Official Game Day Thread - Montreal @ Winnipeg, August 28, 2026

[dd]

I doubt it, at the pro level, they have perfected the '6" ninja punch' as Luke Willson calls it, not so at the high school level where inexperienced kids are throwing haymakers at their opponent and have zero accuracy, its an easy call to make, you can't punch people like a lunatic claiming you were trying to knock the ball out!!

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

I doubt it, at the pro level, they have perfected the '6" ninja punch' as Luke Willson calls it, not so at the high school level where inexperienced kids are throwing haymakers at their opponent and have zero accuracy, its an easy call to make, you can't punch people like a lunatic claiming you were trying to knock the ball out!!

Earlier in the season I saw a player throw 2 or 3 shots trying to punch the ball out, it absolutely looked like he was wailing on the ball carrier and should have been penalized.  What's allowed next a flying elbow smash???

[Tecno]

Earlier in the season I saw a player throw 2 or 3 shots trying to punch the ball out, it absolutely looked like he was wailing on the ball carrier and should have been penalized.  What's allowed next a flying elbow smash???

Ya, I remember that one.  SY I think.  They'll often take wild swings at arms in SY over-the-tops.  The controlled punch-directly-at-the-ball is ok, but what if it's fully 2-arm wrapped?  Then you're just punching arms, which are unpadded and that don't feel great.

We haven't seen it too much since then so maybe the league sent out a reminder to the teams on what they'll start flagging in the future.  From what I can tell the league sends out memos regularly, whether to all teams, or just to the team requesting clarification (like MOS says he asks for every week).  The problem is, it's Super Cereal Secret that they don't make public so we're all left guessing.

[Tecno]

The punching the ball out is a risky play as if you strike the player, you should get a game ejection over the punch

No, and the difference is the whistle.  You can basically do anything you want that isn't a HC or FM within the whistles.  But if you do almost anything after the whistles, that's what gets flagged.

Sure, you can't just start punching the guy randomly say in the back or leg, but you can legally punch wildly anywhere near the ball, and people do almost every play, especially when there is more than 1 defender on the carrier.  But not after the whistle!

And I think that's ok, because how do you police that otherwise?  It's not flag football.

[Tecno]

There is some question as to whether the Demski fumble should have ben overturned
  To me the league needs to make a rule clarification
 Jow is it a player can swing a haymaker to attempt to punch out a ball from a player that is basically tied up and defenseless? And even if they partially contact the players arm why isnt it roughing, I mean if its all ball i get that its a football play but often its a wild swing

First, how the ball came out is irrelevant.  If he just dropped it I bet they call it the same way.  The only issue for this weird overturn is the timing.  Command decided it was "long enough" in the state of no progress and fully encircled/wrapped up.

Exactly like they did in another game earlier in the season.  And this is all well and good.

And you are 100% correct that CFL needs to announce the "change" publicly.  We should be able to read the memo, or hear their rationale.  And that memo would read "we are now enforcing the forward progress rules on the books even if no whistle blows at the time".

Make me commish.  I'll be the most transparent and by-the-book-or-change-the-book commish ever.  No fan will ever be confused again. 

[Tecno]

Tecno's Take - Not Late At All Edition

good
zach 24.5
brady 15
pokey 9
perkins 7.5
white 7
nield 6.5
jones 6.5
holm 6.5
willie 6
vaval 5
demski 5
els 4.5
smith 4
stan 3.5
clercius 3.5
major 3
eli 3
daniels 3
ceresna 3
wallace 2.5
neuf 2.5
cadwall 2.5
broxton 2.5
texada 2
fletcher 2
woodbey 1.5
reese 1.5
kyrie 1.5
kelly 1.5
ike 1.5
cobb 1.5
1 or less: shay, novak, lawson, gatkouth, castillo, moxey, hallett, clark, ayers

bad
kelly 3.5
major 2.5
wallace 1.5
vaval 1.5
ike 1.5
woodbey 1
pokey 1
neuf 1
neild 1
cobb 1
brady 1
0.5 each: zach, white, moxey, jones, hallett, els, cadwall, broxton

1Q9:35 2nd & goal from the 3: reporter post-game asked MOS and he is indeed correct: we only have 11 on the field for this snap.  Could be why no one sealed the edge for Perkins' outside run.

