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How can Higgins do his job when he's already got the axe hanging over his head before the season even started? What a clusterfuck of a situation.

Teague Sherman being a good example of this. Guy is coming along quite nicely. I think the biggest thing the CFL needs to look into is better ways for teams to develop NIs without having to keep them on the roster if they're not quite ready to play.

under rating Spezza or over rating Schiefele? I don't like that comparison one bit. Neither. Spezza had three great seasons. IMO Scheifele's top end is what Spezza was over the rest of his career. The rest of Spezzas career was pretty ******* good too though except for injuries...73 in 82, 57 in 60, 57 in 62, 84 in 80, hell even 66 in 75 last year. This is a guy who had a few seasons over PPG and then hovered around or just below PPG the rest of the time. I don't see Scheifele reaching that level for more than a short spurt.

under rating Spezza or over rating Schiefele? I don't like that comparison one bit. But here's some other interesting names for people to consider since Toews and Kane like to get brought up because of the Hawks winning ways... Kopitar was something like 11th overall, Bergeron was a 2nd round pick, Mike Richards was a later first round pick (though that was a freakishly good draft year), Getzlaf was a mid-late first rounder (but again stupidly good draft year) Claude Giroux was a late first round pick. We could go on but I think the point stands. You don't NEED the really high draft picks to get top players... it helps no doubt but if you have good development you can get good players anyway.

Duncan Keith was drafted in the 2nd round.... Outside of Doughty and Peitrangelo how many top defensemen are actually taken in those top spots anyway? A hell of a lot of them come from the middle of the first round.

hey we've all been victims around here... victims of Tim Burke, Mike Kelly, Jim Daley... etc etc etc

Look at it this way, Bryant was on the roster to replace Kelly, Kelly is now back so he takes his WR spot back, but Moore goes out with injury so Bryant replaces him at his slotback position. It's continuity. Quite frankly I don't see Kelly as a slotback type anyway. Use him to be big on deep routes one on one, it's what he's good at, I think Bryant can be more versatile in the middle.

teams are stubbornly trying to play 4+ NIs on the OL still, they gotta look at using more in non traditional places. Teams are bringing in too much good american defensive line talent the OL are getting outmatched.

They should have just left Winnipeg in the East this year. If a team is going to fail it'll be an Eastern team so if that happens god forbid it would mean yet another division switch for the Bombers. But I guess they want the playoffs to have eastern time zone teams...

Did he not play a lot of slotback when he was with the Bombers the first go around?

Well considering the one throwing the ball has been studying the playbook since he was traded/signed here, he'd probably have a good idea where the route was suppose to go, nevermind that he was seen afterwards on camera and suggested post game that Romby had run the wrong route. but it's still just the one play. The biggest problem with Romby that we can see right now is that he and Willy have absolutely 0 chemistry. Not worried about him in the slot, I'd rather he be there and Kelly go on WR than Kelly to SB. Hell maybe put Kohlert in the slot instead but I suspect they want some more speed there?

Is it even mathematically possible? The East plays each other so you'll have at least two teams in the East with records that should be better than the worst team in the West. Not to mention the western teams all playing each other as well. You aren't going to see every western team with more wins than losses. either they'll split enough of them or someone will come up on the short end of western matchups.

Whitaker for me as well.

How so? He was one of the biggest me first players we've had.... yeah he was damned good as a player for a few years but that was several years ago and he wouldn't do whatever the team needed him to do so **** him.

career in jeopardy, terrible signing by Walters, should never have went all in on a fragile player like that.

my favourite part was the Jake Thomas sack. Just no giving up pure effort.

Does anyone know when this wasn't the case? I've been following the CFL for at least 35 years and I don't remember a year when the East wasn't weaker than the West. 2001

Grigsby didn't really look all that bad on Friday night. The tackles for big losses really hurt his stats. He was also asked to convert a lot of short yardage. yeah he did look that bad. He did too much side to side running rather than taking the ball upfield and not getting much he ran sideways and lost more.

You think there's any chance the Riders wouldn't just back a dump truck full of money up to him?

If they could get Kelly back I think that would help. It's painfully obvious that Willy and Bryant are not anywhere close to being on the same page and they do seem to like having that big tall receiver as an option.

Pointed out in the comments section over at TSN was the following tidbit - after 20 games have been played in the season so far, only 6 have been home games for eastern teams. 14 home games for the west. Of those 6 games, 4 were against western opponents and 2 were divisional matchups. Of those 4 games, the west has won 2 (Bombers beat Montreal, Calgary beat Toronto). The point of all those possibly unrelated numbers was that there has been a huge schedule imbalance so far. Drawing any conclusions out of these early results is premature for reasons other than it's early. I agree that a crossover is likely this year, but I found that tidbit interesting. This is a very good point. I think it is obvious that the west is much stronger and deeper this year, but there is going to be some changes in the standings as eastern teams play each other more and western teams play each other more.

to me Cotton was the most impressive Bomber in pre-season. So he had the one shovel pass bounce off his face against Edmonton, it was just one play. He got another play at the end of the game and it was the single best offensve play made all game (yeah it was garbage time) IF he's not trying to catch punts and just running the ball I think we need to give him a chance.

So then, draft & develop is kind of a joke, isn't it? We're counting on one, maybe two, players each year coming up in the system. At that rate, it takes 8-9 years to rebuild a team. This is how long we are expected to wait? yes basically, unless you're interested in spending a ton in FA it takes a long time to build up a system with depth, especially when you're starting from as shitty a place as the Thrashers were in. That team really crippled it's organizational depth. They left a few good pieces in the system, but not nearly enough.

???? Romby just wasn't getting open at all. It was painful. No he was open on a couple, just that the timing was way off and when it wasn't a perfect throw he didn't do anything to try and fight back to the ball. The endzone toss if Willy threw it deeper Romby was open, instead Willy lobbed the ball up as if it were going to be a jump ball but there was no interest in that on the receivers part. There was another deep toss to him that was simply under thrown. Willy had more trouble with the deep balls this past game than he usually does. Had the one he tried to Denmark earlier where if he'd thrown it deeper was a big play but Denmark had to wait for the pass and that let the dbs get into the play.

and 2nd round picks have like a 25% chance of ever playing in the NHL so if you got 2 guys you expect to make it you're ahead of the curve...