BigBlue

Atlanta Falcons Woods was signed by the Atlanta Falcons as an undrafted free agent on April 26, 2010. He was waived on September 2, 2011. Montreal Alouettes On September 28, 2011, Woods signed with the Montreal Alouettes.[2] Woods did not see any playing time in his first 2 seasons in the CFL; in the 2013 CFL season Woods played on special teams and sparingly on defense. He accumulated 5 defensive tackles and 13 special teams tackles. The 2014 CFL season proved to be a breakout year for Bear Woods, as he finished the year ranked number 2 in tackles with 89 (BC Lions linebacker Solomon Elimimian finished first with 143). He also added an impressive 7 quarterback sacks. He was the East Division nominee for the CFL's Most Outstanding Defensive Player Award in 2014, winning the James P. McCaffrey Trophy as consolation.[3]Following his standout season, he signed a three-year extension with the Alouettes on January 2, 2015.[4]Woods missed the vast majority of the 2015 season after suffering a torn pectoral muscle in the second game of the season.[5] Woods returned to being one of the star players on the Al's defense for their 2016 season. He played in all 18 regular season games and for the second time in his career finished second in tackles to Solomon Elimimian. Woods also had five sacks, three forced fumbles, one of which he recovered, and two interceptions. Just like in 2014 both linebackers were nominated to represent their divisions as the finalists for the CFL's Most Outstanding Defensive Player Award.[6] Just like in 2014 Solomon Elimimian once again took home the CFL's Most Outstanding Defensive Player Award for the 2016 season.[7] On May 29, 2017, at the start of training camp for the 2017 season, the Alouettes announced they had released Woods.[8] Toronto Argonauts On June 7, 2017 the Toronto Argonauts announced they had signed Bear Woods to a contract.[9] So we had a week to sign him .... loyalty counts for a lot but so does the chance to be on a potential championship team instead of a cellar dweller .... money can influence things too especially in terms of ego points .... my guess is we were never really in the hunt .... we had made up our plan already and stubborn is not flexible relative to opportunities

What can't be changed is the inclinations of our two coordinators .... what has changed is the deterioration in the quality of our LBers .... we will have out the worst crew we have had in years .... and its an attitude; we turned up our noses at Bear Woods and he is going to be the difference maker come Thursday night ... we can change our LBing crew but we have to want to do it.

Same thing you said last year

We are what we are ...MOS is average at evaluating talent and our scouting team is also lukewarm .... our defensive coordinator wants to simplify instead of disguising our schemes stunts and blitzes .... and our offensive coordinator turtles at the first sign of trouble. The more we bog down offensively, the shorter the passes become. The whole league knows to shut down the Blue all they have to do is creep up and jam the short game. Same stuff as last year, no judgment, just the facts. It is an "outmuscle them" philosophy - - our best against their best. When we have had success, it has been when Nichols has been making his intermediate passes behind the "creeping" defenses. Lapo knows to do this.... it is just not his inclination. Now that we can't sit on our self satisfied butt after the Regina victory, he will modify what he is doing and open her up, until we win again. Our defensive coordinator: about him I am not so sure. I do NOT know what would motivate him to change. He has a LBer problem with Wilde out and he can't move Carmichael into it. Hurl is too slow to play MLB and with Wilde not roving, he will look even slower .... Leggett is being pressed to do too much. Our D-line oozes with talent and looks invisible. Same story as last year. Simplify, simplify, simplify. The line is all new to the team, right? Mos has delegated the D to his coordinator, right? We have talent, we are going to win some games, when we out muscle them. The question is do we truly have the heart of a champion ... I think we might find that we do, after LEARNING that the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of actually changing our schemes, philosophies, and way of conducting simplification. MOS wants to win real bad... he will get us there as any true leader would.

Over the years I keep getting excited when the Stamps have lineman injuries, and then they keep coming up with outstanding performances from their spare parts .... I am thinking we should win the game in the trenches Friday night, but I have been wrong on the linemen call so many times ..... sigh

If you love the Riders how do you feel about their traditional rival? If you love the Riders, statistically speaking, there is a 97.8653% that you hate the Bombers

"I don't think he hates the Bombers" but I do think Suitor is as close as you can come to that

http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/video/3-downs-who-appears-to-be-on-their-way-to-a-breakout-season-in-the-cfl~1161168 a 3 down non prediction .... could not figure out their opinion except that Jones is "desperate'

Can Ambrosie fix Toronto's attendance problem: http://www.tsn.ca/cfl/video/how-will-ambrosie-tackle-argos-woes-connect-with-younger-generation~1161077

If Jones had not made the personnel changes he did this week I would have bet on Regina not Hamilton in the upcoming game .... but i expect the changes will give the Cats the psychological edge that will make all the difference in the game .... it would not surprise me if the game is close early but Hammy will pull away and maybe explode in the 2nd half

What is this prediction based on; what has changed since the last time he was our starting MLB when he seemed to always be out of position and a step slow and behind?

Rather than debating whether we should concede a safety or not, maybe we should be discussing the boneheaded circumstances that led up to being pinned deep in our own end - - that is what really matters

We love to bash and crash the green machine next door west to us: no depth, no Canadians, mongrels with mish mash of talent filled with has beens ... no end of disrespect and disparaging jokes But the facts are that in spite of losing Jones and company came very close to winning and could be sitting in first place right now ... they were at least competitive The chances of going 0 & 18 look more and more remote .... the probability of going 9 & 9 are going up As much as we love to hate and ridicule Jones, he has done some things in his career and we might be seeing the early signs of a turnaround... Or is this complete foolishness? "The Riders are going to implode as soon as the injury bug hits!" some will shout with pride. So is Jones talented or a lucky pretender?

