In retrospect, giving a struggling team to a rookie head coach whose experience was mainly defence and special teams was probably a mistake. An experienced and formerly successful head coach like Tom Higgins would likely have given confidence to the team and also resulted in better choices in assistant coaches.
We're paying for O'Shea's learning curve and unfortunately it looks like it is going to be a long one. perhaps too long for the team. If the team does not do better than .500 and make the playoffs, O'Shea's future has to be questioned. His decision to leave Willy in after a disasterous first half resulting in an almost absolute certainty of a bad loss was boneheaded. We still got handled and now Willy is sidelined again, perhaps for an extended period which will probably mean a 6 or 8 win season at best and no playoff appearance. Even Ottawa with their GM whom we mocked got a whole lot better since last year and the Riders put up more of a fight in their last game than we did.