Official Game Day Thread - BC at Winnipeg, June 21, 2024

[ModAdmin]

There was definite improvement tonight.  Still, my concerns involve the Oline and Dline.  Offence was better. Kick coverage was better. Zach was better and I thought Demski played well and, as well, Wolitarsky and Schoen.

Still work to be done but we stood up reasonabley well against a pretty good BC Team.

[J5V]

Yes but the rope is getting shorter. The defence was being beaten on the LOS and I suspect had some communication issues. Too many receivers wide open and too much time to throw. Even run defence was not good.

What are our options for next week?

I don't recall a particular instance where Streveler might have thrown a pass as opposed to the short run game. However, the passing game was not the real problem tonight. Oliveria got reps but we didn't establish him early enough etc etc. He looked healthy enough.

To answer your question, I guess our option for next week is to "stick with the process".

We have a new DC. New personnel on all sides of the ball. It's going to take some time for this team to gel. Other teams have gone through similar and are ahead of us in their process. We need to give it time.

What I didn't see coming was the injuries and any team that loses the depth of starters that we have is going to feel it. We have good veteran leadership and a management staff that knows what it takes to be successful. I think fans are going to have to accept the struggles until we iron the kinks out and start firing on all cylinders. I have seen improvement in all three games thus far.

[TecnoGenius]

We know Brady was injured before TC and did not practice during TC. He didn't play in pre season. he got injured in game 1 and missed game 2. He didn't practice this week.

That doesn't suggest he's not injured or prepared at game speed or conditioning. I suppose technically he could be healthy but not prepared per se.

If what you're suggesting could be true, that would mean Brady "pulled an AH" -- showing up to camp unprepared?  That's the first I'm hearing or thinking of this, so we want to be careful here.  But if MOS feels Brady shirked on his off-season responsibilities then he'll be in the same doghouse AH was -- and we all know how that ended up...

That would actually perfectly explain the "Johnny gets the start in week 3" mystery.  It's MOS showing his displeasure.

Let's all hope this is not the case, it would be bad for everyone.

[TecnoGenius]

Nice whiff by kramdi, Just got burned by Hollis on the long pass,  That isn't going to get it done here, down 7 first series

Two bad things about that early explosion:

1) Kramdi is slow, much slower than Holm & Ford, which means he'll stink against a matchup with the opponent's fastest SB

2) Kramdi 100% gave up on that play after the catch and jogged it in; he could have made a final effort during the catch (slight slowdown by Hollins), at least dive for the guy.  Left his 2 buddies out to dry, and cost the TD because they whiffed too.

Need a solution for this or teams will key on it.  And once again, where the heck was Alexander...  Against a pass-mostly team we're still using our FS as a run stopper.  Groan.

[TecnoGenius]

Wilson had a bad dropped pass. Our offense looked better but we need lawler to win games. Plus we need to execute better, coming away with no points to end the first half was embarrassing!!

A complete shambles.  Many teams won't run a play under 11s!!  I said the whole time MOS was deciding that I thought we should kick.  100% kick every time.

I recommend everyone watch the MOS post-game.  Tons of questions on this topic.  MOS swears we can run a 4s play, a 5s play, a 6s play.  Did he account for the fact that a 6s play has to be a 5s play because there has to be 1s left on the clock?

And they have to keep in mind that a live game works differently than practice.  Easy to pull it off to the second in practice, not as easy when the bullets are flying.

Zach says he was to blame for throwing it OOB instead of into the turf to save a couple of seconds.  But he's one to take the blame, whether deserved or not.

I don't expect we'll see a 6s TD attempt again.  If you wanted a TD then that Woli (or Schoen?) catch earlier he should have gotten OOB when he could have, that cost us time.  And you do less runs.

No other HC in the league tries it with 6s left.  I think I've seen it attempted once  - and I think it worked -- but it's such a low percentage / high risk idea that it just shouldn't be done unless you need a TD to win.

[TecnoGenius]

The most disgusting play of the game was 2Q11:42 when VAJ gets a wide snap and has to one-hand it, and we're bringing the house.  VAJ secures the ball while doing a 360, turning his back to the D, and spinning out to instantly throw a hot route at the sticks while running backwards and jumping in the air.

