JuranBoldenRules

Shocking

Noel isn't from North Bay. Kirkland Lake.

Who did Friesen want? The available people with head coaching experience are terrible and as much as Trestman wanted to leave Chicago for Winnipeg, they are in the middle of a season.

Hopefully those teachers don't need to have connections to New Hampshire like Lapo's crew.

Wow. As a passer he's pretty crude in the CFL, hard to believe any NFL teams are interested.

Barron Miles is a guy I'd love on the staff. Not sure if it would have to be at DC this season, but he's a guy who will be a DC and head coach candidate in the next few years. He also has experience in BC's personnel department. A guy like Mike Gibson is interesting. Could be a fit with a younger OC like Khari, as Gibson has OC experience and has worked with Khari before. Gibson as a OL coach would be a good fit in that scenario.

I like a strong head coach who wants to manage and lead a team, empower his assistants and players and only micromanage when absolutely necessary. I think O'Shea fits that mold. Obviously he is inexperienced, but I'd rather an inexperienced guy who can lead that a guy like Bellefeuille with head coaching experience.

That's not exactly what he said...I caught it on the way home and he said, and stay with me here guys because I know this sounds loony, but O'Shea essentially be the actual HC but bypass on the HC gig and just 'accept' a DC position here, thus allowing Cortez to be promoted from Sask OC to our HC as more of a figurehead title. O'Shea would be the HC but actually hold the DC title, and Cortez would be the OC but have the HC title. Ya... Then we can remix "Blurred Lines" as our theme song. "3 and 1, should we go, who makes the call, no one knows"

Every team is running targeted camps where they make contact with agents and invite players or agents suggest players to them. Some teams allow guys they haven't invited to show up too, but nobody is running purely free-for-all free agent camps. I think you'd have a tough time naming more than a couple players who just wandered into a free agent camp completely unknown and unsolicited and ended up making a CFL team recently.

Completely disregarding the specifics of this case, and just speaking generally. Small town Southeast Manitoba is a terrible market for a start-up, non-chain, step above greasy-spoon type place to make a go of it. Not a big market to draw from to start, and close enough to Winnipeg, Steinbach and WInkler that you're competing with businesses there for the locals. I worked for a couple years in a nearby town and a lot of my co-workers lived in Morris, Emerson, Arnaud, Altona, Rosenfeld, Lowe Farm etc. When they decided to go out for dinner or have a night out, they mostly went to Winnipeg. Another factor is that people from the country aren't phased by a 45 minute drive like people in the city are. Most places you want to go is a long drive! You don't see a lot of places in those larger towns like Morris and Altona outside of long-standing breakfast and lunch spots or chains like Subway, McD's and Chicken Chef. The only restaurant I'd want to operate in any of those towns is a Tim Horton's.

Cortez as a head coach is a playcaller who gets to make the big decisions, basically an OC with expanded duties. I'm not a fan of that setup. It takes a very special coach to pull that off, and while Cortez is one of the best OC's in this league over the last couple decades, I don't believe he can run a team successfully that way. I want a head coach who will manage a football team, not spend 90% of his energy on one-third of the team.

They essentially are the scouts. They work their contacts and use scouting services/freelancers, target players for workouts and neg list. We do need someone in football operations.

It's a name hire, so immediately everyone will react. We have the least experienced front office in pro football. That's not slagging ability, but there are a lot of lessons that will likely be learned the hard way, at least they are being handed a team that was more conservative with player contracts so they have loads of flexibility. We are sorely lacking anyone who has experience operating a pro football team at every level other than CFO. I guess we can still hope for another hire at director of football operations to support. Impossible for any of us to know if McManus is a good, bad or great scout, his experience is limited, similar to Walters and whoever we hire as head coach. Just have to wait and see.

Yes, there are only candidates with experience and candidates without experience. Good observation. All humans too. Our recent coaches from that species have been awful.

Mack drafted enough useless players with high picks to offset Muamba's impact on the ratio.

yea cuz that henoc guy and greaves have just been such busts.. When the ratio goes down to 2 NI's we'll be golden.

Kohlert, Watson, Muamba and Greaves are the only NI's that are worth protecting at this point. Hard to see a reason why we wouldn't protect any of them, regardless of their contract status.

Rouse fulfills the Ottawa Dexter Manley requirement for the illiterate ex-con roster spot. It will be harder to fulfill the NI ratio.

I'm pretty confident that getting a good piece or 2 on the o-line will do more to improve the Bombers than an 'impact' import receiver. Those pieces don't hit the market. Name one starting NI OL in the whole league who moved during free agency last off-season. In the last 3 off-seasons, Labatte, Picard, Rottier and O'Neill are the only guys who could be even loosely called starters that moved in free agency. Last NI safety to move in free agency, JR Larose, a guy coming back from a tib-fib fracture who almost had his leg amputated. Free agency is useless when you are building a team. Draft and develop. The Saskatchewan Roughriders, 2013 Grey Cup Champions*, disagree. *barf The core of that team was not built through free agency.

Does Edmonton even have a president right now? Scary that Hervey has total autonomy there. That is a guy who is clearly overwhelmed.

Would be pretty seamless, get rid of Edwards and that would cover most of it.

The fact that he's even in the CFL is a fluke, not so much his cannon arm. If he learns how to play QB he'll be great, but that's been said about him on both sides of the border. Popp and Trestman had Russell Wilson on the neg list. That would have been a fluke too.

More likely that the Bombers had no interest in Higgins, just like every other team in the league.

I'm pretty confident that getting a good piece or 2 on the o-line will do more to improve the Bombers than an 'impact' import receiver. Those pieces don't hit the market. Name one starting NI OL in the whole league who moved during free agency last off-season. In the last 3 off-seasons, Labatte, Picard, Rottier and O'Neill are the only guys who could be even loosely called starters that moved in free agency. Last NI safety to move in free agency, JR Larose, a guy coming back from a tib-fib fracture who almost had his leg amputated. Free agency is useless when you are building a team. Draft and develop.

This is the first deal of its kind in the sports realm. First time a league has given exclusive rights in one country to one partner. That kind of screams CANADA! Umm...the NHL has had the same deal in the states for decades with both ABC/ESPN (Disney) and then NBC/Versus later NBC Sports Network for national rights. Regional rights are completely different, same as Canada. The CFL has also sold it's entire inventory of television broadcasts to CTV/TSN since 2008.