OT: 2015-2016 Winnipeg Blue Bombers/CFL Off-Season

[Hank Chinaski]

I don't really follow football too much anymore, what are they going to do to address the terrible O-line?

Rarely any quick fixes for that.

Dropping Picard is addition by subtraction. Hopefully Chungh and Goossen continue to improve, and LaPolice develops an offensive scheme that covers up some of the deficiencies on the offensive line. The o-line was poor last year, but Bellefeuille did absolutely nothing to work around it.

 

[nobody important]

A good slot receiver is huge.

Yeah, but Dressler is only 5' 8".

 

[Blitzkrug]

16 games played, almost 1000 yards with trash throwing to him most of the year and 6 TD's. 13.4 yards per catch.

I'll take it. Was hoping they went after him as opposed to Chick. As someone said it gives Willy a safety valve.

I'm a bit concerned since Sasky cut him without blinking, but i do believe he still has it and can be worth every penny of that big contract.

Now what about the o-line?

 

[kylbaz]

Rarely any quick fixes for that.

Dropping Picard is addition by subtraction. Hopefully Chungh and Goossen continue to improve, and LaPolice develops an offensive scheme that covers up some of the deficiencies on the offensive line. The o-line was poor last year, but Bellefeuille did absolutely nothing to work around it.

Thanks. Knew they had some new young guys, was hoping it was going to be better than it was last year. I thought we were going to have a decent team.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Thanks. Knew they had some new young guys, was hoping it was going to be better than it was last year. I thought we were going to have a decent team.

CFL is hard to predict. But the O-Line is going to be ok. We have 4 pieces that I think will work well.

Stanley Bryant was the top FA available last off-season. He was great in Calgary at LT. He had just a so-so year last year, but I expect him to be better with a better scheme. Can be a top end LT. Matthias Goosen in the middle is a guy who keeps getting better. They drafted him #2 overall as a young project. He has been getting better every year. Will be a big improvement in the middle as a good technical blocker. Right beside him is RG Sukh Chung who was solid last year as a rookie. He is a pitbull and will compliment the technical Goosen. At LG they have Patrick Neufeld. Since being acquired he has shown to be a very competent starting guard. Problem has been alot of injury trouble and being miscast as a tackle. He should be able to slide back to his natural guard position this year and perform well.

So it's Bryant - Neufeld - Goosen - Chung - ????. The right tackle is the big question mark. The Bombers have the national depth to bring in an american to play that spot. They failed to find a mid-season one last year after an injury to their projected starter (who's name escapes me at the moment). If they can find a good RT and use a better system our O-Line should be at least average if not good.

 

[BigZ65]

CFL is hard to predict. But the O-Line is going to be ok. We have 4 pieces that I think will work well.

Stanley Bryant was the top FA available last off-season. He was great in Calgary at LT. He had just a so-so year last year, but I expect him to be better with a better scheme. Can be a top end LT. Matthias Goosen in the middle is a guy who keeps getting better. They drafted him #2 overall as a young project. He has been getting better every year. Will be a big improvement in the middle as a good technical blocker. Right beside him is RG Sukh Chung who was solid last year as a rookie. He is a pitbull and will compliment the technical Goosen. At LG they have Patrick Neufeld. Since being acquired he has shown to be a very competent starting guard. Problem has been alot of injury trouble and being miscast as a tackle. He should be able to slide back to his natural guard position this year and perform well.

So it's Bryant - Neufeld - Goosen - Chung - ????. The right tackle is the big question mark. The Bombers have the national depth to bring in an american to play that spot. They failed to find a mid-season one last year after an injury to their projected starter (who's name escapes me at the moment). If they can find a good RT and use a better system our O-Line should be at least average if not good.

Neufeld is a huge weak link. He is a natural tackle miscast as a guard. Some guys make that transition, many don't. This is a huge pet peeve of mine in the CFL, the draft/sign/trade for the guy with the tackle build/skills, if he struggles at tackle he can play guard. That's a 50-50 play IMO and pretty ignorant in regards to the requirements of the different spots on the line. Not a lot of former OL in front offices. Neufeld's shown little in terms of being able to play at any kind of reasonable level consistently. His best stretch of games was at the start of 2014 at right tackle with an American at right guard.

At least the other guys are young. Anyone who can snap the ball to the QB in a timely fashion and at least get in somebody's way is better than Picard. I wasn't a big fan of Bryant's play last season either. I was mildly surprised when he was extended, but it's likely they cut his base pay in exchange for some upfront money tacked onto the 2015 cap. Our OL needs help badly. I'll be disappointed if they don't start the season with 3 imports on the line. There aren't any Canadians available in free agency who are anything but jersey fillers and no one really in the draft that will be available right away on the line.

Also, "QB without great arm strength" Willy?

You thought Marve had a gun, but Willy is lacking?

