Tracker

Its a great signing if you know for sure that Durant is not going to be effective any more and also that Sunseri and whomever else are going to suck. Let the Rider fans gloat. If they are looking to Glenn to lead them to the promised land, they are going to be wandering in the wilderness for a while yet.

Hurl's speed may make him better suited to be an outside linebacker, and if Muamba returns, we're all set for years.

You're assuming the Riders could have kept Hurl. You can't force a player to re-sign and you can't assume the Riders "let him walk" either. It's certainly a possibility that Hurl told the Riders to sod off so he could try to follow Richie Hall here. It would be safe to assume that Hall's input to O'Shea would have been sought before signing Hurl, so Hurl may well have underutilized talents as a linebacker.

I hope that we don't put all of our eggs in one basket with Hurl at MLB. I see that as a critical position, andas much as I would love to see a Canuck MLB of the O'Shea grade emerge here, I would rather have a dominating import than a mediocre non-import.

Or, if that doesn't come to pass, "Willy Cut"

Low boredom threshold.

Well... obviously nothing applies in all cases. You can buy a cat and train it for 10 years but it will never fly like a bird. You've never heard of a catbird?

If he's not NFL bound and the Bombers haven't been courting him, there's something we don't know.

All well and good, but there is no substitute for CFL experience in the MLB position where the MLB usually calls the defensive set.

Damn, if this is true. We need a stud middle linebacker and one with CFL experience would be a real bonus. Now we have to pin our hopes on Hurl.

Watching that last game of the season again, Willy was just taking too long to make his reads. He was given the ball on the 5 yard line with 30 seconds left in the first half, dropped back in the pocket and just stood there, until a Stampeder jumped on him and he fumbled. In the third quarter Marve was given the same opportunity with the ball on the 5 and he dropped back and fired a bullet in to Denmark for the TD. Willy has to get rid of the ball faster. Right on. At the end of the season, apart from the physical beating he had taken, Willy looked like a deer in the headlights and that concerns me. I hope he can shake all that off before the start of training camp. We're going to see how he is very early in the season, and i think our next best hope is Marve, wonky knee and all.

I hope that Curran is aware of the tremendous history of great linebackers here in Winnipeg and the esteem they were and are held in. Tradition has to count for something, doesn't it?

I don't think that Edmonton is going to be a whole lot better than last year. We might as well concede first place to the Stamps, but after that, there are so many question marks about the other western teams that it is almost a craps shoot. BC has quarterback issues, Sask looks to be on the downslide, Edmonton has a lot of weak areas, and then there are the Bombers who are rebuilding once again. Third place for the Bombers is a definite possibility as long as Willy returns to form.

And if he qualified for pre-med, he is no dummy.

Grigsby in the open... No one can touch him. He... could.... go.... all... the... way. Oh, he's brought down by a slight gust of wind. Outta nowhere. If you mean all the way sideline to sideline, I would agree. But sudden gusts would still be a problem. I don't think he will be in the league this year.

I think Cotton is going to be a good one, but I am looking to Goossen and Graig Newman to be impact players this year. I keep getting this nagging feeling that Willy is not going to live up to expectations this year, and I hope that our backups are as good as we think.

Well, we could, out of respect, name a month after Glenn when he retires.

But O'Shea thought Etchevery was a good hire, so we will have to wait and see. We do have a good core group in the defensive backfield, though and some good and promising Canadian talent, so we are already on first base.

Glenn may or may not be in our plans, but it comes down to how much faith the coaches have in our current backups. He has not embarrassed himself in personal conduct, and would likely be a decent experienced backup if need be, but I don't see him coming back.

Oh, poop. I have hoped....

We ought to have made him a lineman coach. Then he would be Barron of beef, but that's Myles away now.

That seems....excessive. Not if he turns out to be a Kevin Eiben grade of starting linebacker.

Maybe as a backup in Toronto close to his franchises in Detroit.

Ironically enough, I'm sort of rooting for Ottawa to be a much better team than last year. We do not need another gong show in Ottawa after all the miseries they have gone through. Besides, the more competitive Ottawa is, the more likely the eastern teams are to beat each other up and the ratings on TSN would be higher if the game quality goes up. Win-win.

If the Riders had him last year when Durant went down, they would have been in much better shape.