Official Game Day Thread - Winnipeg at Montreal November 1, 2025

[Jesse]

That's not their only job. The need to get the opponent off the field and win TOP and field position. Sure it's great when they hold a team to a FG. OTOH a 6 minute 10 play drive for 90 yards resulting in a FG is not that ideal either.

Someone needs to show the stats on TOP ( when the defence is on the field ) and average starting field position.

All of those things are just a means to an end. However a defense does it, the ultimate goal is to prevent the other team scoring points.

[Waffler]

Lapo was saying a couple games ago that he sees the Stubler influence all over our defense. MOS and JY both played under Stubler. He is famous for his bend but don't break approach. The thing is that most fans hate the bend but don't break.

[markf]

Wikipedia article

"As of 2025, NFL teams that regularly incorporate the 3–4 defensive alignment scheme as a base include the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Atlanta Falcons, New York Giants, Minnesota Vikings, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, Philadelphia Eagles, Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals."

Recent fan discussion Reddit says many  NFL teams use three four defence.  They specifically mentioned Vic fangio using it, Current defensive guru.

But NFL teams change who's on the field almost every play.

https://www.reddit.com/r/footballstrategy/s/K9fSKXW4wN

Grey cup loss to,the Argos We could have pressured Arbuckle,  but chose not to for some reason. So not the three four defence  that failed, it was that choice that was a mistake.

You can blitz from three four. No idea why they didn't.

A guy that I see anchoring the d line is Micah Johnson. We need someone like him.

[Blue In BC]

All of those things are just a means to an end. However a defense does it, the ultimate goal is to prevent the other team scoring points.

Apparently you missed the entire point / points so we'll agree to disagree.

Defence and offence are the two sides of the coin. The job of the offence is to score points but it's also their job to keep the opponent off the field by sustaining long time consuming drives, winning TOP and field position. The same applies to the defence in the sense that they want to get the opponent off the field and get their offence on.

Too often in the past two years and continuing this year, we saw our defence give up very long and time consuming drives. We may have shut it down to FG's eventually but we saw those long drives too often. Not all of that can be blamed on our offence not staying on the field.

The last game is a " marker ".  We gave up 550+ yardage and 42 points. Good defences don't do that.

[Waffler]

You can blitz from three four. No idea why they didn't.

100%. If they never know who the 4th guy is, or if one is coming at all, it would help a lot.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

Wikipedia article

"As of 2025, NFL teams that regularly incorporate the 3–4 defensive alignment scheme as a base include the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Atlanta Falcons, New York Giants, Minnesota Vikings, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, Philadelphia Eagles, Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals."

Recent fan discussion Reddit says many  NFL teams use three four defence.  They specifically mentioned Vic fangio using it, Current defensive guru.

But NFL teams change who's on the field almost every play.

https://www.reddit.com/r/footballstrategy/s/K9fSKXW4wN

Grey cup loss to,the Argos We could have pressured Arbuckle,  but chose not to for some reason. So not the three four defence  that failed, it was that choice that was a mistake.

You can blitz from three four. No idea why they didn't.

A guy that I see anchoring the d line is Micah Johnson. We need someone like him.

They have adequate personnel to play either look, no reason they can't mix it up in games and between games which would further confuse opponents.  Depending on the QB they're facing the 3-4 works well but as we've seen elite experienced QB's given enough time can find the flaws and pick it apart.  Why stake their claim to one look, use what is effective when needed, make adjustments as needed.

[GOLDMEMBER]

Listening to the Connor and Zach on WST frustrates me even more.

MOS did a brutal job coaching this game. His decisions were puzzling at bast. It was like he was, not unlike the last couple GC games, trying to give his team the worse chance of winning.

I for one am done with MOS. He has ZERO feel for the game. I am super frustrated with MOS. He failed his players.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

Listening to the Connor and Zach on WST frustrates me even more.

MOS did a brutal job coaching this game. His decisions were puzzling at bast. It was like he was, not unlike the last couple GC games, trying to give his team the worse chance of winning.

I for one am done with MOS. He has ZERO feel for the game. I am super frustrated with MOS. He failed his players.

Zach mentioned the failure to make the timeout out call which took away a down in scoring range, I believe the same thing happened at a critical time in last year's GC game.  Also challenging the spot on goal line plunge was a really bad decision considering they had 2 more cracks at it.

[Sir Blue and Gold]

NFL teams also still find ways to get pressure in 3-4 defenses.

Wikipedia article

"As of 2025, NFL teams that regularly incorporate the 3–4 defensive alignment scheme as a base include the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, Atlanta Falcons, New York Giants, Minnesota Vikings, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans, Philadelphia Eagles, Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals."

