Captain Blue

I'm so good with this. His roster is terrible. Bring in someone that can find more than one American talent.

Happy to have Veltung over Willie. I think the talent difference between the two is significant.

I'm happy to be rid of Greaves. I don't know much about Capers, but I am hoping like crazy he can start. If you can put him and Longo into the lineup, its hard to think they can do worse than Neufeld and Greaves. Now if only we could get rid of Picard.

The first sign of adversity happened the second half of last season. I was willing to wait and give them a chance. A full year to scout and recruit and find better players. Heck, it isn't even the record that is the problem with this team. If they were at least competitive in games and still losing, I could see the progression to being a better team. I know this team had a lot to fix and a ways to go, but the problem is this team isn't getting better. They aren't even competitive anymore. And you can throw out the Willy excuse, but how many other teams lost their starting QBs this season. It is football, injuries happen. I'm really on the fence on Walter / O'Shea ... Part of me thinks they still deserve one more year, but I do know that right now there is absolutely zero fun sitting and watching these games in the stands. I'm tired of the mediocrity and I'm not the only one. Proof will be in the pudding with season ticket sales for next season. The team may be forced to make a change just to make their mortgage payment. Patience is only useful if there are signs pointing that a team or organization is headed in the right direction. You hit it on the head - its not that they are losing (though a Sask loss really is a let down) but how they are losing. I can't look at this team's direction and feel confident that it is going to change anytime soon. Jumping into the discussion overall: I support stability, its something this team needs badly, but there are two points here that need to be made when discussing patience: 1) Keeping a bad GM/head coach/player/fill-in-whatever for the sake of stability is insane. Retaining a coach doesn't make him better suddenly. The Lions continually employed Matt Millen, and that didn't lead to success. A bad fill-in-whatever doesn't suddenly become good because he's been given more opportunity to make mistakes. 2) The cause and effect relationship between stability and success isn't X causes Y. More likely, its success causes stability. Good coaches are going to stick around longer and their teams are going to be competitive. Is that team successful because they retained the coach or because the coach is actually good? Conversely, bad organizations (hello, Winnipeg) make bad hires, so their coaches get fired faster. The reason they are failing (or, most of the time) isn't because of impatience but because they were bad decisions or hires in the first place.

Absolutely. I wouldn't turn down guaranteed Grey Cup appearances and wins.

I think this is a step in the right direction but probably not enough to change our season. Overall the roster and coaches still have too many problems. However, it definitely is something that should help the team, so kudos to Osh for getting rid of Tracy. Lirim is having a huge negative impact on our ST unit and I think now with Tracy gone the blame will finally go to him.

Lirim's been consistently poor this season. Horrendous punting, bad XP kicks. Usually I'd agree and say that a lot of fans would be upset with an American, but at this point someone to at least split duties, and potentially overtake both, would be great.

The guy is a fkn troll because he was cut... Wonder what he would have said on twitter when we were all saying he was the weak link on the OL He becomes active with the fan base on social media and he's a troll? If you scroll down his tweets beyond today, he's been disgustingly optimistic about the Bombers and their chances in games. Very supportive of the team and his former team mates. But like the rest of us, today seemed to be a final straw. Its most likely how he's wording things. To me it comes off as trying to spark anger at the Bombers. 'You deserve better!' Perhaps that's not his intent, and Tweeting certainly doesn't do him any favours, but its all about wording. If he had said "I think O'Shea needs to hold players more accountable. He would show penalties on the screen to us, but that clearly isn't working right now" then I think it would be more reasonable criticism.

I think its both. The roster is bad. Really, really bad. I don't think a really good offense is even a possibility until we have a decent OL and QB. It will help to have Nichols there but its not like he's great either. Regardless, asking someone to build an offense with Brohm or Marve is equivalent to handing someone keys to a car with a dead battery. We're struggling to find Americans at positions that shouldn't be hard to find good ones - RB, WR, DL to some extent. Kudos to Walters for finding Bass and Adams, but we need more than just a couple of additions a year to turn this team around. For all the praise that Walters gets as some Canadian scouting guru, there are still problems. How bad is Goossen that he can't earn work over Dom Picard? Addison Richards is halfway to a redshirt season. Walters has had some good ideas and even perhaps a good overall plan, but its not coming together. I think AKAChip did a great job elaborating on Walters' problems last week. The roster is bad but the team is also being hampered by poor decisions, and that's on O'Shea. The only roster changes we seem to make are just due to injury. Hat tip to AKAChip for this line, but when was the last time a player lost his job for poor play? No one is being held accountable. He is loyal, but I fear that he thinks loyalty will somehow improve a player. That over time it'll just all come together. I'm all for patient, but making changes halfway through a season no longer counts as overreacting. Change your roster or expect the same result. Also, its never a good sign when the part of the team your coach is most experienced with (special teams) absolutely blows.

