Episode Podcast Transcriptions 7 of The Markcast® podcast talking about the CFL, XFL, USFL and other “alt-football” news, stories, insights, commentary and more!!!

Episode transcriptions 7 of The Markcast®. The Markcast® is a sports-centric podcast, covering the CFL, XFL, USFL and other alternative football leagues. Tune in for the latest CFL, XFL, USFL and alt-football news. Episodes are listed in the order they were recorded. *Please excuse any spelling or typographical errors.

CFL 2023 Week 18 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 18, What Did We Learn?

Well here we are. Happy Markcast Tuesday. Hope everyone had a great Canadian Thanksgiving. It's been a trying weekend here. We're going to get through everything today. The events of the cfl weekend, I'm about four hours away from getting on the plane to Vegas, so that'll be good. Cracking the opener here in Vegas. So Mariner season and a cfl and BC Alliance successfully gotten us through here the hockey season, so the cfl can't hurt me anymore here, BC Alliance, everything else. We have the crew here. So I was thinking about this when I was in high school and this was probably out of your guys' age bracket. Screamo was really big and there was a band called Thursday and they had a song called Understanding in a Car Crash. And so I think that that is kind of what we will work through today. Understanding in the car crash there was Winnipeg at BC Lions and Jason, how are you doing? Doing good, Reid. Thanks for having me today and ready to talk some football. Evan texting me this morning. Internet issues we're all resolved here. Evan, how are you been? You're a BC fan as well. Yeah, I mean obviously we will get into the thick of it soon, but yeah, I mean very unfortunate circumstance there on Friday in the Winnipeg BC game. I think we can all agree that game probably stands out more than any out of the slate this weekend, but yeah, we'll get into that. Jason, did you have a good Canadian Thanksgiving? It's weird, it's like a Monday. I was talking with Dorothy about this. Most people, even if Thanksgiving's a Thursday, you take off Friday and you have the long weekend, how is it here? Back up at it today. It was really good. I mean it's weird. Some people have their dinner on the Sunday. That's what my family does. And then we just happened to get the Monday off, so yeah, enjoyed the day off yesterday and watched a crappy cfl game. Well I was, yeah, you had the day off. So did I think the Ottawa Red Blacks, I don't know if they were aware of this here. I was sitting there because Sunday was really good football ride and we had everything going on with the Cowboys 49 ERs and N F L and my favorite thing in the world is to watch Skip, cry over the cowboys and watch Stephen a kind of all that stuff. And I thought, well, I'll record the game, but I'm going to sit down, let me sit down. I'm going to watch this Alouette game, but let me kind of get through all of my morning talk shows. And I said, this isn't even, I'm glad. I'm so glad I didn't waste three hours of my life watching this. I watched the highlights and Sean and getting his a hundred stack and all that, but really crazy here. I mean I know Red Blacks, the season's basically done. Jason, were you surprised this was such an egg? Yeah, I mean the last two weeks really, they've just come out completely flat in this matchup. I thought that the first two games between the Ettes and the Red Blacks, the season were very close. They lost by a combined nine points, but to come out so flat the last couple of weeks, just very disheartening. You thought at the beginning of the season that this season may have been a little bit different for the Red Blacks, but unfortunately much the same. Yeah, their season was done and they were kind of already out of everything and this just kind of cemented that kind of pad. Owlettes. Ross, you're here. Evan, you were traveling and I saw a photo. You said They had the game on your plane, what was going on? Yeah, had a live TV on my plane, which I didn't expect. And they had C b s SportsNet, so I got the Red Blacks game. Of course by the time we were in the air the game was nearly over. But yeah, overall this one, yeah, really not much to say. Ottawa just didn't really turn up and unfortunately for them, while they obviously have some good players and they do have some momentum, this is definitely a team where you're looking at possible big changes coming in the off season. And again, there's a lot of people in that building that I respect. But yeah, ultimately it's been a tough slide for Ottawa here. There was a time, I guess it's been a couple months now, which is saying a lot, but a couple months ago there was a time where things did look promising, there was a bit of momentum, but ultimately this team right now only has four wins on the season and they're at a point, it's weird to think that we kind of thought that Edmonton was in the basement and it wasn't going to get any worse, but to be honest, because of the way the season's progressed, you could really make the argument that Ottawa has now become the least fun team to watch. And maybe Calgary too. They're kind of both in that area. All those teams I've just mentioned have four wins. But really Ottawa, I mean your season's already kind of been put away. This game eliminates who I believe and then you just turn up and you pretty much lay an egg. I mean three points, no one really, I don't think anyone was really paying attention to an extent. So it's unfortunate. They've obviously had a lot of struggles this year. A lot of people thought that this was going to be a big year for Ottawa. I thought last year could have been a big year for 'em, but obviously they've been through a lot of unprecedented situations. I guess obviously not having Jeremiah Masol there for a large portion of both of those seasons plays a role, but yeah, I don't know what this team's going to do in the future. I feel like with a team like Calgary who has the same amount of wins and they might be in a conference, a team like that, they've at least had a winning culture for many years and they've gone to the playoffs and you kind of have established success for a team like Calgary. You're entering new territory. But if you're Ottawa, this has kind of been a theme now for a couple seasons and it really feels like you really have to start making some significant changes to get over the hump. Even if you felt like you made significant changes before, that should have gotten you over the hump already, if that makes sense. Well, Yeah, and I feel like, and I want to get Jason's thoughts on this, I don't know, the season to me wasn't lost. I mean we certainly thought that with the Ole and everything, but it felt like there was this momentum here just, and I don't know if this is a Bob Dyson or if they just didn't have enough talent there. What do you attribute to, because Ed said Edmonton seemed lost and now it's like Chris Jones's coach of the year, he played straightforward. I mean this wasn't out of hand until I think of the last month or so. Where do you attribute the falloff to? It's difficult to say because obviously the injuries to the quarterbacks will hurt any team, but I think that considering the situation for a lot of other teams around the league this season, you can't necessarily use that as an excuse. And I think that the troubling thing is the last several years this has happened for the Red Blacks, it seems like we've seen the exact same season play out four years in a row, four seasons in a row, four in the last five years because of the canceled season. So I mean, I don't know exactly what they do. Do they clean House again? I don't think Bob Deiss is a cfl level head coach. He really hasn't proven anything to this point this season. I think that the offense looks lifeless. They don't really have any excitement to them. One thing I wanted to rant about is the fact that they put Nick Arbuckle into this game. What a waste of time. I think that, no disrespect to Nick Arbuckle, but we know who he is in this league right now. And to put him in garbage time, I don't think it really served much of a purpose. If you're going to put someone else in there, put Tyrell Rom, who's their third string guy in there. But I think at the end of the day, I shook my head when I saw that and I think it really epitomizes the decision making that's going on in Ottawa right now. No, I saw that and I saw your tweet and you said, no disrespect, no, I said, no, Jason, you watch every single one of these games. You've covered this league every week. Yeah, say that. Yes. Say that. Voice your opinion on that. It is ridiculous. We know what Arbuckle is. I don't understand that. I don't know how big the Thanksgiving day in the states, the Thanksgiving football is crazy and we've got three games now. I don't know if that holds the same level up there, but if you were sitting around your family to watch this game, unless you're Tim Capper and Cliffy watching this game, I just can't imagine. I think they were doing a fan meetup I saw. I'm sure they had a hell of a time and my team beat up on anyone, but anyone else in the world watching this game would not have been exciting. Evan, anything else? Yeah, I mean I think on the Montreal side of things, which is probably the more positive side, biggest storyline from this game, I think for everybody across the cfl was Sean Lemon Crossing a hundred Sacks in his career, an incredible accomplishment. You're up there with guys like Charleston Hughes and a couple others. But yeah, nice to see Sean Lemon get his hundredth career sack, especially because it took him a bit to get signed. He came into the season as a free agent. He was with Calgary last year and they opted not to bring him back, which I find to be a very interesting decision given that this is looking to be the first year where Calgary isn't in the playoffs in X many years. Very interesting decision to not bring Sean Lemon back. I get that he's old, but he went to Montreal and he's been, I mean, a sack God essentially since he's arrived there, for lack of a better term. So yeah, good to see Sean Lemon. A couple other things, Cody Fido wasn't an amazing game, but he completed 28 of 32 passes, which I thought was extremely impressive. Even if he didn't have a ton of yards, didn't have a ton of touchdowns, whatever, 28 of 30 twos, that's a really high number. So that stood out to me right off the bat. And then someone that's really come into form here late in the season has been Tyson Philpot, not somebody again that we had talked about at large during the season or earlier in the season I suppose, but someone who now is really starting to come into form. And again, just another weapon there in Montreal, they've had so many guys, I think Keon Julian Grant is out with an injury, so maybe this has something to do with it. But like Tyler Snead, obviously we've spoken about Austin Mack a nauseum this season and I think he's an all-star level player. I don't think there's much debate about that. And yeah, ultimately for Montreal this was, I think for them it just kind of felt like business as usual, just getting the job done. We all know this is a team they can be and should be, and they went out there and they did just that. So good for them to get the win on Thanksgiving. And again, good for them to have a player reach a very significant milestone, one of the better players that the league has seen. Yeah, just looking ahead here, I got this schedule, Montreal going into Edmonton feels very winnable there. Ottawa at the Argos. Now this could be the zombie Argos here headed into the playoffs, but it could be interesting there. Yeah, Jason Cody doing good on that. I was just watching the Raiders Packers game last night. Feels a little Jimmy G that way. Okay, I got my little seven yard passes going down the field. Anything else stand out to you about this? Like I said, unless you're hosting the fan event with the Flight Deck podcast, I can't imagine this, was that all leading to anyone else? Yeah, I would argue this is arguably one of the most boring games of the cfl season. I mean, there's definitely some other contenders for that as well, but I would put this game right up there. And in terms of Cody Fado, I think where I am at with him, I think he's kind of like, if you guys are familiar with back in the day, the Andy Dalton scale, where it's like if you have a quarterback that's better than Andy Dalton, then you know, have your guy, if somebody's worse than Andy Dalton, you know, have to get a new quarterback. I think Cody Fudo is that guy in the cfl where he is just that league average starter. And he's not necessarily a high upside guy, but he's not necessarily a low floor kind of guy either. So I mean he does just enough to get this team some wins, but we'll see how he does come playoff time. Yeah, I just had just from Antwon, right? And I was like, oh, what do you make of Cody and everything? He's like, oh yeah, he is kind of a leader. I'm like, okay. I dunno. To me Cody strikes me more as the hoorah yip guy in the locker room, but maybe he just goes out there and plays Evan. Any other thoughts? Cody? Anything else? No. Okay. Well, so let's get into this. So game of the season. I would say thus far here, people wanting to know, well actually no, we got to do this. This guy's coming first. I'm jumping ahead here. No, okay, that's good, that's good. Alright, so what did we make of this? I listened to this game driving home. My whole weekend was to the Thunderer here and we were driving back from BC and I said, oh, let me pull on the six 20 CK or whatever. I'm going to listen to Ballsy on here. So I listened to Michael Ballsy and Luke Melinda call this game. So what did we make of this one? While I get this going here, Jason, we'll go to you first. Well, I mean first of all from the Saskatchewan perspective, what a flat performance after the emotion of the pregame ceremony with the George Reed honoring of him. And I mean, I was just shocked that this team didn't come out with any kind of fire and I thought that given the history of these two teams playing in this stadium, Hamilton had not won since the Rough Fighters opened the new stadium in, I think it was 2016. So I mean historic win for the tie cats from that perspective. But I mean Saskatchewan, I was just so flabbergasted with how they came out and played in this game. And then from the Hamilton perspective, Bo Levi Mitchell, I know he only threw six passes and they took him out of the game for load management purposes, I guess because he suffered two major injuries already this year. They want to just get his feet wet, but he looked really good in this game. I mean, he had a great completion to Tim White had a couple of other nice throws as well. So that's really promising to see from the TCATs perspective. And then Matthew Schultz looked really good when he came into the game as well. So maybe this one two punch a quarterback could work if Bo's not having it that day. Maybe Shilts can come into the game and win a playoff game for us, but I think at the end of