Official Game Day Thread - Winnipeg at Toronto., July 26, 2025

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

Good post.  The hope with letting Ford/Lawler/Dobson walk, well let's exclude Lawler, is that the next guy up (usually 2nd year guy) will step up and be nearly as good.  It's worked well every other year, why not now?  I guess sometimes you get unlucky.  Wallace clearly isn't Dobson, may never be, and Dobson wasn't even that good!  Bridges isn't 1/10th Ford; and that's being kind vs what I really want to write...

Watch Wallace play, he isn't the problem, if I was Walters I would dedicate the rest of my season to signing him to a 3 year extention.  Don't care as much what happens to the rest of the O-line, Wallace is the future.  I donated to a GoFundMe campaign to buy Dobson a non-stop bus ticket right out of town, the fare included a free apple and a road map.

[Sir Blue and Gold]

Watch Wallace play, he isn't the problem, if I was Walters I would dedicate the rest of my season to signing him to a 3 year extention.  Don't care as much what happens to the rest of the O-line, Wallace is the future.  I donated to a GoFundMe campaign to buy Dobson a non-stop bus ticket right out of town, the fare included a free apple and a road map.

That seems silly. Liam Dobson was the top ranked guard (78.8 & 74.2) in the entire league week 8 and week 5, and was third overall week 6 (65.7). He's having a good year. He's playing better consistently better than our guards.

[Blueforlife]

That seems silly. Liam Dobson was the top ranked guard (78.8 & 74.2) in the entire league week 8 and week 5, and was third overall week 6 (65.7). He's having a good year. He's playing better consistently better than our guards.

Dobson is very good

[Blue In BC]

Snaps against the Argos. Person getting nearly as many as Adams.

Jefferson 58
Vaughters 54
Thomas 35
Lawson 34
Adams 26
Person 25
Kornelson 6

[peg_city]

Rememeber when we could afford

Prime Bighill
Prime Jefferson
Prime Harris
Prime Collaros

and our best O-Line since the early 90s?

[dd]

We took a few big hits after last season. As noted, lost were Dobson, Lawler and Ford. Wallace has been decent, but no Dobson. We didn't replace Allstar Lawler with anyone, and same with Ford. Add to that the loss of leadership in aging Alexander and Bighill and we have a major talent depletion, it's no wonder we are where we are.

We need to find a decent corner to replace Ford ASAP, and a decent safety ASAP. Not sure who that is, whether players coming of IR can fill in or what, but man our secondary SUCKS!!!!

Not sure what the deal is with Mitchell, but either play him or cut him. I can't imagine him not helping us out at reciever, or is Hollins still availabe out there (decent reciever with CFL experience)

[Blueforlife]

Snaps against the Argos. Person getting nearly as many as Adams.

Jefferson 58
Vaughters 54
Thomas 35
Lawson 34
Adams 26
Person 25
Kornelson 6

Very interesting, Person and Adams hopefully will make an impact this week, unless we see Woods?

[bunker]

Rememeber when we could afford

Prime Bighill
Prime Jefferson
Prime Harris
Prime Collaros

and our best O-Line since the early 90s?

Those were the days. The problem is we are paying Jefferson and Collaros much the same salary, but they are no longer prime. We are paying Bryant and Neufeld decent money as well, and they are falling off every year. We are paying Brady and Tony Jones more than we paid Harris and Bighill. We used to get value for the dollar. Not any more.

[Blue In BC]

Very interesting, Person and Adams hopefully will make an impact this week, unless we see Woods?

I think Woods has to wait 1 more week to come off 6 game IR. Then it's a question of whether they want to add him and change the ratio elsewhere, or an injury opens a roster spot. Also the game ready versus healthy may exclude him for a bit longer.

Year to date reps on the DL.

Vaughters 290
Jefferson 281
Lawson 205
Thomas 198
Adams 176
Kornelson 45
Person 29

[Jesse]

Those were the days. The problem is we are paying Jefferson and Collaros much the same salary, but they are no longer prime. We are paying Bryant and Neufeld decent money as well, and they are falling off every year. We are paying Brady and Tony Jones more than we paid Harris and Bighill. We used to get value for the dollar. Not any more.

We never got value. We outbid other teams for all of those guys on the open market. We made Jefferson the highest paid defender in the league until we broke our own record to make Bighill the highest paid defender in the CFL. That's how we got Harris and Bryant here too.

[Sir Blue and Gold]

Rememeber when we could afford

Prime Bighill
Prime Jefferson
Prime Harris
Prime Collaros

and our best O-Line since the early 90s?

We can still afford that. The problem is prime Jefferson costs the same as today's Jefferson; Prime Collaros the same as today's Collaros. And so on.

[Blueforlife]

We never got value. We outbid other teams for all of those guys on the open market. We made Jefferson the highest paid defender in the league until we broke our own record to make Bighill the highest paid defender in the CFL. That's how we got Harris and Bryant here too.

Disagree we have got outstanding value from most of our top guns over the last number of years imo.

[Pete]

We never got value. We outbid other teams for all of those guys on the open market. We made Jefferson the highest paid defender in the league until we broke our own record to make Bighill the highest paid defender in the CFL. That's how we got Harris and Bryant here too.

I actually think this is what we have missed, rather than targeting one or two players that can make us better we overpay for players out of loyalty and settle for midtier replacements. We dont need to be outbid we chose to

[TecnoGenius]

Watch Wallace play, he isn't the problem, if I was Walters I would dedicate the rest of my season to signing him to a 3 year extention.  Don't care as much what happens to the rest of the O-line, Wallace is the future.

I like your enthusiasm.  I'll take another look at Wallace.  All I know is there's been a lot of damage coming through the interior and left interior of the OL when Wallace is there.  And when Vant was there it was very solid.

Maybe the problem is more Vant-Wallace breaking down.  Have we seen any of Stan-Wallace?  I guess it's possible the suckage of Vant at LT is leaking onto Wallace.

I'll give your thesis serious consideration.

[TecnoGenius]

That seems silly. Liam Dobson was the top ranked guard (78.8 & 74.2) in the entire league week 8 and week 5, and was third overall week 6 (65.7). He's having a good year. He's playing better consistently better than our guards.

Ya, and PFF said Dobson was top ranked many times in '24.  At the time I said "I don't see it".  But I deferred to PFF and the Dobson-lovers here (about 50% of us).

I still don't really see it.  I think both Ran and Vant in LG were easily as good as Dobson, at least at pass-pro.  Wallace: my jury is still out.

Sometimes I wonder if PFF isn't full of poop.  They may be getting too deep in the weeds and missing the forest for the trees.  They may also ignore synergy with the guys next to them and the whole unit.  Or they're just focusing too much on the wrong metric.

If I was a GM, I wouldn't base my OL hiring and salary purely on the numbers PFF spits out.

One thing's for sure.  Dobson was/is half the RG Desjar was/is, at least when in blue & gold.  (Yes this also goes back to the feeling that every year we seem to downgrade a little, since 2021...)