Tag Archives: Hamilton Tiger-Cats

There Was a Time When the Crossover Was A Reward…

Posted on October 17, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

When the Canadian Football League moved Winnipeg back to the East and created the crossover playoff structure, the crossover was a reward.

It was created to honor a good team stuck in a great Conference. For instance, if the East had a 13-5 team and  12-6 teams and your favorite team was 10-8, your favorite team would make the playoffs because the West probably had a 12-6 champ and, ay, three teams that were about 4-14. A 10-8 team deserves to be in the playoffs.

This year, however, a team that is 6-12 could conceivably reach the post-season in the crossover because the B.C. Lions and Edmonton Eskimos are so bad, they’re both embarrassments to the CFL.

Yesterday, the Montreal Alouettes defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 22-19 because when it really counted, the Bombers offence couldn’t make a play. It’s been the same sad story all year for Winnipeg. When they play on the road, they stink. They’re 0-8 away from Canad Inns this season and with a 4-3 record at home, the Bombers are now 4-11.

And still, because Edmonton beat B.C. 31-28 in overtime on Saturday night, the 4-11 Bombers still have a legitimate chance to make the playoffs. Not only are Edmonton and B.C. both 5-10, there is no reason to believe either team will win another game this season.

Edmonton finishes the season at home to Saskatchewan, at home to Winnipeg and on the road at Saskatchewan. They could easily go 0-3 down the stretch. B.C. goes to Calgary, plays at home to Saskatchewan and goes to Hamilton. They could easily go 0-3 down the stretch. Winnipeg has Toronto at home this week, goes to Edmonton and plays host to Calgary. They could easily go 2-1 or even 3-0 down the stretch.

While the Canadian Press wanted to make it clear in their national game story yesterday that the Bombers were dead, nothing could be further from the truth. CP wrote, “The loss further dims the unlikely playoff hopes for the Blue Bombers,” when in fact, it doesn’t dim them much at all. After what happened on the weekend, the Bombers are officially two games back of Edmonton and B.C. (they must finish ahead of the Lions and Eskimos to claim the crossover) with three games to play and they have a relatively easy schedule to finish the year. The Lions and Eskimos have extremely difficult schedules. Winnipeg could make the playoffs with a 1-8 or even an 0-9 road record (if they win their two home games and B.C. and Edmonton lose out).

Look, the Bombers are a lousy football team, but they aren’t so lousy, they won’t make the playoffs.

And that, in itself, is as embarrassing to the CFL as the absolute dreadfulness of the three bottom teams in the league this year.


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Does LaPolice Owe Jyles An Apology? Or More?

Posted on October 12, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

You have to figure Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice owes Steven Jyles something. An apology maybe? His career, perhaps?

Thanksgiving Monday afternoon at Canad Inns Stadium, Jyles came off the bench with the Bombers trailing 32-11 in the fourth quarter and led the team back to a 32-32 tie by the end of regulation and then a 47-35 overtime victory.

It was an incredible finish, after starting quarterback Alex Brink did almost nothing – 4-for-18 for 61 yards. Whose stupid idea was that?

To his credit, LaPolice finally decided to go with Jyles and the guy who’d been benched bailed out his boss. The Bombers are now 4-10 and still alive in the Eastern Conference playoff race and in the crossover playoff race. Who woulda thunk it?

So now, in hindsight — not ours, but the head coach’s – something clearly suggests that Alex Brink wasn’t  a very good idea. In fact, with the Bombers still in the playoff hunt, it was about as dumb a move as a coach could make. Brink was awful and he was awful for a long time. It wasn’t like he started strinly and got awful, he was awful from the get-go. Four-for-18? For 61 yards and no touchdowns? C’mon man.

In the end, Jyles, the jilted lover, rallied the Bombers to a remarkable come-from-behind victory making his coach look like genius, and a bonehead, all at the same time.

Considering that it was a great Thanksgiving weekend for the CFL’s Eastern Conference, the Bombers are still very much in the hunt for a crossover playoff spot. Because all four Eastern teams won — Hamilton beat Edmonton 36-11, Toronto upset Saskatchewan 24-19 and Montreal blasted Calgary 46-19 in the other three games in Week 15 — the Bombers are now 4-10, Edmonton is 4-10 and B.C. is 5-9 with four weeks left in the season. Perhaps a playoff spot isn’t such a longshot for Winnipeg.

Bomber fans should thank the Lord that their head coach, Paul LaPolice, noticed that Steven Jyles was still standing on the sideline yesterday or their head coach might have found himself responsible for one of the most boneheaded decisions in Blue Bomber history.

