TrueBlue4ever

Could be exactly the same sending on how you want to spin it, depending on your pre-conceived bias. Let’s try this shall we? ”Poor vocabulary” - Dunigan is hardly Shakespearean. People say watching him is like having the drunk uncle broadcast (and that’s meant as a compliment), so you can’t tell me he is more articulate than Black was. His replay “analysis” often consisted of “ooh, ahh, bam, Gettin’ er done” and assorted grunts. As was once said of tennis analyst Bud Collins “is he commenting on the match or having a baby?” “Nicknames” - I heard “Kadeem Cash ‘n’ Carey” from Matt at least 4 times during the game. It’s not just a Rod Black trait. “Repeating himself” - At one point Matt said the same thing 3 times on one play. “Middle was blocked so he’s trying to bounce outside, because he couldn’t go up the middle, all blocked up so he takes it outside, see how he goes outside after the middle got blocked up?” My brother watching with me (he’s a hard core CFL critic) literally said to the TV “yeah, we got it the first two times”. Matt will grab a narrative and follow it as much as any other broadcaster. People just go out of their way to cherry pick what Suitor says and make it like that’s all he does, and ignore Dunigan when he does the same thing. Again, easy enough to cherry pick and find the flaws. “Homerism” - People will dump on Suitor as an ex-Rider for any good strokes he gives Saskatchewan, and because of the Rider hatred here I feel they will ascribe that as homerism rather than simply giving props to the team that we loathe. I think he tries to hard at times to deny when responding to the haters, and that does not help his cause. But I have heard him give lots of credit to the Bombers too (he was gushing about Collaros in the BC game in particular) but that seems to go less noticed. Dunigan is a huge rah rah guy in the booth, let’s not pretend he isn’t. He’s the biggest fan boy amongst the analysts out there, but he gets a pass for it because he’s folksy, or has “personality”, or because he’s an ex-Bomber as there is a pro-Dunigan bias here, but I think it’s dead wrong to say he doesn’t do it too. I will agree that the Suitor time can come off as cynical, and I think that’s based on his tone. But I’d hardly call him ill-prepared. He has a narrative he follows, and if people don’t like it, they call it ignorance rather than respectful disagreement. And Matt’s “enthusiasm” and “authenticity” could just as easily be called “unprofessional” if you are looking for solid analysis instead of cheerleading. Like I said, I think during the live pace of the game his hodgepodge style takes over. When he is in studio and he has time to break down a play and script a response, he is excellent at that. But my original point stands that people who pick on Suitor and Black for their perceived faults give Dunigan a pass for doing some of the exact same thing, and I suspect that the ex-Bomber and Rider passports of the respective broadcasters have a lot more to do with it than people would care to admit.

It’s funny that the same criticisms that people have of Suitor (or Rod Black) that they harp on over and over could just as easily be applied to Dunigan if people chose to watch with the same “let’s pick apart everything he says and spin it to the negative” eye.

Matt is great in studio when he has time to collect his thoughts. As a live broadcast colour guy he is more erratic I find and becomes a cheerleader much more than an analyst.

I wouldn’t say we were lucky to win, as the defence limited Bo Levi and Collaros played lights out extending plays, but we did have our fair share of good fortune. So to be fair, I can understand that take. The Stamps dropped 3 touchdown passes, including the last minute gimme. They had a 4th TD wiped off the board with a legit but split second holding call on a punt return. They gave the Bombers a fresh set of downs and a 6 point bonus with a really marginal call on kicker interference (by rule, the technical requirements of contact below the waist behind the line of scrimmage were met, but it happened so late the ball was already through the end zone on the kick and it is arguable the Stamp was blocked into Legghio, who sold it pretty well. Calgary shot themselves in the foot a lot, but good teams find ways to win. But it is a stretch to say to score flattered Calgary as some have said, IMO.

Thanks as always for a great and objective recap of the game.

Commentators still haven’t mentioned the missed convert.

If that roughing the kicker penalty had been called against the Bombers people here would have lost their mind. Garbage call unless you are a complete homer.

The sad and simple answer is that they are there to protect the players’ financial interests, more so than player safety. Masoli still gets paid while on the injured list, Marino won’t because the suspension forfeits his salary. And no, the PA will not consider the murky question of “what about Masoli’s future salaries he loses if his injury knocks him out of football and he cannot get another contract when this one is done?” They are about the here and now.

