Tag Archives: Saskatchewan Roughriders

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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Taman Will Soon Be Named Riders GM

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Scott Taylor| 1 Comment

Roger Currie, who hosts the Saskatchewan Roughriders pre-game show on CKRM in Regina told us today that Brendan Taman will soon be named general manager of the Riders.

Currie, and a second source in Regina, told www.rivercitysportsblog.com that Taman will be named GM before the end of the week. Taman, the former GM of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, joined the Riders midway through the 2009 season after leaving the Bombers “in order to take some time off.”

Taman grew up in Saskatchewan and started as a ball boy with the Riders. He also worked for Ottawa and B.C., but really came into his own as a bird dog and GM under Dave Ritchie in Winnipeg.

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Alouettes Win 97th Grey Cup. Riders Blow 27-11 lead with Only 10 Minutes to Play.

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The Saskatchewan Roughriders must not have slept very well on Sunday night. Probably won’t sleep well on Monday night, either. After all, they had the 97th Grey Cup game in the bag and then gave it away.

As Montreal’s Damon Duval was missing a 43-yard field goal — a miss that that would have given Saskatchewan a thrilling 27-25 victory –  the Roughriders were found to have had 13 men on the field, penalty flags flew and with no time left on the clock, Duval kicked a 33-yard field goal to win the game 28-27 for an Alouettes team that erased a 16-point deficit in the final 10 minutes to steal their second Grey Cup title in seven appearances since 2000.

Als runningback Avon Cobourne (bad choice) was named most outstanding player while Als receiver Ben Cahoon was the most outstanding Canadian.

In the end, Anthony Calvillo (who was dreadful for three quarters) finished 26-for-39 for 319 yards and two touchdowns, but that wasn’t enough to get him most outstanding player (it would be amazing if it wasn’t for the fact Canadian sportswriters choose the award winners). My gawd, he’s the only quarterback in the CFL capable of bringing a team back from a 27-11 deficit in 10 minutes to win.

On Monday, while many people wanted to pick out one play — especially the old 13th-man play — as a cause for Saskatchewan’s demise, the fact is, when you lead by 16 with 10 minutes to go and you’re outplaying your opponent by a wide margin, you should have won and you just didn’t have the jam to seal the deal.

In fairness, Saskatchewan probably shouldn’t have been in this game at all. In fact, they should be given credit for playing a wonderful game. Meanwhile, the Alouettes became the first team in professional football history to win a championship game without having the lead once until the clock struck 0:00 to play.

The 97th wasn’t a great Grey Cup, but the final three minutes — which actually took 31 minutes to play in real time — was worth the 3 1/2-hour TV marathon.

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Another Week in the Trenches. Als to Win 97th Grey Cup.

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

This was going to be a simple little post.

We were going to talk about how the Montreal Alouettes’ offensive line would protect Anthony Calvillo long enough for the CFL’s most outstanding player to throw five or six touchdown passes and lead the Als to a 45-10 victory over the Saskatchewan Roughriders in tomorrow’s Grey Cup.

We were going to talk about the healthy Montreal defence, their almost perfect special teams, the well-designed offence of Marc Trestman and how all of that would work together to give Montreal a third straight impressive, lopsided win (48-13 over Winnipeg on Nov. 1 and 56-18 over B.C. on Nov. 22).

But then the CFL’s tall foreheads and the mainstream got all stupid on us and football now takes a back seat to silliness.

1) The Canadian Football League’s 2009 mantra is this: “The Canadian Football League is our league. It’s built on a tradition as proud, staged on a field as broad, and played at a pace as exciting as the country we are proud to call home.”

Which is fine, except for one thing: The CFL is starting to talk once again about adding more Americans to the starting lineups and reducing the number of Canadians in the starting ratio from seven to four.

The CFL already killed its offence when it lowered the starting ratio from 11 to seven (notice how every change to make the CFL more American has destroyed scoring). Now, about 70 per cent of CFL games are duller than dishwater, over in the third quarter. Slowly but surely, all these American coaches and penny-pinching GMs who know that dime-a-dozen U.S. players are cheaper on the market than rare, super-talented Canadians, are going to run the “Canadian” out of the CFL.

In fact, if the league lowers the starting ratio again, you can take the “proud” out of the CFL’s mantra. Or not. After all, you could to call it “Just another proud American minor pro football league.”

Hey UFL, here we come!

