GCn20

Nichols was an average QB on a team that only needed average QB play. He did his job for us and there is no need to crap on him. Fajardo is a one trick pony and was figured out in the last 3rd of the season where his production dropped off because teams had film and game experience against him. Did he do a fantastic job bailing out the RIders last year....sure did....far exceeded expectations. However, teams now know how to contain him and how to force him to make mistakes. He will have a much tougher season this season.....that and somehow the RIder OL has gotten even worse. If I were a betting man I would bet Jon Jennings v2.0 over Bo Levi v2.0 simply because he threw more 50/50 balls than any QB I've seen in a long time. That kind of gunslinging is unsustainable.

Why cancel it? Still umpteen thousands of reasons to go through with it.

Whether Lucky is back will be highly dependent on whether Grant re-ups or not I think. Both are very similar guys, but we need one of them back. Neither will command big dollars and will be good value for the money because of their ST skills.

That's true. I'm going to need something in my back pocket for when she comes to the realization I was mistaken.

Exactly. If we do not have Harris to bear the brunt of the work who is to say we don't heavily pursue a couple stud receivers, or go for broke on a Trevor Harris etc. To say we would have no offence without him is suggesting we would stay static without him. We wouldn't have done that. That is not an effort to diminish his value to us, it was enormous, but getting 25 touches a game between pass and rush really upped his stats too. Lapo gambled that Harris could handle the load and he did, and it led to a Grey Cup but I don't believe for one second that if Harris were to leave tomorrow that we wouldn't reload. It would be fantastic to have him back at the right price but if we can't do it then we take that money and find another way to generate offence.

Yea....yea....worst part is I got into a scrap with the wife about this the other day. She's a big Trudeau fan. Now I have to go home today and admit defeat.

What does his time before Winnipeg have to do with the argument. Clue...NOTHING. I totally agree he carried our offence the past several seasons but I disagree with the premise that we would not have upgraded our lineup elsewhere if we didn't have Harris. That makes the statement that we would have had no offence without him a straw man argument. In theory it is correct, but you would have to be pretty naive to think that we would not have loaded up elsewhere if we had to do so.

I would like to make a full retraction on saying JT was in Costa Rica. I just went to look it up so I could post a link and realized the article I was referring to was dated Jan3/2020. My bad and my apologies to JT. However, no apologies to the Ashtons.

I know Steve and Niki personally and you are absolutely bang on with your assessment. Steve ran a tab at my business in Thompson and then got ignorant when the bill came. He thought it should be comped....lol. Yep. Unbelievable that the mainstream media barely even touched on this.

Justin spent the Christmas break on vacation in Costa RIca.,

That's a bit of a straw man argument. Our offence ran through Harris because he was here and Lapo knew to use him for the work horse he is. There is more than one way to generate offence and without Harris we would definitely have to change things up, but we could certainly do that if we had to do it. Our offence over the past several years has not been outstanding, it's consistently been average. It's hard to say that without Harris we would have been worse because that would assume we would have done nothing else to up our offensive production. I agree with the caveat that Harris has to come in at a reasonable salary.....and by reasonable all I am implying is that he take the same level shave as Willie J, Collaros and others have taken.

Maybe...hope so...

A good question for Justin Trudeau and Niki Ashton as well.

I am glad I don't live in the USA. One side fixes elections and the other invokes riots. What a time we live in....but at least Trump or Biden didn't go to Costa Rica for Christmas.

I have no doubt that Augie and Oliveira would be solid, however we would never get the dual threat 1000/1000 type of production we get from Harris. However, we might not get that from Harris this year either.....time is cruel mistress.

We will NEVER find a NAT that can adequately replace Harris's production. If he leaves we either find production elsewhere in the offence and stay NAT at RB, or we go IMP at RB and get a stud.

I'm not as worried about that scenario as you are. Neufeld would be a RG in Sask, and while he certainly would represent and upgrade over the garbage they currently have, it is a position he struggled with here in limited duty.

I know that I am in the minority on this, but I am OK if the Bombers and Harris part ways. Of course, I would absolutely love to have him but at the end of the day I believe he is a luxury item. If he wants to take his shave, right on! If not, then we simply find a stud IMP running back and move on and make ratio elsewhere. I have similar feelings about Medlock. It's not that I don't think these guys are outstanding football players it's just that they are likely the two easiest big ticket items on our list to replace at the moment. Having said that c'mon Med and Harris...take your shave and stay. The reason we drafted Liegghio(sp?) is because Medlock has been waffling every offseason about returning for the past couple years. It was bound to happen. Personally, I am fine with Medlock going. At the end of the day he is a kicker and we drafted a very good one.

Prior to 2019 I was kind of meh on Demski too. Not because he didn't ooze skill and potential but because in his first few years he was terrible at securing the football. 2019 he had a much better year for ball security and seemed to be much better at running north/south than previous years. Something he obviously worked on that offseason.

I am not really sold on Fajardo, he had a ton of receivers making him look pretty good last year on poorly thrown 50/50 balls and his spin o rama got figured out towards the end of last year. He is a competent QB but he rode his early season success for the most part last year. If the Riders lose Shaq to FA or NFL it will be tough for Faj this year. That guy saved him from about a dozen interceptions.

Good lord...there FG kicking has been brutal this year in the NFL.

For sure that's true. If time machines existed it wouldn't be fair. However, if the old or new athletes had the same level of training, coaching etc. you would probably see there is not much difference. The guys from the 80's were the best football players on the planet outside the NFL, just as the guys here now are. The difference now is their strength and conditioning programs, the coaching, the technology to scout and watch film etc. However, I agree if you took the 1984 Bombers in a time machine and placed them in a game against the 2019 Bombers they would get destroyed. That doesn't mean they weren't the best football team outside the NFL that year, all it means is times have changed. In the 80's we were still eating 4lbs of spaghetti the night before a game for energy for cripes sakes....lol. These rankings are based solely on the 2019 season. Biggie did not have a great year.

We will have some roster turnover for sure. 32 FAs and a reduced SMS kind of seal that deal. Lots of guys on the lower echelon of the pay scale may choose to move on from football and just find jobs down South. The good news is that the upper echelon players will likely begrudgingly take the shave. In my estimation, the new spending policy will just make it really tough on recruitment as well. Losing Rigmaiden couldn't have come at a worse time for us. We may need to shave some luxury items off our list like the extra NAT OLs and a NAT receiver, and carrying 3 KRs is probably something we won't be doing this year either. Some hard decisions on a couple vets are likely as well. Pat Neufeld immediately comes to mind...

If MBT took a time machine, and a modern OC, back to 84 he would be very successful. However, if MBT were to have broken into the league under the same training and game knowledge that existed at the time he would not have been any more successful than he is now. Same goes for any athlete. Would Crosby score 200 pts in the 80's....possibly...but he's a generational talent. MBT is not. One cannot overstate how much physical and mental conditioning, as well as coaching, has improved over the past 20-30 years. I can't imagine how good James West, or Greg Battle might look with the advancements of today. My guess is they would be all stars in todays game too. Yes, in the NHL, the style of game heavily contributed to Gretzky's gaudy numbers. However, if Gretzky were a rookie today he likely is on his way to being the GOAT....just without the zillion points he put up.

Jimmy is not a good QB. I would think that the 49ers will be in the market for someone this offseason. The list of availables is not great, but there should be some unexpected QB movement where they might get something or draft well. If I were a betting man, I would wager that if the 9ers move on that the front runner to replace him would be Kirk Cousins. A guy that Shanahan really likes from his Washington days.