17to85

honestly at that point I might have been welcoming a giant space rock personally.

yeah the man was a prick of the highest proportions but damned if he didn't know how to win. It's always a loss when the CFL loses legendary figures like that.

well no but the third game, the third game he finally got the team to show some heart.... awwwwwww crap....

Decent in 2012? In his first game as hc in the easiest game to get players fired up for they got their asses handed to them. Burke was a loser head coach from day 1.

Or was it just a case of a guy is a very good coordinator but not qualified to be a head coach. Lots of examples of that

Because he cut everyone and brought in his own picks at qb. He has no one to blame for his qb situation but himself. He coulda had Kevin Glenn who isn't great but certainly wasn't crap at the time. Never mind that the guy he hand picked quickly got thrown under the bus and they had to resort to huck it, chuck it Michael Bishop to just throw prayers up and hope for the best. Kelly was brutal as a GM. As a coach he might have been able to make something work, but it was the way he managed the roster that ultimately torpedoed the team. I am also going to disagree with a previous post that Kelly had better talent. Mack brought in better players, he just hired poor coaches.

The question ultimately is whether or not Hurl is a better linebacker than Thomas/Ekakitie/Butcher are DTs and whether the american DTs they brought in are better than the american linebackers. That's the balance they're striving for and I for one will trust the coaches to make that call. Not like they don't rotate people in and out anyway, probably lots of plays with a canadian at dt and an american at lb and lots with a canadian at lb and american at DT. They'll make it work.

Yeah exactly, what in gods name makes anyone here think that Mike O'Shea doesn't know how to spot a guy who can play linebacker? If there's one thing he should know it's what a linebacker looks like.

Mike Kelly the coach was a hell of a lot better than Mike Kelly the GM. If he'd just been hired to be the head coach and had a good Gm with him we might remember his time here entirely differently, but as it stood Kelly was so determined to micro manage everything he ended up not doing anything well, but at least he got the players to play for him. Tim Burke on the other had is the worst head coach I have ever seen this team have. Teams under him were an entirely gutless collection of players simply going through the motions. The most embarrassing football team I have ever seen.

I think overly much gets made of the top teir qb stuff to be honest. Ultimately the only question is can you win with your guy at qb? And we know that this team can win with Nichols at qb. Like I said, he won't be the reason the team loses if they do lose. Does it matter if he's not a top teir qb? No not really, he's got the right attitude for this team and can do enough at the position to put the team in a position to succeed. After that it's still a team game and the rest of the team needs to take advantage of that. Truthfully I am much more concerned about the coordinators than I am the quarterbacking. If anything is going to hold this team back it's going to be the soft vanilla prevent defense Ritchie Hall likes and the conservative to a fault offense Lapo is in love with.

Yeah but every single team brings qbs up and cuts them, just because a guy doesn't work out doesn't mean the initial assessment was wrong. As I said in a previous post, they likely saw the physical tools and wanted to get an up close look and see if there was anything there to work with. After seeing the guy in a preseason game and through camp they decided that there wasn't. Happens with tons of players every single year in every city in the league.

Nichols is fine, he showed he can win games with the right support around him and he's got some fire in his belly. He won't be the reason the team loses games.

Is it really? Guy had tools so they brought him in and maybe discovered there was no toolbox. Not the first player to have that happen, won't be the last.

Not to mention that during the radio broadcast Bob and Doug were basically laughing at how bad he was... Seriously people a strong arm is nice but it takes a hell of a lot more than an arm to be a qb.

Easier for them to just show up and listen to what the coach has to say post practise and regurgitate his quotes than to actually write their own opinions on what they might see, or god forbid watch practise and ask some relevant questions afterwards. Instead they take the easy way out, who's hurt, coaches thoughts on mundane things, bang out their article for the day. Really a damned shame.

Not good enough for a playoff team but good enough for worst team in the league. Yeah makes sense

You know I have had the opportunity to meet some people who spent the better part of the last 10 years working as political staffers in Ottawa and I won't bad mouth the jobs anymore. Some very smart hard working people who just happen to enjoy the policy work. It is definitely a real job and in some ways can be more volatile than a real job if the government of the day decides to up and cut the funding for the department you are working in.

Well a guy who has been around as many CFL training camps as Kevin Glenn should be one of the best players on the field early in training camp.

Hey if you take away their excuses then the Rider fans don't have anything left at all.

Hey I'll bet Glenn looks great in training camp, no fear of getting hit in camp, but once people start getting some licks on him he'll do his usual KG5 panic move.

You know what, I would agree that the Riders probably aren't the worst team in the league, trouble is they don't play in the east so getting their wins is harder when you're still looking like the worst western team on paper.

8 wins almost always guarantees playoffs, the Riders won't get there. There's only so many wins to go around in the CFL and to me all the other west teams are too far ahead of the Riders for them to get to that total.

yeah but then you said

how is Ogopogo not a momumental improvement on using rookies at the other DE spot? I mean I'll let Nevis and Cummings being a wash go but come on, that other DE spot is a major upgrade. Now as far as Shologan goes, I never expected much out of him, I felt his season in Ottawa was playing over his head, I mean the Riders did leave him open to the expansion draft for a reason.

It does when everything the Bombers do is wrong and everything everyone else does is right.