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.

[Tecno]

Starting in 2026, the ball comes out to the 40 yard line when a missed FG attempt hits the upright. Kramdi was penalized with a 10 yard misconduct which should have put the ball on the 30 yard line. Why did Winnipeg scrimmage from the 20? I think someone screwed up!

You are correct.  But I'm not sure many people noticed that change in the 2026 rules, because it was lumped in with the rouge changes.  The rouge change is controversial and hogged everyone's attention span (like mine!).  Apparently the refs, command, and MOS & Miller are all ignorant of it too, or this would have never slipped past them.

So I guess everything except an INT in the EZ is now brought out to the 40??  And the INT situation is the 35?  If so, this shouldn't be rocket science for the officiating to remember: everything is now 40, except INT to 35.

The thing I find most disturbing though is that command didn't catch it.  Those guys should be up and 100% perfect on every current rule.

Also, did it used to come out to the 30 (as refs thought here) or the 35??  I thought everything that was 30 was moved to 35 when they moved the 35 stuff to 40?  Or had they not gotten around to updating everything?

[Blueforlife]

The first huge sling to Singer was about 56 point-to-point (trigonometry-wise).  Basically Zach's limit.  The nice thing was Zach threw it early enough Singer didn't really have to wait for it.  But it wasn't really "in stride" because Singer slowed up a bit at the end, but managed the DB superbly so he blew his wad too early.  (Pokey did the same thing with the last second lateral shift so the DB thought the touch point was downfield when it was really shift-right.)

These are all things we've been lacking or bad at all season, but looks like the RECs are figuring out.

2Q12:12 to White is about 47 p2p.

2Q2:00 Deep to Singer on the hash is about 53, but it was high-pointed so it's really a 55-ish.  Just like the 1Q one.

4Q2:56 is 32Y, maybe 34Y considering the high-point.  This one got YAC after.

The key to every single one of these is the RECs are not waiting for the balls.  Zach is throwing early enough that they are still running, albeit sometimes in a lower gear.  Other than that these were within Zach's normal max range.

The 2Q2:00 one is particularly impressive because Zach threw it while still running.

Impressive analysis thanks

[Tecno]

Picked up one of those free Mobil keychains for my kid today.  It's pretty nice, he's really happy to have it to put on his sports gear bag.  I get gas there sometimes anyhow, so it's bonus gravy.

But now my other kid wants one too!

I wonder if they'll still give away the leftovers tomorrow if you ask.  They seemed to have lots.  Just show your receipt from the pay-at-pump, or pay inside.

[kkc60]

just imagine where our offense may have been if we didn't utilize Gavin Cobb or Joey Corcoran every week

[dd]

You are correct.  But I'm not sure many people noticed that change in the 2026 rules, because it was lumped in with the rouge changes.  The rouge change is controversial and hogged everyone's attention span (like mine!).  Apparently the refs, command, and MOS & Miller are all ignorant of it too, or this would have never slipped past them.

So I guess everything except an INT in the EZ is now brought out to the 40??  And the INT situation is the 35?  If so, this shouldn't be rocket science for the officiating to remember: everything is now 40, except INT to 35.

The thing I find most disturbing though is that command didn't catch it.  Those guys should be up and 100% perfect on every current rule.

Also, did it used to come out to the 30 (as refs thought here) or the 35??  I thought everything that was 30 was moved to 35 when they moved the 35 stuff to 40?  Or had they not gotten around to updating everything?

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.

As a football official with over 40 years experience I can assure you that you are way off base. A foul is a foul a foul whether its the first play of the game or the last play of the game, the score has absolutely nothing to do with calling a penalty and the refs don't 'let them play', rather we call fouls that impact the play. The officials in the CFL get rated every play and for being consistent, I can assure you that what you're saying is 100% BS.

[Blue In BC]

Now the Bombers are shown in 3rd place.

[Throw Long Bannatyne]

Rewatched the game, couple of points

-Jenkins played a few reps at the start of the game and a few at the end, he may be on his way out the door as he's behind Fletcher and Reese.

-Clercius did not see any reps on offence, but he probably played somewhere on ST.

-Singer played the SB position over Pokey which gave him the waggle but also eliminates Pokey from being used to run jet sweeps. Maybe the Jet sweep has become too dangerous a play to run for non RB's and Demski's, they almost always get smoked. Pokey wore a cast on his left hand the previous game which has now been removed.

-Kyrie took more reps. when Smith went out and made a number of good plays including hurrying VA on 2 blitzes.

-Nield and Daniels rotated throughout the game, each receiving about half the reps.

-When Elsbury came on as the 6th man, Singer, Pokey, or White came off.

-Eli looked good at starting Center, could be an illusion but looks like he's been putting on pounds this season and is more imposing.

-Stan played well, only got beat badly one time when he got pushed back into Zach.

-Wallace got beat once on an inside move through the A gap.

-Broxton got beat on a run around Cape Horn but Zach held onto the ball far too long on that play.