JuranBoldenRules

Yeah. Liram's been decent. That return wasn't the problem of the punt at all it was where he was asked to put it and the ensuing coverage. It seems that every time the Bombers have to kick from deep in their end Tracey ask Liram to place the ball in the middle of the field and the blockers are called to basically spread contain which leaves them totally weak up the middle. The ball should have been placed on or inside the right hash and contain left which should mean the cover team only has to cover 1/3 of the field. I think you're wrong. There's no circumstance where a professional punter puts the ball in the middle of the field on purpose. My opinion is that Hajrullahu is still learning how to punt, his get-offs are very slow and he tries to speed them up when he is worried that a block will be on, leading to the poorly hit punts. There's also the wind factor which he has to learn to deal with. For the most part it seems that he's just hammering the ball as fast as he can after the punt blocks earlier this season.

The Riders had the ball for 2/3 of the game and only managed two offensive TD's, with the first one coming at the end of the 3rd quarter. The defense did their job. They did get off the field.

I think its both. The roster is bad. Really, really bad. I don't think a really good offense is even a possibility until we have a decent OL and QB. It will help to have Nichols there but its not like he's great either. Regardless, asking someone to build an offense with Brohm or Marve is equivalent to handing someone keys to a car with a dead battery. We're struggling to find Americans at positions that shouldn't be hard to find good ones - RB, WR, DL to some extent. Kudos to Walters for finding Bass and Adams, but we need more than just a couple of additions a year to turn this team around. For all the praise that Walters gets as some Canadian scouting guru, there are still problems. How bad is Goossen that he can't earn work over Dom Picard? Addison Richards is halfway to a redshirt season. Walters has had some good ideas and even perhaps a good overall plan, but its not coming together. I think AKAChip did a great job elaborating on Walters' problems last week. The roster is bad but the team is also being hampered by poor decisions, and that's on O'Shea. The only roster changes we seem to make are just due to injury. Hat tip to AKAChip for this line, but when was the last time a player lost his job for poor play? No one is being held accountable. He is loyal, but I fear that he thinks loyalty will somehow improve a player. That over time it'll just all come together. I'm all for patient, but making changes halfway through a season no longer counts as overreacting. Change your roster or expect the same result. Also, its never a good sign when the part of the team your coach is most experienced with (special teams) absolutely blows. I don't think our special teams are that bad. They need to get a punter and forget the 3 good games Stoudermire had last season. Cover teams are solid, only problems happen when Hajrullahu puts the ball in the middle of the field, even on a bunch of those miscues they cover those punts well.

If Neufeld, Picard and Greaves are playing our offense will struggle. Nichols might be a little better at getting the ball out before he gets cranked. Run game will continue to struggle, we've got 3 guys playing who can't block CFL defensive linemen at any level approaching consistency. If you're playing odds, you can basically count on at least 2/3 of them sabotaging any play off the snap. If the offense can get 15-17 first downs with no big turnovers and Hajrullahu can keep his kicks out of the middle of the field, I think our defense can do enough to have a shot to win.

Bass-Simmons-Hurl were on the field earlier... either way, Shell is not the answer. I'd take Unamba right now. With Randle. They ran the odd 30 front with 3 linebackers. None of those guys can cover a receiver. The front 7 is basically the front 6, and that's universal in the Canadian game. Unamba can't cover anything and takes stupid penalties. The only game he played significant snaps for the Riders he took 3 IC penalties. He's terrible. Not sure why people get fixated on terrible players.

Is there a team "starting" just 7 Canadians? It's a roster management ploy so they aren't stuck playing guys who don't belong on the field on O or D if there's an injury. Barely affects how they deploy the imports. The bigger problem here is the lack of impact players among the imports we're playing.

My hope is that they are reviewing Walters performance and immediately fire him after the season is over, hell do it in the last couple weeks of the season if we're eliminated from the playoffs. Our import depth is pathetic, the amount of money we're spending on useless players is worse. I'm embarrassed that the team representing my city has Pat Neufeld on the field, let alone playing right tackle. Greaves and Picard too. We can't even find import OL, forget the NI's. If you're a CFL GM and you can't find imports, you're in way over your head. We played a receiver who looked like he doesn't understand coverages at all for several games, Jhomo. This isn't a learning league, especially for imports. Get some guys who can play. Same problem with non-imports, we can't keep passing up football players for guys who we hope will turn into football players. We can't draft guys in the first half of the draft to simply chase kicks. I'd like to see all of Walters, Goveia and McManus fired ASAP. I'm not sure there is anyone to really replace them with in-season, so it will probably have to happen at the end of the season.

