Official Game Day Thread - Calgary @ Winnipeg, October 10, 2026

[tlf]

Vaval could get a sniff, if Singer too small for NFL? Lock both up forever, blank cheque time

Vaval is 26, so I'm thinking no?  Singer, is 23 and 6' I believe.  I think he could, even though Jacksonville let him go and we reaped the rewards. I'm still wondering why WE let him go. I'd sure like him to stay for selfish reasons, but wouldn't blame him for leaving for a payday.

[Tecno]

Calling Techno, on one TD announcer, says that's on the Bombers before the ball is thrown, no flag, TD stands. They don't show what they were talking about, but it looked like Calgary wanted a procedure call.

Bryant moved early and the Calgary DE stopped thinking the play would be whistled dead. It should have been a penalty.

Ya, Stan was a bit early.  But a) the CFL refs let slight-early gettings-up slide all. the. time; and b) ref has to notice it for it to be flagged.  They are human, they blink sometimes.  I measure the live/human-perceptible movement at 4/10ths of a sec early.  The best OTs are often 1 to 3/10ths ahead of the snap -- it seems to help their game vs the speed-rush DEs.  And they almost never get flagged.

4/10ths is slightly more egregious, but again maybe gets flagged under 50% of the time.  I can time every early OT get-up in a game if you want (esp SSK!) and give you some concrete stats, but that's some real pain in the butt homework...

Watch SSK's Yoshi on every single snap: he's upright close to that early all the time.  Never a flag.  (Yoshi also always moves his neuro-damage head-bob within 1 sec of the snap every single time too, yet never flagged, even though that's a rule too.)  I've spent a lot of time studying and measuring Yoshi's shenanigans since he went to SSK.  I knew them all when he was here: I just didn't say anything as then it was our advantage! 

Also, (c) it was in the final 3 mins of H1, and I've noticed refs this season seem to be under instruction to let WAY more things slide after the 3 min warning(s).  They rarely call holding in the final 3, too, for example.  Everything gets looser to "let the boys play", which would dovetail perfectly with Johnston's "More Show".

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

I'm not one of the poor-tackling harpers.  And I never made a value judgement about whether Younger's force-D&D scheme is good or not.  In fact, I've been critical about it all season.  My whole goal all off-season was to find a way to stop SSK's D&D.  And your point about exhaustion is valid and I totally agree -- but surely Younger takes that into account.

I think allow-D&D can work well when you are FORCING a non-D&D team to do D&D.  But what do you do when a team builds their entire O around nothing but D&D (SSK)?  Then you're giving them exactly what they want?  That's never a good thing.  The key then would be to have the ability to suddenly obstruct the D&D...

The main problem I see with the Younger scheme is that its stated purpose (max coverage, stop the slingers) failed vs MTL & TOR.  Well, it actually worked once for each team, and sucked once... but if it was a good scheme against slingers that could really dictate the D&D, it wouldn't have sucked ever at all.

It appears the dinkers and dunkers are no longer the Bombers biggest nemesis, they have to figure out how to stop the mad bombers like Alexander, Kelly and Rourke from scoring at will, those 3 teams will likely be contesting for this year's GC.

[Stats Junkie]

Also, (c) it was in the final 3 mins of H1, and I've noticed refs this season seem to be under instruction to let WAY more things slide after the 3 min warning(s).  They rarely call holding in the final 3, too, for example.  Everything gets looser to "let the boys play", which would dovetail perfectly with Johnston's "More Show".

Numbers don't support your observations.

23.9% of all penalties are called in the final 3 minutes of a half (Q2 & Q4). 21.6% of offensive holding calls are in the final 3 minutes of a half.

[Tecno]

Numbers don't support your observations.

23.9% of all penalties are called in the final 3 minutes of a half (Q2 & Q4). 21.6% of offensive holding calls are in the final 3 minutes of a half.

Now do as a % of the plays run in that period, not as a % of all plays... Remember, there are waaay more plays per minute in the final 3 of each H.  So holds vs plays in final 3 mins of H's, vs holds vs plays in not-final-3-mins of each H.

Even if you turn out to be right on the above stats, I maintain they let a lot more go uncalled in the final 3's.  I've been studying this all season, with eyeballs, not stats.  I will admit, however, it may be limited to 2-3 of the 5(?) crews.  Definitely not just 1 crew though.

It's a lot like the playoffs and GC: the deeper it gets the less they will call.  It's not that teams suddenly wised up and stopped their holding ways, because you can still see them do it: it's that the refs (or their CFL masters) are loathe to make the Big Games flag-fests.  Are you going to deny this post-season effect occurs??

And I'm not saying refs stop flagging things: it's that they up the bar for egregiousness.  So a marginal flag won't get thrown in the "let them play" times that might have gotten thrown in the normal parts of normal games.