the day, the TCAs are starting to build some positive momentum. I think they've won Five of their last seven games or six of their last eight games or something like that. Their only losses being to Toronto over that stretch. So some real positive momentum being building in Hamilton. Yeah, if you want to talk about that, this scares me, this BC going in, we will talk bc, but Hamilton came in and cleaned your clock at home the other way. So certainly on that. Yeah, I will say listening like the George Reed of it all, I saw more people and we've been talking on here for weeks calling for Dickinson's head and this team's flat and we need change more. So everything after this, I mean talking about Lane and they get home, Hamilton coming in. I will say though, we give him crap, but I thought Michael Ball, I don't listen to Sports Cage where he's probably doing a lot more controversial stuff, but calling the game I thought was fine. I like Luke, he's been on the show as well. So I think that that's a good situation there. I know we give Michael Michael Ball a lot that crap on here, but I thought that at least for the home team, if you're a Saskatchewan fan listening to that, Evan, did you catch any of this game A bit? Yeah, I mean, here's the thing for me. So I expected Hamilton to win this game and I understand that there was a lot of emotion surrounding Saskatchewan. Obviously a lot of things happening lately, a lot of things to be honored, et cetera. But I expected Hamilton to win this game. Just thought that right now they looked like the better team. And yeah, this might've been, again, one of their most complete performances of the season just feels like even with their somewhat change, it feels like they're getting better too. Down the stretch, as Jason pointed out, Bo Levi even limited action looked much better than he did at the beginning of the season and he wasn't playing much then either. Injuries plagued him and it's kind of surprising that he's playing it all again this season. But they put him in there and he looked very good in limited action and then Matthew Schultz came in after that and looked honestly even better besides the one interception. I mean, he had an outstanding game, was definitely ready to go again. So yeah, a lot of things there in Hamilton. I mean the other thing would be James Butler going over a thousand yards on the season. I was very surprised, I forget what the specific year was, but I think it was Hamilton's first thousand yard rusher in like 10 years or more than 10 years. 2010, Yep. So yeah, 13 years. I was really surprised by that. But good for James, obviously that one means a lot to me personally, having connected with James over the years and very good guy, well deserving of that, really nice to see him carve this new career out in the cfl. A lot of people don't know, but he was in Saskatchewan at one point before he really, I mean that was even before the xfl, that was 2019. He was in Saskatchewan. A lot of people don't know about that. So this was kind of a revenge game for him in a way. But the real story here that kind of came out of nowhere on the Hamilton side was Omar Bayless. Now a lot of people don't know this either, but Omar Bayless in 2019, he was second in the nation in the US in receiving yards behind Jamar Chase here at L SS U. And of course he was in Arkansas State, so G five program, it might not be the same, but spent some time with Carolina, Kansas City and then didn't even, that was a name that I hadn't heard in a while. I didn't even realize he was in Hamilton. And then here he comes into this game and has two touchdowns. So that was good to see from him a little bit of a boost at the end of the season. And then, yeah, I mean Saskatchewan, it was kind of ironic because Saskatchewan fell flat in a lot of areas where they don't, but the one area where I criticized them, I guess to an extent over the course of the season was their run game and saying that they really couldn't get the ball going on the ground and that was a detriment. That was the reason that I don't think that they could be in a lot of games that they otherwise might have a chance in. But in this one, Jamal Morrow comes back and has 120 yards in a touchdown, but the rest of the offense doesn't really muster up anything. And unfortunately for them, yeah, I mean that was it. I didn't expect them to lose this badly. Again, I projected Hamilton to win, but 38 to 13 was not a score on my bingo card. So that's very unfortunate. Again, obviously for Saskatchewan, given the circumstances, you could argue that this might've been the most emotional game of their season, even though they've obviously had a couple of other big performances and games that maybe mattered more. Look back at the Banjo Bowl, things like that. But yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with that. Yeah, I saw, we have a comment here, stop playing. I kind of agree with that. It's like you're still, I can't remember who, if it was, was it Aro? Someone tweeted out that they think that on the west you should be able to have Trey Ford and just a bunch of leftover players that kind of do an all-star team to be that third spot in the West because there's not, I mean, Jason, what are we doing here? I mean, riders are going, we'll talk bc, but riders are going to go into BC place and get their clocks cleaned. What are we looking at here for a semis? I mean it could be Calgary, I mean against all odds because Calgary and Saskatchewan play on Friday. Calgary wins that game and that game, by the way, is at McMahon Calgary wins that game. They're only a game behind in the win column, but they're actually even in the lost column. And Calgary has three games left to play. Saskatchewan only has two. So I mean it's very realistic that Calgary could end up getting that seed, that third seed against all odds. But how do you have any competence in either of these teams right now? This has to be the saddest playoff race I've ever seen since I've started watching the cfl. Yeah, no, it's kind of a weird schedule here the last couple weeks. And then you have, where was I looking at it here? This Hamilton, Montreal, and then could be back to back here going into the semi. It's just kind of a weird scheduling coming out of that. Yeah, the bow leave. I have it Jason, because I was listening to the game they had on their new alt ones that they have the Tiger, they have that because Ballsy was having a hell of a time. Okay, who's in the game now? I think the numbers don't, I don't think it's a dark enough contrast with the gray. Yeah, Bo was in and then they put in Matthew Shilts and they're like, go Bo Levi Mitchell with a crazy rundown the field. And then they're like, oh wait, that's not Bo. That's not Bo, that's Matthew Schultz. I thought, yeah, Bo was just picking up and running 20 yards down the field. How did you think Bo looked? Evan I think texted the group like, oh, did Bo get hurt or Bo's at? I was like, no, it sounded like it was planned here. What did you make of that? As Tim Capper checking in, Tim, we celebrated your outlets go back talking about the fan event and everything else. So Jason, what did you make of Bo? Well, I mean it was a very short appearance obviously, but I think this is the best we've seen from Levi Mitchell in honestly a couple of years. He looked very sharp, the ball was popping out of his hands. He looked like he had the arm strength necessary to make those throws and that touchdown to Omar Bais was very nice. And I have a little story about Omar Bais as well. My best friend actually, he works for Bell, a big telecom company up here in Canada and he actually set up Omar Bail's internet the other week. So pretty cool connection to the TCATs there. But yeah, Bo I thought looked pretty good and we'll have to see a larger sample size. I'm really interested to see if he gets the full game against BC on Friday. The first pass is almost intercepted, so let's be fair. Or at least it sounded like, again, I'm listening to it, driving down the road, but like, oh, Beau Levi, and yeah, then he settled down. Evan thought to this, I mean we like Shilts and Beau coming back and I dunno, Shilts has gotten the tie counts in this position. We've kind of had this debate, but now that Bo's back playing, what do you make? Yeah, well it's interesting. Hamilton might be the only team in the cfl where they could be comfortable starting three different quarterbacks. Not a lot of teams have that luxury. I mean even Toronto, like Brian Scott, obviously we love him, but there's a bit of a question mark on that. Yeah, you've got Chad Kelly. Yeah, you've got Cameron Dukes, but I mean having three quarterbacks there in Hamilton that could start obviously Taylor Powell being the third guy. Again, that's a real luxury that you don't see very often. Not something that I really expected from a team like this, but again, that gives Hamilton a lot of options moving forward. And I know we talked last week about is it good to switch up the quarterback situation or should they have just rolled with Powell? I was kind of on the side that they should have just rolled with Powell, but I mean you look at what Levi and Matt Shilts did in the game this weekend and it's like, well maybe there is something there that you can build off of. I think a lot of us had written off Bo Levi Mitchell, myself included. Again, I was very surprised that he's playing again this season, but clearly came in, he was ready to go, he was fired up and I don't know, again, he was on a Snapchat, it was limited. So I don't know, is that an accurate projection of what he'd look like if you started him for a whole game? I don't know. I still feel like Shilts is a bit of a safer option right now because he's been there for a bit going back to last year, he kind of knows things and obviously we've seen him in some capacity this season. Again, he got injured pretty early on too, but we know who Matt Shilts is. He played in Montreal for some time too, so I don't know. It'll be very interesting to see how Hamilton kind of uses that. Of course in the past you got to think we're talking about one guy, but they've used two guys in the past. Jeremiah, Maoli, Dane Evans, they've kind of bounced between the two at times when they had both of those options. So that's kind of a new storyline that's opened up here for me as well. Definitely interested to see over the course of the next couple weeks if you're Hamilton maybe, I don't know if you're really at the point where you feel comfortable experimenting or if you just want to go off the momentum, but definitely maybe some decisions to be made there. We will see. Yeah, Jason, I think Blake, right? You're N F L co-hosts here. Feel bad for your tag hats. We're going to lose about 20 plus points here. We're a little bit of crap talking. Jason, anything else? This one, the shilts of it all. I mean you're the tie cat guy. I feel pretty good right now. Yeah, for sure mean and another big development I think is the defense is starting to play a lot better. I mean this was probably the worst defense in the cfl the first half of the season, but they've changed some stuff up. I think they've maybe changed some stuff up scheme wise, and I think they're starting to look really good on that side of the ball. Jager Davis against All Odds has came back after that voided trade with Calgary earlier this season. I think he had a partially Torre meniscus, so he rehabbed that game back on the field with the TCAs and I think he's playing his ass off out there even though he doesn't have a sack yet this season. I mean, I think he's really making an impact the last couple of weeks getting a lot of pressure on the quarterback. So I think the defense is another positive sign for the TCAs. Still kind of getting ready for the buzz side here that is the Argos, but could be interesting. I mean I think whatever happens this East Semi has to be more exciting than whatever's going to go on in the west. I mean it's just really disappointing. Jason, are you, I don't know, given the expectations where that we were at the beginning of the season. Are we good sitting at third here with a chance to get in? Yeah, I guess I'm kind of relieved how this season's turned out because it certainly could have been worse. I think that at 1.0 and three to start the season, so we finally this week just got back to 500 for the first time this season, a big chance this week to potentially finish the season strong and get a winning record. So I think at the end of the day it's going to come down to if they can beat Montreal on the road, that's going to be a tough task. Montreal's kind of owned the TCATs recently, so I'm very interested to see how that game plays out. And like you said, it's going to be much more interesting than what's going to happen out west, but I think at the end of the day it's going to be interesting. So they have a week 20 buy And Montreal as well, so Nothing like the double bias in the 19 league. Evan, anything else that this one we'll get to bc Winnipeg? I don't think so, although, I mean I do find it interesting how the last thing I'll add I guess is yeah, Hamilton started oh and three and it seems like they do that every year. They kind of put themselves in a hole and they climb back out. And this season I didn't think they'd do it. I didn't think that they had the capacity to do it, but as Jason's pointed out, they've changed a couple of things, made some adjustments, and now this team really does look like a proper playoff team. Again, we'll see going into Montreal, whatever how that turns out. But I feel like they have a good chance. I am kind of pulling for Hamilton here late in this season And I don't know, I mean I think Orlando probably protects his job here. You just kind of good enough. And I think a lot of the N F L teams kind of get away with that too, where there's really only so many contenders and well we were good enough, I was watching that was it the Raven Steelers game over the weekend and they were showing Harbaugh and Tomlin's sitting there talking. I'm like, you guys, the boats just kind of wallowed in like yeah, we're just good enough here for the last, I know Harbaugh's a great coach, but you know what I mean. Steelers have had a winning record for the last 15 years or whatever under Mike Tomlin like, okay, that's cool. So anyway, so let's get to this and I want to get your guys' thoughts, then I'll get into whatever. But driving up, going up to Vancouver, people always like, well, why don't you go up here more often? We left at two 40, we drove directly to our hotel and checked in at 6 45, so four hour drive, it's not as easy as people ran across the street and got to the gamma about 7 0 5, so missed the first drive with all of that. And then traffic coming home Saturday, we trying to get through the border with a Canadian holiday and then everything else really, really crazy. Ended up having to go sneak through the duty free shop and buy vodka so that we could cut the line. Quite a memorable weekend for lots of different reasons, but I'll defer to you guys first. Jason, what did we make of this game of the season and just overall thoughts and then we'll get into the minutia. Yeah, it's weird because I thought that BC was probably the better team for a large portion of this game, but Winnipeg just showed the heart of a champion down the stretch and BC just showed that they were not ready for the moment when it came down, was able to put things together and just, they had this one play Farhan was talking about on the broadcast where they would fake it to Olivea and then throw a quick pass out to the flat and BC just had no answer for that play. They would run it over and over and over again. So I mean I don't think BC made the adjustments on the defensive side late in the game and the offense just stalled completely in the second half. Yeah, I dunno. It really felt like BC owned it for a long time. Evan, thoughts on this? Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot. I mean, first of all, just the stakes in this game can't be overlooked mean, we talked about this from week one. There was going to be a scenario like this at some point in the season where someone really had to make the statement and someone really had to take control or take advantage of the situation to really come out as the dominant team and BC they were so close, they were so close, but it was just these one or two little things. And then if that ends up, if it really ends up being their season, which again, right now this is the regular season game. Yes, the stakes were still high, but you're not eliminated from anything. You still have some football to play, there's still some things to build off of so it's not over, but we all know how this makes things look in terms of standings and playoffs, seating, everything like that. This was supposed to be BC's game and I mean you were the one that was there in person Reid, but from what it sounded like and from what I heard and everything like that, from what I saw, I guess it looked like a very good turnout. People understood the significance of this game and I'm sure there might've been a decent amount of Winnipeg fans there too, given again, it goes both ways, but man, where do I even begin? I could talk about the botched third down call, which that's very controversial. We see that happen in the N F L I think a lot now where I guess you'd say ref interference maybe plays a role. Me personally, I don't like to blame any game on the ref. I feel like if you're going to put an entire game on one decision, that could have gone either way. The reality is the team probably could have done more to begin with and I feel like BC was in that position, they could have capitalized on more, especially in the second half. I kind of felt like they came out and maybe they just got too comfortable. They kind of thought they had things in the bag, but Winnipeg is not the team that you want to get comfortable against, that's for sure. And that really showed that last play. I don't know who the receiver was, but when they were running obviously Dominic. Yeah, yep. Rhymes. Yeah, very interesting decision to not go down and just clock it and take a field goal and then that's it, right? Because I mean they had it. I go back and I look at that play and obviously the smart decision is to take a knee or just slide and then take the field goal. And I know you were very vocal about that, Reid, but I mean it's almost crazy to me how we were a couple yards away from a walk-off touchdown in the CFL's, arguably biggest game of the season. I mean it was a couple yards by the time that clock hit triple zero. So yeah, there's a lot, again, a lot to go over. You can look at the third down call where it initially looked like Vernon had it, the ref stepped in and said, no, you don't stop. Winnipeg gets the ball and then inevitably ties it up with a field goal. I just think the one thing that I can't stop thinking about, and this is a more general thing, I mean I just went over a lot of specific plays, a lot of specific moments, BC's lack of, I guess you could say enthusiasm in the second half again, kind of getting a bit more comfortable. Put all that aside. I think the one thing here that really stands out, and I brought it up I think on the show last week if I recall correctly, but BC with I don't know how many, looks like less than 50 yards rushing. I don't know where's the ground game? This is a game where again, I was saying you really want to establish another element to your offense. Yes, I get Vernon can throw, he had another 350 yard passing game with a passing touchdown, he can move the ball. We get that. There's no need to prove that anymore. But I'm looking at Taquan Maisel six carries for 23 yards and you're averaging less than four every time you touch the ball, that's not going to cut it the game of the year. And I've been saying about that with certain teams bc, Saskatchewan, you're not going to win games when your offense only has that one element to it. Yes, it's fun to watch BC air it out and have these big passes. We all know Vernon loves to take those deep shots down the field and again, I just pointed out he had another 350 yard game, another a hundred yard receiver, we get it, they're good in that department, we don't need to see that anymore. But what I really needed to see was a bit more of the ground game. And I'm not asking for much, I don't need Maisel to go off and have a hundred yards and I get that they have a very past focused offensive strategy which you might want to have in the cfl compared to anywhere else, but you just got to have a bit more than that. You got to have a bit more than that in a game that's so important. And then you go to Winnipeg where if you look at their run game like Brady, olive, Oliveira had a slower day by his standards but still had 67 yards and a touchdown and average over six yards of carry, which is extremely efficient. And that goes without saying even their second rusher Dakota op who's a quarterback had 5.6 yards per carry and was very efficient with limited work. So I think that's the main thing for me above all is I'm not going to say that the reason that BC couldn't run the ball was the sole reason that they lost this game, but this was really an opportunity for them to show another part of their offense and give fans more confidence in that area. But they didn't and you could definitely contribute that to I think a reason as to why they were unable to finish this game. Yeah, it was interesting. So good crowd, not great crowd. I think I saw the attendance was 24, 22, 20 4,000 good BC places, just enormous. They're going in. We were looking at the capacity there, but it was interesting. Matt Baker had gotten us tickets and great seats and were 50 yard line. It was awesome. And kind of in our section it felt to me like there was a mix. You had kind of the old school cfl guys and there was a guy there with his dad that was describing the plays. I don't know if he was kind of hard of scene or whatever, you could tell kind lifelong season ticket holders. And then the people on the other side of us I think had won tickets to the giveaway and so they were like, oh yeah, we went to the CFO a couple years ago or we haven't been forever. Like, okay, is this a playoff game? What's going on? I think there was a lot of, I think Baker and the b e c team had done a good job trying to get the word out of how important this game was, if that makes sense. Because even after the game we were talking with people at the restaurant, they're like, oh God is BC out now, what's going on? It's like, well no, but this was kind of the season because we wanted the home field advantage, all that stuff. Great game like you said, felt like BC really keeping Winnipeg limiting the damage early on. If we're looking at the points here, second half Vernon kind of disappeared on that. But yeah, the two things that stood out to me was obviously, and if I'm remembering it was the second, and this is from the game last night, but it brings up my point when Vernon was rushing, I think it was the second down Jason and then the third down we got stopped and clearly I went back and looked at the, even just on my phone, whatever clearly gets the first down, it's spotted shore, then we go for it third and short and then obviously we don't get it, but there has to be. And last night we had the Green Bay game where you can see and they go back and review it talking with Farhan and obviously I wasn't watching the game with his commentary but talking with him afterward and he's going to be on the show this week, so we'll kind of talk through all that stuff as well. But you need to have a booth review there. You need to have a booth review. This is the biggest game of the year. You need to be able to have that. He clearly got it and then you go out and you do the third and short. Okay, we definitely should have had that, but you shouldn't have even been put in that situation. And then the Dominic Rimes thing of it all, you have to know the rules, you have to know that you can get down. And it felt to me it was earlier this year was the Edmonton game where they gave up the rouge or whatever and they didn't know, I can't even remember one of the receivers. You have to know that you need to go down there and you need to have, your coaches need to tell you, and I don't know if that's on Rick or Wet, but if you catch the ball you need to go down because it was a chip shot field goal at that point. Sean White had been automatic all day. I don't understand what the deal was there and why. I mean to me that's the game. And then you go into overtime and Winnipeg comes out, I think I saw the stat where Michael Chase, they've opted to take the ball first, whatever, and they're five in one in terms of overtime of taking the game. Rick Campbell, we defer, they get the eight, we don't get anything and we're sitting there in the stands and we're like, this game should have been over 20 minutes ago. I mean it was really frustrating. Jason, what did you make of that? Because the rhymes not going down. I mean yes, there's a million things to go into it, but I mean that really did cost the game For sure. And I mean at the end of the day somebody deserves blame for that, whether that's the coaching staff or not, insisting that if this happens, that this very scenario happens, you have to get down and because there's likely going to be time left on the clock because any other scenario, the receiver's going to be trying to get as many yards as possible. But yeah, you need to know the time, the situation of the game, the magnitude of the situation. And Ryan's just simply had a brain fart in that situation, ran out the rest of the clock, and then in overtime the exact same fate that the lions suffered was actually what Hamilton suffered against the bombers in the Great Cup when Winnipeg got the ball, first scored the touchdown plus the two point conversion and then Hamilton had the interception right away on their first possession of overtime. So I mean not necessarily surprised. I think that it's interesting with the strategy that teams deploy in terms of the overtime rules, they always tend to try to defer to the second possession. But it happens to, like you said, I think that most of the time the team that gets the ball first actually ends up winning. So it's kind of weird how the strategy's been different with that, but I think at the end of the day just a missed opportunity for bc. Yeah, I get that. Okay, let's see what they do and then we know we got to score here. But yeah, I think the other way I think going out is the aggressor BC's defense is gassed at that point. Let's give them a few minutes to kind of regroup there. It was a couple of weeks ago and it was the chiefs in Jets game where Mahomes got the first down slid short of the goal line and they were able to run the clock out and that Emmanuel OCHO whatever was like, I can't, Patrick Mahome is so smart knowing I'm like top five paid quarterback in the world knows the rule of his sport. This should be the rule, not the exception, but here you go. You have to know the rules, you have to know how it works. And I would not, I don't know how a locker room reacts to that, right? Do you give rhymes a pass or do you not say anything? I do you hold that against him? I don't know. But I do feel like that was the season. I don't see BC going in and winning. We have a lot of comments here talking about Winnipeg running the ball in the cold and it was so frustrating because I know it wasn't the season, but it really felt like the season, Evan. Yeah, I mean I think you said perfectly there is still a lot of football left and anything could happen. I know BC's hungry and I know they've been handed Winnipeg kind of owns them in terms of they've been making all this progress the past couple seasons, but even last year you look at what happened, like Rourke comes back, everything looks good, and then they still get beat. And that was because they were in Winnipeg. I think you can contribute a large portion of, again, Winnipeg winning just because they have that home field advantage. It really is that big of a deal and especially BC has struggled on the road this season at times we know that we've talked about it before. So yeah, we will see what happens. I don't want to count BC out yet. I really don't. I feel like they can finish out the season strong and they will ride into Winnipeg with momentum, but it's still going to be a really big challenge to go into Winnipeg with that team. And we just know how poised and calm and collected that team is. I mean they really are the chiefs of the cfl. I mean yes, there's only nine cfl teams, 32 N F L teams, but I think if you can draw a somewhat direct comparison, bombers are chiefs in the sense that they have a veteran quarterback who just knows and can just get the job done. The second that that game went to overtime, and again couple of things that we talked about here that would've led to a BC win and they wouldn't have had to go in overtime, whatever, you can't change the pass. But the second that game went into overtime, I knew I knew and Winnipeg gets the ball and I'm like, yeah, it's time to turn the TV off. And I did watch, I mean I watched the rest of the game, but I knew sometimes it's too hard to overcome and like you pointed out, defense is gas. If anything you should be getting the ball on offense if you want to win to try and make a statement. I understand that that might not always be the mentality, but I don't know against Winnipeg giving the ball back to him right away. I'm like, no, you can't be doing that. And yeah, they went down there and scored no problem, got the two point conversion and that was all she wrote. So yeah, it's tough if you're bc this is, I don't know how you feel mean this was kind of one of those games where you had prepared for it kind of all season. And it's tough too because there was a time where BC flattened Winnipeg and that game happened obviously a lot earlier in the season, but if you're a BC fan, you almost wish that those two games could be flipped, you know what I mean? And that game could have happened now where they just