3 of our guys got through the line untouched and are near.  Willie is closest but alone sealing the left.  But 29 & 6 are together and both hold up speed to keep right contain.  Someone needs to just make a play here, someone needs to be the gunner who just goes for VAJ and to heck with contain.  Sometimes you have to gamble.

Anyhow, VAJ is untouched and makes the pass to an absolute nobody rookie who then gets YAC on our sad DBs.

That play disgusted me as when a QB gets a bad snap and turns their back it should be a disaster.  29 or 6 should have blown him up.  Missed opportunity.

[TecnoGenius]

For those of you giving Dobson a tough time earlier, gotta give him his due tonight: nearly every single short yardage play went right over him tonight and all were successful so that's a good sign. Runs over the left were on the menu all day too. He and Stanley were the best part of the line easily.

I'm halfway through the rewatch and I fully agree.  Dobson was very good, just like week 1.  He was also often switching over to run block on the opposite side.  And he was great at it, which makes sense since he was a very good 6th last season.

So far it's Ko-man and Lofton getting pwned tonight (after decent games for Lofton).  Lofton is too skinny and gets pushed around (like bull rushed) a lot.  He looks like half the size of Yoshi.  Someone get that guy some bologna, he needs to really bulk up.

[TecnoGenius]

What bugged me at the game is 2 min left in 2nd Q and we just got the TO and we're at our 30YL.  Looong field ahead.  2 min is a lot, but not a ton, of time.  Nearly every team in this situation takes a shot.  First down we just run Brady into a stacked box for 3.

Why not take a shot?  Even if you overthrow everyone, it's just as useful as Brady getting 3.  Just don't underthrow...

Then we run it on 2nd & 7, and we get enough, but it's the 2 min drill and clock is bleeding fast.  By the time we get 1 first down on the 3rd down sneak, clock is at 1:10 and we've barely made 10 yards!!  We need 80 yards to score!!

End result is we screw it all up and our nearly-TD (and certainly close enough for a FG) drive is completely 100% wasted and definitely changes the calculus in the 2nd H.

The homer clock guy did try his best.  Not often they overturn the *start* time of the clock, even when homer clock guys pull this stunt.

Oh ya, the (finally!) creative play on the TD attempt, Zach's Brady-leads-Demski with only one defender probably would have worked.  Should have taken the shot to Demski.  I think the only reason Zach didn't throw it is he saw they collided and it was a bit discombobulated.  This is a big sign that we aren't getting enough practice.  They probably ran that play once in closed practice.  Need to run it through many more times than that.

[TecnoGenius]

Refs don't have anything to do with the time, there's an official game timer and he would have intervened saying the game clock started late and taken the second away. It definitely is a bad look though

From all I've heard over the (long) years the timer guy is a homer guy provided by the field.  He's not some league guy that travels around.  But I may be wrong.

We often see "homer timers".  I've been aggravated by them more than once before.  Rarely does the start time get reviewed/changed though!  Seriously, can't remember the last time I saw something like this.  Usually it's the end time they change: i.e. home timer tries to run the clock longer on a charging opponent O.

[TecnoGenius]

I didn't like the long pass to Demski on 2nd and 6 with 2 minutes or so on the clock. It's great if it connects and it nearly did but didn't. Decision to punt I understand but felt it was a mistake. The defence wasn't going to get the ball back for the Bombers.

Ya, it was bass ackwards between that would-be-go-ahead drive in the 4th and the start of the going-into-halftime drive.  You take the shot on the latter, after the turnover, not when you need 6Y and your dink & dunk game is working great.

Zach didn't really connect on a single deep ball all night, did he?  And maybe 1 or 2 all season so far?  Why on earth are we going to put the entire game on a Zach deep pass?  What we needed to do was bleed the clock and get in FG range!

It should have been 3 down territory already.  We stopped BC drives on their side of the field maybe once all night?  Even when we held them to 3 we let them drive all the bloody way nearly every time.  What on earth makes you think that D (now tired) is going to stop VAJ this time?  Magical thinking?  There was no way we were getting the needed 2 & out on them.  None.  Nada.  Zilch.  Dumbest call I've ever seen, and it isn't the first time he's pinned it on a weakened D in recent years, to our woe.

You go 3 down territory in your head the second you get the ball, and and play the great short game we were doing with a good pass/run mix and some creativity.  All we needed was 3 more yards and Strevie gets us the guaranteed 3rd & 2.