1Q9:11 Love the 1st Perkins SY TD: we overload the right side, moving Stan there and putting in Eli.  Daniels takes Stan's LT spot! MTL realizes it too late, and can't adjust in time.

1Q7:34 I thought "Ike doesn't make that IB mistake", and I don't think he did.  Refs see someone fall down with someone behind and they just flag a ST IB.  Ike never pushed him, in fact he tried to hold him up; it was their feet that collided, like an accidental DPI situation.  Not sure if that qualifies to be flagged.  Could have been challenged, but no way you figure that out in ~35s (I couldn't).  I think the MTL guy sold it a bit, too.

1Q3:44 Crowd really didn't like that Maltos late UR hit on Vaval.  Unflagged by the blind refs, of course.  CFL has been flagging that late hit (2-3 steps OOB) all season -- but crickets for us.  EITS can't call down a flag??  When he gets a fine this week, it'll be proof crowd was right.  Even MOS is smirking at that one.  Oh ya, and doubly egregious because Diaz basically punched him in the face instead of trying to tackle or bump.

1Q3:08 The Condell-cam has our freakin' call chart showing right on the wall with fish-eye lens!  Holy Moses!!  Someone do something about that! Our guys need to see what the TSN booth cam is going to look like before they start the broadcast!  I can read everything, and so can the opponent! I really hope they change the numbering scheme up every game or we could be screwed by cheatin' teams.

2Q12:05 The Snead walk-in busted coverage is the exact same play EDM ran on us.  Have a REC crossing out to in, get invisible and small behind the line and switch back out.  It was Major's assignment, and Jones as WILL as backup: both were chasing the play as they both botched it. We didn't film study the mistakes from the EDM game?  Every team will take their tiniest REC and use this against us, because you can't track these tiny guys behind the dense line!  Figure out a solution Younger! 2Q10:18 THe Awe RTP on Zach, that's a huge whack on Zach.  Lifting him way up and suplexing him with his whole weight, and pretty sure Zach's back-of-helmet whacks the turf, which is usually the Zach-out-for-4-weeks thing.  I'm glad we got it, but it's a judgement call by the ref, as Zach was slightly jumping already and the hit wasn't late at all.  I'd say the full-body-weight follow-through (not the suplex) is what did it.  Awe could have just lifted him up and held onto him and set him down nicely when the whistle went.

2Q5:43 Holm takes a wicked blindside block from MTL hoggie #68.  That's what springs Philpot on a big hitch screen.  #68 is slightly moving back towards his line, though somewhat parallel (starts at the 43 and the hit is back at the 41).  The hit is "forceful" and blows Holm up.  No flag.  Ironic, because later I'm pretty sure we take a blindside or crackback penalty.  Haha, Luke even highlights it on replay and he doesn't even mention the fact it's illegal, and Dustin even says "imagine not seeing that guy coming and then he gets ya"... ya, that's the whole point of the rule!

3Q14:57 First time I've ever seen Shay do anything.  He was in beast mode on ST on KO, miles faster than everyone, whacks his blocker and goes and makes the tackle on first contact.  Very nice!  Probably won't get a stat because there was a UR-FM by MTL?  If he keeps this up, he'll get noticed (finally).

3Q10:18 The Chaos Fumble, went like this: Alexander(M) Jones(W) Theis(M) Kyrie(W) Jones(W).  The funniest thing is: is this ball incomplete?  It was clearly a forward pass: underhand shuttle.  But the only one who ever has it for any length of time is Theis, and he doesn't have it very long (1 sec?) before he's fumbling it (without contact).  Hot potato!