go out there and drop 50 or whatever and you don't even have to worry about all these weird overtime scenarios and third downs and getting the ball back and all that stuff. Just really, really tough for a team like the Lions and I mean, I don't want to call you out Jason, but I know your N F L team is the Buffalo Bills and the bills I think are in a situation now in the N F L where I almost felt like it last year, but definitely this year more than any, where it's kind of that make or break season, you've been gaining momentum for a long time, you're on the brink of a Super Bowl, you know, have the talent that you can do it or in this case great cup with the lions is the comparison I'm drawing, you're on the brink of a championship, but there's always one or two things in the way that you just can't seem to overcome for one reason or another. And the lions, as much as I want to root for them and we'll continue to do so, I still like the team, I still like what they have. I've been a strong supporter of what they've been doing. Obviously still a couple areas that they could improve in as many other teams could, every team really could do that. But my point being just I don't know, if they can't get over the hump this year, are they going to have that again next year? Are they going to be able to do the same things? I know Buffalo, the team that I'm comparing this to, they have been able to do that year after year after year, win multiple games, go to the playoffs, be in that same position. But I don't know, I feel like it gets to a point where you really are at a crossroads and even if you do have the same personnel and you are able to carry that into next season, you just kind of lose a lot of mental focus. I think you have to keep telling yourself, okay, we have to get over this. And I know there's just so many times where it's like you work and I see it too much where a team works for something the whole season and yes, every game matters, but some are going to matter more than others and then they end up with the same result time after time after time and it's just like how many years can you put in all that work just to get defeated in such a key moment and then it doesn't amount to anything. So I know that sounds very grim, I don't want to make this sound sad or whatever, but that's the reality sometimes in football teams just know other teams better and there's a lot of good teams, but some of them might just never reach that mountain peak. It's a great debate. It's almost would you rather have a losing season and just kind of build from scratch or would you rather have all this momentum and get really excited only to have a knife jabbed into your heart at the end of the season? So again, that's another debate, but that's my thoughts on sort of the general situation. I know a lot of what I just talked about is away from the game itself that was played this weekend, but I know if you're a fan in BC you're kind of thinking about all those things and I wanted to acknowledge that. No, I think this is the window. I mean, like I said, we were talking and I've talked with BC people and obviously kind of on and off air, but it feels like this is the window right now. You kind have this and talking, like you said, going into the overtime and everything, they call it the big, right, the momentum, the second Vernon didn't get that spot. And I know it's all ticky-tacky, but it's like if you're in an argument with Dorothy or something and you say something and then it starts to spiral and you're like, no, I didn't mean that. You just feel like it gets out of hand and you just wish you could pause time, ride and rewind just, oh, can we just get six seconds back here? To me, you have to play the perfect game or a perfect game to beat Winnipeg, especially in these big, and we've seen Winnipeg drop a couple games this season, but you can't, and to me what's crazy is here, the sticking point we've had all year is Vernon, is Vernon the guy or what's going to happen? Vernon played awesome Vernon here and played a damn near perfect game against Winnipeg and their defense. And you saw, and not to go back to the rhymes thing, but they cut to Vernon and you see him just exacerbated because he did it. The spot was on him, it was his time to shine and he did it and he got it. There's nothing more Vernon can do in that point. And so to me that was just amazing about that as well. The many questions we've had about Vernon this year, he really shown to me in the biggest spotlight he's been in so far and it still wasn't enough, if that makes sense. Jason, what do you have? Yeah, I mean, yeah, just to build off Evan's point, the cfl is a very year to year league as it is. So I mean, generally you don't see rosters stay together all too long in the cores of rosters. Winnipeg's is nearing the end as well. They got some really old players over there. So I mean it just so happens that BC and Winnipeg, they've kind of built up at the same time and you can only get so far if you can't beat the top teams in your own division. Talking about Hamilton, yeah, they've went on a hot streak recently, but can they beat Montreal and Toronto? They're a combined, oh, win six versus those teams this season. So at the end of the day, especially in a league like the cfl, there's only one path to go to get to the Great Cup and if you can't beat those top teams, you're not going to go very far. Yeah, it's like they talk in Evan, we were talking about the Chiefs and all that N F L, you're building teams specifically just to beat other teams no matter what happens. And I mean, shoot, we just saw that on Sunday with the Giants and 49 ERs, the Cowboys and 49 ERs, the Cowboys are built to beat the 49 ERs and we saw what happened and it's a good measuring stick of that. And we'll see, I'm going to Vegas tonight with the Kraken and the Golden Knights. We will see how we've done here in terms of that, but frustrating. I obviously, we said the season isn't done yet, but it certainly feels like this was the time, and I just, like Evan said, kind of work it and get back to that point. Are you really doing that again? I don't know. Evan, anything else? I mean, if you want to talk about, well, I'll talk about Vernon specifically real quick. The T s m panelists were saying that this was probably the biggest game of Vernon's career, and I definitely agree with that, but I think we can all agree. Yeah, like you said, Reid Vernon did everything that he could have. Yeah. I mean maybe another touchdown would've helped or whatever, but he did everything that he could with what he was given. Yes, it slowed down in the second half, whatever, but he really went out there and I mean, he could have, I think there was some concern that he could have just went out there and laid an egg, would've not had the passing yards, would've turned the ball over a lot. I think that was a concern for a lot of people because again, as I've pointed out, Vernon is a very good quarterback. Someone that I guess you could say is still in the M O P discussion, perhaps maybe not with this loss, but again, with the way he played, he's still a good quarterback. It's just sometimes we see him go on these streaks. If one bad thing happens, then it all kind of unravels and then that might've not made this game entertaining at all if things had gone in that direction. But Vernon really, I feel like if you're a BC fan, again, obviously a lot of emotions right now, your head's probably spinning. You're probably wondering what to do, and you're already kind of gearing up for, you're probably not even thinking about the rest of the regular season. You're just like, I need to get fast forward and just get into Winnipeg and see what happens to give me some closure, whether it's good or bad. But if I'm a BC fan, I still feel like you should have confidence in Vernon. And I really do feel like as crazy as it sounds, last year it seemed like BC was on top of the world with Nathan Rourke and that was their guy, but there was always that pending thought in the back of people's minds that he was going to leave because he was almost too good. And obviously now Scon in the N F L with the Jaguars, you don't have that anymore. So they bring in Vernon, and again, no one really thought about that a lot last year. Yes, he played a bit at the end of the season, but that wasn't really on anybody's minds. Now it looks like, because again, Vernon's playing well, but he's not somebody that you're going to lose. Vernon is becoming a cfl veteran at this point. That move to bring in Vernon by BC might go down as one of the better moves in the cfl. I'm not going to measure it in terms of years, but just in recent memory, I think one of the better moves by a front office that they could have made where it's like, okay, we know that our quarterback's likely going to leave. Who do we want to bring in? But it was also the timing of when they brought him in. They could have waited until the off season to go pursue somebody to bring in for 2023, but they made the move during 2022 to ensure that that player would still be there, which in this case is Vernon, to get that early development and prepare him for a starting role now, I guess. And yeah, Vernon, I feel like he really, I'm not going to speak for him, but given that he's a native of Washington, I'm sure he feels at home in bc and I feel like this seems like the best spot for him to kind of finish his career kind of rioted out. And I feel like BC it feels like it goes both ways. It's just comfortable in general. I feel like he could stay there, he can be productive, and he can kind of call it a career there when he wants to. Again, he's still got a couple more years. I'm not saying this is the end of anything. I feel like they can keep doing things. But again, like I brought up before, they can keep Vernon, but how long is the Gray Cup window really open? And that's a question that I think will be answered for us in a couple weeks. Come playoffs. Yeah. Yeah. I got to see what's the contract status with these receivers and can we keep those pieces together here. Jason, any other thoughts on this one? And we'll kind of ya, the Argos, I got to hit a plane here pretty soon. Anything else on the bc Yeah, I just wanted to build on your point there about the players that they may lose because they'll price themselves out of bc. The defense has a lot of talented players as well at all three levels that are going to need paying as well. So I mean, at the end of the day, how long are you going to be able to keep this core together? That's a big question. Last Game here. Like I said, we were Driving up in The road and I didn't have, we had the Mike Mitchell's agreement with the xfl news coming out. I'm trying to tweet that. I wasn't listening to this game as much driving up. Evan, any short thoughts on this? Like I said, we'll get out of here at the top of The hour. So if I'm not mistaken, this loss officially eliminated Edmonton from the playoffs, I believe. Not surprising, but I think killed a pipe dream for a couple people. The Trey Ford, I mean we're all Trey Ford believers, but the real Trey Ford Homers who probably think that he, well, and I might agree with this too, but maybe could be better than some of the quarterbacks that we see in the playoffs here in a couple weeks. That pipe Dream has now gone. Unfortunately, Edmonton is looking forward to 2024. For Ford specifically. It was an okay game, didn't flash some things as he normally does, but the two interceptions weren't ideal. Again, it's growing pains, right? As much as he's a cool player to watch, he's fun, he's electric, whatever, he's still learning. He's only started so many games and I think people are quick to forget that because he looks so poised sometimes and he looks like he has, well he does have, I should say, a wide skillset. But yeah, I mean I expected Toronto to win this game regardless of what their, I guess management plan was. And Chad Kelly did play in this game very pedestrian performance by Toronto again on their side. But if pedestrian is putting up 35 points, I'd say that's a pretty good sign. AJ Ette doing his thing, they had a couple other guys, Deontay McMahon scored a touchdown from McNeese out here in Louisiana. I interviewed him last year. So that's again been really cool to see Toronto incorporate guys like that. And they're really picking guys up from everywhere. You'll hear Mike Mitchell talk about how much he appreciates that scouting department and the Quantas stickers of the world and the Cameron Dukes of the world, right? You're kind of picking guys from everywhere. No stone left unturned I think would be the best way to put that. But anyways, yeah, even in a game that I guess you would call slow for Toronto, they still go out, they still put up 35 points and it's automatic for them at this point. I mean it doesn't matter who's playing for 'em really here in these last couple games this season because they're just so deep that they can go out and beat anybody. So very expected result. For me, it's too bad. Maybe Edmonton could have tried to make a bit of a statement and kept the dream alive for another week. I don't know. That would've been fun. But it's a game. I mean, I think just given the severity of the other game, the Winnipeg BC game that we just talked about, I mean, I don't know how many people were actually paying attention to this one unless you were an Edmonton or Toronto fan obviously, but a decent game, I guess couple good players is what it is. I mean, it was ultimately a blowout, I guess you'd call it. So Jason, any quick thoughts on this one? Yeah, I mean, Edmonton just dug themselves too big of a hole this season to ultimately climb back out of it and get a playoff spot. I thought that obviously they've shown a lot of improvement over the second half of the season, but they have a ways to go to get on the same level as a team like Toronto. And we saw that in this game. Trey Ford had one spectacular play where he danced around and found Gavin Cobb for touchdown, one of the plays of the cfl season. But besides that, he didn't really show a lot of consistency in this game. Had a really bad interception and that believe went back for a pick six. So I think at the end of the day, Edmonton just pretty disappointing to not be more competitive in this one, but ultimately missing the playoffs was inevitable. But he's Canadian, Jason, that Canadian quarterback, Trey Ford, the make him dive. Yeah, so we'll see. Interesting week. Like I said, Han's coming up this week and then I'm going to have, I think Greg Peach on the show as well, former C Fers. So should be good. We'll figure out what's going on with the xfl stuff. Like I said, I'm getting ready to head to the airport pouring rain here. I think it's 90 degrees in Vegas, so should be quite a change here Evan. Appreciate it. Jason, everyone watching, we'll get out of here and like I said, show Friday, check out Jason's previews and everything going on his channel and we'll see you guys next time.

XFL-USFL Merger, the Latest Timeline + How Are XFL/USFL Alienating Their Fans?! CFL Week 18 Preview!

