Captain Blue

Pretty fun game to watch. Drew Willy was absolutely outstanding tonight. Throwing bullets and running all over the place. Without him this car has no engine. Loved what Veltung brought to the game too. He's so smooth out there. Kudos to Adams for having a big game too. The man everyone loves to hate called a good game tonight. Thought Bellefeuille did a good job of going with what was working and attacking several weak links in the BC secondary. Earlier in the week I had mentioned that he was drawing Moore towards the QB near the snap, and today with Veltung in his place we started to see the added wrinkle of the toss to the WR and potential for quick routes off it. Ran a lot of motion with Veltung and read-option with the RB. Who wasn't terrified after that first BC drive? Defense did a good job of figuring it out right after that, holding them to 6 points, three of which came from a phantom contacting the kicker call. I'm still concerned overall about them but credit for shutting them down. Lulay does a great job on the short game and they limited the damage there. I've got a few concerns about our OL. They really struggle to run block consistently. Pass blocking I think they fare much better. Weak links remain on the inside. Dom Picard does a great job of standing around blocking no one. And if a DL does make contact with him early on, that's a battle he's going to lose consistently. BC sure does like to talk a lot. A win was so satisfying tonight.

MB is definitely a problem. His plays are lackluster and predictable. By the end of the half the other team has figured us out. Like others have pointed out, look what he did to Calvillo in Montreal. People can talk about his work with Calvillo all they want. It was worth considering his work with Calvillo when we hired him, obviously, by looking at his prior work and seeing his successes and failures. He's been here long enough that we can judge whether he is the right OC for us based on what he is showing as Bomber coach. I see an offense that's been able to attack downfield often yet still manage to maintain a high completion rate from their (starting) QB. I think almost every fan in the CFL feels their OC is too predictable. Its always easy to look back on it. Part of me feels that fans want some ridiculous trick plays consistently, but that's not part of the discussion here, just a tangent on my part. I think if you study the offense week in and week out you can see the wrinkles he keeps adding. The formations and movement prior to the snap for instance have shown a clear desire to show the current opponent one thing, and present further options in later weeks. Little things, like having Moore head towards the QB with the potential of taking a hand off. All this isn't to say MB is perfect. He deserves his share of the blame as the guy who's in charge of the offense. Still, MB gets little of the praise when the offense works and seemingly the most blame when the offense doesn't. Meanwhile, Willy struggled against blitzes early in the season, there are still several OL struggling to maintain blocks consistently, and Brian Brohm flat out can't hit an open receiver. Anytime Willy gets hit we're reminded that MB's offenses have had QBs take a lot of hits. This is a valid criticism if applied correctly, but often I think here it isn't. For example, Tyler got blown backwards and beaten immediately on the play Willy got hit on. Other times Willy has failed to identify the direction of the blitz, resulting in a hit. None of this is on MB. Now, there have been times when we've reduced the protection in favour of spreading out the offense, and in some of these cases I think the criticism of getting his QB hit is warranted. The thing I'm most hoping for is Willy to stay healthy, because I think he can be outstanding in this offense. And if he isn't, then at least we have more film to work off of when fans are evaluating both Willy and MB. Having Brohm play is complicating the evaluation and probably providing a more negative outlook on this offense, in my opinion.

Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here and go against the crowd on this one. I don't think Bellefeuille is a particularly great OC, but I don't think he's the problem either right now. I think Willy has thrived in this system, and I think it actually does play to his strengths. Willy's also gotten better at reading and reacting to blitzes, which was a big problem early on. At this point I think any system would be downright awful with Brohm at QB. I don't think Marve is going to be the answer either, but we're at the point where its his turn to see if he can make something happen.

What really irks me about this theory is that it flies directly against logic. Imagine you're hired as CEO or GM or HC of a football team. You're gonna want to keep that job and you're gonna want to win some freaking football games. When you're looking to hire other positions, you will certainly consider people you know and/or share similar viewpoints on football. But you're not gonna hire someone just cause he's a buddy, and risk having that person bring the team down. You're going to do everything you can to find the right people. Now go back to the real situation here, except remember that the people that rise to success are often the most driven and most competitive people in the sport.

I love how as soon as there is some sort of link between staff and/or players, fans assume they're automatically best buddies and the only reason they got the job was due to that relationship. I'm sure there are times when that theory holds true at least a bit, but holy hell guys its a 9-team league and everyone knows everyone at this point.

Or...the most likely scenario is that your calculations are either wrong or missing something.

This place is just as bad as RiderFans after a loss.

My guess is they weren't thrilled with Marve's short yardage work. Marve makes sense for read-option plays, particularly in the red zone and on two point converts if we ever figure out that we should be doing those.

The only other option is for the defense to honestly not come near a receiver. So you know, impossible to play defense now.

That's a soft PI call. Hope it's overturned. Bad for league if they keep these terrible penalties up.

I don't like that ruling. If BC recovers a fumble, who cares if it's too casual? Sask could have jumped on that ball if they cared to pick it up,

Second day in a row I'm gonna call out praise for signature jerseys. The Sask ones are decent for sure. Did the leg pants change to black? They look a little less like Oregon now.

Montreal got great signature jerseys. I honestly love them.

The only time I am in favour of kicking for 1 point now is if it's in the second half and it's really a no-brainer to get the extra point. To win, to put yourself within 3, etc. You only need to make just over 50 percent on your two point tries to make it worth it, and I feel given our red zone, goal line offense that we would easily surpass it. There are NFL studies showing that teams should be going for 2 more consistently. I would be willing to bet that the evidence holds up in the CFL too.

I think Hurl gets too much hate. I don't think he's been very good this season, but I don't think he's nearly the problem others do I guess. His job is a lot harder too with DTs that aren't able to move linemen around.

Unamba was good on special teams, useless everywhere else. That's why he is gone and Shell, who can actually pitch in and play on the defense, remains.

I really want to laugh at the Rider fans who are claiming to fire everyone, but I still see the Fire Richie Hall thread to high up on this board. The guy who's coached three games here. I hope this board proves me wrong, but I'll be looking to see if all those guys with low post counts and shouting from the rooftops are here this week to discuss a win.

You have to wonder how many more losses before Sask cans someone. Think Chamblin still will manage to survive for now, but add a couple of losses onto the 0-3 and someone will get blamed (by Chamblin, since he's blameless of course.)

Holy geeze, Saskatchewan continues to plummet.

Was only half paying attention, was it really worthy of a flag?

OT! Saskatchewan absolutely can't close out a game properly.

Can't believe they're going for the kick here. Such a long kick, I'd gamble on the third down play.

These flags are probably good calls, but this is really killing the game.

I want to see OT.

That's a shitty call there ref, cop out ruling forward progress stopped. I mean, the guy is still moving and fighting. At least it didn't make the difference, BC gets the ball.