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Now There’s Trouble in River City… and it starts with T. and it rhymes with P. and it stands for P.U.

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

That was stinky. It was stinky early and stinky late and it left Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice with some real decisions to make.

Friday night’s football game at Canad Inns Stadium smelled funny. Hamilton 39, Winnipeg 28. In Winnipeg. A week after the Bombers should have won in Hamilton.

In four meetings during the first seven weeks of the season, the Tiger-Cats beat the Bombers three times. So now, before Labour Day, the Tiger-Cats have wrapped up the first playoff tiebreaker with Winnipeg. Throw in the fact Winnipeg is not only 2-5 on the season, but 2-2 at home and 0-3 on the road and you have a team that seems considerably worse than it was last year. And it wasn’t very good last year.

The Winnipeg media got its wish when the Bomber board of directors fired Mike Kelly, but the pleasant, new regime, the one that seems to respect the the local papers, the city’s TV stars and the club’s rightsholder, hasn’t been very successful. In fairness, it certainly didn’t help that Buck Pierce got hurt and you have to admit that injuries have definitely affected LaPolice’s plans this season, but just when it appeared that the Bombers were in a position to get to 3-4 before heading off to Montreal and Regina in successive weeks, they lay an egg at home and now there is a reason to believe that this team could be 2-11 by Oct. 1.

The Bombers are now, officially, not very good. Friday night’s game at Canad Inns Stadium was over early and all that was left by the end were a few die hard fans scattered in the stands and a head coach wondering how it could all have gone so badly.

After all, this was a Bomber team that looked good in its opener, a 49-29 shellacking of these same Tiger-Cats. Seven weeks ago this team looked pretty decent. Now, it looks like it needs a makeover. When the defence couldn’t stop Kevin Glenn, LaPolice gave up on Pierce. When the offence got going, a penalty or a turnover stopped the threat.

The Bombers did put up 290 yards passing and 121 yards rushing (with losses, 393 total yards) and four touchdowns, but Glenn threw for 306 yards and three touchdowns and more than 90 yards in penalties didn’t help the Bombers much either (Philip Hunt picked up four 15-yard penalties, himself).

It was just a lousy football game from the Winnipeg standpoint. The worst effort of the season. And now the schedule gets really difficult.

I know we’re only seven weeks in, but perhaps this team should start thinking about next year. Get rid of the old, slow guys and give the youngsters a shot right across the depth chart. Because the veteran players Paul LaPolice has been depending on, haven’t done the job.

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Bombers Lose Again … so is that a surprise? I mean, really?

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I love reading the comments lists at both winnipegfreepress.com and winnipegsun.com. Everybody has an answer for what ails the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, but few want to admit that this re-building team (yes, rebuilding again) isn’t quite good enough yet.

Saturday night the Bombers lost 29-22 in Hamilton. The CFL, being what it is, the Bombers will likely beat Hamilton when the teams return to play in Winnipeg this Friday night (The Bombers and Ti-Cats play four times in the first seven weeks. If that’s not the worst schedule in the history of professional sports, I’d like to see what is.).

Seems folks really want to blame kicker Alexis Serna for the loss, but to his credit, head coach Paul LaPolice took the blame. The team’s offence isn’t much, but it did get the ball to the Hamilton three and did  have a chance in the dying seconds to tie the game at 29 thanks to Hamilton coach Marcel Bellefeuille’s boneheaded decision to go for two instead of kicking the extra point with an almost eternal seven minutes left to play.

That’s what I still don’t understand about CFL coaches. They all seem to panic (with perhaps the exception of Montreal’s Marc Tretsman or Calgary’s John Hufnagel) in the final eight or nine minutes, but the final eight or nine minutes can take hours of real time to play. The final three minutes, in which the clock stops after EVERY play, probably allows for six possession changes.

Oh well, Bellefeuille dodged a bullet and the Bombers gassed it on the Hamilton three-yard-line and now Winnipeg and Hamilton are both 2-4 and nobody should be surprised. After all, Winnipeg knew all week — hell, they talked about it all week — that they had to shut down Arland Bruce III and yet he still caught 11 passes for 197 yards and a touchdown. C’mon people.

Of course, that’s the price you pay when you re-build a franchise every year or so. It takes time to build a winner and the Bombers often find themselves using the first eight to 10 weeks of a season to get their personnel arranged and their act in gear.