Amazing exploration of the universe. Now if we could just get our s#it together on this planet. Sorry, just saw the January 6 hearings and saw that there are forest fires and +30 degree temperatures north of the Arctic circle. Feeling a little fatalistic.

Wow, just wow! That’s like OJ saying: “If you throw out that one night when Ron Goldman unexpectedly interrupted me, I’m way down on my spousal assaults against Nicole this year.” Given Dockenson’s responses here, I think the Saskatchewan BOG needs to step in and send a message from the top before the league investigates the entire culture there. Like Florida did with Quenneville. But with the Cup in Regina this season and a team still in the hunt, I don’t see a thing happening until they are eliminated from contention. At best there will be an off-season reckoning…..not that I would hold my breath waiting for it.

Nope. But they have done that for this year in the 3rd jersey scheme.

Ok, let’s go down this rabbit hole for just a second. McDonald’s (or Tim’s, or Safeway, etc.) runs a contest to help boost their product sales (Monopoly, Roll Up the Rim), and they falsely promise prizes that they would be on the hook for. They can do it because they control all the aspects of the contest. What products they want to sell that they attach the contest to, the odds of winning, which product holds the winning “ticket”. They control it all, so they are the only ones who can game the system. No issue that this could be manipulated and has been in the past. Now compare that to the situation you are proposing. The company puts up the contest in exchange for advertising time on a major TV network. They are on the hook for the prize money. But they have no actual control over when or even if the prize is given out. They are waiting on an external event (2 KO returns in the same game) that is beyond their control. All they can determine is the statistical odds of it paying out, and if the insurance they pay to cover the prize money is worth the increase in revenue the advertising boost gives them. So for them to have the ability to cheat the system, they would need an outside partner (in this case, the CFL) to rig the system independently to ensure the payout never happens. And even then, there is no guarantee that the phantom flag could be thrown without some 100% certainty that a marginal block happens on every return (like the “known fact” that holding happens on the o-line on every year snap even if not flagged) to allow for the opportunity for a flag to be thrown without it being totally obvious that it was WWE-style fakery. And then the professional league would have to agree to go along with it. That this one sponsor is so valuable that they are willing to risk the entire integrity and livelihood of the sport for the revenue they get from that sponsor in return. Oh, and let’s also remember that the newest (and apparently most profitable) league sponsor is a gaming site that gives each team $2.5 million in extra revenue a year. Just how would they feel knowing that a rival sponsor is forcing the league to fraudulently fix the outcome of games and putting the credibility of their gaming site into question? And that the CFL is totally on board with doing this, screwing them and every fan of the league over and illegally match-fixing for the sake of that other sponsor, all because they don’t want their sponsor to pay what is likely at most a $10,000 insurance premium for a company owned by a guy worth $10 billion dollars? THAT’S the scenario you think is possible? Just take a moment to really think about how implausible this kind of 3rd party tampering is, and how little it would be worth to actually go through with it for the dollars involved.

Of all the anti-CFL rants and conspiracy theories you have levied against the BOG, TSN, Ambrosie, etc. in recent times, this one really takes the cake. Corporate sponsor Save On Foods runs the contest and they are the ones who pay out, just like they did when Laine scored 5 goals in a game. The league HQ, BOG, and the officials have nothing to do with it.

Go to the tweet. Bottom right under the tweet is an upward arrow coming out of a box. Click on it. It should give you the option to “Copy link”. Copy, then come here and paste directly into the message body (do NOT use the “insert image from URL” box). Once it is pasted it should automatically show.

I’m just curious to see who Bigblue204 ultimately picked.

