GCn20

Ottawa was a 5-11 team not a 3 win team that in last half of the season had brought in a new QB named JC Watts that was playing some really good ball. They beat an 11-4-1 Hamilton TIcat club to get there. That does not mean that the Riders would have, The East was no cakewalk at the top. Hamilton was very, very good and led by Tom Clements and Ben Zambiasi on defence. Obviously Hamilton crapped the bed against Ottawa with Watts running style giving them fits all game. Riders with two pocket QBs would likely have been creamed. At the end of the day JJ Barnagel had a head to head matchup with the BC Lions for 3rd place overall in the CFL at stake in their final game of the season. They scored 5 points that game, lost and were eliminated from the playoffs. Context does matter.

I ain't dying on any hill. A QB tandem that failed to get their team into the playoffs is not historically significant imo. Sorry, but I don't make the rules of who gets celebrated as a QB and doesn't or that it is almost always tied to Grey Cups and winning. Just ask Kevin Glenn.

You also can't dismiss that wins matter when talking CFL history that wins matter. BTW, if context matters as you say the Riders offence finished 4th overall that year in points scored. Does that sound historically significant to you? I have said all along that the Barnes/Hufnagel combo was a good one...no doubt about it. However, I just don't see them as a historically significant QB tandem....they won nothing. This league has a long history of very good QB tandems and Barnes/Huffer would be somewhere in the middle of the pack imo. I don't care how weak the East was that year and I'm not sure why it even matters? Every West team played the same amount of games vs the East and each other...the Riders finished 4th and out of the playoffs. Also, of the sake of context it should be added that Hamilton finished with the 2nd best record in the CFL that year at 11-4-1 so the argument that a crossover would have resulted in a Cup berth where they would have defeated the Moon and the Edmonton dynasty goes even further out the window. Simple as that. If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle is not context it's a hypothetical reach to justify the fact that Speed has a boner for this duo that didn't get it done in the win column and were defeated in the final game of the season by BC in a game to decide 3rd and final playoff positioning.

Willard Reaves just trucking guys too. Forgot how good Reaves was. Weird his name rarely comes up whenever we debate best Bomber RBs of all time and it should be in the discussion every time.

I like many, many people's mock drafts. Dunk, Ferguson, Forde all give some really good mocks when they do them. What I don't want in a mock is poorly reasoned picks such as what Hodge is known for and therefore I, personally, don't see a lot of value in them. We have published lists of the top prospects, they are available to all in abundance. Now tell me a well reasoned argument for where they may end up and I won't hold it against any mock drafter when they get it wrong. Throw darts at names and back it up with very poorly thought out logic and you've wasted my time. I would suggest that is how most people who follow mock drafts feel.

The ONLY thing we require out of a FB is to be able to come into the game once a drive or so and be a blocker. Our FBs don't get touches, nor should they more than just a few times a season. We could convert literally half a dozen guys to that position right now, why on earth would we draft in the first parts of the draft doing that. Even if I could get past the obvious that FB is not a priority, say somehow the Bombers felt the need to add a FB....they wouldn't draft 2 of them in the first 3 rounds. That, all by itself, defies all logic. Some mocks are closer to the mark than others. Hodges aren't even in the realm of reality normally nor does his reasoning for making those picks make a lick of sense. Their are degrees of being wrong and no one is going to get more than a few picks right. However, Hodge's picks are so grossly incorrect that it borders on bizarre sometimes.

Awesome. I read FL's post and thought i had missed it. My mistake. I read a post saying it was last week and didn't bother to fact check it.

Nobody has hate towards 3DN, but if you are going to add opinion to your site make it informed opinion. I think their news reporting for the CFL is very good. Their opinion pieces are terrible. If 3DN is reading this, WE are your viewership. It's not so much vitriol or hate towards them it's readership simply giving it's opinion. They disabled their comment section so when feedback happens anywhere 3DN should appreciate it.

I didn't even know the combine was last week and I'm a diehard CFL fan. If they can't reach me they don't have a snowballs chance of drumming up interest to the casual fan.

I like reading Dunk's mock, but Hodges has been completely out to lunch every year he has made one. Like really bad. I'm not going to pretend I could put one together that is better because I really don't know any of these guys but I will at least have the courtesy to not do so knowing that. Hodge may want to do the same.

9-7 and they would have beat Moon and company....sure whatever. They finished 4th in the West out of the playoffs. Crossover or no crossover this wasn't some dynamo of a team. I didn't say they were average btw, just that they don't deserve the moniker of two headed monster and unstoppable force that people had bandied about. They were a good tandem, nothing more. True. However, at the end of the day none of that happened. They were the 4th place team in the division and didn't make the playoffs. Everything else is just conjecture. Luck of the draw has not been kind to many, many really good QB performances. The gold standard will always be the ability to win when discussing QBs. It's why Marino is an afterthought to Montana etc. etc.

I've never used it and wouldn't know where to start. I'm sure, like most things, after you learn it it's easy. My point though was sarcastic as the post was mostly a copy and paste from the 5 posts before it.

Yea...FB maybe after the 3rd round. We don't use one enough to be really all in before that. Would make no sense as our FB is really just a 6th OL most of the time. I could see us going OL round 1, DL round 2, and OL flyer in round 3.

I suspect that we will be looking at the trenches early in this draft. The last few drafts have been BPA, but I'm not sure we have that luxury this year.

Not if they went 9-7. Like I said, I wouldn't be disappointed either but I like winning better than I like stats. My top two tandems that I measure all others are Austin/Burgess and Holloway/Barnes. Both put up big numbers, both had championships to their name. Not trying to be a bugaboo about it, I just value wins as part of the equation.

They didn't win. I have consistently said for years that's my ultimate measuring stick for QBs. It's why I don't believe Trevor Harris was ever an upper echelon QB for instance. I truly believe that really good offence is good for 10 wins in this league by itself. You wanna go higher than that and then you need defence and ST help. Just my opinion. I remember watching Barnagel, and they were OK. Just in case you think my post is purely Rider hate, the very best QB combo I have ever seen was Austin/Burgess.....now that was a killer combo. I'm not trying to slag Huf/Barnes, just that I think they were average.

I would think it would take more thought to learn how to do that, than the thought that content would have taken.

Hopefully one of them is our next Schoen.

May have asked for his release when the Bombers came calling.

Totally agree. I don't dislike CFL haters, I feel sorry for them. Their own bigotry towards an exceptional product is making them miss out on some pretty damn good football.

They didn't make the playoffs. End of story. I didn't say their play was subpar....I said it was not a two headed monster worthy of mention as one of the great QB tandems. Has nothing to do with the RIders. Go get a Snickers if you're feeling pissy. I think that Clements and Huffer tandem was a far better tandem than Barnagel. Just my opinion.

Two headed monster or dangerous is a pretty generous description but I guess it was one of the few years in the 70's and 80's that the Riders finished above .500 so while not all that great compared to the rest of the CFL, it certainly was pretty good QBing by Rider standards.

I wish CFLdb were still the site it used to be. Used to have all these advanced stats available.

Absolutely. The big thing is that DCs will be scrambling to game plan for both guys and that's hard to do because what they bring to the table is very different. It will be very difficult ask for any DC to formulate, and then implement a shut down defensive game plan for Collaros and Strev in the course of a few days. This will allow us to exploit defences a little more. I expect Zac, a very cerebral QB, to be able to operate at a very high efficiency level against the league this year.

Tackle stats require a lot of context for sure. I agree. Like most stats a deeper dive should usually be done. I do agree that the two you singled out are big time proof of that.