We needed maybe 25-30 yards to get comfortably in Castillo range.  This isn't rocket science.  You run as close as you can get with 10s left and take the kick.  We miss, we can all live with that.  Not handing the ball back so they can drive to our bloody 1Y and laugh at us.  Shameful.

[TecnoGenius]

Hand it to Fayad: he single-handedly stopped a BC drive real early in the 3rd Q.  Including an incredible spin move on the LT to force VAJ into the arms of Cole.  That's the type of play we need on DL.

Also, Eli did my all-time favorite play where he is in in jumbo, instantly runs 6-8 downfield and turns and puts his hands up to take a pass.  Of course they didn't throw it to him, but he did tie up a LB, and also blocked him after the catch.

Hey, we saw a hoggie get a big catch for BC.  Love to see it finally happen for Eli one day!  Make them think about it.  I don't think I saw this play since 2022, and I really missed it.

[TecnoGenius]

Buck/Zach must be reading the forum.  He's added a lot more zip and pep to his passes.  Quicker release, quicker wind up.  Very few underthrows tonight.

And his zippy passes had more success than his feathers/arcs.  One of the only big ones that failed was the shot to Strevie that Strevie whiffed on.

Also, Demski 1-handed throw-behind save was one of the best catches of the year.  And then his 1-handed overthrow snatch, is another catch of the year.  And maybe he had a 3rd throw-behind snag earlier in the game?  These are astounding Kenny-type catches we haven't seen from Demski in a loooong time.  Superb!

Wheatfall looks like calf or hammy?  It was non-contact but took 2-3 strides to fully develop.  Could be knee, too, but he didn't collapse as one would expect.  MCL?  Just a slight tear?  Who knows.  He was holding his calf with the trainers, but I doubt it's achilles.

4Q13:36 Peters holds onto Brady on the turf 5-6 secs after the whistle.  Who knows what that clown was doing, looked like trying to gouge out his knee caps.  To me that's even worse than the twisting on Strevie.

League has got to do something about this.  It's not fair to the carriers who cannot retaliate or they'll get a penalty like Strev did in the GC.  And it needs to be harsh.  Brady shouldn't have to lay there and take it for 5s!  And there's no pile and it's clear and obvious.  Should have been a call on the field.  Refs should get training on keeping an eye out.

P.S. On the subsequent Strev TD BC had 3-4 players clearly offside.  No flag was thrown.  What's up with that?

[Blue In BC]

To answer your question, I guess our option for next week is to "stick with the process".

We have a new DC. New personnel on all sides of the ball. It's going to take some time for this team to gel. Other teams have gone through similar and are ahead of us in their process. We need to give it time.

What I didn't see coming was the injuries and any team that loses the depth of starters that we have is going to feel it. We have good veteran leadership and a management staff that knows what it takes to be successful. I think fans are going to have to accept the struggles until we iron the kinks out and start firing on all cylinders. I have seen improvement in all three games thus far.

I just read that Schoen didn't play in the 4th Q, Wheatfall also got injured. On defence Woods got nicked.

Schoen had a hip issue all week and going back into 2023. So whether any of these 3 can play next week is another set of questions.  Nichols might be back but that's uncertain at the moment as well.

Net result is that we'll see a few more bodies brought into the PR.

[Blue In BC]

If what you're suggesting could be true, that would mean Brady "pulled an AH" -- showing up to camp unprepared?  That's the first I'm hearing or thinking of this, so we want to be careful here.  But if MOS feels Brady shirked on his off-season responsibilities then he'll be in the same doghouse AH was -- and we all know how that ended up...

That would actually perfectly explain the "Johnny gets the start in week 3" mystery.  It's MOS showing his displeasure.

Let's all hope this is not the case, it would be bad for everyone.

I heard he got injured in off season training. That limited his ability to practice nearly all of TC and that continued this week.

So no I don't see his work ethic etc as any issue.

[BomberFan73]

I heard he got injured in off season training. That limited his ability to practice nearly all of TC and that continued this week.

So no I don't see his work ethic etc as any issue.

In the 1st preseason game, Brown thought it was a hamstring.  Makes sense, and would explain trying to limit what he's doing. Hopefully he can actually practice this week, and I think he'll force himself to.