JuranBoldenRules

They could save on post event cleaning crews though. I guess so, any development and it's success kind of depends on the surroundings. Unfortunately where the stadium is it will be very hard to complete any kind of permanent developments that depend on consumers, seeing as how there are a dozen events a year there and the location is extremely isolated, even on the U of M campus.

White just isn't a quarterback. Can't make a throw from the pocket and it doesn't matter how great of an athlete you are. He's like a tiny, left-handed lite version of Justin Goltz.

Americans who attend CIS and Americans at SFU won't be able to qualify as non-imports unless they spend 5 years in Canada prior to 18 years of age. People on student visas aren't permanent residents, and it's a whole process to become a permanent resident too. You need to be a permanent resident for 3 years minimum to apply to become a Canadian citizen, then more process. He spent years in Alberta as a kid. He'd still qualify as a non-import or "national" if he was coming into the league today, have to live in Canada for a minimum of 5 years prior to 18 years of age now to qualify. Basically the new rules are squeezing out guys who used to qualify as non-imports because they didn't play high school or university in the US, nor live in the US. The Australian kickers especially. A guy like Cassama isn't helped by these changes in terms of getting NI or "national" status.

He's making even Bryant Turner jealous...

Bottom line is that Knapp has been better than Jones this year so far. Last year is pretty irrelevant at this point. Except he hasn't... everyone just went nuts when Knapp ran as fast as Drew Willy. For me, I still don't see the benefit of an 'international' RG... especially if a 3 import OL means sitting Anderson and Kuale on certain plays. The only competition I see is Neufeld v. Jones... and if Neufeld can steal that spot then there is really almost no reason to have a 3 import line. Sure there's a reason, we don't have a solid non-import guard other than Greaves. There's the reason. Having a strong interior would be a big change for the Bombers, something we haven't had since Labatte left and Morley's decline. If Neufeld can beat the rush ends to the edge enough to keep them out of the pocket not necessarily be a beast but just help form a pocket, and he looked better than Jones on Monday, than we still go 3 by 2 on the OL, just deployed a little differently.

That's dumber than REDBLACKS.

True, but the example was Orlando Franklin, a player who would be draft eligible if he held NI status. If he petitioned for NI status and was confirmed as a NI, I don't see how he would be a free agent. The 25 year old issue in the CBA is an automatic entry into the CFL Draft regardless of where players are in their CIS/NCAA career, and it only applies to players who already have NI status. I don't see how it would apply to a player in the situation of Orlando Franklin, older than 25, without NI status, but would be a NI if he applied. I'm sure a certain team would try to have Orlando Franklin declared a free agent if he ever decided to play in the CFL, but 8 other teams would pull out the draft/supplemental draft by-laws and call BS on them.

Thoughts Between Pre-Season Games http://2ndand10.blogspot.ca/

The unions would care if the government went bankrupt because the first creditor that would get screwed in bankruptcy are the pension funds, that goes for public and private sector when it comes to companies/governments going bankrupt. The logic and reality behind Hudak's jobs campaign were both hugely lacking, and he didn't present it in a palatable way either. How can you cut 100,000 well paying jobs and not sink your economy? Not your provincial government budget, but the actual economy?

Pallister is also the wrong guy to win them votes in Winnipeg, where they need to win votes, but they don't have a lot of options.

Is there any source on the 25 year old age limit? My understanding is that players with NI status are automatically eligible for the draft following their 25th birthday if they haven't already been eligible for a CFL Draft, but I don't see anything that would limit someone from petitioning for NI status past 25 and being entered into a regular or supplemental draft, but it's never happened.

When the alternative is someone who is going to cut 100,000 jobs to create 1,000,000 jobs. The Ontario PC's are as incompetent as the PC's here in terms of putting together a legitimate platform and election strategy. You'd think some of these provincial parties would see Harper and the Federal Conservatives strategies and take some advice. Be the wolf, but at least put on sheep's clothing until you get power.

