Valderan_CA

If we want to have a good offence, we should plan to "start" 5 NI's on offence, 2 on defence. If Pencer or Neufeld win the RT spot, great, Swiston is the better of the 3 so he'll probably end up being our RG by default. We shouldn't rely on it. That's a recipe for a bad season. We really need to solidify the interior though. For some reason the Mack/Lapo regime had this great fascination with the NI tackles and we've done nothing to procure or develop any interior guys other than Greaves and even Greaves was looked at as a tackle prospect. I think they assumed that is a guy could play tackle he could also play Guard... it's turning out to be pretty untrue

Transportation is easily one of the things the Bombers have done best. With the exception of pre-season the park and ride system has been a delight. I never have to hunt for a parking spot, basically never have to wait in traffic while driving (since the drive to the park and ride is basically traffic free) and have to wait little to no time for a bus.

Green

Positive developments yes, but too little too late I would imagine. Not trying to take away the good things we have seen lately, but that can't cloud the fact that there is much more wrong with this team than there is right. A few games to close out the season that show positive developments can't change minds about what needs to be done to be much better next season. We finished last season 4-3 with the brain trust thinking we were on the right track, so little to nothing was done in the off-season. I would hope that we learnt our lesson then. We finished 4-3 on the back of some decent quarterback play from Joey Elliot, whom we then released and went back to Buck Pierce (who appears to be no longer able to play football at a high level). I'm not saying Elliot is a saviour, but if we had started the year with him as our starter I don't think we would be eliminated from the playoffs yet.

Does this really surprise you? He also suggested we protect Poblah and mentions the likes of James Green over Etienne. Is Poblah worth protecting in round 2? I'd protect Poblah in round 2, if I protect him at all.

What do we trade for him? If Calgary protects BLM in the draft over Tate I wouldn't be shocked to see them trying to move him for a decent price since they've just signalled that they value him lower than BLM. Here is the interesting thing... if both Hamilton and Calgary leave their vets (Glenn, Tate, Burris) unprotected I could see Calgary not losing a single QB in the draft (Take Burris and a potential winner like Collaros/Willy) Does Calgary protect Glenn and hope that Ottawa values Collaros over BLM? I'm guessing the protected lists will be hard kept secrets...

I'm not sure myself, but the wording is : each club may protect a QB and ten additional import players, so I don't think we benefit by not naming a protected QB, unless of course, we give Ian Wild some reps in the last game and name him as our guy. How do they determine who on your roster is a QB... played a game named as QB during the season? For example... if we had a guy like Sinopoli could we protect him as a QB even though he's played receiver all year? Obviously there has to be some rules or teams like us would call multiple players who aren't QB a QB for the draft. guys we aren't going to protect, call them all QB's so that Ottawa can only grab one of them from us and give us more NI's to protect in the second round... etc, call our QB's receivers or whatever because Ottawa won't take them anyways. I'm assuming the rules are that you are only allowed to have 3 QB's designated as such on your roster, otherwise just have a 46 QB roster... easy peasy

He is interesting isn't he? I think his body of work in the CFL is too small to predict how he'll develop. He could be another Michael Bishop. I thought Michael Bishop never really got his opportunity... the instant he started to look good TO brought in Kerry Joseph and gave him the job (and Kerry Joseph did really poorly that year) That being said I wouldn't be shocked if Troy is who Montreal protects, neither of their other guys have looked good and Troy has more potential in a lot of ways (that bullet he threw for a TD was sick) I actually wouldn't be surprised to see McPherson back in an Alouette uniform next year (once Calvillo retires from playing)

Green

Interesting question. Based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_CFL_Draft , I make it that we have: Round One: 1 pick (probably the #2 overall). Round Two: nothing. Round Three: 2 picks (ours and Toronto's). Round Four: 1 pick. Round Five: nothing. Round Six: 2 picks (ours and Edmonton's). Round Seven 1 pick. So we have a total of 7 picks. Only problem is that over half of them are Round Four or lower and I keep hearing that it's not going to be a very deep draft. we have 3 picks in the first 3 rounds and 4 picks in the last 4 rounds.... You think we'll end the year with a better record than Edmonton?

How does the trade deadline work now... can you still make trades but neither player can actually play for the teams? Or can they not even be on YOUR 46 PLAYER roster? I guess maybe if Toronto makes an early exit from the playoffs there might be time to trade for Collaros before the league cuts of all trades after the Grey Cup... not sure how the trade deadline works exactly...

Whatever he started out doing wrong at the start of the year he must have figured out... It seems like Denmark has been playing better since we tossed Crowton and moved over to Bellefeuille's schemes, I wonder if that was part of it.

yeah well Burris coming into this mess would just pout and be a total jackwang in the dressing room, blaming everyone else for the team's failures. No thanks. Hamilton was a disaster last year and that didn't happen with him. ^ Guy played well enough to win a LOT of games last year and they ended up with a worse record than we did because of their turrible defense... never heard him bitching.

Yeah. Hall didn't look bad even though he was totally under siege out there. I wonder how good he could be if he had some time in the pocket to go through his reads? My thoughts on Hall... when he gets a second to make his reads he consistently makes the right read. Doesn't even throw Ints that often when he has the chance to throw the ball without someone hitting him while he's doing it

The thing I like about Burris is that he has had success under several different systems over a period of many years. Collaros looks great, but he has only played in one system on a pretty good team with some great coaching. Could be a dramatic fall-off if Collaros comes here, which is less likely with Burris. I'd rather bring in Tate and Burris if we are gonna spend on two... Burris -> age makes him a touch cheaper, Tate ->injury history makes him a touch cheaper... maybe affordable to bring two guys in... Burris as backup in case Tate gets hurt. Both guys are pretty veteran and therefore hopefully be able to transition into a new system more easily.

If you could convince Walters to stay on as AGM, I wouldn't mind bringing Murphy in as GM... I'd only accept taking a first-time GM if he had someone with some decent experience underneath him as AGM.

I agree....

Yeah, that's totally not what he said. But I guess whatever helps the narrative that Burke is awful at everything. Well.... it is basically what he said. Essentially Denmark was running a "make space for other receivers" route, he wasn't supposed to get the ball and wouldn't even have been faulted for not going full speed on the route since his only job was to pull the safety over to that side of the field for the primary routes. Now, it was good on Denmark to go full speed and good on Hall to see that the Safety read the designed play and went to the side of the field where the play was supposed to happen. If anything Hall going "off the book" in that spot was the result of them running the play in practice, seeing the defense react and knowing that Denmark was going to be in a 1 on 1 in that spot of the field because of that practice. TLDR... the pass going to Denmark wasn't in the playbook, positive result was because of guys practicing and going full speed all the time.

Yup... if anything that was a strength of our team early in the year (short yardage QB keepers) when Goltz was doing it.

I'd prefer if Tate were in that list

Hall has shown himself able to make plays when he doesn't try to throw the ball while he is getting hit. probaly 75% of his Int's have been him throwing while getting hit... he starts eating the ball in those spots (or our Oline plays worth a damn) and his stats don't look so bad. Montreal is playing a defense where a lower completion percentage with a lot of big plays will happen

Either that or the guys we've drafted/signed as OLinemen have all been REALLY bad

Green

Nope http://www.morningbigblue.com/community/topic/1077-lock-of-the-week-winner-valderan-ca-new-game-will-start-now/?p=20472 Keep going until the end of the season and the player with the fewest strikes wins. Wait fewest strikes... damnit I thought it was most strikes.... gonna have to start trying now

Same here... I didn't even bother checking it on my phone until it was already over... found out the final from the news after.