The concern this year is a more simple one, however. It’s the lousy schedule. After playing the stinky Ti-Cats this Friday night, they go to Montreal and Regina, get the Roughriders back in Winnipeg on Sept. 12, go to Toronto on the 19th and then get Montreal — on a short week — back in Winnipeg on Sept. 24. It’s conceivable this Bomber team could head into October at 3-9 and that wouldn’t be good.

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Bombers Look Good in Defeat. But Doesn’t it Get Old Saying That?

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Saturday night in Calgary, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers played a pretty decent football game in a 23-20 loss to the Stampeders.

It’s unlikely head coach Paul LaPolice and his staff are happy about it  and you can pretty much bet the players are pissed at losing, but all things considered, a 23-20 loss to the best team in the West in their ball yard isn’t the end of the world.

OK, so the Bombers offence was marginal, but the guy playing quarterback, Steven Jyles, was simply a backup filling in for No. 1 Buck Pierce and when Pierce is ready to go, the Bombers should pick it up. In the end, Jyles was barely 50 per cent at 17-for-30 for 227 yards and two touchdowns, but 61 of those yards came on a single play when Jyles hit Terrence Edwards on long TD pass after Calgary’s Brandon Browner completely blew the coverage.

Granted, the Bombers had a chance to win it late in the fourth quarter, but from the Calgary 30, Jyles missed three straight receivers and that was it. When you consider that the Bombers offence as able to put up only 18 points (the final two points came on a time-wasting safety by the Stamps themselves just to blow the final seven seconds off the clock) while the defence played so well, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Winnipeg might have won that game with Pierce at the helm.

Defensively, the Bombers bent but didn’t break. At least, not too often. Calgary QB Henry Burris put together a terrific drive on the first series of the third quarter, but after moving the ball from deep in their own end to deep in the Bombers end, Philip Hunt forced a fumble and the Bombers made a game of it.

“I told the team I was proud of their effort,” LaPolice told reporters in Calgary after the game. “We put ourselves in a position to win the game, but unfortunately we didn’t make enough plays to win it. Hats off to them, they’re a good defensive unit.”

LaPolice is a decent man. I know football coaches and I know he was steaming underneath. The Bombers did have a chance to win and probably should have. However, aside from everything else, this effort did prove that when healthy, the Bombers are definitely capable of competing with any team in the league. Especially on the defensive side of the football.

The Bombers are now 2-3. Next week, they go into Hamilton, the site of that 28-7 loss in Week 3, in two weeks they get Hamilton back in Winnipeg on Aug. 13 (where the Bombers won 49-29 in Week 1) and in three weeks they go to Montreal where they’ll really be tested. Then it’s back-to-back with Saskatchewan. By Sept. 12, after their 10th game, we’ll know if this is a good Bomber team or just another also-ran.

Listen every Monday through Friday at 9:20 a.m. and 5:20 p.m. for the NCI Blue Bomber Reports brought to you by Valour Tri-West Insurance. In Winnipeg, the reports can be heard at 105.5 FM. Outside Winnipeg, check local listings for the NCI network station in your area.

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Thanks for the Admission. But WTF?

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It’s been quite a week in Crazyland and it’s not even close to being over yet.

Between the incredulous reasoning for dumping veteran captain Mike Keane, and the injury to Blue Bombers quarterback Buck Pierce that started out as one game and turned into “two-to-four weeks,” (if Mike Kelly had kept a player out of post-game interviews as Paul LaPolice did with Pierce after last week’s 28-7 loss in Hamilton — which is certainly the head coach’s right — he would have been publicly eviscerated for “trying to control the message.”), we’ve had the Canadian Football League admit that both its on-field officials and its replay officials “erred” on a play that ultimately cost the Bombers a football game.

Tom Higgins, the league’s director of officiating, admitted on Monday that the league’s “replay command centre” (love the pomposity of that name) officials in Toronto “erred” when they reviewed a Bomber challenge claiming that Ticats quarterback Kevin Glenn had indeed fumbled on a run around the left side in the  third-quarter.

“This is going to go down as an incorrect ruling, because we didn’t allow enough time for the fumble to be recovered,” Higgins said in a written statement. “It’s a shame, because that’s what we have replay for.”

A shame? More than a shame, it’s a firing offence..

Got this response from regular reader Fort Rouge Ted:

Hey Scotty…it just dawned on me!  Why I enjoy watching curling so much during the winter…a sport I never even tried.
BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE DEAF-DUMB & BLIND OFFICIALS F*%KING UP THE GAME!!!!
Simple as that!
What was really sad about that travesty of a BLOWN REPLAY CALL…In which everyone at the CFL lounge called a fumble….is that it takes great talent to do what that kid did in going for the ball and punching it out in one motion…is that not why we go pay to see these kids play?  To see the athleticism and the natural talent they have to play the game professionally? Just like the kid that threw the perfect game for the Tigers….most likely his first and last in the Show…but just like the fumble…and the England goal…..some INCOMPETENT BOOB f*%ked it up!
Cheers,
FRT

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Just Plain Bad

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Here’s today’s question: Have we watched the point in professional sport — outside of golf, of course — where we’re going to make up the rules as we go along?