3Q8:52 The phantom illegal block downfield: Luke is right, what penalty is this supposed to be?  Blocking downfield is when you are engaging your D guy, like holding him and trying to block him out.  Pokey here just comes back and gets in the way.  You're allowed to get in the way.  And the coming back to the line part is irrelevant as that's not what the refs called, and in any case nothing was forceful.  Again, he was just in the way. And Luke is also correct in that the hold on the play before was bogus because it was the DL guy who dragged Neuf to the ground, not the other way around!  They should make called holds challengeable.  It's dumb that cheating DL can get away with faking a take down just because the refs can't figure it out in realtime.

3Q0:00 Demski's fumble: this is the same overturn they made a few weeks ago when EITS called down "forward progress" even though no on-field whistle went.  I noted it at the time as new precedent.  Now we get another example of it.  I hate it because it breaks precedent, but I also like it because it is by the rule book -- is the player fully wrapped up?  Yes.  Is the player no longer advancing?  Yes.  So by the book he's DBC.  This may be a new thing to compensate for the command memo passed down a few seasons ago to almost always "let it play out".  That was in response to refs blowing whistles way too early on fumbles, etc.  And if you're going to do that (where refs used to blow it dead faster) then you do need some way to compensate, otherwise you're always favoring the fumble vs DBC.  In other words, the on-field call cannot get priority when you've purposely said "don't make quick on-field calls" in these fumble situations.  As usual, this would go over a lot better with fans if the league would just issue the memos publicly and list their revised standards. Instead you are leaving fans (and clearly HC's like Maas) apoplectic with confusion and anger.  P.S. I checked the one angle where you can see Demski's helmet almost hit the ground, but upon studying it 100% does not touch the ground before the punch-out.

4Q2:39 If you ever question is big crowd noise helps, check this play out.  No REC knows their assignment.  Alexander is frustrated.  Is even throwing his arms up because no one around him knows anything.

Nield actually did something (...then he didn't).  His jumping catch with the DB draped all over him was pretty spectacular and not something we see any Bomber not named Kenny doing.  And the later ladder-climb/hit-take was also quite exceptional.

MTL gets Beauchemin, we get Kelly.  Theirs makes an insane impossible GL stop.  Ours bumps into people and lets them get TDs.  It doesn't seem fair. P.S. Doesn't Nield weigh anything?  Both guys are full on braced for impact and yet Nield stops completely dead, with zero give by their FS.  Weird.

Boy, Jones is a monster: what is he not good at?

OL quite astounding in all aspects.

Told y'all Cadwall is the future Mike Miller / Gauthier forever-STer doing special things.

D all coming to pile on, stopping the infamous MTL tandem blocks.

Texada: didn't see him much all 1st H.  But we were doing all sorts of weird sets in the 4th.  Like no-Moxey, and both Vaval & Texada in with Holm & Major.  If Moxey wasn't nicked, is this them experiementing with new looks?  Giving Texada a good look-see for later-season roster planning?  Or just up 23...

I always wonder if anyone does any work in the off-season in terms of schemes to beat the guys who hosed your previous season.  This is the first time all season I've seen any indication that anyone agonized over that final ESF loss, and came up with better plans.  Is this finally me getting what I wanted?  This doesn't look like just one week of practice and new wrinkles.  This looks like a complete plan to deal with MTL and its high-powered O and D.

So why did we win instead of pulling a '25ESF?  We had an answer for nearly every single thing Thorpe did.  Watch carefully at every snap and you'll see 1-2 REC watching the misdirection of Thorpe on how many are coming.  They all read it near perfectly and went hot on cue, and all in a near perfect way.  We especially excelled at the LoS crosser -- The Condell Special.  Zach was great a seeing things, even the blindside risk, and put a great touch on all the hots.  Pass rush blocking was above par, and I'm not sure Brady screwed it up even once.  On D we confused #10 and stopped the run, and that was good enough.  They weren't expecting the Texada/Holm/Major/Vaval set.  We kept Kelly out of one-on-ones to a fair degree.  We really had a near perfect MTL-killing plan on all phases.

Injuries:

Hazen looked dazed on a ST collision early.  Demski didn't finish.  Not much Moxey later in the game?

Zach's calf all taped up?  Can't see a brace.  What's up with that?  Probably related to that one sack he took vs EDM where he was touching his knee & limping.