But look at the core of the cover team - Rempel (33), Pontbriand (32), Shell (33), Cronk (28) Our gunners are Shell and Morgan - how does this make sense... Jones, Sherman were our best guys last year - after Unamba, Sears, Randle, Wild... It was a garbage punt but Pontbriand and Cronk missed their gaps. morgan and jones are both very good but raw.. both have made a huge play in back to back games.. shell cronk and rempel are experience but shell is the only one worth his role imo. get wild here asap to dump rempel.. only good thing he has brought is snaps.. The real issue is why is our entire PR unit (except Shell) made up of Cdns... we have good, fast imports that can do this - Simmons, Bass, Randle... Personnel decisions are hurting this team I actually disagree with both of you. The "core of the cover team" really isn't guys like Cronk, Pontbriand, and Rempel. They're in there for blocking, or in Cronk's case snapping. I don't think the problem is Canadians either. Simmons played some special teams today anyways, and I think Randle did too. Why play Bass when he's such a good LB right now for us?

I'll take Richie Hall over both of them - and I know that Hall did a terrible job in Edmonton. Hmmm. Trying to think of his Edmonton tenure. I think Hall would be a great candidate for interim HC. He can still control the defense, and maybe he will start making changes on the roster finally.

Let me first state that I think Pat Tracy should be fired, because the ST unit has been subpar the whole season and parts of it were really bad last season too. That punt return was on Lirim. Don't punt it down the middle of the field.

My guess is sometime this week. Organization needs someone to take the blame. While I agree he should be fired, he's really more a symptom of the problem. This is the equivalent of taking out a low level criminal while the mob boss is free. I think our problems are rooted more in how this team is built and run, rather than just how the offense is operating.

Maybe I'm missing something, but what exactly has he done to make him a 'voice of change'? As I'm writing this, I just saw two tweets from him about having Wade Miller more involved in football operations. That's it. On that point: I think Miller should be involved when hiring and firing (as in, now he should fire Walters and Osh), but I don't think he should be involved more in other football operations. Contrary to what Morley wrote, that's not how good organizations operate. Each person has a role to play. Football ops are left to the GM and HC. When those are not done adequately, then its up to the CEO to replace them and find guys that can do the job better.

If all the QBs suck, maybe the problem is the guy bringing them in. Fire MB if you want (I would), but the best offensive minds in the world wouldn't be able to craft an offense behind a guy who struggles to go through reads and hit WRs (Brohm) and another that can pretty much only run (Marve).

What benefit did we have to leave Brohm in? We all know Matt Nichols is going to be the starter. Why not look at Davis, or even Nichols later in the fourth quarter? The game is over and Brohm might not even be on the roster by Tuesday. There was simply no benefit to having him in there. You can sell me the line that he knows the playbook and has experience all you want, but by the time the game was out of hand, it was time to start thinking about next week. The problem I have with Mike O'Shea is that there are a lot of times when I think he simply refuses to think about the big picture. We make the same playcalls, the same roster decisions, we do the same things every week. Go for two? No thanks, apparently. Late in the game, why go for it on third down when football clichés say you should "take the points"? Oh, we missed the FG anyways. Pull Brohm to start evaluating your other QBs? No need to do that. It is time to fire Kyle Walters and Mike O'Shea. This simply can't go on any further. A bad roster being lead by a bad coach. Promote Richie Hall to interim HC and re-evaluate the franchise once again this offseason.

Pretty sure Wiecek is confused. An American will go into the lineup somewhere and I do assume it's Collins.

The problem I have with Marve is that he has soooooooooo many things to improve on before being even a decent QB that I don't think that investment will ever pay off. I do wonder if he's actually hurt or if they soured on him quickly.

Hard to be optimistic if Brohm starts. Its not just one or two things with him that are the problem. Of course the main one is that he throws into the dirt quite often and no amount of coaching is going to prevent that at this point in his career. I think Brohm is very much a known quantity at this point (terrible). I think Davis could likely end up terrible this Sunday given the environment and that he hasn't been here long. At least there's a small chance he could do something positive - maybe we get lucky and like Marve he can have a good first game when there's no film on him.

It depends what kind of 3-4 they intend to run. A lot of teams with the big, typical nose tackles make that guy 2-gap a lot, so bigger is better. I think Hall is smart enough to avoid that idea here, because I don't see a guy like that on the roster. As an overall point and not to your post, I think we can all get too caught up in what is a stereotypical role. Like how some will blame Hurl for not playing like previous MLBs did.

Start Nichols even if he knows half the playbook.

I LOVE this move. He's not great but he is very much better than both the guys we have now. He at least should be able to move the ball a bit. Get him ready to start asap.

Wonder if it's for a QB...

Hell no to Tillman. I want to win, but I don't want to root for that guy to succeed. This Chevon Walker signing is downright embarrassing. I don't know what we employ American scouts for at this point.

I think Kyle Walters might be the biggest problem for this team right now. I'm sure many will point to Bellefeuille or even O'Shea, but the fact that we have gaping holes at so many roster spots falls to him. There is no head coach or offensive coordinator that is going to look good with Marve or Brohm at QB, and certainly not behind some of the OL we're playing. Basically, I think Walters "hit" on his QB and HC, but struggles with most of the other job. Canadian depth has improved but the bar was also set low. His American scouting is awful, and free agency is hit and miss. In comparison, I think Mack's biggest flaws were selecting head coaches and finding a long term answer at QB. His American scouting was solid, but his Canadian work was poor. Ironically, I think they both have created one-half of a good football team but never a whole one. Personally, I would have liked to have seen what Mack could have done if Willy was here.