Montreal and Edmonton both did and won! No they didn't. Nichols had one practice with the Bombers, Cato and Franklin have been with their teams since training camp. Crompton didn't though... What? Crompton was with the Als for six weeks before he played.

Montreal and Edmonton both did and won! No they didn't. Nichols had one practice with the Bombers, Cato and Franklin have been with their teams since training camp.

Nichols is the starter now. There's no way anyone would toss a guy out there with one get-to-know you practice at Quarterback. Hopefully we see improvement from the quarterback position, because outside of QB, Greaves/Picard/Neufeld and Hajrullahu as a punter, this is a pretty good team.

It's not a video game. You can't just put a QB in with no practice time and he plays to his ability.

It's kind of funny when people rip the special teams because the one thing that would improve them the quickest is also likely to result in the same people whining, playing an American punter, or a punter of any nationality who actually knows how to punt and isn't just playing in a competition of who can kick the ball the furthest.

In his first scrum in Winnipeg he referred to himself in the third person three times in the same sentence. A real winner.

Keep in mind that a centre who can't block nor snap consistently anymore is getting $200,000 all in.

Chris Cuthbert says big names will be interested in Riders coaching job, then rattles off Higgins, Benevides, Kelly Bates, Glen Suitor and Lapolice. Cuthbert is losing it. He forgot Tim Burke.

I think Tate has Jason Maas syndrome. I don't think he'd be very good, nor last as a starter now. He's been worse each time he's played significantly.

Picard has negative value. His Madden rating would be like 65, and he's paid about 3x more than he's worth. I don't think the Lions are that desperate for a NI centre and if they were we'd have to take back their version of him, a crappy overpaid veteran who is paid for the rest of the season. Aren't the lions using an american center? Cuz rumors are they were going to go hard after Jones if he was let go. You could probably make a deal with the Lions around Picard but i don't think you get a 1st back. There's a big difference between Picard and Jones for many reasons, age and ability the most obvious.

Picard has negative value. His Madden rating would be like 65, and he's paid about 3x more than he's worth. I don't think the Lions are that desperate for a NI centre and if they were we'd have to take back their version of him, a crappy overpaid veteran who is paid for the rest of the season.

That "CFLCapGeek" really needs to qualify the numbers they have up. Is "cap space" an estimate of what teams have left to spend cumulatively? The SMS is tabulated by the league at the end of the season, teams don't have to be "under the cap" for each game like the NHL. It also defaults unknown salaries to the league minimum, so the numbers are going to be wacky regardless. To be honest there are way too many bonuses in CFL contracts to put together a database like the NHL cap geek.

Keep in mind Picard's making close to $200,000. *puke* I'd go to about $275,000, and that's pretty much the absolute ceiling I'd have at this SMS number for a non-QB. That's 5% of the total SMS over a whole season, about $110,000 over the last 7 games.

It wouldn't be hard to free up the money to pay Muamba, and with the way the CFL SMS works it doesn't have to be done immediately. I bet he waits a couple weeks on the NFL and likely only signs for the rest of this CFL season. The Bombers might be out of the race just based on that.

"Friends" is a relative term. If two people know each other, that doesn't automatically make them friends. And if it does, you'd be hard-pressed to find many working relationships in the CFL that didn't start that way, with someone hiring someone else that they are familiar with. O'Shea was a senior at Guelph when Walters came in as a rookie, and they were on opposite sides of the ball (Walters was an RB at the time). They played a grand total of one season together in Hamilton. Exactly what I was going to say. If you're going to call Walters and O'Shea "friends" or "buddies," then everyone who's playing or coaching in the CFL right now are friends and shouldn't work together. It's a pretty huge leap.

Veltung is injured. Willie is more of a YAC guy.Gordon is the confused one.

The point is that those guys hardly played as they were "developing." When they got the chance to play, they showed that they had a base of ability to build from, even if they did struggle. Marve did the opposite.

Excited to see some competent receivers and Collins return.