The NFL and NBA have been making up the rules for a long time. Hockey has no rules, or to be more fair, despite a number of changes and league directives, the rules are still different in the third period than they are in the first. Major League Baseball has reached the level of pure, unadulterated joke (Why bother having a strike zone? Play call your own. Don’t waste the money on a homeplate umpire). Officiating in the World Cup was comical.

And there is the Canadian Football League.

Just watched the PVR of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 28-7 loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Watched the live version at Assiniboia Downs on Friday night and have just re-watched that debacle once again.

There is NO justification for calling the Kevin Glenn fumble in the third quarter a “non-fumble.” It was a fumble. The textbook definition of a fumble. If you look up the word fumble in the CFL rulebook, you are asked to go to www.tsn.ca to watch the replay of that fumble. And yet, even with video replay, there was some sort of excuse made up to make it a non-fumble.

It happened, of course, at an extremely important point in the game and may have changed the outcome (on the next play, Glenn threw a touchdown pass to make the score 21-0). The CFL should be ashamed.

The Bombers lost and fell to 1-2 on the season, tied with Hamilton for last in the East. It’s really not that big a deal. After all, this 18-game season is only three games old and the Bombers get the lousy Eskimos in front of the beer cup snake at Canad Inns Stadium next week.

But it just makes the league look bad and nobody needs that.

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The Bombers Are Back. That Means It’s Crazier Than a LeBron News Conference Around the ‘Peg

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ 2010 Canadian Football League campaign has begun. That means the Loonie Season has returned to Winnipeg.

You might have thought LeBron James’ uncomfortable and embarrassing news conference on ESPN (TSN or ESPN North in Canada) was crazy, but the way the two local newspapers in Winnipeg lead the cheers for the local football side — as long as the football side does what the newspapers want — is a non-stop source of comic relief.

On Sunday, the Winnipeg Sun told us (and this is the lead to the story) “The special teams saviour is on his way back to town.” Huh? Seems Derrick Doggett has returned to the Bombers after being released by the Pittsburgh Steelers and now, all is well. Derrick Doggett?

Yep, that’s it. One player will change the entire special teams performance of the Blue Bombers, a performance that has been pretty shaky so far this season.

So, hey, thank goodness Derrick Doggett is back. Obviously the Cup is on its way.

Yeah right, after two games in an 18-game season, let’s start telling people that the Bombers are another step closer to a Grey Cup championship because a special teams player has returned. That’s just stupid.

Wha…? Huh? It’s not? The big paper has been giving us that kind of stuff since February? The things you miss when you aren’t paying attention.

In fact, the folks at the Winnipeg Free Press were so certain that the Bombers were the best team in the league after they drilled 0-2 Hamilton 49-29 in the season opener, that they had to dial it back a bit on Saturday morning.

Honest to goodness, the Free Press wrote this headline after the Bombers lost on Friday: “Cup parade put on hold.” Cup parade? The only people in the city who had anointed the Bombers as potential Grey Cup champions were the sports writers at the Winnipeg Free Press (other writers at the Free Press will tell you that). Now they’re backing off?

The cheerleading over there is a joke. Not even head coach Paul LaPolice has suggested – not even a teeny, tiny bit – that the Bombers are contenders for anything. He’s been clear, “Let’s just see what happens and hopefully this team can compete.”

Cup parade? That’s almost the stupidest thing I’ve ever read in a newspaper. Even in a bad one.

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At Home in the Whine Cellar

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I arrived home on Friday rather shocked to see my wife in her favorite chair on the sundeck, reading a book and then hearing the droneful buzzing of what I thought were vuvuzelas. For a died-in-the-wool football and baseball fan, I would never have expected to see (or hear) my bride watch soccer.

“That’s not the soccer game,” she said without looking up from her book. “It’s the mosquitos. This is June in Winnipeg. Some of these mosquitos are bigger than wasps. I put out some coils. It’s not bad here.”

Silly me, and I thought it was the World Cup.

Speaking of the World Cup, there are two things that I love: (1) all the players who dive around as if they’ve been shot in the back of the head and (2) all the referees who call things they don’t see.

