Official Game Day Thread - Grey Cup Game - Saskatchewan & Montreal

[dd]

He is not a traitor for going to play for the Argos, he IS a traitor for going to Sask, no true Bomber would ever go to Sask, that is why he is and always will be considered a traitor to me. Can't change my mind. Oh and Yoshi falls into that as well.

Grow up man. Players go and play for those who will give them the money they want to be paid for their services. Given the hopeless state of our O line, we couldn't use yoshi s services, leadership and much needed mean streak—of course we could!! So he s not a traitor... we re just cheap and stupid. You can't expect players to stay here and give up big dough in the prime of their money earning years.

Still love Harris and yoshi, wish they could both be here but they aren't. They are far from dead to me

[blue_gold_84]

Labelling Harris a traitor because he took on a coaching role with the Bombers' main rival just smacks of pettiness.

Maybe the Bombers should've offered him that RB coach role. Heck, he'd probably make a better OC than the current one on staff.

[Pigskin]

Nice to see Helle at the Grey Cup.

[BBRT]

Labelling Harris a traitor because he took on a coaching role with the Bombers' main rival just smacks of pettiness.

Maybe the Bombers should've offered him that RB coach role. Heck, he'd probably make a better OC than the current one on staff.

Just a slight correction - I (an 80 year old retired actuarial accountant) would probably make a better OC the the current one!  

[GOLDMEMBER]

Just a slight correction - I (an 80 year old retired actuarial accountant) would probably make a better OC the the current one!  

hmmmm, yesss, maybe...

[Tecno]

Olivera has to hate this, why the f*** didnt the bombers run him in the east semi.

Because our OL isn't the SSK OL.  Ouellette gets the best gut holes and Yoshi edge-seals and REC kick outs you can possibly imagine.

WPG forgot they were a running team all season.  No one here knows how to do it anymore.  Going to have to fix that in order to play at this "new normal in the West" level.

[Tecno]

Yeah, good at holding and not getting called for it.

And that's the main problem with how the CFL is officiated.  As the post-season progresses the refs do more and more of "let them play".  They are loathe to call holds.

And so "holding teams", and I mean ones who really push the boundaries all season and explicitly coach to max-hold to the point of illegality, have a massive advantage the farther they go.

During the season they can practice their mega-holding, and if refs get antsy they can just scale it back a touch until the refs stop calling it.  So they are well-practiced and experts come SF, DF, GC, when it's a huge payoff as the refs turn a blind eye.

For SSK, it's not just OL, it's REC and ST who all do max-hold.  And this is where their big-body RECs come in extra handy.

It presents a conundrum for "more honest" teams like ours.  Unless we switch to coaching like this, and focusing on holding, we'll always be at a disadvantage, especially in the post-season.

But strangely enough, SSK has been this mega-hold team since the C.Jones era.  This is 2 HC's later and they still mega-hold.  I wonder what the commonality is... or is it just the players maintaining this continuity?  Maybe there's a constant OL or REC coach?  Who knows.

And please, don't give me "all teams hold" nonsense.  Yes.  But SSK takes it a special level that no other team does.  So many examples in the GC it's not even funny, not to mention the regular season.

[Tecno]

The commissioner should talk to his buddies at TSN.... My screen keeps flicking on and off to black.

Ya, turned out it kept happening all game.  Sometimes at pivotal points or during interesting replays.  About 7-10s each time, with a few shorter ones.  Really shameful.  Imagine if those glitches were showing on the broadcast to the USA?  Talk about bush league.

So much time to prepare, the premiere sports day in Canada (excluding potential Stanley Cup games), and they put out this crap?  And I can understand 1 or 2 in the 1st Q, but the tech guys have a job for a reason to get on this stuff and fix it during the game!

So lame.

[Tecno]

He is not a traitor for going to play for the Argos, he IS a traitor for going to Sask, no true Bomber would ever go to Sask

I mean I get where you're coming from, but there's so much inter-team movement between SSK & WPG, for so many years, that we can't just pick out Yoshi & AH to hate.

AH had to leave to make it work for Brady -- the master has to "die" before the apprentice becomes the next master.  It would never work here.  Not the year he left, and not now.

