17to85

You are in error when you claim Donny O was as important to retain.

I do that too thinking that they just dropped the guy for nothing

Hell there's plenty of stuff to suggest they've offered Muamba top dollar already too. This team has always been willing to pay it's top NIs top NI money.

Like I said, the entire thought process from the coaches with regards to the qb and offense was flawed from the get go.

Our Canadian talent was brutal before Mack got here and he didn't inherit a lot of draft picks. When you look at what he's done Macks drafting was fine, he did more to rebuild the NI talent on this team than had been done in years. Don't try your typical blowing things out of proportion to take another whack at Mack.

do we have more than 3 guys worth paying top dollar to?

Nonsense. Have you listened to what Doug Brown has said about the Muamba situation? He said he never made it to free agency because the Bombers always gave him an offer he couldn't refuse. All the talk surrounding Labatte was that the Bombers were offering him enough to make him one of the highest paid guards in the league. Cory Watson was always extended well before his deal was up and I doubt that he was re-upping early for peanuts. People like to say Mack was cheap, but he was really only cheap with import player, he paid his non-imports and he paid them well because he knew they were valuable.

All the more reason he shoulda stayed there going into this season.

No entirely true, Crowton put more and more of his stuff in as the year went on last year. All those improvements were credited to him putting his stuff in. The new and improved stuff for this year was done for one reason, to try and prevent Pierce from getting crippled, but PIerce can't play that way so they scrambled to try and change it... and PIerce got hurt. The real ironic part is that a quick release offence is actually something that would benefit Elliott more than Pierce. Just a giant **** up in thought process from the get go.

This. ^^^ if he was an equally loser qb no one would be pining for him. He showed better than these guys with the same coaches and same players, why can people not understand this? No one is claiming he's the greatest qb in the game, just that he was better than what we had here

Swaggerville was the best thing that ever happened to this team, it was the over reaction by certain people that was the bigger problem. I want a team that KNOWS it's better than everyone else, not the sad sack bunch of losers we're trotting out there now who only know that they're going to lose and the only question is whether they keep it close or whether they are getting spanked.

Going after scoring in free agency generally doesn't work out, it just leads to over priced contracts. Gotta develop from within these days. Need Schieffele to turn into a real player, need Ladd and Wheeler and those guys to maintain the offense they're bringing now and need Kane to stay on track. They got some interesting looking options on defense now and in the future, as long as the development pipeline works eventually it'll work out.

Elliott played behind that exact same offensive line and with that exact same offensive coordinator last season and showed better than any of the guys we used this year, that is the entire point here. He proved he could make it work at least some of the time as opposed to the complete and utter failures we've seen this season.

Exactly.. And MACK was responsible for selecting them all on his own. Yeah and when have I ever said otherwise? If you'll recall I said last season after they canned Lapo that the next guy Mack hired for head coach would ultimately decide his fate as a GM right?

It all comes down to taking guys who can play regardless of what position they play. You identify your 7 best NIs each week and they start, if someone is hurt then your next best NI goes in for him and you balance the ratio however it needs to be done.

Because all the socialist governments manitoba keeps electing do a bang up job of running the private sector out of the province.

You don't have to tell Bomber fans what it's like, we know all too well what it's like sadly. We've put up with a hell of a lot of **** in the last 2 decades.

disregard Crowton offence moves... the man was a visionary simple as that.

I'm a bit lost here. Your posts have kind of drifted from calling the rest of us out for blaming Mack for 'everything' but now you just blame Burke for 'everything'... Burke is terrible but the bombers haven't won since mid-2011... two different HC, four OC, three DC, two ST - you're telling me that all of these guys were incapable of motivating the fine talent that Mack assembled? With Lapo the team at least competed. With Burke the team just rolls over and dies and that is just unacceptable. I don't think Lapo was all that as a head coach but he was 100 times better than Burke was. Agreed. But this all leads back to Mack... Lapo was struggling in 2012 (after Mack influenced him to cut Kent) and then it finally seems like we are turning the corner with a close game at BC and the next day he is turfed. Anyway, whatever... we suck. and I absolutely hated the timing of when Lapo got fired and said as much at the time. It of course all leads back to the GM but everyone is focussed on the players when in reality it should be the failure at the coaching level that people are most vocal about cause that's where the failure was the biggest and most notable.

I'm a bit lost here. Your posts have kind of drifted from calling the rest of us out for blaming Mack for 'everything' but now you just blame Burke for 'everything'... Burke is terrible but the bombers haven't won since mid-2011... two different HC, four OC, three DC, two ST - you're telling me that all of these guys were incapable of motivating the fine talent that Mack assembled? With Lapo the team at least competed. With Burke the team just rolls over and dies and that is just unacceptable. I don't think Lapo was all that as a head coach but he was 100 times better than Burke was.

I say the inconsistencies are from a coach getting more out of a roster of scrubs than a coach not maximizing his talent. The only forward who is a true top flight offensive guy is Kane and even he isn't really dominant. He's a 30 goal guy which is great but 30 or so goals in 82 games doesn't lead to a lot of consistency out of a team. If all their prospects develop to a reasonable level they'll have a heck of a defence in a few years and some solid forwards but overall the top end talent isn't there right now to expect any kind of consistency from the team.

If they're going to lose I at least hope to see them go down fighting rather than rolling over and dying. Last week they opted to roll over and die by taking a knee at the end, at least fight tooth and nail and we can at least respect that.

Noel gets more from that team than is there so to me as more of a secondary jets fan it seems crazy that he's even on the bubble. I mean almost made the playoffs in the SE division, that's not much of an accomplishment but that roster isn't much just yet either. It's not going to be a playoff team in the west I don't believe, the level of competition is just so much higher. This is a team that still sees Jokinen as an option at centre, that means you don't have a good roster. There's some good pieces but it's not a playoff roster until some of them take a big step.

You know what the saddest part is? We're all sitting here picking someone on the roster and wishing them to be successful, that's a crappy situation. Thanks Tim Burke!

You will always have a drop off when you go from top NIs to backup NIs no matter where they play. Labbe is as good a backup to Muamba as you'll find out there (Stephan if he's not hurt seems decent enough too) The problem here is that outside of Muamba none of the NIs have stepped up to that top teir level. Watson has but he likes to get hurt a ton.