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For sure. Our entire organization is first class and a helluva lot better than our neighbor's to the West....and we know the dressing room is light years ahead of their's. If he gets a 3 year contract I think a weak GM would be a great thing for any coach coming in. Hear me out. With the coaching hard cap in place, and O'Day having a team out written into his contract that allows them to tear up his term, it means either O'Day performs well and Buck is given the tools to succeed, or he stay the course and O'Day is the guy in the crosshairs not the new coach. The very worst that can happen in this scenario is that O'Day gets fired and the new guy decides to eat his salary on the coaching cap. Buck gets another 2 years of HC money to come home to Winnipeg in whatever capacity. However, the likelihood is that the coaches are all safe, and Buck gets a big say in O'Day's replacement or perhaps even offered the job himself. There really is no risk in walking into that kind of situation for Buck because the likelihood of him getting fired for performance is very low, as next year's team performance will be squarely on O'Day unless Buck is an absolute tire fire.

He could give coordinator money, but a rookie HC running his own offence will almost certainly end in disaster. Hopefully, Buck is not that foolish for his sake. He could, but that just as risky for BO as it is for the Bombers when you play that game. BO wants to be a Bomber a heckuva lot more than he would want to follow Pierce to Sask. I think the attraction to follow coaches is overstated. Players that love their locker room tend to stay no matter who their coordinators are or where they might go. Double that up with BO being a Winnipeg boy thru and thru...

The pay bump that might move Buck is not really comparable to what Costello might get.

I am guessing he feels his time is now for HC.

For sure. Great teams don't throw the baby out with the bath water if it means losing a good player. I would be far more worried about Zac coming back to haunt us in the next couple years than Brown. Anyone who thinks that 7 other teams wouldn't be all over Zac are crazy. We have 3 and maybe 4 in our division right now that would likely take him in a heartbeat if they could fit him in their SMS. Imagine BC with Zac, they would be a juggernaut.

What has Brown done more than Arbuckle did in his first couple seasons? Arbuckle took over from BLM and went 7-0 or something like that in his first appearances. You are right, it is a discussion to be had for sure, nothing wrong with it. If we want to discuss Zac's age and whether he continues to be top level of for how long he remains top level, those are very debateable conversations worth having. Saying that Brown is better than Zac right now and that's why we should move on isn't really conversation worthy imo, it's just wishful thinking. Nope. Mgmt all coming back.

You honestly think that Dru Brown processes the game faster than Zac Collaros? You think he looks like a deer in the headlights? I'm not sure we are watching the same games. Brown is a good looking PROSPECTIVE starting QB. There is absolutely no way of knowing how he will respond to the next level of being a starter. None. Anyone who says that Dru Brown is better than Zac Collaros right now is just caught up in some kind of weird frenzy that happens with backup QBs sometimes. I don't think some people are appreciating the difference between being a starter and being a back up. Brown is a great back up, but is completely unproven as a starter. That's when DCs comb over film on you, and find your tendencies and weaknesses and close off your strengths and a QB must be able to counter that. We have seen one game where the opposition had time to prepare for Brown as the starter, and that was against Calgary. We won...but it was not a great performance by Brown and that gives me pause.

Costello loves it in Winnipeg. He is not going anywhere.

It's Rider fan speculation and wet dreaming. Hell, we gave Ottawa permission to talk to Buck last year and he flat out told them he wasn't interested. We have no idea if he is even interested in the Rider job. It would not shock me to see Richie retire this offseason and Younger is our man here. Would Younger leave Winnipeg for the Riders for the same job, I very much doubt it.

It would be interesting for sure. I just have a sneaking suspicion that Strev may come home at a discount for us unless someone throws legit starter money at him.

Yea that's a possibility for sure. However do you think Brown overtakes Collaros next year? I don't. Do you think he over takes ZC by year end 2025? Possible but I'd be willing to bet against it. Therefore, we keep our best QB right now....everytime and always. One year contracts make it a necessity in this league. We could keep Brown and end up taking him through his growing pains as a starter and he leaves anyway for all we know. Agreed. If we get this year's Zac Collaros next year we will have the best QBing in the league still.

Please compare stat lines between the first two Grey Cup wins and the next two losses. Virtually identical. We neither won nor lost cups because of Zac Collaros. He did give us our best chance to win in all 4 tho. We will not be keeping Brown unless no one wants him to compete as their starter. We need to be realistic. We have the league's best QB under contract for the next 2 years with a very significant amount of that contract guaranteed. We couldn't move on from Collaros if we wanted to without severely damaging our SMS. I mean let's be real here people, Brown MIGHT BE a good QB starter someday, and Collaros IS UNQUESTIONABLY a good QB starter right now. The CFL salary structure is not built to be looking long game 2-3 years down the road. This isn't the NHL. Contracts are one year, sometimes 2, very occasionally 3 for a select few. You go with who will give you the best chance to win THIS year. That is Collaros.

