Official Game Day Thread - Winnipeg at Ottawa, July 15, 2023

[bomb squad]

Full credit to Crum and the Redblacks for the the highly improbable comeback (good for them and the league). I think the key to us allowing it was committing the cardinal sin of letting them get out of bounds. Not just once, but several times. The Redblacks needed and got all of those, otherwise they run out of time. Ouch.

[theaardvark]

Thomas is a force, still bringing it late in his career.  He is a solid player, a solid teamate and a solid member of the community.  There is no quit in him, he plays to the last down, and he will play on teams when he gets a chance (not sure how many specail teams tackles he has, but I always giggle when I see him on the field, tracking down a returner)

Anyone who thinks Thomas is not performing well as a Nat DL is delusional.  

[theaardvark]

Did O'Shea have the challenge flag still in his pocket at the end pf the game?  Because there were a couple of plays late when OPI could have been challenged.  The play where the OTT rec got his toes in and then went out of bounds, he had visibly pushed off seconds before...

If nothing else, a challenge gets the team a break to calm down and focus.  It may cost you a timeout, but it is far better than a timeout...

[blue_gold_84]

This is the clip of Thomas opening up a huge hole for Bighill
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxI3SV5veTFEFofuquXaNvgt3iOvJ4CzZe

Thanks for sharing. Jake Thomas is a known commodity and that's been the case for ages. He's a solid NAT and veteran on this team.

Ragging on him for what happened the other night is pretty pathetic.

[GOLDMEMBER]

Thanks for sharing. Jake Thomas is a known commodity has that's been the case for ages. He's a solid NAT and veteran on this team.

Ragging on him for what happened the other night is pretty pathetic.

I agree that was not his fault.

[Blue72]

Its time to get Biggie some help as Darby and Clements are OK but need a lot better, our linebackers are not as strong as what we are used to. Maybe leaving Biggie to cover more of the field. Also there has the be someone ( IMP ) better then Walker at the DT spot. Would like to maybe see is Cole given a chance might be faster and a better hitter then Darby, a lot younger.

[TecnoGenius]

We may not have home field advantage for the western final......yeah yeah it's only July but these kind of losses are impactful when it comes to winning the home field bye for the western final....

But that's the bright side of losing to OTT: losing to the E won't count for as much come season-end.  As long as we keep winning against the W we should be just fine (see previous 2 years).  The critical thing will be beating BC on Aug 3 @IGF.  Then at least we have a shot at the season series late in the year when we have a ton of IR guys back.

[TecnoGenius]

Still trying to figure out WHY we dressed Agudosi instead of a defensive player.  Not that we have many choices on our PR. 2 D's and a couple of DT's.

With hindsight it looks dumb.  But I called the idea before the team did: I (and they, maybe) thought the OTT O would be completely useless, thus why dress more D.  Dress more O to help rack up the score and keep fresh legs.  Or maybe an O guy was iffy on the injury/sickness front and they wanted a "just in case" extra WR.  Who knows.

Something we did learn, though: don't do it again.  Go back to what we do 95% of the time and put the extra DI on D.

[TecnoGenius]

The running game was not working as designed yesterday, instead of giving Augustine a few reps. to try and mix things up, Buck stubbornly repeated what wasn't working throughout the game.  Same with Agudosi, not a single ball was thrown in his direction all night, I don't even know if he saw the field.

They stuffed our running game and they hit Collaros on every pass in the first half. Both are due in a large part to our O line work. I'd replace Neufeld for the Edmonton game to see if it helps.

We need better schemes to make the run game work even when they are stuffing it.  I don't care if you need to bring in 2 TE and also bring in half the receivers.  You find a way to make the run game work.

And if you you really can't run at all because the D focusses 100% on it, then you throw it deep waaay more often.  They stuffed our run, they stuffed our short game, so let's go deep on both downs: let's do more like what CGY used to do with the best QB circa 2015.  And you don't need much time in the pocket for those: you can do timing routes, go/posts and rainbows.  You can get many of those off in sub-2 secs.