The officiating in the World Cup is silly. I wouldn’t call it bad. I’d just call it apochryphal. These guys make up fouls that don’t happen, they pick out one foul in a series of fouls , they call offsides or miss offsides when they don’t see it and on Sunday, the referee pulled a red card on Brazil’s Kaka when Kaka barely made contact with a player from Cote d’Ivoire who should have been kicked out for life for bad acting.

When I heard that FIFA might have sent Koman Coulybaly home for blowing the call on the Yanks’ third goal in the USA’s comeback 2-2 draw with Slovenia, I was marginally impressed. Only marginally, because FIFA didn’t suspend the dozen or so other referees who had made calls as egregiously bad.

The dude in that Brazil-Cote d’Ivoire match shouldn’t be allowed to officiate a match involving nine-year-olds, let alone a World Cup match. But, hey, I’m not the only won whining. The referees’ supporters should listen to the players and managers. It’s a joke.

*          *          *

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers were drilled 38-20 in Hamilton in their final pre-season game yesterday, proving once again that pre-season games don’t mean squat.

When you go from a 34-10 win over Montreal in your first pre-season game (read: practice scrimmage) to a 38-20 loss in your second, all it means is that head coach Paul LaPolice and his staff were looking to see who could play and who couldn’t. They got a better sense in Game 2.

Kevin Glenn, who should never have been released in Winnipeg, threw a pair of touchdown passes as he took the Bombers apart in the first quarter. Buck Pierce struggled and Steven Jyles looked good for Winnipeg. LaPolice appears to have a decision to make.

Regardless, after Hamilton leaves Winnipeg on July 2, we’ll all — and that includes the coaching staff — have a better idea as to where this Blue Bombers team actually stands in the CFL’s Eastern Conference. Those two practice games meant nothing.

*          *          *

Heading back to watch the golf. I’ll see how long it’ll be before I’m forced to hit the mute button. I don’t know about you, but I’m just so tired of Johnny Miller’s new full-time job as captain of the Phil Mickelson Cheerleading Team.

UPDATE: Miller just described a trap shot facing Ernie Els as “impossible to get close.” Els stiffed it. Just another day listening to Johnny Miller saying things are going to happen and they never do.

Golf is really quite enjoyable on CBS. Miller kills it on NBC.

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What Happens If….?

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The decade of the 2000s or “The Aughts,” as they’ve been called, come to an end in about four days.

With that end, comes more questions than answers.

In fact, here are five questions, all starting with What Happens If….?

A brave new world awaits, old media panics, new media has a field day and if there is one thing we know, it’s this: Sports will change dramatically in the decade of the “Tens.”

So what happens if…

1) The Canadian Olympic Team doesn’t “win the podium” in Vancouver this February? With all the national, television-generated pre-Olympic hype, how badly will the traditional media treat our athletes if they don’t win every medal in every event. “I Believe,” it will get ugly.

2) The NHL’s non-traditional markets keep taking a beating? Tickets are now virtually free, the teams aren’t winning, there is limited interest, newspapers have stopped covering many of the teams on the road, Versus isn’t ESPN and there are often more empty seats than seats with butts in them. The NHL will look differently in five years if Bush’s recession doesn’t end.

3) The NHL’s non-traditional markets keep taking a beating? Will the NHL return to Winnipeg?

4) The CFL doesn’t get some new stadiums soon? Canad Inns Stadium in Winnipeg is a dump, Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton is worse, Ottawa doesn’t have a stadium, Toronto doesn’t have a place to play and the east coast still doesn’t have a suitable stadium for CFL expansion. The biggest problem in the CFL is not fan-support or media-support, it’s government support. And without new stadiums, the league could be on its last legs.

5) The Indianapolis Colts never get it back? After having the gall to actually charge people money for that debacle on Sunday afternoon, Colts chicken-livered head coach Jim Caldwell (coaching scared is the worst thing a coach can ever do) doesn’t deserve to win another game. If you look around the NFL, buildings are seldom full anymore. I’ve been in Jacksonville and Tampa this season when there have been 25,000-30,000 empty seats. The NFL can claim record numbers of sellouts if it likes (I think “tickets distributed” is the term), but only the best teams truly sell out anymore. Indy was a team that sold out, but if I was a fan, I would be a lot more hesitant about buying tickets in the future. When coaches throw games in order to rest the stars — because they are afraid of injury — the premise of professional football goes out the window. What happened Sunday in Indianapolis was unprofessional. In a recession that appears as if it’s going to last for decades not months, that kind of unprofessional approach to the game could come back and bite a franchise in the ass.

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