I thought Tillman had pretty much scouted Laurent on his own - no one seemed to have heard of him before the Supplemental...? The Laurent situation is a very unique one. Bruce Feldman (who was at ESPN at the time) came across a Duane Forde article ranking the top defensive linemen available in the CFL draft. He contacted me asking if those 10 guys were all better than Ted Laurent or at least why there was no mention of Ted. Bruce had written the fantastic book "Meat Market" and got to know that recruiting class very well at Ole Miss and Ted was part of that class. After a couple of emails it was confirmed that Ted would qualify for the draft but it was beyond the date to get onto the official draft list so he ended up in the supplemental draft in one of the largest supplementals in a long time. These kids that move with family members to the States during their teens are nearly impossible to keep track of especially when they move before high school. The high school kids are a little easier if they've made a name for themselves a bit. Hypothetically, what would happen if they found out a guy who had played in the NFL for a couple years (let's say he's 27 or 28) was actually eligible to be a NI. An established player. Would he suddenly be declared eligible for the next draft? To put a real name in here let's say that Orlando Franklin decided that he wanted to play in the CFL after his time with the Broncos was over. My understanding of it as that he could apply for NI status (and would get it in a heartbeat as he's more than eligible even before the rule changes) and would enter as a free agent. Likely he's already on a neg list somewhere and in his case he'd probably only want to play for Toronto. Worst case scenario he would go through the waiver process so the 9th place team of the year before would have first negotiating rights. Pretty sure any player in that situation would go through a supplemental draft, and they'd go to the highest bidder with waiver priority, or be eligible in the next CFL Draft depending on when their NI status is approved. NI players have to go through a draft, they are only free agents if they are undrafted. I don't think a non-import player can be a free agent without being eligible for a draft.

people should listen to me, I don't make **** up. Hall wasn't bad in that game apart from a few throws, the receivers let him down a hell of a lot. He had a pretty rough outing. Could have made a couple first downs by pulling the ball and rolling out on the zone read instead of leading the back into 3-4 defenders, by my count he made 2 good passes, underthrew one completion that Carter snagged off the turf, and over or under threw everything else. Wasn't bad apart from a few throws is basically a bad night when you're only making a few throws. He looked better to me live than when I watched the game again, but I wasn't paying much attention live. Brohm was equally poor. Only tossed a few catchable balls, a couple of his incompletions were on the money but total rockets that nobody could catch. He's got a gun but he might need to spend some time on the range getting it under control.

Braxton Miller will get a lot of NFL looks. Stephen Morris, we could do better. As for Jordan Lynch, his only problem as a QB is throwing a football, no big deal. I think both Lynch and Morris suffered from being forced to be NFL-style pocket passers. Miller 'might' fall off the radar... I would sign Morris just for his nickname, 'Tin Cup'... but that's just me. I'm guessing you haven't seen Northern Illinois and Jordan Lynch play. He's not a quarterback, he's a running back who throws sometimes. He definitely wasn't "forced to be a NFL-style pocket passer." Doesn't really matter how good of a scrambler or runner a guy is, if he can't consistently make throws from the pocket he can't be an effective pro QB. The easiest thing for a defense to stop is a running QB who can't pass.

Depends on how you're judging, but we've had 5 first rounders since 2011 and the only one on our roster is Goossen. That's relatively awful IMO. We just cut a 2nd rounder from 2013 who couldn't even stay on our roster past one pre-season game, when we aren't exactly brimming with talent. There was the analysis of the numbers of drafted players on CFL rosters and the Bombers were on the high side of average, but a lot of those players aren't Blue Bombers, and they didn't bring back quality NI's, so does it matter?

This regime could be the one to turn things around with NI's. Goveia has put together several stellar drafts for the Argos, and as stupid as it sounds, having several Canadians in the front office probably makes the non-imports more of a priority and less of a "oh, we have to play how many Canadians" type of issue. Taman kind of goes against that, but he views draft picks more as currency to spend than investments.