Coming Up this week on the markcast, well, just one week ago the xfl and usfl announced their intentions to merge, sending shock waves through the all football landscape, but now it's business as usual. Please pitch first. Nothing to see here. Both leagues conducting business on their own. xfl has a showcase this weekend. USFL free agency is in full swing. Lots of mixed messages here are both leagues doing demonstrable damage to their fan bases. While we wait for news from the merger we discuss, we welcome Dan Kaplan back onto the program to get his thoughts on everything regarding the xfl usfl merger timeline. Are we really waiting on the federal government here? Is it more of the leagues that need to get their affairs in order? We get Dan's thoughts on that as well as whether or not he thinks that this merge league could even be a success moving forward. They're not going to put in a press release. Anytime you bring two companies together, there's massive egos involved and that we can always become narcissistic and refuse to merge. I don't think you'll see that and I think any corporate merger that's announced or when they put out intended to emerge, it's because it was leaked out like we had in this case, it's almost boilerplate to say pending regulatory approval. Then speaking on the subject of potentially upsetting and Disgruntling fan bases, Greg Parks, the xfl board joins us again talking through kind of the roller coaster of emotions that xfl and usfl fans are going through. Is the destination worth it? Are we still going to be here whenever we arrive at this promised land? If I'm going to dedicate myself to covering a league, I'm going to jump in with both feet and I'm going to leave no stone unturned and in order to do that, I have to be passionate about it. I have to believe, as you said, I think you put it very nicely. I have to believe in the vision that they're selling me and if I don't believe in that, I'm not going to cover it just to say I can cover it. I'm not going to cover it just because I feel an obligation to spring football or whatever the case may be. I'm going to go outside and touch grass instead. I don't know. Then Eddie Steele, cfl Zone joins us again talking through everything cfl week 18. I am getting ready to head up to BC to watch America's cfl Team BC Alliance host the Winnipeg Blue Bombers huge weekend of cfl action. Me as a Canadian, I love it but put the Canadian aside man. We need some better quality quarterback play across the league. I don't care what your passport says, we just need some better quarterback play and I don't think anybody can deny that. Then fresh off is viral onsite punt. Last week Jeron ant tweet of I would say our cfl team of the C Montreal outlet sauce by the program Catching up with him. Hope you guys enjoy it, like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark cast Reed here. Really weird times right now in the xfl usfl landscape. I joked with Eddie Steele during, before our interview I said it must be nice to focus on just one football league that's not trying to merge with its competition here in the States. Really odd times, weird times. Rollercoaster of emotions right now. That's kind of my topic today. Talking through all of this, obviously we've been inundated. We have, okay, there's going to be 10 teams or 12 teams or six hubs or traveling hubs or conferences or we should be three conferences, all this different stuff. Endless speculation in terms of all that today, focusing a little bit more on the timeline, what do we expect? What's the holdup? What are we working through the hurdles right now with Dan Kaplan and then like I said, kind of that roller coaster of emotion that the xfl and U SS F L fans are going through. Very much feeling that it felt very similar kind of over the last couple years. Lack of communication with getting the Vegas Vipers deal going and getting the schedule going out and all this stuff you kind of dragged people along here, kind lead 'em out in the dark a little bit, starting to kind of feel the repercussions of that both kind of in our circle and seeing fans online. So whenever we get to this merger, whether it's this year or 2025 or whatever, is that destination, what casualties have you incurred along the way to get to that? That's to boil down the thesis for today with this business as usual theme. Like I said, huge shout out Dan Kaplan working through his time to come on the program. Greg Parks making time late at night. I really appreciate that and I hope you guys enjoy my conversation with Eddie Steele, extended time with him. Really appreciate all the time that he put into that late at night with his schedule as well. And then obviously the Montreal West Joshua and an TWE and all of that. Appreciate the team over there for setting that up. That's going to do it for me today. Hope you guys enjoy, like I said, heading up to Vancouver for the big cfl week 18 showdown with the Montreal or with the, excuse me, Winnipeg blue bombers traveling in to take on the America's cfl team, the BC Alliance. Hope you guys enjoy the episode. I think Dan gives some fruitful information in there that we didn't necessarily know. I think that's good to process as we kind of sit and work through all of this of when we are expecting news. So hope you guys enjoy it, like can subscribe. We'll see you at the end. Well it certainly seems a little cyclical here. Last time we had Dan Kaplan on, we were talking the xfl, I think it was like the Shark Tank episode. The xfl was seeking investors. Now we talked with the cfl, now we're talking with the U SS F L. What do you make of all this? Like I said, very cyclical in nature here. It feels like we're reaching out to more parties. Well, clearly there's not enough room in the American sports marketplace for two spring leagues. Whether there's enough room for one is a question we can get to, but clearly there's not enough room for two. We've seen spring leagues come and die the first two versions of the xfl, the U F L, the European League, the N F L had the originally usfl, which obviously transitioned to want to transition to fall. So there's a limited amount of shelf space in the American sports ecosystem because there's so many different sports out there and so many different forms of entertainment and whether there's enough appetite for people to continue to watch football after the Super Bowl for months on end. And this last year we had football go from the preseason of the N F L in August of 2022 and it went straight through to July of 2023 with the U SS F L. So there's clearly a need for these two leagues to merge or at least one of them to get out of the way and we'll see what happens here, but there's just not enough room for two. Yeah, well and Dan, we now have cfl here through even so we've never had a break. I was talking with, we had Greg Parks on this stuff even for us doing this and now you're getting back into the N F L again and it's kind of this full circle. Are you surprised? Obviously usfl through the first two seasons xfl won. It came out the Forbes article, they had lost $60 million. They had immediate kind of, okay, we're cutting back marketing staff, we're reworking that. Are you just surprised? Year one feels like one and done here. We kind of got to figure out what we're doing that we didn't. We're not trying to run this back at least one more time. Well, 60 million is for these leagues is not the worst amount of loss for year one. I mean xfl 2.0 under Vince McMahon lost over a hundred million in their half a season. Now they really put money into marketing. They had a different structure in which the teams were in their own markets, whereas this current version of xfl 3.0, as we all know, the teams operate out of a base and fly into their home markets for games. So that clearly brought costs down, but whether that 60 million could be brought down to 20 million, 10 million of breakeven of profit in the years two or three, that's very questionable and the xfl has an equity fund behind it, Fred Bird Capital and they're not going to sit around and just suck up 60 million losses year after year. Yeah, that to me feels like, and I don't know what we've talked on here, I run my own business startup and there's always costs like are we not prepared for that? Are we just unwilling to accept that because you're never going to come out in a spring. US have felt was profitable to N B C because they were paying to license some of the games to play on there. usfl lost money for Fox as well. I mean let's not make any mistakes about it. They can just write it out differently. It just feels to me that it's weird that we're not capable of accepting any sort of setback as opposed to just we need to be profitable from the get-go. Well, I don't think that the xfl backers thought they would be profitable from the get-go, but I mean clearly there was something about the size of the loss they weren't expecting otherwise. They wouldn't look to merge right away. I think most people thought after two or three years these two entities might merge. I mean this is after year one of xfl, which is I guess pretty good considering what happened to xfl 2.0 and the end of the xfl 1.0. So when you have private equity behind you and if they're disappointed with the losses, they're going to move pretty quick to end it. So that's how I see it. When they were in the market looking for investors, I remember I asked Jerry Cardell who runs Redbird Capital, that's why it's called Redbird, his last name is Cardell. So I asked him at an event, why are you looking for investors? Are you losing money? He says he took umbrage at that and said, no, things are fine. We're just looking for strategic partners. He protested too much in my opinion. Clearly. I was talking for the story that we have up there from awful announcing. I talked to Randy Pataha, he owned one of the original usfl teams. He was a New England patriot wide receiver in the seventies and he's since the early nineties, been a sports investment banker and he loves talking about spring leagues and he says what these spring leagues always failed to account for is it's very expensive to play football. You have large teams, large equipment costs, the insurance is out of sight. The medical insurance and all this was a big problem for the Alliance of American football. If you recall, they had problems with insurance with some of the teams. The Florida team couldn't get insurance and they had a headquarter in Georgia if you remember. So it's much more complicated and much more expensive than a lot of the operators coming in expect. Is there more pressure on F l you think with Redbird and all of that behind where, I dunno, to me we will never really know with Fox because they kind of do their budget HOAs focus a little bit and we're going to move this or do that or so is there more pressure on the xfl to immediately show profitability because of the money behind it where maybe USS F L can ride that out longer with Fox? Yeah, I don't know if it's a media profitability, but it's certainly not significant losses and not losses that are forecast going off into the future. We don't know what the budget looks like for the next two or three years for an independent xfl, but if they're looking to merge with the usfl, it's certainly a signal that they realize it's better to not go alone. And if the losses of 60 million continued REDBIRD would've just cut, they would've pulled out. I realized the rockets all the attention, but the real money is redbird In terms of, we were talking the schedule of all this and you have your ratings in here and the general ratings for the season. I think both were fine, right? I mean we saw the usfl exist without xfl for the first season and then I mean they did kind of cannibalize during that crossover and then usfl was never as high afterward, right? And was that football fatigue or whatever? But what did you make of kind the overall success of the xfl from a TV sports landscape? The XFL usfl? They did fine. I mean they averaged about 600,000 plus viewers, which is, I mean it's better than the N H L does during the regular season for regular season games nationally, but hockey's always been a nichey sport. So that's not so surprising. If you go back to xfl 2.0, they were doing much better than that when they got shut down. It's just hard when you don't, in the US L'S case, you don't have most of the teams in their home markets where they're playing in the xfl. You don't have the teams with an established base doing community outreach every day. That's tough. I understand why they're doing it to try to keep the cost down, but it's hard to build a fan base when you're not in that market, when you're not reading about the players every day. I mean if you are following an N F L team, an N B A team, the sports press, they're covering them every day. The players are doing community charity outreaches, their scandals are in the press. If you're not in the market, if you fly in for a game and then you fly out, it's a different animal In terms of the theme of this episode. So we had the Axios report come out, okay, this is happening. Then last week we had the official press releases messaging from everybody, Hey, the intent is to merge and I want to talk to you regulatory stuff, what might be a sticking point? But now usfl is in, they're doing their free agency, they're moving players xfl, they have a showcase this weekend it's very much we're operating business as normal, But we're doing the merger thing maybe, but we got to do this anyway. How are you reading that? It feels to me as like a spring football, we've covered this for three, four years now. You're asking a lot of these fans of like, hey, still be excited about next year. I just got an email. One of the teams is selling suites for the stadium, but then also this might not even exist here in six months. I mean, what do you make? Because to me it's very concerning of we have these two competing messages going on. Yeah, they're in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If they don't go forward with the marketing of the suites doing their combines and drafts and all and they don't do that and the merger doesn't occur, then they're screwed. So they have to send these mixed messages at this point because I mean Axios broke the story, so they went out and confirmed it a week later and it is always possible. The talks breakdown, I mean egos get involved. Who's going to be, who's run this league? Is it going to be xfl people? It's going to be usfl people. What rules will they keep? What teams will they keep? What markets will they keep? Will the rock be as front and center in this a new merge league? So there's lots of questions and as I said, egos can get involved so you have to move forward presuming it doesn't happen from an operational perspective, you have to move forward if you're the usfl and the xfl as if you're going to play 2024 the way you play 2023. So if you are a suite holder or fan buying tickets, that's tough. You might be buying tickets to a market that won't even exist next year. So I wouldn't want to be the head of sales for that. It just feels there's always been this contentious relationship anyway. And usfl, we have real football for real fans and we're running Super Bowl ads and all of that. I don't know. I mean that's why people had asked me forever, do you see this happening? And I said no. I mean obviously practicality says that like you said, there's only so much landscape and all of this, but there are a lot of egos involved here and let alone Danny and the Rock and her as the first co-owner of a major sports, all these different kinds of platitudes they have on this, it just feels like there's a lot of different chefs in this kitchen. There are a lot of chefs. We all saw Darryl Moose Johnson's comment to Sports Business Journal about just being perplexed that the xfl got higher ratings because in his opinion, U S L had better football. I don't know. I mean I leave that to you if that's true or not. usfl had better football. I mean one of the reasons though it's so tough for these spring leagues to succeed is it's hard at the skill positions, particularly quarterback to put on a compelling product there. I mean you look at the N F L their teams in the N F L that don't have a good quarterback. There's only so many great quarterbacks that can go around. I mean I know there's hundreds of them coming out of college every year, but it's an interesting sport that way that it's so contingent on one position. I'm making it a watchable product. I mean I'm a long suffering New York Jets fan and Zach Wilson's performance on Monday night, not withstanding when he plays it's all but unwatchable. Yeah, I don't think the Daniel Jones would've a place in the xfl or the usfl either right? Now, speaking of that, in terms of timeline here, so they say, okay, we're going to go through regulatory processes. I lived politics for a long time when I was in local news, roundabout story, Kevin McCarthy was actually from Bakersfield where that was the first job I had. So I fall Kevin McCarthy's career kind of like this entire way, but we have this government shut down and that we're delaying it in terms of the regulatory process that this would have to go through, were you surprised a on what hurdles or what things should we be expecting here? We are dummies here. Well, any merger, any corporate, and it's a corporate merger. There's two corporations will undergo antitrust regulatory scrutiny if it's in