2) Here’s a stat that you didn’t read in the local newspapers this year. Not surprising, of course because it’s a stat that makes the hated coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers look good. It also tells you something about how good the Bombers offensive line turned out to be.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats were sacked once every 15.6 passing plays in 2009. The Montreal Alouettes were sacked once every 18.3 passing plays and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were sacked once every 22.5 passing plays. With an improved defensive secondary and a collection of great young players under contract, clearly, this Bomber team is just one quarterback away from playing in next year’s Grey Cup game in Edmonton.

3) “Tiger Woods seriously injured in auto accident.”

That headline reverberated around the world yesterday as the mainstream media fell all over its collective hyperbolic ass trying to dig up dirt on a golfer.

By the end of the day, Woods had hit a fire hydrant backing out of his driveway, cut his lip (it’s still unknown whether the blood was a result of the accident or a spat with the wife), went to hospital for a stitch and was home resting, while the mainstream media blamed the absurd headlines on the Florida Highway Patrol.

I sometimes get the sense that the sooner all these money-losing newspapers fold, the smarter we’ll all be. People, you’re reporters, not gossip-mongers. Write the truth or don’t write anything at all. Get it first but get it right.

Guess all these old rules don’t cut it anymore. The new rule appears to be: Make it up, some idiot will believe it.

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Bombers Win. Was it Good or Bad for the Future?

Posted on September 27, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

When it comes to right now and the immediate future of my friends, Mike Kelly and Brett McNeil, Saturday night’s 29-24 win over the Toronto Argonauts was a blessing.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers needed a victory, no matter how chippy or nail-biting, and thanks to the obvious fact that they finally played a game without seven or eight turnovers, the Bombers built a 29-9 lead and held on to beat the sad-sack Argos by five.

For now, that’s a big victory. Winnipeg “improved” to 4-8 with the win and as a result, Winnipeg is just two points back of B.C., in the race for the final playoff spot in the East. Yep, that’s “the East.” If the playoffs started today, with the CFL’s crossover playoff system, 5-7 B.C.  would finish third in the East and go to Hamilton for the Eastern semifinal.

However, there are still six games to play this season and the Bombers have four of them at home. Winnipeg is clearly a better football team at Canad Inns Stadium than they are away from it, so there is no reason to believe that the Bombers can’t catch B.C. and sneak into the playoffs.

Winnipeg plays host to an inconsistent Edmonton team this coming Friday night, goes to Hamilton on Oct. 12, plays host to B.C. on Oct. 18, plays host to Montreal on Oct. 24, goes to Montreal on Oct. 31 and plays host to Hamilton on Nov. 8. There is a chance this team could be 8-10 before it’s over and with that, they could play host to the Eastern semifinal.

There was another good reason for a win on Saturday: With a record of 4-8, Mike Kelly has now won as many games as Jeff Reinebold did in his first year as head coach — 1997. That means, with one more victory, the media can no longer call Kelly “Jeff Reinebold-like.” Go Bombers Go!

However, on the downside, the Bombers are back in the playoff hunt. That means Winnipeg will have to go with the veteran Michael Bishop for the remainder of the season. There will be very little opportunity to play Casey Bramlet or Ricky Santos, the alleged “quarterbacks of the future.”

Because of that, one senses this team won’t improve dramatically next year. And this team still needs to improve dramatically next year if Mike Kelly is going to be around a for long time, not just for a good time.

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Some Blue Bomber Thoughts. On a Perfect Tuesday in September

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The NFL is back and at this stage, I like New England and Minnesota in the Super Bowl. That, of course, is subject to change.

The NHL is back and right now, I like Calgary and Washington in the Stanley Cup final. That is also subject to change.

The CFL, meanwhile, is heading into Week 12. There are eight games remaining and things start to get serious now. If I were a betting man today, I’d bet Calgary and Montreal meet in the Grey Cup, but who knows? That could change, too. This year, the CFL is as close as it’s ever been, at least among the league’s top four teams: Calgary, Montreal, Edmonton and Saskatchewan. Meanwhile, Hamilton isn’t bad and B.C. should be better.

Toronto and Winnipeg, however, are extremely lousy, but if B.C. doesn’t improve, one of these two dogs could reach the playoffs.

1) Yep, that’s the craziest part about Winnipeg’s last two defeats – 29-14 in Saskatchewan and 55-10 by Saskatchewan in Winnipeg. As badly as Winnipeg has been beaten and as horribly as they’ve played, the Bombers are still in the thick of the playoff hunt.

Granted, when six teams out of eight make the playoffs, it’s harder to miss the post-season than to make it. But that’s a good thing if you’re the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Right now the 3-7 Bombers are only two points out of the playoffs, tied with Toronto at 3-7 and in view of crossover B.C. at 4-6.

