope for players? I mean we saw the same **** here with Mike Kelly and didn't cry conspiracy, we just said yeah Kelly is a clown and he's hurting the team. The Riders are fortunate that they have Durant who is a real good qb otherwise it would be even uglier.

Confidence is key though and sometimes you do need a spark from a benching as significant as your starting qb.... that being said I don't believe Nichols is doing anything right now that Willy isn't capable of. Willy won when his D forced 6 turnovers too. The D has improved since the start of the season, the OL has improved, the run game has improved. There is a lot going on now that wasn't happening when Willy was in there independent of what Willy was doing. Yeah he had issues with his confidence but the team collectively has improved since he was sat down. You gotta try pretty hard to lose when your D is winning the turn over battle as lopsidedly as the Bombers have been this past stretch.

Yeah that game right there is why I love the CFL. Back and forth, up and down, lots of big plays. Real entertaining way to end the labour day weekend.

Thanks for dragging up bad memories.

All the bitching about a PI call is simply a bad football team looking to make excuses for their badness. I saw contact clearly when it first happened, obviously the refs did too. That it might have been a soft call is of no consequence. They were calling soft PI all game long so it just stuck with what was already happening. My advice for the Riders is to get over it and learn 2 football noobs.

Or how about the OL just looks flat out better? Harris numbers alone back that up. No rin game what so ever means a defense can tee off on the qb but when the run game is a concern they have to account for it

Man oh man ray is having a hell of a time with the pressure

Khari was also willing to take a risk and let his receiver win a battle. Sometimes you gotta take those risks