the same market, provides the same services. I can't imagine that the Justice Department is going to have any kind of problem with this. There's barely been a market for spring football. It's barely existed. There's been so many cases we just discussed where they went out of business. So anything's possible, but I think that's the regulatory language you're referring to in the press release. That's just checking a box. So then, and we will wind this down here, but that begs back to then, so the messaging of all this from the beginning was we're intending to merge unless regulatory things stop us, we're acting on our own accord. Unless the merger doesn't happen. But if you're saying, Hey, the regulatory stuff maybe probably isn't an issue, it is more than just the egos at play here and trying to get the details. Are they using that as an excuse? That's my point. Like, hey, They're not going to put in a press release. Anytime you bring two companies together, there's massive egos involved and that we can always become narcissistic and refuse to merge. I don't think you'll see that. And I think any corporate merger that's announced or when they put out intended to emerge, it's because it was leaked out like we had in this case, it's almost boilerplate to say pending regulatory approval. You'll see that whether it's two banks merging or two oil companies merging, it's always that Now there's only two competitive, there's only really two producers of spring football in the United States. So you could theoretically say there's an antitrust concern. It's just that given the history here and that for a periods of time there were no Purdue platforms for spring football. I just don't see the Justice Department paying much attention to this. Does it strike you that their press release last week was a direct kind of whatever of the Axios report and this probably wouldn't have come out right now otherwise? Yeah, usually companies in the midst of negotiations don't like to publicize it. They're not going to say, Hey everyone, guess what? We're secretly in negotiations to merge these two spring football. These two companies, I mean Axios broke the story and they obviously took a while to get their public relations strategy down. It took a week to put out that statement, but they put out the statement. We thought I have the other interview on this episode, but it wasn't just one because they had, it was the official press release, U SS F L had a letter to its players. The usfl Players Association has a separate letter to its players, both seasoned ticket holder. If you were seasoned ticket over the xfl or the usfl, you got a different letter. So still it took them a week and it still was a very diversified messaging approach. Yeah, I mean there's two kitchens right now and there's different cooks in each kitchen, so they're trying to figure out how to put those kitchens together and who's going to be the lead chef? So it's going to be Russ Brandon, is it going to be Moose Johnston? We don't know who's going to actually run the day-to-day of this. What are they calling it? The National Spring Football League? Is that the new name? Well, yeah. So that was the, I actually for a brief period of time, held a trademark to that. I trademarked it as a joke. That was the holding company that they were using to get a lot of the trademarks back a couple of years ago. So I have a hat somewhere that says National Spring Football League on that I printed out. But my last question for you, do you see this working, looking at the ratings and we've had Ben Fisher on and talking, is this even relevant If you're hitting certain things, are you even making a mark on the public kind of awareness? Do you see whatever this ends up being called 16 teams, 12 teams, whatever, as a business philosophy? Do you feel like this is going to work? I think there is a market for it. I mean especially with the streaming universe we're in and entering and with sports gambling now, I mean that's one factor that when all those other spring leagues we talked about, there wasn't sports gambling. So there's intense interest up from gamblers to bet on just about anything. And there'll be value in the data, the league selling the data and selling gambling sponsorships and things of that nature. I mean, I think the N F L pulls in, I think the latest was $130 million just off gambling sponsorships. And that's not including the data deal they have with junior sports. So I mean it's a money area for them. And with so many outlets looking for content, whether it'ss, ESPN plus or Peacock or you name it, it's a different ecosystem than there was five, 10 years ago. So I think there is a market for it. Clearly a lot of these players, some of them are ending up on the back ends of N F L rosters. And so the N F L has been more involved with these two leagues than in past spring leagues. So I'm not saying there's going to be a formal affiliation, but I think there's an openness that the N F L would work with the emerged usfl xfl. Are we thinking weeks, months here for this regulatory process? Well, I know just There has to be a formal merger, first announcement. They have to agree to merge. You wouldn't have regulatory approvals or processes until there's a deal submitted to the Justice Department. So there's no regulatory process at the moment until they announce it's not just intend to merge, but we've reached a merger agreement, they have to put out a release saying we've agreed to merge, and then that's pending regulatory approval as well. Okay. So that's interesting. Okay, so that goes backwards. I think of a lot of people are thinking right now, I think people are thinking we're waiting on the justice department. You're saying we're actually waiting on them to get all this hammered out before we actually go forward with that. Well, when you say intend to merge, it's saying that there's still deal points that have to be negotiated. This as I understand, I've always understand those statements. So usually they'll put out we've agreed to merge, agreed to merge is what you're looking for, not intend to merge. And when they're getting together to negotiate, they're intending to negotiate a merger, then they negotiate the merger and they've agreed to merge. So that's how I understand. I could be wrong, but my understanding is intend and agreed are two different things. Correct. Okay. So that's interesting because people are worried and oh, like I said, the shutdown or whatever, we still might be two months from them even figuring out what they want to do before we even have to mean that might not even be a concern at all. I mean remember the Liv Golf P G A golf, they've still never reached a merger agreement. That's not necessarily going to happen. They announced their intention to merge and I think it was early June, and they still don't have a formal merger agreement. They put the deadline on that as December 31st. So that's their deadline, but they can always push that back. But that golf merger, that's not even been submitted to the Justice Department. Everyone's talking about it. There's committees, congressional committee's looking at it. The Justice Department I think has indicated they're going to take a look at it, but there's no formal merger right now. That's interesting. All right. Well Dan, I appreciate it. Interesting stuff. We'll keep you in the loop here and just keep this on your periphery. Maybe you can fly back in here and give us some insights. You're moving on, but I appreciate your time. Good luck with everything. It means a lot. You taking the time to come on. Thanks a lot. Well, in the world where the rated our superstar Adam Copeland, because we can't call him edge debuted in a e w in the world where that didn't happen, I imagine the usfl xfl merger is still the biggest news here. Greg Parks xfl board. How are you doing, sir? I'm doing well. You can call him Edge, I'm sure that's fine. I don't think the lawyers will come after you, but A E w, that's another story. I will say this week peruse the godaddy.com listings and found that N S F L board, N SS f L newsroom and n sfl news hub, were all taken. So at least everybody managing all these properties doing their due diligence. Greg, we will get into all this. I have your article, the devil's in the details L board.com. I wanted to talk with you about that, but to me, I think the episode is going to be called, it's just business as usual, but it doesn't, it's so weird. So usfl, now we have free agency. We're okay, we got guys moving, whatever historic first time ever, free agency spring football, f l Hey, we got our showcase coming up this weekend, business as usual, but it's not because you just announced last week that you're intending to merge. What do you make of it seems I'm very confused. I did tweet out the Will Ferrell from Zoolander. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Yeah, it's still in the processing phase I guess in my own mind because you're right, people are, and for a lot of the lower level folks, the folks at the team level, the folks who are running social media, it is business as usual because they're not involved. They have to treat it as business as usual because they're not involved in the conversation. They're not privy to based on all reporting, they're not privy to anything that's going on over their head. So they kind of have to operate as business as usual, which is kind of weird because you have the poor Vegas Vipers people running social media and it's like they're not going to have a team in this new league if it goes through. I mean there's just no, in all of the incarnations that you see, the Vegas vipers are not one of them. So maybe holding out hope that the merger doesn't go through and the xfl plays in 2024 and they do relocate the Vegas franchise to wherever in the continental United States. So business as usual in terms of that, and I tweeted this out maybe last week, it certainly feels like the U SS F L is doing more business as usual than the xfl is. We can maybe get into that a little later, but I It's just weird, man. It's weird. Well, it's weird because so obviously we know there is contention between these leagues at least publicly I would say from the usfl with the ads they've run. I get the emails every week, real football for real fans this weekend, xfl, they obviously know what's going on. They try to, I think do a better job of not publicly. It's kind of the Vince McMahon of speaking, wrestling like well, going to, we don't need to acknowledge our competition, but it almost feels like right now we have this out and so there's this huge elephant that's not even in the corner anymore. This is existing in the world, but yet both leagues seem to be like, well, we're out doing you with how we're running. We don't even care about the merger. We got free agency coming. We don't even care. And the f l, like who is running this showcase? Who is going to this showcase? I got the email okay's, Rob Buckley's going to be there. I'm even surprised. Why would you even put Buckley there? Where anybody in there worth their weight in anything is going to ask about, Hey, what's going on with this? And they'll probably tell the reporters, you can't ask only. So we're still doing media events, but we're not, I dunno the whole order of events here, I don't know if this got leaked early. It just feels like you said it feels very strange. I guess they kind of have to go forward with the showcase because they had all these people signing up and giving their money. So it's probably easier to just go forward with the showcase and if nothing else, they have this list of players. If the merger does go through that, the people running the showcase can share with the usfl and the xfl, it's run at the league level. So the league is collecting all the data on these players. So if there is a merger that would just be shared not only amongst the xfl coaches but the usfl coaches as well, if they're interested in signing any of these players. Certainly with one of the showcases being in Orlando, you would expect Terrell Buckley to be there because he coaches the Orlando team. But What if there's no Orlando team? I mean, But that's the business as usual part of it. I guess the media aspect is interesting and I saw a couple tweets today about the showcase and it's really going to be interesting to me to see how much coverage this showcase gets across xfl social networks. Do they just kind of bury it and not acknowledge it very much say for maybe a few clips here or there, or do they really treat it as business as usual and give off the same vibe that they gave for the showcases over the summer? And then the other aspect is the local media aspect of it. Is there going to be media here at all? And if so, how transparent is the league going to be in allowing even questions to be asked know they're not going to be transparent in answering questions. We know Terrell Buckley's going to say if he's asked, look, I don't know what's going on, I'm just treating it business as usual, whatever like that because that's all he really can say. That's all any of the coaches or DPPs can say or anyone else involved with the league at this level. We'll be interesting to see if Danny Garcia is there. We know Orlando is her city. It's your hometown. She was reportedly one of the ones that pushed for the Orlando franchise, so you would expect maybe her to be there if this was a normal course of business. But the roles of Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson are still kind of up in the air for this merged league. So depending on the certainty of the merger, how far into this is Danny Garcia going to go into the business as usual aspect? I mean just so there's so much and yet there's so little Reid. I think that's the hard part that I have trouble with is we know so little. There's zero details about the actual merger and that's why I wrote the column, the devils and the details that a lot of questions that the answers to will I think, and for a lot of fans guide how invested they are in this merge league. And so there's a lot we don't know. We've had reporting, we've had some conflicting reporting out there about everything basically. So I've kind of tried to just tune things out as much as I can. And then you have the business's usual aspect of it where fls knee deep and free agency, you're seeing teams sign players and it being announced on social media while the xfl teams have not added a player since September 5th. The draft that was reported to, not reported, but one of the DPPs talked about it on the xfl behind the scenes combine as October 4th, and then we got reporting that it was pushed back to T B A, which is not a great sign. So the usfl seems like they are going more in the business as usual than the xfl where it's like they're kind of tiptoeing into things and the whole thing is the 2024 versus 2025, right? If what's the drop dead date for the merged league to actually kick off in 2024? There has to be an agreed upon date where if we don't get, whether it's the regulatory process completed or whatever the case may be by this date, then either the merger's off or they wait until 2025. And so of course we don't know that. So we're kind of in the dark feeling around a little bit with all these dates and all this speculation. And I've quite frankly tried to keep my mouth shut as much as I can on social media about it because I don't know that there's a whole lot to be gained with the endless speculation on this other than to just fill airtime and fill word counts and things like that. And I'm not really interested in doing all that, but I think it does have to be talked about because it is a major impact on both of these leagues that a lot of people cover and a lot of people care about. Well, and that's kind of where I want this conversation to be focused today. I think we're on the same page. I've had more dms. Do you think it's eight teams? There's nine teams or 10 teams or I think we're going to do three conferences. Everyone's got, what was it? Mark Thompson tweeted out from the us Oh, just Mark Thompson note. But to me, I want to focus on, because I think for at least the xfl as my belief is doing demonstrable damage right now of it feels to me like you said, usfl, we're going forward with business xfl finally similar last time with the cfl. Like, Hey, do you guys want to talk? Don't watched this league for the last however long now, three years and build up to this. And I saw them purely focusing just on a single league launch, almost not be able to do it right with all the Vegas stuff and with the schedule and everything we got there, but it was really, really down to the wire. We were like, you're the teacher, the kid, we're finishing the papers, you're collecting the notes, right? You're coming around and tell me if you're wrong. It is my belief, I don't think the f l can both figure out this merger and also get their own season two ready to go. I just don't think that there's enough. Am I wrong there? Well, it sure doesn't feel like it. I mean you hope naturally that they're going to be able to do that. Maybe the draft goes off without a hitch in November and maybe they'll announce the new Vegas location and it'll surprise us all. I think the frustrating thing for me as not only a fan, but as someone who covers this league, you talked about the lead up two and a half years from the time they purchased this league out of bankruptcy to the time they kicked off, they had two and a half years and they