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

[Jesse]

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.

We refused to operate like this for players, why would we do it for coaches?

[Tecno]

Since it's "boring season" right now, and nothing will happen for a couple/few weeks, I thought I'd drum up discussion by offering my take on my recent rewatch of the '25 ESF (our loss to MTL).  I promise you I have some insights that everyone missed.  (Give me some clemency here, I was in MTL for many days for that game, away from my normal computers, and the PTSD kept me from rewatching for a while.)

1) I'll start with the best.  2Q10:34.  Looks like a crap play, with more OL breakdown, and failed deep look by Zach.  Everyone on here was just looking at the surface (I read the posts from that time) and thought it was more of the same crap O we had all year.  Hogan took 99% of the blame.

But watch it again.  It's a brilliant Lapo-esque play design & setup.  Not only was it pretty brilliant, but it would have worked perfectly, guaranteed 1st down and maybe 20Y+ explosion.  What is it?  Watch #89 who is the SECOND guy coming around on a planned sweep.  When he comes around 2 OL are already starting the screen downfield.  The DL is otherwise tied up, and the LBers have followed the 1st sweep and other RECs who are clearing.

What goes wrong?  Zach for some reason eyes the deep shot and decides that's what he's going to do.  He ignores the play setup, and ignores or doesn't see the 2nd sweep worked and the guy is wide open.  Or maybe he got greedy/impatient and didn't want the dink & dunk yards.  Maybe he no longer trusted Hogan and just wanted to do his own thing.  I don't know.  But Zach blew it, made the wrong choice, and cost us another drive.

Maybe this speaks as much to the non-chemistry Zach/Hogan had.  Ya, Hogan was mostly useless, but at times he did provide smart plays that would work if the players would just execute (and not just Zach).  If I had to guess, I'd say Hogan got pretty miffed about this one play.  If I was him I'd have excoriated him in the film room.

2) Brady's runs were limited and botched mostly by garbage OL play.  Guys not blocking, blocking air, being out of place, or not maintaining their grip/wash on DL.  Brady isn't superman, he's just a normal RB, and he needs OL holes and chaos just like they all do.

3) Wynn destroyed us.  He had 3 plays where he basically stopped us dead all on his own doing things that are pretty remarkable.  No OL could hold him.  Brady couldn't escape his clutches.  As much as I hate Wynn, I think he went cheap in FA and we should have been a suitor.

4) For all the "WPG runs all/too-much 3-man rush" all year, we only ran it 9 times all game.  That's a pretty small fraction of all D snaps.  We'd show 3 a lot more, but usually bring a 4th immediately.  And I'm not including the times we showed 3, brought 3 initially, then a LBer runs in when he sees it's a pass play!  If you include those, we almost never brought only 3 -- but I won't because the delayed extra guy is often pretty useless.

5) See 2Q1:30, show-3, bring-4, forces Alexander to commit IG.  I have no idea why the refs didn't flag this.  The RB was 6Y away and facing/heading the other direction, and should not count as a target.

6) 3Q5:21 Eli got pancaked totally on his butt on a bull rush.  Totally not a good look for our potential future C.  He's too light!!

7) 1h21m into the broadcast, when we were getting destroyed, Kate says "WPG wanted this, resting all their starters in week 21, MTL is making them pay".  She was talking about us WANTING the xover and throwing the week 21 game so we could get MTL instead of stay in the West.

This is simply 100% not true!  First of all, we WON the week 21 game, so what she says makes no sense.  Yes, we did rest starters, but that's because with the CGY game a day before ours, our xover spot was set in stone.  It didn't matter who we started or whether we won.  Just as it didn't matter for MTL with HAM's win the day before -- and they rested starters, including Alexander, just the same!

We should have won that ESF simply to stick it to Kate.

8 ) Witches to burn... I counted the following bad screwups (listing only those with 2+):
5 Randolph
4 Kyrie
3 Parker
3 Houston
3 Zach (lone mistake) (+2 if you include times the OL made him rushed by whiffing)
2 Ko-man
2 Allen
2 Kramdi

Excluding Zach, of those with 3, Parker & Houston are gone.  Randolph may or may not have a spot after TC.  And Ko-man with 2 is gone.  This may be the first year in a long while where we really did "burn the witches".  Only Kyrie got a pass... so far.

9) Good plays.  Likewise my good play count (more than 2+):
6 Zach
5 Sterns
2 Parker
2 Brady
2 Wheatie

Bummer.  Only the superstars Zach/Brady were retained.  The guys with 2, I guess are "meh" or "got lucky", so no big deal.  But Sterns had one of his best games for us and without his production we would have sucked so much worse.

The fact we let Sterns walk and brought in an expensive NAT lends credence to the idea we are going 3 NAT RECs.  Since Sterns was probably still cheap(ish), there's literally no reason to not retain him otherwise.  Who's to say he wouldn't have been even better for us in his 2nd year here?  Oh well.

10) Discuss.  If you don't want to discuss (you know who you are: "it's so long ago, pointless, herr derr derp!") don't read the thread!!  And hey, who would have thought: Hogan wasn't 100% useless!!

[Blue In BC]

If that analysis is correct then Randolph and K. Wilson should both be shown the door, possibly before TC. We've obviously added players in free agency that fill those spots in theory. This might explain more about why we targeted those positions.

Also the sheer number of rookie OL added already indicates there should be a real competition at ( LG ) beyond Broxton starting at RT.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

I think Sterns was replaced by White not Nield, Sterns was effective inside and on quick hitters but was not much of a threat downfield due to his smaller size and Zach's inaccuracy on longer balls.

[Pete]

looking back at that game what gets me is we actually scored 33 points with a receiver group of Wilson wheatfall stern COroran and Cobb. (our oline actually did a decent job)
Our starting group this year will only have Wilson starting the rest will be upgrades plus adding Broxton should help
 In that game the defense totally let us down:
Parker and to a lesser extent Lawson Jr were totally picked on. Every time we only rushed 3 we got killed. Add to that our defense made zero adjustments from the first half where we got beaten badly by the deep ball. This lack of adjustment is an area we really need to adjust this year.

[Tecno]

If that analysis is correct then Randolph and K. Wilson should both be shown the door, possibly before TC.

Well, to be fair, it's just 1 game, and though witches are often burnt based solely on the last playoff game, their performance does have to balanced against what they brought all year.

Dudes sometimes have just one bad game.

Kyrie probably had his best year since like '21, so I'd give him a pass.  And he brings that wise-old-vet experience MOS values.

Randolph is on thin ice though.  We'll often cut these IMP dev projects when they don't pan out.  He's clearly (to me) not any sort of future OT.  He might work at OG, and be a OT backup, but he's no Stan, Broxton, or Yoshi.  And what you need to win in this league is those guys at OT.

[Tecno]

I think Sterns was replaced by White not Nield, Sterns was effective inside and on quick hitters but was not much of a threat downfield due to his smaller size and Zach's inaccuracy on longer balls.

This is true only if we are going 3 NAT.  To me White is more the Wheatie/Mitchell replacement.  If White is the Sterns spot, then who is taking Wheatie?

If it's me I'm using White for the home-run ball and Nield inside on the big-body clutch punishments.

Ironically, probably our best deep shot in the ESF was Sterns in the EZ?  That was a beauty.