Imagine a team facing us and seeing us suddenly switch to deep on first, deep on second?  They'd have no answer, especially not OTT where their weakest link on D is probably their DB corps.  Why were we fighting with their strong front 7 against a team like that??

[Sir Blue and Gold]

We need better schemes to make the run game work even when they are stuffing it.  I don't care if you need to bring in 2 TE and also bring in half the receivers.  You find a way to make the run game work.

And if you you really can't run at all because the D focusses 100% on it, then you throw it deep waaay more often.  They stuffed our run, they stuffed our short game, so let's go deep on both downs: let's do more like what CGY used to do with the best QB circa 2015.  And you don't need much time in the pocket for those: you can do timing routes, go/posts and rainbows.  You can get many of those off in sub-2 secs.

Imagine a team facing us and seeing us suddenly switch to deep on first, deep on second?  They'd have no answer, especially not OTT where their weakest link on D is probably their DB corps.  Why were we fighting with their strong front 7 against a team like that??

Several things:

1) Generally speaking, when you are losing the along the interior of the line, you want to spread things out. Bringing in more people will only crowd the box further. It is harder to throw out of those formations, the defense can cheat even further to the run and just because you have more people on the edges doesn't mean you can run it between the tackles any better.

2) Brady Oliveria is a between the tackles runner, predominately. He doesn't have the speed to attack the perimeter on a regular basis, he gets outside for some change of pace plays/tendency breakers but that's not his bread and butter. The longer you make the line, the further he has to run to start going north, the more time the defense has to close.

3) We did throw deep more often against Ottawa but it remains a high risk low percentage play. You can't line up and throw those type of passes over and over and expect to win. That is certainly not the way we have been able to have success over the last 4 years. It isn't the way we will have lasting success now. You cannot 'throw rainbows' quickly. Deep passing plays require more time. That's just a fact.

[TBURGESS]

Throwing deep takes time and Collaros was getting hit every time he tried it.

[Blue In BC]

With hindsight it looks dumb.  But I called the idea before the team did: I (and they, maybe) thought the OTT O would be completely useless, thus why dress more D.  Dress more O to help rack up the score and keep fresh legs.  Or maybe an O guy was iffy on the injury/sickness front and they wanted a "just in case" extra WR.  Who knows.

Something we did learn, though: don't do it again.  Go back to what we do 95% of the time and put the extra DI on D.

Don't need hindsight to say it was a bad roster decision.  We already had a back receiver in BOO. If there was no plan to actually use Agudosi ( there didn't seem to be ) then nearly anyone else off the PR would have been a better choice. A DB or Fox for example.

I wonder if they choose to save some SMS by not activating a PR player. Agudosi might have been moved to 1 game IR in order to do that, so they save a game day check for a PR player.

[LXTSN]

Don't need hindsight to say it was a bad roster decision.  We already had a back receiver in BOO. If there was no plan to actually use Agudosi ( there didn't seem to be ) then nearly anyone else off the PR would have been a better choice. A DB or Fox for example.

I wonder if they choose to save some SMS by not activating a PR player. Agudosi might have been moved to 1 game IR in order to do that, so they save a game day check for a PR player.

I would think (and hope) that MOS doesn't worry about the money side of things. If the team is good, usually money is good.
I could see the bombers just wanting to keep Augudosi happy and not available to sign elsewhere.
But you are right, if he isn't a part of the gameplan for the week, we would be a lot better off adding a DB to the active roster for special teams. If Parker is back soon, I could see him taking that AR spot

[theaardvark]

We lost a trap game to Montreal last year to kill the perfect start, we lost a trap game to Ottawa for a wake up call...

Every championship team can have a bad day.

I'm not in the least worried.

[Waffler]

We lost a trap game to Montreal last year to kill the perfect start, we lost a trap game to Ottawa for a wake up call...

Every championship team can have a bad day.

I'm not in the least worried.

I am majorly worried. Pretty clear this is not a championship team anymore. Lawler should help but the o-line is not good enough now. We couldn't stay on the field long enough to rest an also aging D.