were making mistakes that everybody saw coming the Vegas situation, the big one, right? The Vegas situation. There were a couple of other more minor ones, but that's certainly the big one. The marketing was another big one. Everybody was saying, I wrote numerous columns on what's the deal with the marketing basically. And then there's somehow surprised at the end of the year when they don't hit their expectations. It's like, well, how did you not see this coming? And then to, again, I go back to the two and a half years, you had two and a half years to put this together and you can't survive past year one. Now we hear all this stuff. Mike Mitchell was on the xfl Insider podcast saying, yeah, they have money set aside for year two, year three, year four. I mean, I question that It really doesn't feel like that's the case. I don't know, but I certainly trust Mike's reporting, but what the xfl is doing kind of tells me different. So I don't know. Yeah, it feels to me, and you I believe had the report on xfl board probably, I don't know the time is nebulous right now, but sometime before today where the quote from the league was like, this is a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. Right? And to me now definitely echoes that where man, we made it through year one, this was a lot harder. We didn't make as much money. The profits, whatever. I've gone back and forth with the comments on our YouTube last week was just horrendous. And people were down and we feel like the X L brand is going away or we've done all this stuff. And I said, I started, I do my own small business. I took out a loan for $15,000. I bought a camera, I had a whole little list of everything and I lost money and now I make money. And that's how a business works. And it's insane to me that, so the xfl redbird, all of this, we made it through year one and what was our solution? We're going to lay off enough people to justify the losses we had in year one, and we're going to kind of vior this to get it. You're always going to lose money in the usfl lost money, the 60 million USS F L lost money too. They can write it off on Fox and Fox social media, everybody lost money. But the fact that Redbird, did they lose more than they thought or did they not accept? That's what I don't get. It's like, well, we're just going to lay out. You can only trim so much fat here to move forward. And it does feel like, Hey, we're just not equipped for this or we're not interested in this anymore. And one of the things that Vince McMahon talked about way back in 2001 when things had gone south for the league and he used the term brand building, and I mean you have to put some equity into these brands. You're not going to have 20,000 show up in Orlando Guardians game overnight. I mean, St. Louis is the outlier. You cannot have that expectation for every city. So you have to build that brand over a period of time. These fans are not going to show up overnight because the rock is part of the league. They're not going to show up overnight because Danny Garcia is the first woman sports owner that might get you in the door in certain ways. And I look at the C N N interview that they had on Anderson Cooper's show a couple Sundays ago where they interviewed the Rock and Danny Garcia about safety in pro football. They didn't give that spot to the U Ss F L, and they could have very easily done that. Danny Garcia and Dwayne Johnson get them in the door for things like that. But that's not going to draw fans to watch the games every week. That's not going to draw fans to spend money on the league, whether it's merchandise or whether it's going to games. It's going to take a while to build the brand, to build up players that you can advertise and market. And you've got some players after year one, you've got AJ McCarran, although he's now with the Cincinnati Bengals. You've got guys like Jako Pearson who are really interesting stories that you can begin to build after year one. And it just seems like it's the same old story. There isn't that patience. You have to be willing to lose money when you start a league like this. And you have now the St. Louis Battle Hawks will be going into the third version of a league that's existed. And you can't build fan bases that way. You cannot sustain success that way. And so it's hard for me to understand the thinking, and I get that over the long term, the xfl and U SS F L is probably going to do more damage than good as two separate brands. I think whether we wanted to admit it or not over the long term a merger was maybe the best case scenario with one purchasing the other as probably the next step down. And then neither existing is the worst case scenario. But I'm surprised that everybody, seemingly, I'm surprised that it happened so soon, and I think it would've been better to be able to build some equity in these leagues before you merged. I mean, okay, maybe the Birmingham stallions and the St. Louis Battle Hawks is a dream match, but it's for a very, very small portion of fans who even know those teams exist. Whereas if you were able to build those brands for a few years and establish those brands, maybe three, four years down the line, people start looking forward to it. But after year two of a league and after year one of a league, I mean that's not going to be on anyone's radar. They've been putting out and we've had press releases like the St. Louis be Hawks, they're doing suites whatever for the thing and someone take, how are they doing? I'm like, well, okay, if you're trusting Yale Stratton's report, there's going to be hubs. St. Louis will be a hub. Conceivably I can buy the suite, whatever. But in my head I'm like, who are buying these tickets right now? Why would you buy any of these tickets right now? I don't Understand. That's the business as usual part though, right? Because you can't completely hit pause because if the merger doesn't go through and all of a sudden you to play in 2024, you're going to be caught with your pants down in certain aspects at the team level where you're selling tickets and who knows what's going to happen to those tickets. For the Orlando guardians, if the merger goes through and they don't have a team in 2024, that's going to be a mess trying to get the money back to the fans and things like that. But those at the team level certainly have to operate as if they're going to have a team in 2024 and it's going to be the xfl. That would be very, very difficult for me. It's Very messy. Very messy. And I don't think it's the ideal scenario, but I don't know what a better scenario is, and I had never thought of needing regulatory approval. Two companies of this size I didn't think would need to go through that process. So that has certainly slowed things down, but I just don't know. It's unfortunate for a lot of these people whose jobs are truly up in the air and who probably go to work every day not knowing if they're going to have a job in three to six months. But I don't know how you operate otherwise. No, and I know, and that's why, like I said, when the US of L and they put that out, I said, I understand this business as usual, but you need a unified voice. And they like, well, no, they only did that. Well, I think that's a terrible idea because now you're asking these fans if taken the leap of faith in 2020 and then you come back and then you push and then we delay and then we do the cfl and then we come back and you're asking for this other delay again. And it's like you're living in purgatory here. And like you said, in terms of establishing these brand identities, I mean, I will tell you we have four season tickets for the Sea Dragons. They're out, they're done. They're like, and we're paid up. But they're like, well, what are we doing here? The only thing that's enjoyable about this is going to the five home games we're allowed to go to, God forbid if they're not opposite Kraken or anything else going on and a Thursday night when our games were, I don't know. To me, and I had the analogy before, it feels like with this ramp up and everything and everything's too hard, it feels like you're okay, it's a new year, new year, new me. I'm going to lose 15 pounds. And it's like the second week of January and you're like, bill, you couldn't even get through the first month. What are we doing here? I don't know. It feels like this is a very quick about face because like you said, usfl, their marketing message is pretty clear on their season ticket holders. We went through all those. If you haven't listened to the episode, Andy and I went through all that stuff. I mean, hey, we're moving forward. This is what we're doing. If you need a refund, we'll process that. To me, it seems very clear with the usfl at least is trying to manage this. Yeah, I do think the usfl has handled this better and peripherally speaking, I'm only seeing what's going on on social media. I'm not seeing what's going on behind the scenes. But it certainly feels like the usfl is handling this in a better way than the xfl is. You had xfl social media go dark for three days after the usfl xfl merger was announced and you're kind of throwing your hands up what exactly is going on here and now you have them. I don't know what the right answer is. I don't know if it's just to go dark or I don't know if it's to pretend that it's not happening. Like I said, I don't think there's a good answer, But I just feel like it should be more cohesive, whether it's internally with the xfl or in partnership with the U SS F L, there should feel like more cohesion than there really is. I don't know if there's things going on behind the scenes that are stopping that from happening, but it's certainly not. I mean, the understatement of the year maybe, certainly not the off season. I expected from the xfl when we talked and we did the kind of postmortem after the year, it's like there are certain aspects they can do better. They saw what worked, they saw what they can use that data and use that information and use that feedback to prepare for year two to do better marketing in these areas to do other things like that. And they haven't done any of that. They just haven't. And so I don't know, maybe they're putting all their chips in the center of the table for a merger and hoping that that goes through. I mean, if that merger doesn't go through, I'm not convinced there's an xfl 2024. I mean, that's kind of where I am right now and it's pretty sad to say that, but based on everything I'm seeing, and I don't have any inside information to back that up, but just based on the U SS F L reaction to this and how they're going forward versus the xfl reaction to this merger and how they're allegedly going forward, I'm not super confident that there's even going to be a 2024 if this merger fails. No, and I would echo that. John Lewis, he has the John Lewis Sports YouTube channel. He had like, Hey, what are your hot takes he wanted to do? He did a predictions video, which I thought was very well done. And that's what I said. I said, if this doesn't go through, I think usfl moves right along. And I think the xfl, whether you want to say folds or does whatever, but certainly everything that's happened here in the last two weeks, and I know the accident report, I would love to know did how early did that get out? Do we want to do this right now? It's a weird time. Anyway, we've got the showcases and the draft and like you said, in terms of getting this unification, even just getting the press releases last week we had the official press release. We had the usfl letter to the fans. We had the usfl PA letter to their players. We had the xfl season ticket holder letter. We had the U SS F L season ticket holder letter Russ put out, I guess it was leaked, but Russ had his letter to the staff. And then Danny and the rock boat just retweeted more work to be done. But it's like you have seven different messages coming out from, I just don't understand how that's possible. And yet it is. So yeah, it's messy. I think doesn't begin to describe what this process is like. And you mentioned the report on, I believe it was Axios and who leaked it, right? There's a very small number of people because as Mike has reported, only the very tippy top know about this and we're in negotiation. So there's a very finite number of people that this could have come from. And the report was very both sidey. It didn't feel like, oh, this must've come from the usfl. It didn't echo James Larson's report that said redbird went to the usfl to ask for this. It didn't feel like it came from the xfl side where you would've thought, okay, the usfl approached us or whatever like that. It was a merger of equals and things like that. So it almost felt like they wanted it to get out, but then both league's reaction to it makes you think they weren't prepared. So I don't know. Maybe that's just another thing that's going to keep us chasing our tail is wondering who leaked it and does it even really matter? I don't know. But yeah, it is interesting that that came out and didn't really seem to give a signal as to what side may have tipped them off. I got one last comment here and I want to hit your article. Just if there's anything specific. Not again, I don't want to talk like, oh, this is going to be 12 teams, but just from kind of the bigger picture. I was just thinking about this when we were talking about the ticket holders and everything. I know Pat Rafino has said this a bunch. Obviously he covers the St. Louis market. He knew there were so many season ticket holder or former maybe 2020 season ticket holders or interested parties in 2023 that I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait, let the ballot hawks come back a year, right? Let's go through this. Absolutely. It was the same with the dragons. And then I'll buy in. Show me that this, you're just pulling the rug out again. I mean, it's just really hard. Anything else on that? And then I want to just make sure we hit on your article here. No, I think you're absolutely right. It's unfortunate and it does hurt the brand. It hurts the brand of every one of these teams. It hurts the markets that you're trying to win Over. Teams win over fans in, it does so much damage when you do this over and over again. And I get that it wasn't Redbird in 2020. It wasn't Danny Garcia and Dwayne Nelson in 2020, but the effect is still the same. Effect is still the same. So here you're talking a lot of details coming out with all this. We're talking what was your big, because like I said, I enjoy what you said. I didn't want to get into the nuts and bolts, but I got to put something out here mean. What did you want to express with this article? The devil's in the details and many different things to work through here. Yeah, like I said, there's a reason that I haven't flooded the market with opinion pieces over the last two weeks. I can't, don't have the strength for it. I don't have the energy for it. There's so much you don't know that you could speculate and people have done it, and I don't feel like I need to add more speculation to what's already out there. I don't think that benefits anyone. In fact, it probably just makes people more anxious. So I want to avoid that as much as possible. But the point of this article was, and it was kind of spurred on by something that you posted on Twitter in reaction to the Neil Stratton report about the hubs, where you said, look, if this is the situation, I can't envision myself covering it. And I know Evan for xfl, Newshub has basically said the same thing. And so I've kind of tried to keep my powder dry on not saying, not going down the road of, okay, if this happens then I'm out. But if this happens, I'm in and I don't want to get into the what ifs, because a lot of it for me is feel like when they lay everything out on the table, how do I feel about it? What's my feeling is there more on the scale of like this versus on the scale of, yeah, I can't support that. How does that scale up? So it's really going to depend for me, but this article looks at some of those pieces, some of those details that we don't know yet. But I think that some of these details will really tip the scale for people, whether it's the hub versus no hub. For some people it's not going to matter. The people who maybe watch the usfl and the xfl, they're already used to watching hubs in the usfl, so they're fine with it. But there are people who even watch the U SS F L and they're saying if this is a merged league, I'm expecting something bigger. I'm expecting something better. I'm expecting to improve upon what we're getting already. And if it's not that, if it's just the status quo, I'm not interested. You have the management structure, what's the management structure going to be like? What's the ownership structure going to be like? I think that could be a tipping point for some people. Especially you've got a lot of anti Danny Garcia and anti Dwayne Johnson people out there. And so if they're still heavily involved and if they are still the face of this league, I think that's going to turn some people off. You have the structure of the teams you have, are the teams going to keep the place? Is AJ McCarran going to get to stay in St. Louis or are they going to just start redrafting people again? Are you going to be on the third incarnation of a St. Louis Battle hawks team? Are you going to be drafting a third brand new St. Louis Battle hawks team? That would be a mistake to me. And so I think that could be something where people look and say, if we're starting from