Yoshi was purely money.  SSK decided they wanted to allocate way more money to the OL.  We didn't.  Therefore they have Yoshi, we don't.  Yoshi's days are numbered and he's always talked (when here) about looking after his family.  Probably has diddly squat to do post-football.  Can't blame him for running to $240k!

Now if we had offered those players within $20k of the SSK offer and they snubbed us?  Ya, then call them traitors.  But that's not what happened.

[Tecno]

Really strange that the concourse, bathroom lines etc were so much different for the Grey Cup than a Bomber game.

I never use the can in GCs for this very reason.  The difference is due to:
a) so much more drinking at GCs
b) every seat has a butt -- no paid but unattended seats like a normal game

From my perch at the top of PAS all game I checked out the concourses with the binocs every break.  I couldn't believe the traffic jam in the South EZ.  Holy Moses!!  Until like the 1st H 3 min warning the people walking there were not moving at all!  And I mean that literally.  And the whole time the E and N concourses were moving pretty well.  Even around the Rum Hut!  There's something wrong with the S EZ and WFC needs to fix it.

They could start by forcing S-side gates people to use the E/W side gate their seat is at!  Put up huge signs.  They should also enforce (with guards) directional lanes, and have cordoned off lanes for movement vs standing.

And if you're trying to traverse E to W, use the N EZ, not the S!

[Tecno]

How much did the Blue Bombers offer Andrew Harris for a coaching position?

Nothing.  He had to leave to make room for Brady.  He also is not intelligent (in a general sense, not in a RB football IQ sense).  However, he is the league-best motivational rah-rah man, and he knows how to run a RB corps.

We'll never see him here in a CFL-job capacity again.  We'll just have to hope SSK has OL woes or too much GC-champ-sniped-talent, and/or Ouellette's, uh, "muscle aids" destroy his body prematurely.  Beefy IMP RBs don't usually have long careers.

[Tecno]

Playing Austin Mack was also a mistake on the part of Jason Maas. Mack wasn't close to 100%. Alexander Hollins should have replaced Mack far earlier than late in the fourth quarter.

I didn't know Mack was injured going in.  Wasn't he in for both ESF and EDF?  I guess that would explain his lack of production in all 3.

What was his issue?  When they pulled him, was his injury acting up or did they just get sick of his uselessness?

[Tecno]

Gotta give credit to Mueller as well. He built a system around Harris' skill set and it was consistently successful all season long.

It's more than that.  It's Mueller, Mace & O'day all working together to build the O around a singular predetermined scheme.  They went very unorthodox in so many ways in a grand plan/gamble.  They bet, and won.  In hindsight it was brilliant and we need to analyze and possibly reproduce what they've done.  (Top OL, cheap RECs, run-mostly, all-short game -- well, I like all of these ideas except the short game, I want balanced like we're used to doing.)

[Tecno]

Maybe Alexander should have been pulled but MBT isn't that good, but who knows what would have been. 

All those who bashed MOS for keeping sliced-up Zach in the '24 GC, and said no other coach would make such a mistake, need to apologize to MOS.  Here's GC-winning Maas making the same "mistake".

In fact, it's even more "egregious" because MTL had a very capable, GC-winning MBT as an option!  We only had do-nothing Wilson and the useless SSK retread guy.  So if anything we should forgive MOS more than Maas.

If it was me, I would have pulled Alexander the moment he came up clearly less mobile.  And I would have pulled Zach the instant he threw that first sliced-finger underthrow INT.

I forgive MOS more because it was a novel situation no one had seen in years/decades -- so he didn't have a plan in place and was just winging it.  Maas has no excuse because he saw WPG's folly the year before, and yet still kept punishing Alexander.  Saying pre-game "and he's gonna finish it" was just stupid.

[Tecno]

That was a huge turning point early in the game. I thought there was no way they'd overturn the non-call on DPI, but they did. Shrewd call by Mace.

See my "more show" thread.  '24 command does not overturn that call.  This year, they did for "more show".  A juicy TD at that point for the (then-)struggling Riders certainly added to the show!!  Toldyaso!