We got Doug Brown's rights from Calgary for a third round pick in 2003. The Stamps weren't complaining too much (though I'm sure they'd have preferred to have Doug playing for them) as that pick turned out to be Mike Labinjo. I looked back at the years 2001-2007 and what is even more amazing to me is from the years 2001 - 2006 we not only didn't have any first round picks, we had no seconds either. We ended up getting our first pick in the third round almost every year, and some years we didn't even have a third rounder (like in 2003). In 2007, we had a second rounder, and we took Corey Mace, who never played a down for us. And 2002 1st rounder, who ended up being Oosterhuis, cut by Calgary and ended up playing 9 years for the Bombers.

Imagine what our NI crew would look like if we just drafted Calgary Dinos in the first round instead of who Mack picked... Coehoorn, Fabien, Edem. 3 starters instead of 3 guys who aren't on our roster.

I feel like Lawless got a lot of this info direct from the Bombers. Grigsby might be great in practice, but he was horrible in the game. He showed no ability to read zone blocking and find the gaps, make a quick cut, hit the gap and get yards. Other than one big run where he got around the edge, he did squat. Cotton was consistently grabbing 6 yards, finding the gaps and fighting through contact behind the same OL in the 2nd quarter. Cotton showed the ability to grind out yards, as well as hit big runs.

For the most part, I don't think Etcheverry thinks in those terms, what the defense is willing to give or bend but not break. IMO, his scheme is all about throwing the offence off-balance and making them guess, basically having few tendencies that a QB can read pre-snap. That's basically the opposite of Burke's D, which relies heavily on players to win 1 on 1 battles and really doesn't break tendency or engage in psychological warfare too much. Etcheverry also has a lot of reads built into his scheme, so he's relying on his players to see certain things and react properly according to what he wants, anyone anywhere can basically end up doing anything, blitzing, dropping into coverage. If Etcheverry was a hitter in baseball, he's looking to slug an extra base hit or a home run every pitch, whereas a guy like Burke is going to take a couple pitches and just try to make contact or get on base. He has some other core beliefs too, smaller and faster is better than bigger, slower and stronger being a huge one, and he applies that to every position on the field.

The expectation that athletes in their early 20's are supposed to behave like Mother Teresa just because they happen to be athletes is bound to disappoint. More often than not they will behave just like any other 21 year old male. Unless they have more disposable income, then they may behave worse. Nothing on his rap sheet raises my eyebrows. Been there, done that. The 3 knee surgeries might be a concern if I hadn't seen him running at practise. Powerful, smooth strides, quite an effortless runner actually. It's a concern because he's never lasted a full season. The knees are ticking time bombs. He's healthy now, but for how long?

I know it's preseason and I know Etch doesn't want to tip his hand .. but honestly .. watching the Argos run on us (at will) on Monday night made me cringe .. Thing that bothers me is all the "everyone rally to the ball" stuff, but then you watch them on Monday and most runs right up the gut became 1 on 1 in open field, when you should have more guys in the middle of the field when the offense attacks there. If Wild misses one tackle, it's an easy TD. They rallied pretty well when the ball was outside the tackles, but the middle of the field was gaping. I guess we can take solace in the fact that no one will step out of bounds without being hit, but they can just take 10 yards right up the middle if they wish. The scheme was likely very vanilla, but that core principle of everyone rallying to the ball was missing for the most part.

I guess he could get a pass for being a veteran and dogging it a bit last night, but he's also supposed to be the tone setter, a big reason why he was added. He was either not going 100% or always a step behind, and whiffed on a few tackles that should have been routine.

I've only reviewed the 1st quarter so far, but Wild looks pretty damn good. He made a couple great open field tackles where backs/receivers would have had a lot of space if he didn't get them down, and he didn't get carried for extra yards either. I think you gotta figure out a way to use him, whether it's where he played yesterday or somewhere else. Suber got picked on pretty badly in the 1st quarter by mostly rookie CFL receivers, he couldn't seem to disrupt their routes. To the point I've gone over the game again, Suber and Banks have both looked like crap, Banks covering turf not men and not really involved in any plays positively.