Meanwhile, after this coming Sunday’s game in Montreal, the Bombers have a very easy schedule with more home games than road games. Playoffs here we come????

2) Mike Kelly continues to deny that Casey Printers is ever, ever, ever coming to Winnipeg, but what happens when Montreal clobbers the Bombers this week and again, it’s the quarterback position that kills the local side?

Kelly doesn’t like Printers, it’s personal and that’s fine, but the coach does have a quarterback problem and he’s running out of options. Jeff Garcia signed with Philly on Monday so he’s not returning to Canada any time soon.

And don’t tell me Casey Bramlet is the answer. Please don’t tell me that.

3) In the midst of a football world full of craziness, you have to give the Toronto Argos some credit. At least, they’re trying to get better.

Yesterday, the scorchingly fast Dominique Dorsey returned to the Argos. Dorsey, who was a CFL special teams all-star last season and a guy who led the league in combined yards despite missing five games due to injury, was just recently cut loose by the NFL’s Washington Redskins. No other NFL team came calling, so Dorsey re-signed with the Boatmen, the team with which he played for the past two seasons.

The Argos return game, just like the Bombers return game, has been less than satisfactory this year and Dorsey will immediately make the Argos better. He’ll also play some running back and catch the football from the H-back position. Evidently, the Argos don’t want to fall to 3-8 if they don’t have to.

Toronto plays in B.C. this week while Winnipeg plays in Montreal.

Wonder what the Bombers will be thinking about on Monday? Casey Printers? Pacman Jones? Kevin Glenn? All interesting thoughts.

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Bombers Horrible in Banjo Bowl. Mike Kelly Should Be Glad He Doesn’t Own a Piano.

Posted on September 13, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

(About an hour after filing this, a solid source told me there is reason to believe Casey Printers is now on his way to Winnipeg. Kelly denies it, but maybe Bauer is starting to make his own moves.)

Minnesota Vikings head coach Brad Childress told a story to the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It’s one Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly (and probably even CEO Lyle Bauer) should consider:

Childress, whose Vikings looked outstanding in a 34-20 win at Cleveland on Sunday, was talking about the time during the 1980s when he was an offensive assistant coach with the Indianapolis Colts and Art Schlichter was his starting quarterback:

“This is a true story,” Chrildress said. “He (Schlichter) was with us one game. He was our starter. We cut him after the first game. We’re standing in there and just got our butts beat. It was awful. I’m like, ‘I don’t care if it’s the first game for a new staff or whatever. A beating is a beating.’ I’m trying to stay out of the way. I’m soaping up in the shower, and here comes Tom Lovat, who was at Green Bay for years. He was assistant head coach. He says, ‘Well, Bradley, let me tell you something.’ He had a great way about him, a great perspective. He goes on, ‘That game right there will make you damn glad you don’t own a piano, you know what I mean?’ I said, ‘No, Coach, I don’t really know.’ He says, ‘You ever move a piano? Those things are heavy as hell. If we keep playing like that, our butts will be moving. Makes you damn glad you don’t own a piano.’”

It was a wonderful story and yesterday, Kelly was in the same situation. His Blue Bombers fell to 3-7 on the season with an embarrassing 55-10 loss in the Banjo Bowl at Canad Inns Stadium.

It was so bad, my pal Dr. Sports from Hot 103 in Winnipeg called from the stadium to say, “Fold the team and tear down the stadium, it has reached rock bottom. This is the worst I’ve ever seen.”

Well, hopefully, the city will get to tear down the stadium soon and David Asper will build the team a new one at the University of Manitoba.

The Blue Bomber board of directors needs to clean house. Sooner, not later. The board should call in Asper, who will soon take over the team anyway, and let him assume the leadership responsibilities now.

Let’s not pull any punches, the board has been as big a disaster as Mike Kelly or any other failed coach. The board has been as big a disaster as Stefan Lefors or any other failed quarterback.

This franchise hasn’t won a Grey Cup in 19 years and it’s unlikely it will win one this year. In an eight-team league, every team should win at least one Grey Cup in 19 years just by having a little dumb luck.

It’s time for a wholesale change. And that doesn’t mean fire the coach. It means changing the culture of the franchise completely. It’s the only way to salvage what could soon become a very, very embarrassing year.

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It’s Saturday. There is even more stuff banging around in my head.

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Sorry, my head hurts again. Between the Coyotes bankruptcy case in Phoenix, the CFL’s officials’ mistakes in Vancouver and the sad, ugly circus that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have created for themselves, I hit the Advil pretty hard last night.

Let me get this stuff out of my cranium…

1) NHL commissioner Gary Bettman talks like those far-right Republican loons in the United States — lots of confidence and hatred and bluster, but no apparent logic.

