Kyle Walters Press conference

[Pete]

The difference is Sask. often used blitzing LB's to add pressure while Younger used the extra man in pass coverage.  Bizarre formation in the ESF highlighted by TSN had Tony Jones stranded in the flat in pass defence a couple of times while the Als ran the ball straight up the middle.

One of the issues with the 3 man front wasnt just the lack of pressure by that group, it was they didnt even create enough disruption for the blitzing lb to be effective. We did have to do a better job of not telegraphing which lb but also tying up more olinemen to create opportunities

[bunker]

To me, Willie was a big part of the problem of no pressure. Jake was obviously not impactful in the middle, but Willie mostly made one attempt to go wide, and once it didn't immediately work, he would back off and spy the QB while waving his arms around the line of scrimmage. Sometimes that was due to a double team, but often it was not. Vaughters was actually more impactful most of the time in terms of pressure.

I don't know if  Willie's play was a product of instructions from Younger, a bit of laziness, or lack of motor due to age and too many reps. But I hope it changes this year. Hopefully the disruption caused by Ceresna will open up more opportunities for him. And hopefully the 2 new "J" ends get some reps leaving Willie fresher when he plays. He took far too many reps for his age last year.

[Sir Blue and Gold]

To me, Willie was a big part of the problem of no pressure. Jake was obviously not impactful in the middle, but Willie mostly made one attempt to go wide, and once it didn't immediately work, he would back off and spy the QB while waving his arms around the line of scrimmage. Sometimes that was due to a double team, but often it was not. Vaughters was actually more impactful most of the time in terms of pressure.

I don't know if  Willie's play was a product of instructions from Younger, a bit of laziness, or lack of motor due to age and too many reps. But I hope it changes this year. Hopefully the disruption caused by Ceresna will open up more opportunities for him. And hopefully the 2 new "J" ends get some reps leaving Willie fresher when he plays. He took far too many reps for his age last year.

I wouldn't have brought Willie back and I wouldn't have brought Stanley back.

[Tecno]

The difference is Sask. often used blitzing LB's to add pressure while Younger used the extra man in pass coverage.

To be more clear, in the GC SSK used 3-4 more than you'd think, and most of the time actually only brought 3.  In fact, there was so little blitzing going on by SSK because their normal 4 (or 3) could get significant pressure most of the time.

Either SSK's DL was that good, or MTL's OL got really bad since '23, or both.