Official Game Day Thread - Winnipeg @ Edmonton, August 21, 2026

[dd]

didn't notice him 'containing' or tackling last night

[Tecno]

Pretty much sums up Jefferson's contribution to last nights game, I honestly don't recall seeing him make a play, and if he's one of our stars he has to play like it.

Different kind of game, a D-line pinning their ears back against Fajardo and Rankin is bound to get burned, this game was about containment.

Ya, DL didn't make much of an impact, especially when we needed them to.  However, they did a pretty good job on Rankin and Cody.  Only 1 Cody run?  And it was on the always-vulnerable edge?  I can take that.

That said, some pressure at key times, like on Cody deep shots, would have been really helpful.

[Tecno]

And listening to Luke try to explain that Pokey could have turned the other way and caught it with his feet in bounds was insulting.  There is no way to "basket catch" a ball that far out of bounds.

I think it was catchable.  The best circus guys would have done it.  I think Kenny would have stopped dead and high-pointed it.  With no defender around you can do that.  Pokey waited for it to fall.

I think Pokey had no idea where the rail was, and if he had, he would have played it differently.

[Tecno]

He would have had more carries if JY and the defense, who cannot possibly say they were tired, could have made any kind of third of forth quarter stops.

I think we have a conditioning problem.  Moxey and probably the DL were completely out of gas by the end.  Probably more guys too.

Ya, TOP for H2 was garbage by then, but it was 100% the other direction in the 1H.  I didn't see HAM D being gassed and giving up on tackles late in the 2nd like we did late in the 4th.

But it remains clear we screwed up way more on tackles when we were tired vs what EDM did when they were tired.  This is on players and coaches for accepting substandard conditioning.  Maybe DI'ing a DB might have helped, too.

[Tecno]

I believe he was removing an audio receiver from the inside of the helmet, thus Jake's overt concern. 

I'm not sure if helmet speakers are allowed on D in CFL.  I don't think they are disallowed.  However, nearly every D, if you watch carefully, uses hand signals.  There were shots of Younger in the last couple of weeks giving signals.

Because the D doesn't huddle, giving helmet signals to just 1 guy has limited effectiveness, because the call still needs to be distributed to the entire D.  Thus hand signals might be a faster way to communicate to everyone.

[Tecno]

We only had the ball for about 3 minutes in the 3rd Q

Does that mean my 90% can't lose 2025 bet of "WPG loses 3rd Q" is back on the table??  We had been doing ok in the 3rd until now.  Back to '25 bad 3Q performances??

[Tecno]

Ya, I just don't get this. Our O line was absolutely dominating Edmonton's D line the first half, road grading and running and getting big yards at will, then its like we turned off the tap and had nothing.

One of our players, don't remember who, in a presser a few weeks back, talked about how they were on teams that started games hot but would then peter out and lose -- they couldn't sustain it.  We've never been that team, but the last 3 games we seem to be going that direction.

MOS and the team took so much criticism for starting every 2026 game slow -- media was playing it up every week.  So the team made a conscious effort to start faster.  And they did.  And just like that player said, some teams can't sustain it.  And we couldn't.

It's a conundrum, for sure.

[Tecno]

Here are the Brady runs:

1Q
2&1 2
2&4 7
2&2 10
1&10 35
1&10 5
1&10 7

2Q
2&3 4
1&10 10
1&10 5
1&10 9
2&1 4
1&10 1  clock 2:56
2&11 9
1&10 4

3Q
1&10 6

4Q
1&10 2

What stands out to me is starting after the 3min warning in H1, the EDM D changed tactics to take away Brady.  After that point he had 1 1st down run I'd call successful: the one in 3Q (we had to punt anyway after).  Usually this means loading the box, run blitzing or just having all LBs cheat up for the run vs cheat back for the pass.  I will rewatch to confirm what they were doing.

Before that we were doing way more 2&whatever with Brady, and they were working exceptionally well.  I think the all-pass 1st down until 1Q4:31 really screwed up EDM, and was a tendency breaker for us, and more importantly we used that to open up the next 7 mins of ball for 1st down runs.  This is a common tactic of OCs, and as you can see it worked perfectly.

For those that say we just should have kept running Brady on 1st all game, a) we didn't even do it early, b) the "cheatcode" setup trick was exhausted by mid Q2.  And after that he averaged 3.25Y per 1st down rush.  And we all know we cannot sustain 2nd & 6.75 -- it's too far for us.  And thus we stopped doing it.

It seems like maybe Condell had only a 1st order plan -- pass-mostly then switch to run-on-first -- with not much of a higher-order plan for when EDM countered.  He did have a couple of great wide-open deep shots he finagled later in the game, which may have been part of a grand plan, but Zach & RECs botched every last one of them.  Maybe that's why Condell was so angry in the booth.  We all know WPG only gets a couple of those free shots schemed open a game.  And when we don't connect on them, we generally lose.