On Friday, Mr. Bettman was lamenting comments by Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes, a man who lost approximately $300 million of his own money on a franchise that doesn’t work now and will never work in the future. Moyes suggested he has been treated badly by the NHL.

“I just don’t think I’ve been treated right,” Moyes said. “I gave it a 100 per cent try and I feel betrayed by the NHL. Hockey will not work in the south. Mr. Bettman’s plan is not working out. You got Phoenix, you got Dallas, you Nashville, you got Atlanta you got Tampa Bay all in  trouble. These teams are not working in the south. You have to go north where people love hockey.”

Bettman, of course, responded like a petulant child.

“I’m disappointed in those remarks,” Bettman told Rogers SportsNet. “Considering the NHL has been operating this team for the past year when Mr. Moyes was supposed to be, I find that disappointing.”

Moyes lost about $300 million on that dog of a franchise and the guy who lied to everyone — everyone! — for an entire year about taking over the operation of the team, says he’s “disappointed.”

The illogical hubris of that remark makes me gag.

2) The Canadian Football League said last week that the B.C. Lions’ 19-12 win over the Montreal Alouettes will stand despite the fact that “mistakes were made by officials as the clock wound down.”

“While the errors were unintentional,” said commissioner Mark Cohon,  “the league’s regret at this incident is deep and profound.”

Odd response. Deep and profound sounds good, but it just doesn’t cut it. Cohon has both teams in Montreal this week. Send them out on the field before the main game starts and replay the final minutes (and perhaps overtime) of last week’s game. That will fix the problem.

Or is the real problem that CFL officiating is lousy and now the league has pretty much admitted it’s lousy? That’s not good.

Of course, there is another problem here. With the crossover playoff rule, if the post-season started today, the B.C. Lions would be in and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Toronto Argos would be out. If those “mistakes” in B.C. cost a team a playoff appearance then, what you have, is a pretty illegitimate league.

(Listen to my complete rant on this issue before the Saskatchewan-Winnipeg game on Sunday at about 2 p.m. CDT. I’ll be on the pre-game show with Roger Currie on 620 CKRM in Regina)

3) The Stefan Lefors quarterback experiment in Winnipeg is over for the season — and it just might be over period.

The 3-6 Bombers put their former starting quarterback on the nine-game injured list on Thursday because of recurring pain in his non-throwing shoulder. He might undergo surgery.

Guess I was wrong. Stefan Lefors wasn’t the second coming T.J. Rubley. Sadly, he wasn’t good enough — or unbreakable enough — to be the second coming of T.J. Rubley.

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Bombers Lose. It’s Becoming a Habit. But it’s Fixable.

Posted on September 9, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Last Sunday afternoon in Regina, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were drilled 29-14 by the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

I must admit, I thought the Bombers would win. I thought the team that played in B.C. one week earlier was the real Bombers. That team won 37-10. This past week’s team didn’t look like the real Bombers. It looked like some absurd, talentless, faux Bombers.

Oh well, here’s the deal: When you have six turnovers and the other team has one, you lose. More often than not, you get clobbered. The Bombers got clobbered.

However, until the fourth quarter disaster — three of the six turnovers came in the final 15 minutes — I watched a team that still had a chance to win. Fact is, the Roughriders might be a 5-4 first-place team, but they aren’t Montreal or Calgary and they  probably aren’t even Hamilton (Boy, that Kevin Glenn has played well, hasn’t he?). The Riders are beatable. They aren’t Grey Cup contenders at all. And with 30,000 crazies at Canad Inns Stadium this week, Winnipeg can certainly win.

We talked about this on The TEAM 1260 in Edmonton this morning. The only team that really doesn’t have a chance to win its post-Labour Day Classic re-match is the Toronto Argos. This is, after all, the CFL. Home teams win a lot and there is no reason to believe Montreal, Edmonton and Winnipeg won’t win at home this week. Toronto, on the other hand, is just a mess and you have to wonder how long head coach Bart Andrus will keep his job.

Now, I’m not naive. I still believe the Bombers must improve at quarterback if they’re ever going to become a .500 football team. But they should win this week.

What happens in Montreal in Week 12, however, is a whole ‘nother deal, but still, if the Bombers are 4-7 with Toronto coming to town on Sept. 26, they’ll make the playoffs. In fact, even with Michael Bishop at quarterback, this looks like a team that will be no worse than  8-10.

Check the schedule. There are a load of home games, and plenty of wins out there.  Just win on Sunday and everything should be fine. Lose, and well…WTF.

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