Willy can drop a pass 60 yards down the field right into a spot. Even Burris can't do that. Willy's got about as good of an arm on both sides of the coin, strength and accuracy, that you're going to find in the CFL. Hopefully he gets a chance to make some reads this year without having to pick snaps off his cleats and then scramble away from a 3 technique or nose who walked through Picard and Neufeld untouched.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Neufeld is a huge weak link. He is a natural tackle miscast as a guard. Some guys make that transition, many don't. This is a huge pet peeve of mine in the CFL, the draft/sign/trade for the guy with the tackle build/skills, if he struggles at tackle he can play guard. That's a 50-50 play IMO and pretty ignorant in regards to the requirements of the different spots on the line. Not a lot of former OL in front offices. Neufeld's shown little in terms of being able to play at any kind of reasonable level consistently. His best stretch of games was at the start of 2014 at right tackle with an American at right guard.

At least the other guys are young. Anyone who can snap the ball to the QB in a timely fashion and at least get in somebody's way is better than Picard. I wasn't a big fan of Bryant's play last season either. I was mildly surprised when he was extended, but it's likely they cut his base pay in exchange for some upfront money tacked onto the 2015 cap. Our OL needs help badly. I'll be disappointed if they don't start the season with 3 imports on the line. There aren't any Canadians available in free agency who are anything but jersey fillers and no one really in the draft that will be available right away on the line.

Also, "QB without great arm strength" Willy?

You thought Marve had a gun, but Willy is lacking?

Willy can drop a pass 60 yards down the field right into a spot. Even Burris can't do that. Willy's got about as good of an arm on both sides of the coin, strength and accuracy, that you're going to find in the CFL. Hopefully he gets a chance to make some reads this year without having to pick snaps off his cleats and then scramble away from a 3 technique or nose who walked through Picard and Neufeld untouched.

Willy has consistently struggled to push the ball downfield. Even with time all of his deep passes tend to come up short with the receivers having to come back to the ball. I comment on what I can see. Willy has never "dropped a passed 60 yards down the field right into a spot". He is good at short and medium throws though. And it's not a big problem with his arm strength, it's just a little weaker than ideal for CFL. And yeah Marve had a huge arm. Could gun it deep and had zip on his balls. His decision making was quite poor though unfortunately.

Neufeld has looked fine at guard, IMO. We'll see. I'm pretty sure that's where he will be. He came to the Bombers as a guard from Sask as far as I know, don't follow CIS. As for Bryant he had a so-so season. But he has shown he can be an elite LT, so another chance with a better system and team is only smart.

 

[BigZ65]

Willy has consistently struggled to push the ball downfield. Even with time all of his deep passes tend to come up short with the receivers having to come back to the ball. I comment on what I can see. Willy has never "dropped a passed 60 yards down the field right into a spot". He is good at short and medium throws though. And it's not a big problem with his arm strength, it's just a little weaker than ideal for CFL. And yeah Marve had a huge arm. Could gun it deep and had zip on his balls. His decision making was quite poor though unfortunately.

Neufeld has looked fine at guard, IMO. We'll see. I'm pretty sure that's where he will be. He came to the Bombers as a guard from Sask as far as I know, don't follow CIS. As for Bryant he had a so-so season. But he has shown he can be an elite LT, so another chance with a better system and team is only smart.

Neufeld started a big chunk of the season before his broke his leg in Regina at right tackle. Watch the playoff game vs Calgary 2012, they had an extra blocker on his outside gap almost every snap to deal with Hughes and Neufeld still got killed on his inside gap repeatedly. He's always been a guy skating on how good he can be, hasn't done it yet. The injuries are a concern too cause he had a pretty horrific tib-fib leg break in Regina.

Willy has hit a ton of deep balls as a Bomber before he's got injured each season and I've never noticed his deep balls to be a problem in any respect. The big problem has been getting the time for the receivers to work downfield with the horrendous OL. If anything his weakness is when they try to go quick game, which is what they had to resort to each of the last two seasons after he was injured and they gave up on the OL being able to block.

Marve was a horrible QB in every respect, his arm was not adequate in any way, strength or accuracy. I watched him in practice, pre-season games and the unfortunate regular season games he had to play in, never saw a gun. He gave some people a wet spot in their shorts cause he could scramble and completed a few miracle passes doing it in Calgary. The game he started here vs Calgary is the most pitiful display of quarterbacking I've seen by a Bomber, and that is saying a lot. He couldn't make a basic throw.

 

[HannuJ]

Willy has consistently struggled to push the ball downfield. Even with time all of his deep passes tend to come up short with the receivers having to come back to the ball. I comment on what I can see. Willy has never "dropped a passed 60 yards down the field right into a spot". He is good at short and medium throws though. And it's not a big problem with his arm strength, it's just a little weaker than ideal for CFL. And yeah Marve had a huge arm. Could gun it deep and had zip on his balls. His decision making was quite poor though unfortunately.