So I keep hearing Calgary is not as good as last year; most teams improved, how has the Stamps retrogressed or degenerated? The o-line. the whole D. coaching.... what specifically has changed?

what about joe zaleski?

I hope you are right... I just believe we are going to be outcoached this week

What I don't like is the agency fees ... they seem too high and too easy for too little work ... hurts the walk up business for sure .... only escape is buy season tickets ... pure greed and lack of competition Toronto continues to suffer from P**** envy .... they are trendy, extreme trend followers and want to pretend they could be as good as a classy American city: the blue jays suffer from this band wagon effect ... Toronto could develop its own niche of fans but they have to develop that crowd with lower priced tickets that makes them attractive compared to other competitive venues ... many real fans wouldn't go to Rogers centre because everything was too expensive, refreshments, parking, driving time ... it was more fun to just visit the local beer store, order a pizza and watch the game on TV .... and your wallet wasn't $200 lighter the next day If you can get decent seats for $35-60 each all in, things could change ... when your fan base gets above 20K then slowly start to raise prices on the best seats but keep the cheap seats around for developing fans I wonder how pricing for soccer compares to football tickets at BMO

east to say, hard to do .any idea HOW to do that ... how to make the blitz effective, how you keep contain on blm, how to stuff messam before he gets up a head of steam? I don't think Lapo changes much of anything until he is suffering real pain and that might be in the form of Saturdays 1st quarter turning into 4 quarters of being shut down by a real defense this coming weekend We can fix the ROC hole we saw but blm has habit of making our DBs look silly even when we are at the top of our game .... messam vs hurl is no contest ... I am expecting Calgary will blow us away this week and LAPO won't respond until the game is out of hand ... we have the makings of a good team but this week our two coordinators are going to go through a reality check (I fear) and only after eating some serious HUMBLE pie will they begin to make necessary changes to our general strategies and specific schemes Our only hope is if we can contain blm and keep him in the pocket AND if we can blitz through messams gaps before he does .... tall orders indeed and I don't yet see the will to do so ... its going to take some pain to go from talented newbies pursuing individual aspirations to real team work where everyone is working collaboratively I just hope when we are next licking our wounds we start realizing how to use all this talent and that means making changes currently outside our comfort zone I think this is realist not pessimist ... we are still going to finish first this year but we are not going to do it by out muscling our opponents .... we are going to do it by going beyond our current mindset and stretching to do what actually needs to be done to beat the individual weaknesses of each particular enemy

Its a long boring list ...

where do you get these stats from?

I don't know what you all saw today bur Regina's blitz seemed to exert a lot more pressure then the Bomber blitz .... in my view I thought our blitz seemed mostly well handled and I just feel like its anemic Are we scheming as well as we can when we blitz?

Not claiming any guru or prognosticator status here today but my best judgment seemed to work out today ... here was my forecast as I started this thread: "I think we manage to eke out a strange squeaker by the tiniest of margins and I would rather be lucky than good (even as we make our own luck).... I don't believe the Blue are ready to blow anybody away just yet; but by labor day who knows..." So it's a double great feeling for the victory and the forecast .... yippee !

Anybody got a calculator? In Calgary tonight 3 missed converts by Paredes ..... Maher was having trouble too with a miss and blocks or deflections of his kicking ... of course it was an unusual night, but it got me thinking about an old topic here on this site: Why are teams not going for a 2 point convert more often .... right now teams are doing them only (more or less) when they have momentum, or, when they can tie the score or change the differential to 3 points How much worse off would a team be if they tried all 2 point converts (except if at games end they just needed that single point)? Another point from preseason: last play of the game, just scored a TD; one coach tried the 2 pointer to win instead of the "safe" play of tying it up with the single point convert ... and he lost the game when it failed. But in real life, not preseason, if on one play you can win with a two point convert, would you not want to keep control of your own destiny? Anything can happen in overtime, right? So if you are confident of your offense why not put it all on the line on one short conversion play? (Coaches wanting to keep their jobs or needing to preserve their reputation need not answer.) Who has that kind of conviction and courage?

One of your most impressive Diatribes Mike

Administrative role By 1992, Ambrosie took over as the secretary of the Canadian Football League Players' Association(CFLPA). He played a role in monitoring the 1992 NHL strike as the CFLPA and the CFL renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement that year.[34] Ambrosie was also part of the CFLPA board that oversaw the CFL's expansion into the United States.[35] During the expansion, Ambrosie took a strong stance against lowering the import ratio which requires each team to carry a certain number of Canadian players. He also took issue with a proposed expansion or dispersal draft intended to be held in early 1993 to provide players for the San Antonio Riders and Sacramento Gold Miners.[35][36] The CFLPA and Ambrosie threatened legal action over the import ratio issue, but no legal action came to pass.[37] Business career After retiring from football, Ambrosie became the North American head of sales at HSBC Securities. In May 2004, Ambrosie joined AGF Management Ltd. as their head of sales and marketing.[38] The president of the company reportedly hired him to "shake things up".[39] Ambrosie's leadership brought several changes to AGF Management Ltd., including new fund managers and the launch of new products.[40] In June 2006, Ambrosie was appointed president of AGF Funds Inc.[41] Due to another managerial change in 2008, Ambrosie left the firm.[42] In October of 2012, Ambrosie joined Canada's oldest investment firm, MacDougall, MacDougall & MacTier (3Macs) as president and CEO and guided them through a period of significant transition and growth. In 2016, 3Macs entered into negotiations ending in the eventual sale of the firm to Raymond James.