Recent fan discussion Reddit says many  NFL teams use three four defence.  They specifically mentioned Vic fangio using it, Current defensive guru.

But NFL teams change who's on the field almost every play.

https://www.reddit.com/r/footballstrategy/s/K9fSKXW4wN

Grey cup loss to,the Argos We could have pressured Arbuckle,  but chose not to for some reason. So not the three four defence  that failed, it was that choice that was a mistake.

You can blitz from three four. No idea why they didn't.

A guy that I see anchoring the d line is Micah Johnson. We need someone like him.

NFL teams also get pressure with 3-4 defenses. The pressure comes from the scheme more so than the defense ends generating immediate rush pressure. You have late blitzing linebackers and slot corners coming downhill. You have safeties timing snap counts etc.

There is really no professional system that tries to sell the idea that pressure isn't necessary except for some of the language coming out of the Bombers this year. It reminds me a bit of Mike Kelly's comments on the shotgun. It's just really off base, confusing and wrong. The times when our system looked better this year was, generally speaking, the times they were able to get at least some pressure. Including in the game against Montreal last week.

[dd]

Whether you're running a 3-4 or a 4-3, you need to get some pressure from your DT's. We don't have DT's that threaten the O line at all. They accept to be blocked and rarely, very rarely get through on their own to push the pocket. Rather they engage in the OG and do some rolls from one side to the other and the O lineman just push them to the side on the roll, zero penetration. It's a joke really. No vertical pressure, just roll to the side. That's horrible.

[Pete]

Yeah I agree, if your going to run with a 3-4 defense, the three dl better be top tier. plus rotational (this defense requires a lot of substitutions as seems to me it would be very tiring facing 5 or 6 olinemen)
I would much rather invest in dlinemen as they seem to be much harder to find than linebackers.
The teams that do it well also use much more creativity on blitzes or rushing one of the lbs than we showed on order to create pressure. We've relied on our secondary too much.

[TrueBlue4]

My opinion is our defensive scheme has to change - when we won the Grey Cups we employed a 4-3 dline. How many games this year did anyone think that the opposing QB had waaaay to much time in the pocket? For me it was EVERY game. Give QBs all day in the pocket and they will beat you. I also think that we need to better disguise our blitzes because I called them correct about 90% oc the time and if I could I'm pretty sure the opposing QBs could as well. I know our defensive stats suggest the D wasn't that bad but I believe those stats are misleading in how good our D was.

The O in my opinion needs to upgrade our Oline as the biggest issue. I disagree that Collaros is done - this year he was running for his life almost every game give him better protection and he can still accurately sling it. I think we are good at running back and I'm not down on our receiving corps - I don't think we are great. Also how much was our OC to blame? I don't know the answer but found it very interesting when Collaros said that they practiced plays in training camp that they never used during the season. That seems to be a waste of time and effort.

It will be a  interesting off season. I for one want O'Shea back.

[dd]

MOS had a good interview, he ll be back. He said he's going to check into zach s concern with the offense, and also mentioned he could have helped the offense more this year. Well the, start listening to Collaros as he's forgotten more than our OC knows!!

And ya, we need to upgrade our O and D lines, but keep in mind, we lost our #1 and #2 receiver for this playoff game, with schoen being gone most/all season. I think we beat Montreal if we had schoen and Demski in the lineup, now having said that, I don't think schoen will ever be healthy enough to play again, so go get us a #1 receiver , and we ll sort out the offensive scheme issues, but we really got to sort out turning the ball over on O, we were brutal this year doing that.

[blue_gold_84]

I for one want O'Shea back.

I think you speak for the vast, vast majority of fans here. He's been one of the greatest coaches this franchise has ever had.

[theaardvark]

MOS is one of the most successful coaches in Bomber history, sure.

He's had a pretty solid team to coach for most of that, because of Walters / scouts.

He seems to lose things in the details.  Clock management, timeouts, taking advantage of turnovers quickly, utilizing weapons.

I think, with better support staff, he becomes a much better coach.

The front office $SMS was brought in because Chris Jones was...  Chris Jones.

It was meant to stop teams from killing their bottom line with bad decisions.

I really, really think it needs to be erased or raised dramatically.  We can't attract top tier assistants paying them PR roster player wages.

Yes, the WFC has a good bottom line and can afford to pay coaches more.  Making the fans pay for bad coaching because we aren't allowed to pay better ones will hurt the best fanbase in the league.  With zero upside.

Make front office $SMS a soft cap, with overeages paid for in dollar for dollar contributions to the league, with those payments disbursed to the other teams the following year as money they can spend above the cap.

We blow the cap by $800k, every team gets $100K in payment from us, and the ability to spend $100k over the present cap that year (we get the cap increase too, but no $$$).

The haves can spend, the have nots get a hand out.