Neufeld has looked fine at guard, IMO. We'll see. I'm pretty sure that's where he will be. He came to the Bombers as a guard from Sask as far as I know, don't follow CIS. As for Bryant he had a so-so season. But he has shown he can be an elite LT, so another chance with a better system and team is only smart.

think your Willy critique is based more on:
1. really poor offensive schemes i.e. coaching
2. weak O line in Willy's first year
3. lots of sacks based on point 1, which made point 2 seem like a weakness last year (when it probably wasn't as bad as it seemed)

 

[Hank Chinaski]

Willy has consistently struggled to push the ball downfield. Even with time all of his deep passes tend to come up short with the receivers having to come back to the ball. I comment on what I can see. Willy has never "dropped a passed 60 yards down the field right into a spot". He is good at short and medium throws though. And it's not a big problem with his arm strength, it's just a little weaker than ideal for CFL. And yeah Marve had a huge arm. Could gun it deep and had zip on his balls. His decision making was quite poor though unfortunately.

Arm strength isn't just pushing the ball deep downfield, though. Willy throws with tremendous velocity on short and medium routes, and more importantly, he throws those passes with good RPMs and makes it easy to catch. He's not what you'd call a great deep thrower, but not a bad one either. He's dropped his fair share of 55-60 yard passes (if you're counting width of the field) into a bucket.

Bottom line, he can capably make every single throw you'd expect from a CFL QB.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Not gonna quote everything that was responded to.

I like Willy alot. He does struggle with the throws deep down the field though. The come up short pretty much every single time. The time excuse doesn't cut it here, even with time they come up short. He is a quality CFL QB though and is very good with his reads and all other passes. I have no problems with Willy as a starting QB. The O-Line was a problem but he had plays where he had time obviously.

Marve had a really strong arm and could run. He couldn't make any good decisions though. Was not a good QB, albeit maybe could still have had upside, but meh whatever. He is gone, who cares.

Neufeld was starting as tackle yes BigZ. Where was not good. That's what I originally stated. But when he has been in at guard he is much better. He is a fine unspectacular guard. We got two good guys in Goosen and Chung in the middle of the line, IMO, so having one just decent guy is ok. Starting 3 internationals on the line is way too big a handicap to even think about starting a season like that.

 

[Hank Chinaski]

Thanks. Knew they had some new young guys, was hoping it was going to be better than it was last year. I thought we were going to have a decent team.

There was actually a decent team hidden behind that 5-13 record. Maybe not Grey Cup contenders, but definitely a 0.500 team.

If you want to keep it really simple, you could narrow it down to five things that killed them last season:

-bad special teams
-bad playcalling from Bellefeuille
-abysmal kicking game
-Willy's injury and having no real backup until Nichols was acquired
-questionable game management at times from O'Shea

There were other issues for sure, but those were by far the most crippling. I expect they'll be much better this season.

 

[Blitzkrug]

It should be noted you can also mask a crappy o-line if you have a coaching staff with brains.

Call more QB rollouts, bootlegs, etc and the league worst o-line becomes a below average o-line. We now have a offensive co-coordinator that has more than a single digit IQ so i imagine things will be better.

Though i imagine the heat is going to get turned up on that whole front office if they somehow don't show at least some improvement.

 

[BigZ65]

Not gonna quote everything that was responded to.

I like Willy alot. He does struggle with the throws deep down the field though. The come up short pretty much every single time. The time excuse doesn't cut it here, even with time they come up short. He is a quality CFL QB though and is very good with his reads and all other passes. I have no problems with Willy as a starting QB.

Marve had a really strong arm and could run. He couldn't make any good decisions though. Was not a good QB, albeit maybe could still have had upside, but meh whatever. He is gone, who cares.

Neufeld was starting as tackle yes BigZ. Where was not good. That's what I originally stated. But when he has been in at guard he is much better. He is a fine unspectacular guard. We got two good guys in Goosen and Chung in the middle of the line, IMO, so having one just decent guy is ok. Starting 3 internationals on the line is way too big a handicap to even think about starting a season like that.

I think the bigger handicap is having your franchise QB outright injured or otherwise compromised. The Bombers have enough NI's on D to start 3 imports on the OL. And if you're going to have a spot that's a little weaker than you would like, let it be a spot in the secondary, not the guy responsible for gaps that are a straight line to your QB.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

I think the bigger handicap is having your franchise QB outright injured or otherwise compromised. The Bombers have enough NI's on D to start 3 imports on the OL. And if you're going to have a spot that's a little weaker than you would like, let it be a spot in the secondary, not the guy responsible for gaps that are a straight line to your QB.