I suspect this week we will be hearing noise on that front.

Yea...I agree. There were a couple plays Zac made that cost us, but really nothing that should have put the game in jeopardy on a day where our defence plays up to it's level. Not hearing much about that though. I get the excitement over Brown's potential but painting Zac as an inconsistent has been that we will be sorry to keep is completely over the top.

We will have a GM in the very near future I would think.

How much of Dru Brown's success is just teams not having a ton of tape on him? That is huge. We criticize Zac for inconsistency but in the games he was inconsistent was when his OL was getting bettered by the opposition. Did he try too hard to force some things sometimes this year. I think so. I am super unclear how a guy with a QB rating over the season of around 110 can be labelled as inconsistent though. I just think that as a fan base we tend to have selective memory of the past and we are holding him up to the standard of a QB we have romanticized in our heads. Go the game by game logs of 2021 or 2022 he`s had non descript games in every season he is here and I would argue that most if not all QBs have in the modern era. ALL QBs numbers go noticeably down after Labor Day. Every year. Defences catch up to offences...that`s just football. Fact of the matter is that defences were solid all around the league this year and nobody played better against them than Zac.

Only thing that might be problematic with an East coast team is that half the RIders fan base is Newfies that moved there, and who knows where there allegiance might be if there was an East coast team. Just kidding...sort of. Not at all what I was implying. Unions are great organizers, are very ideologically aligned with community ownership, and have the resources to greatly aid ticket drives etc to save the current ownership model. However, if you are talking about unions owning sports franchises it is a pretty prevalent practice really. Although, that is not what I was referring to at all in this case.

Despite a lot of people thinking we are somehow not attractive anymore and our team is falling apart, basically every marquee guy interviewed stated they want to be back, Exactly. The ones who aren't are the break out guys that are gonna get HUGE raises because they are now top tier players or players we are willing to risk to FA. No team let's their reasonable priced high end talent walk out the door if they can avoid it.

Yep...he was. It's a good thing I am not going to define any QB by one playoff loss like some others on this forum. Any given Sunday and all that. I just don't believe that Collaros, although he played poorly in the Grey Cup, is showing great signs of regression like some others on here. Was he MOP level ZC, no not this year. Was he best QB in the CFL level ZC...imo he was. I just think our Grey Cup loss really has some guys jumping the shark a bit and wildly overthinking things. But yeah...if you want to take playoffs as the only indicator of future QB play then CoFaj would be the gold standard QB right now based off that.....and we all know that it was simply a case of the sun's gotta shine on a dog's ass once in a while.

For sure. That rookie NAT contract is a joke. His max is like 75K? a full season. He might as well take the whole season once he committed to go South.

For sure. A couple years ago we had like 35 FA's after the season and by February we were down to 6.

Please show me the stat lines where Zac turned the ball over 9 times, or passed for 3 yards in the first half of a playoff game? If you are talking about the regular season then don't use playoffs as your metric. Zac hasn't put up hall of fame numbers in the playoffs but he hasn't really played badly either until this year's Grey Cup, and that really wasn't terrible either. He was asked to game manage and he did. It was actually when he tried to open it up that it cost us. Bottom line is Zac was the best QB in the CFL last year. The numbers prove it. If you want to move the goal posts to the playoffs to determine who was the best QB last year.....still Zac....and yes, I firmly and strongly believe he is the least likely to regress next year out of the top 3. Kelly looks to be mentally fragile, I think the book is out on him now and Vernon Adams has been wildly inconsistent his entire career and I don't see that changing. What has Zac done? Nothing but win 2xMOP and then be the league's top QB for a third year in a row. That' s consistency I am willing to bank on. You talk like 36 is ancient for a QB, and it's not. Other football positions sure...but not QB.

Ton of time left to sign pending FAs. Good gravy it's November. Just a matter of a QB trying to do too much sometimes. Easily correctable.

$$

I find it hilarious that you break down Collaros's playoff numbers in isolation while suggesting Kelly is his equal after maybe the worst playoff performance in a generation. You point to playoffs ONLY as an indicator of next year's performance for Collaros but if that is the case the two guys you say may surpass him should be cut this offseason based on beyond horrible playoff performances themselves. That's the danger of cherry picking games to support your argument..it doesn't show the full body of work. Qbs rarely are stellar in the playoffs. That's just a function of defences playing harder and cold weather. Zac was the best QB in the CFL this year and there is more reason to believe VA and CK will regress than ZC.