I sometimes think we overlook and take for granted how important Joe Pascucci’s impact is on the Blue Bomber legacy. Saved up all the old archival tapes from his time at Global (then CKND) and gives us a living history of the Bombers (and Jets) that otherwise would have been lost to the dustbin of time. Big shout out to him for seeing the value in the old footage and keeping the memories alive. And the best part of that video was the newspaper headline shown at the end. 🤣

I think you are now fixating on the fly sweeps that Dressler and Demski ran as a comparable, which Whitehead also did with a good bit of success. But remember that D and D also ran deep patterns and converted with more success than Lucky did. The goal was to get the ball into Lucky’s hands and let his quick acceleration make people miss. Making him a punt returner and giving him quick easy short passes have him the touches to exploit his skills, because he was not succeeding at getting the ball in his hands consistently on the mid or long range plays. In theory, Janarion Grant should be the same “kind of player” as Whitehead - great early acceleration and vision to find holes in traffic from a smaller player who could be a deep threat given his speed. But we haven’t seen him morph into anything other than a jet sweep option, so is Buck Pierce mis-using him or does he just not have the skill set (yet?) to be that kind of player? Maybe there is more to bring a deep threat than just sprinting down the field faster than everyone else on every play. Lucky would seem to agree given his comments about how he needed to learn route running. He did not have it in his first year with the Bombers, O’Shea chose to bench him in favour of a more gritty Bailey, and Walters opted not to re-sign him.

That’s the thing about the “eye test” from games 3 years ago, it will be just as (if not more) deceiving than the raw data, even if those numbers can be “spun”. I remember Ed Tait commenting that for all his speed, Lucky did not get much separation from defenders on downfield routes. But everyone will remember more that which feeds their confirmation bias (like when you buy a new car and suddenly it seems like there are tons like yours when before you never saw any - they were always there, but your mind was not focussed on looking or them). If you think LaPo muzzled him, all you will remember is nothing but hitch screens and Nichols bad aim, when Lucky himself admitted that it took the 2020 year off for him to learn how to run better routes and transform his game. I just provided some statistical data about how many long targets he had and how ineffective he was at converting them as a counterpoint to the idea that LaPo “refused to use him past the line of scrimmage”.

Lucky had 75 targets in 2019, and a staggering amount of them were tosses behind the line of scrimmage (30, with 27 being completed). Another 19 targets were at 7 yards or less (16 completions). LaPo definitely overused the hitch screen to him to the point that teams would sit on it. Having said that, Lucky was unreliable in the longer pass game, and some of the abandonment of him there was due to his lack of success as much as it was just being a decoy. Of 26 targets thrown his way at 8 yards or more downfield, he caught only 9 of them (34.6% conversion rate) and only 1 of 9 targets over 20 yards with 1 TD and 2 of those intercepted (for some context, same year Darvin Adams caught 8 of 20 targets over 20 yards for 2 TDs with one of those being intercepted, but had an additional target where he drew a PI call). So the overall picture is a bit more complex than what is being presented. And Lucky and Brandon Alexander both noted how hard he worked in mini-camps during the 2020 pandemic to improve his route running and how much he improved at becoming a deep threat because of it. So criticism can be spread out between LaPo’s over-reliance on hitch plays to get the ball into his hands, Lucky’s own inability to improve his game beyond that type of play, the Bomber receivers coach for not honing that skill more in 2019, O’Shea for benching him in favour of Bailey instead of letting him develop, and Walters for not re-upping him and giving him another chance.

I’ll pick Rourke, root for a Bomber shutout, and be out of my misery.

If it worked this time that’s a big huzzah in my books. Maybe between your boisterous curses, Tracker’s voodoo rituals, and my silent incantations we can sway the football gods some more!

Appreciate that, but with those abilities where the hell were you during the 29 year drought making us all suffer? Hack! 😁

That is how I viewed the play exactly. That’s where an official explanation of “surviving contact” (if that is even part of the rule for possession and “down by contact”) would have been so helpful during the broadcast to determine what the review booth is looking for.

That play is a lot closer for sure. I did not see definitive evidence the ball hit the turf between Banks’ knees (no obvious bounce up or change of direction - not like the turf pebbles that came up in the West Final non-catch) but it is possible, I didn’t think there was a clear angle either way, but my initial reaction was “wow, Banks did not drop it” and I saw nothing on review to make me say that was a wrong first assumption. Again, it is subjective and I think the biggest debate is of Houston is down by contact the second he hits the ground or if he is required to “survive contact” to complete the play. That kind of interpretation is what would make a ref in the TV booth a good add to provide insight. I suspect some would still say the ref was wrong since they are likely to back up the call on the field almost every time.