They brought in a lot of internationals at OL last year, in fact often started 3. Didn't help. Proper system, starting Goosen, moving Neufeld to guard where he should be and getting a good player for RT and the oline will be fine. Neufeld is fine at LG where he has some help. He just couldn't be out on the island at tackle and handle it. That's fair very very few nationals manage to succeed at tackle.

 

[BigZ65]

It should be noted you can also mask a crappy o-line if you have a coaching staff with brains.

Call more QB rollouts, bootlegs, etc and the league worst o-line becomes a below average o-line. We now have a offensive co-coordinator that has more than a single digit IQ so i imagine things will be better.

Though i imagine the heat is going to get turned up on that whole front office if they somehow don't show at least some improvement.

Still need to block someone on a rollout, which was truly the biggest problem for guys like Picard and Neufeld. Often times moving the pocket is even more difficult when you're playcalling with a OL that is not only technically bad, but lacking physical ability. You get them in space and widen the gaps for the defense, once your QB is off-tackle he's a runner. Unless you have guys who can execute, rolling the QB ain't gonna help against the blitz coming from anywhere, which is the Jones/Steinhauer zone blitz that's killed the Bombers the last couple years. Helps more against a 4 man rush.

 

[BigZ65]

They brought in a lot of internationals at OL last year, in fact often started 3. Didn't help. Proper system, starting Goosen, moving Neufeld to guard where he should be and getting a good player for RT and the oline will be fine. Neufeld is fine at LG where he has some help. He just couldn't be out on the island at tackle and handle it. That's fair very very few nationals manage to succeed at tackle.

You still have to block 1 on 1 anywhere on the line. He struggles bad with that part of it. The island part of it wasn't the problem, it's the straight up take on the guy in front of you part. He's a good athlete.

I'd argue that they have the same problem with import OL as they do with non-imports. They bring in guys who are tackles and try to convert them into interior guys. Selvish Capers isn't a guard, and it's a completely different game. The interior guys need to engage a lot more physically and keep a block longer, you've got to get leverage off the snap and hold leverage to win the play, or at least tie if you're on OL. The outside guys can give up a lot more space before they are really in trouble and it's become more about speed and agility in the zone blocking/spread offenses.

 

[kylbaz]

What about that Moore who they are letting walk? Was he any good? I mean is Dressler going to be that huge of an upgrade letting Moore walk?

 

[Ducky10]

What about that Moore who they are letting walk? Was he any good? I mean is Dressler going to be that huge of an upgrade letting Moore walk?

Moore was good, problem was that he was rarely healthy.

 

[gbill2004*]

CFL is hard to predict. But the O-Line is going to be ok. We have 4 pieces that I think will work well.

Stanley Bryant was the top FA available last off-season. He was great in Calgary at LT. He had just a so-so year last year, but I expect him to be better with a better scheme. Can be a top end LT. Matthias Goosen in the middle is a guy who keeps getting better. They drafted him #2 overall as a young project. He has been getting better every year. Will be a big improvement in the middle as a good technical blocker. Right beside him is RG Sukh Chung who was solid last year as a rookie. He is a pitbull and will compliment the technical Goosen. At LG they have Patrick Neufeld. Since being acquired he has shown to be a very competent starting guard. Problem has been alot of injury trouble and being miscast as a tackle. He should be able to slide back to his natural guard position this year and perform well.

So it's Bryant - Neufeld - Goosen - Chung - ????. The right tackle is the big question mark. The Bombers have the national depth to bring in an american to play that spot. They failed to find a mid-season one last year after an injury to their projected starter (who's name escapes me at the moment). If they can find a good RT and use a better system our O-Line should be at least average if not good.

The RT is Jace Daniels. He was very good until getting injured last season.

 

[AngelicAssassin*]

The RT is Jace Daniels. He was very good until getting injured last season.

Jace Daniels has been extended. Do we have any chance of competing for the services of a Josh Bourke or Corey Watman.


Or for that matter guys like Ted Laurent, Courtney Stephen or Justin Capicciotti that could really help our D?


Signing a veteran receiver is fine but I don't feel like that was our most glaring area of weakness and the NCAA will be loaded with guys not drafted and unable to get a shot with an NFL club.

 

[bustamente]

Just a few thoughts while i like Neufeld i don't know if he can be trusted to stay healthy and for that reason alone i hope they bring in a least 2 nationals to compete for that position.As for Willy's arm in terms of throwing long he does not have not strongest arm but he also didn't get much time to throw, plus how many times in a game do you need to throw 50 yards passes. Short, medium throws and occasionally a long one complemented by a good running game and Willy will shine, of course his line will have to keep upright.

 

[Do or Die]

Given, that we have given up about 130 sacks, the last two years...

I am cutting the QB a bit of slack here...

 

[sully1410]

Wait. we let Nick Moore walk?

 

[Holden Caulfield]

Wait. we let Nick Moore walk?

FA isn't for a bit, but yeah. Just couldn't stay on the field.