scratch, again from the player point of view, I think some people are going to be out. And then the franchises, what do the franchises look like? What teams are kept from the U Ss F L versus from the xfl? And obviously if you're in the home market of say the Seattle Sea Dragons or Seattle Dragons, I don't even know what they're called anymore. I'm on such a rant, the Sea Dragons. So I mean if you're in the Seattle market and your team either isn't playing or plays in a hub in Arlington, that's going to be a huge factor for you. Or if you're obviously a Vegas fan and you don't have a team anymore, that's going to be a factor for you and whether or not you follow this league. So my goal with this article was to kind of put together, not to speculate on these points, but just to say that these are some points that fans, current fans of either the xfl or usfl or both are going to look at when they're deciding whether or not to follow this new league. And for some people these are going to be the tipping point decisions for them. To me, and that's kind of where I'm at. It is been tiring just in general and all this. And we've done now weekly recaps for every xfl game usfl game and now cfl since February, whatever, what was the kickoff, the 14th, 15th, whatever. It's been busy and that's fine and it's enjoyable and obviously I'm blessed to work from home and be able to do all this stuff, but My interest in covering the xfl is not whether or not there is a Seattle team, I really don't. cfl doesn't, I call it the BC Lion American Seatbelt team, but I have to fundamentally believe in the vision. I've been very vocal on here. I don't believe in the US develop business model. I don't like the way that they operate in terms of, Hey, it's football man, you're going to just watch. And obviously we bought into the Vince McMahon vision and Oliver Luck and all of that. And then Danny and the Rock I think kind of took that to another level of like this is what we believe in. You've never gotten that. I know Moose has been decent about, yeah, we really want opportunities for players, but you never got that same whatever. And I have to believe in the vision model of this and I don't think that going to hubs and saying, if you ask a usfl fan what is working from the usfl business model? Say it for just, Hey, we outlasted the xfl at this point. I don't know, is there, what more pro do you have? Well, hey, we outlasted, that means our business model is better. Yeah, but what have you accomplished in that? I mean you've gone from one hub to four. That's where I'm at a sticking point here. I don't see if in another two years this vision plan out To me, the hub is not a growth model. There's not a lot of room for growth for the league with the hubs. Sure, your goal could be to sell off these franchises and let Philadelphia play in Philadelphia, but what business person is going to buy a franchise in which they have no idea how it's going to perform in the home market, they have no idea how many fans they're going to be able to draw. They have no idea what kind of advertising they can get in that city because they're not there. So if your goal is to sell off these, who is going to be interested in these franchises that are not in their home cities? And so I just don't see the growth part of this model. We hear, oh, eventually they're going to get out. Eventually they're going to get out into these cities. Well, Fox is a billion dollar corporation. They certainly have enough money to put these teams in these cities if they chose to. So I'm not sure what they're looking for. I'm not sure what financial markers they're looking to hit to where they can say, ah, now we can play in Philadelphia. Now we can play in New Jersey. Now we can play in Houston. I don't know what they're looking at. And the hub model was supposed to be temporary. It's supposed to be one or two years and now we're going into year three in the hubs with no sign of an end to that. And kind of like you, I just don't have any interest in watching that kind of football. God bless you if you do. I don't hold any ill will to the people who enjoy football for what's played in between the lines. And if that's something you want to support, then all the more power to you. But we all each have to make individual decisions about how we spend our time and money. And those decisions are going to be different based on what's going on in your life and what your interests are and things like that. And I just don't really have any interest in devoting my time necessarily to that. Again, they could blow me away. They could say, look, we're going to play in hubs, this merged model, we're going to play in hubs, but we're going to do this, this, this and this and this. And I could be like, Hmm, okay, maybe that's enough to get, and that's why I don't want to say if they're doing this, I'm out or if they're doing this, I'm in. I want to see the whole package. I want to see what my own feeling is about it internally that indescribable, am I really attracted to this idea or not? And because for anyone who's read my work, and so thank you so much if you have, but you know that I don't do, there are no half measures for me and I have the Excel spreadsheets to prove it. If I'm going to dedicate myself to covering a league, I'm going to jump in with both feet and I'm going to leave no stone unturned. And in order to do that, I have to be passionate about it. I have to believe, as you said, I think you put it very nicely, I have to believe in the vision that they're selling me. And if I don't believe in that, I'm not going to cover it just to say I can cover it. I'm not going to cover it just because I feel an obligation to spring football or whatever the case may be. I'm going to go outside and touch grass instead. I don't know, but I don't feel like I have that I'm chained to the idea of spring football in any form. Yeah, it's just hard. What if they do? You're talking about all these different things they do. What if they do six hubs and they have six home teams and they have traveling teams? You get into the endless what ifs and then once you go down that path, it's like you can create any number of incarnations of what this league looks like. And I mean you're doing nothing but stressing yourself. Well, and I don't know if any of those are that appealing to what we saw last year, which was the xfl actually playing in its markets. I mean, any other combination of anything to me is a step back of what we did last year and that was still obviously flawed in its execution. And it would be interesting to see how xfl leadership, even if it's still Danny and Dwayne sell, because their big selling point was, look, we're going to be in our home markets. That was whenever they were asked about the usfl. I Asked Danny Garcia, that's what she said. Yes, whenever they were asked about the usfl, they would say, look, we're focused on our own deal. And their advantage was playing in their home markets. If they merge with the usfl and now you've got the hubs where they're not in their home markets, I mean that's a definite tail between your legs feeling that I as a fan would get from ownership. And so it would be hard to support that. I'm not saying it's impossible and I'm not putting my cards on the table right now just because I don't think that's useful. But yeah, I think I would love to hear the xfl side of this ownership, sell the xfl fans who've already been through a season where these teams played in their home markets on the benefits of hub football. Now My last point here, we'll get out of here. I know it's late for you on the east coast. I remember vividly when I'm sure it was Wade probably had the thing on PW Torish, Hey rumor, the xfl city is for the 2020 launch. And I remember I was sitting there and I was filming the Nutcracker. I was doing that at the time and I remember texting Paul and Michael, my two still F L season ticket holders now. I mean we're going ballistic. Oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever. And because this is going to crash and burn, this is never going to work. Vince is going to come back and do all this stuff. But then over the course of, I guess it would've been 2018 over the course of the two years I'm All in bought In and it just now to be three years removed from that and we're doing this stuff, it is very different from that initial whatever link I saw on the PW tours. Very, very different. And I just feel like this is a different point. And I don't know at what point is it, are you the bastard child times 15? And I don't know what this is anymore. It's not what I envisioned to be getting. And I sat here and talked to you about that during the xfl season and I told you how tiring it was to be a fan of a league like this where you're living and dying by TV ratings, you're not knowing, you're investing and you're giving all of your time and effort to covering this league, really not knowing the long-term outlook. And you're just hoping you're just that they do well enough to get to season two and then you're hoping they do well enough to get to season three and you're hoping they can get a big TV deal out or something like that to kind of give you that sustained success. And I talked about how frustrating it was and how just tiring it was to have to be anxious about TV ratings coming out every week and how much more did they draw, how much less did they draw? The sky is falling versus we're walking on sunshine. And once you got through the first season and you saw the interviews that Danny and Dwayne did during the championship week and they did tons of interviews with print media and with traditional media and it was like, okay, they seem to have a good grasp of what's going on here. And they seem to have a good grasp of what they did. They were very humble. They said, look, this wasn't perfect. We made some mistakes, we're going to correct it going into season two. And that gave you a little bit of confidence, which lasted all of two weeks until they started cutting positions in Vegas and then they're doing all this stuff and now the merger and it's like you kind of throw your hands up and it's like, come on, get it together here. We're fans, but even we can only take so much. It does. And that's a perfect way to end the conversation. Don't take your fans for granted. I get all this and it's a little bit of the ivory tower syndrome and we're figuring all this stuff out and even this merger stuff, most of the team people, when we got the team ticketing, people listening to the show to get information, that's just not a good position to be in. So that's my last Anything else from you? We'll get out of here. I appreciate it, Greg. Nope, I'm good. Go watch Adam Copeland here and get a w I saw I sold 2000 tickets, only sold 2000 tickets for his big debut show or whatever. So Tony Kahn and all that. Always interesting. Always Interesting. You got it Reed. Awesome. Greg, thank you so much. Thank you. Well I appreciate it making time here late on the Wednesday, working around family commitments and everything else. I appreciate it. Here we have Eddie Steele talking cfl I had to double check. Week 18 here, flying through the season. How are you doing sir? I'm doing excellent brother. It's good to be with you this evening. You've been keeping well. We've been good. We've been good. Like I said, heading up to the great north here on Friday doing the, I felt like I got to go America's cfl team game of the season, win the pay coming in. We will talk through that matchup as well, but a lot of stakes here. What do you make here? cfl? We're 18 weeks through almost through the season. At what kind of grade the season if you had to from an overall view Overall 30,000 feet above view. I would say the season has been, if I had to put a grade on it, I'd give it a b plus. It's been a very positive season. There's been a ton of excitement. The front runners have been kind of themselves for the whole season being Toronto, Winnipeg, bc. But with that being said, there's been good games, good action. Even the teams, you look at the Ottawa BC game a couple of weeks ago, the teams that are the bottom feeders like the Red Blacks, the Elks, they still are putting on exciting games and ultimately that's all you can want as a fan is just to see exciting football. And that's something that the cfl always isn't shy from. They produce some good football, some exciting football. And now that the N F L is in full swing of it, we're a month into that season. It's awesome to see how exciting cfl football is in the fourth quarter compared to N F L football. It's remarkable man. And I've been a part of those types of games. I did tweet out, we were watching the Sunday night, I'm trying to remember which night of the week it was. The chiefs and Jets and Mahomes running and sliding down with minute 50 whatever left. I said, I do agree. We get a lot of this. Oh, what's real football? We have leagues down here arguing about what's real football. But I do like, I will say seeing how that game ended, I appreciate the CFO's end of game rules kind of last three minutes. If I had to choose Honestly, man, I've been a part of games where I've been up or down by 17 points with three minutes left and I've lost and won both of those games. I've been on both sides of the coin. It's crazy the way the clock stoppage and everything. It's the best part about it is it really is over until it's over. You're down 14 with three minutes left, it's a game. Well that was like you were just saying the BC auto game, I mean here, this historic comeback and would not be possible with that. And also some good special teams. I want to get your thoughts. So your former Edmonton team here, we were going to burn it down and we hate Chris Jones and then we free trade forward and now and we'll talk about this game. But the Elks overall, it feels like there's momentum here now. Am I mistaken? Yeah, there is absolutely momentum. I mean going into last, the last loss they had on a bi-week now this week they had a two game win streak at home, as crazy as that sounds because they had the historic 23 game losing streak at home. It's amazing how football is, you win a few games and just the tides turn and we're in the business of winning. That's what pro football is. You're paid to win games and nothing else doesn't matter about entertaining regardless. Everything comes when you win games. The fans come when you win games. And we've seen that with the Elks and I think the change at offensive coordinator was due bringing Trey Ford in the mix was due and he's absolutely given them the spark of juice that they needed in terms of the energy. Is he a polished quarterback? No, absolutely not. There's still lots of improvement there in terms of passing, but what he can do with his legs, he gives the offense life. And that's something that this team has been so desperate for this whole season And we will get through this year and kind see how everything winds up. We got to build him into a star, right? We've kind of seen the Chad Kelly of it all and I know we had the Victor Que and all that stuff. I don't know if we're kind of in the holding pattern right now just getting through, but I just waiting to get on here morally Scott tweeting out, Hey, I got Trey Ford coming on the antlers up or whatever the show there they do. I want to get Trey because here's another Canadian guy and the dunk will be happy about that. We have this guy that we can put out here. And so I want to see more of that. Like I said, I feel like maybe we're in a holding pattern with Edmonton right now, but going into next year, this guy needs to be one of the front and center people. You're right, the league does need to showcase him and I mean shoot, the Elks drafted him in the first round a couple of years ago. So let's showcase this talent. That's funny. You're right about dunking the Canadian content and Marshall Ferguson would be very happy as well. And me as a Canadian, I love it. But put the Canadian aside, man, we need some better quality quarterback play across the league. I don't care what your passport says, we just need some better quarterback play. And I don't think anybody can deny that Edmonton here. So coming in, this is kind of a weird game like Toronto and it's kind of like a first world problem here. Like, oh, we clinched so early, what are we going to do? But they sat Chad last week. We saw a friend of the show, Brian Scott have not the greatest Audi and along with Cameron Dukes there, but he's going to play. We have the big a hundred 50th anniversary here. What do you make of this? Because it's a weird game for Edmonton. I don't see them winning, but can they win and defeat? I think again, Toronto's in that tricky place, and I tweeted this out last week and I was having this debate with someone, Winnipeg family member because Toronto was sitting some key players for this game of the year and a lot of Winnipeg media, they weren't happy about that and saying Toronto's cowardly and then giving excuses this and that, but Toronto won the war. In my opinion, the fact that they kept that game close Winnipeg might have won the game in the battle in the short term, but the fact that Toronto kept it so close without having their best players in the game, that's sow seeds of doubt. So in terms of the Elks, I don't think it's, look, you just want to be competitive. The Elks aren't mathematically out of it, but there has to be a lot of help that needs to happen. And whenever you have to depend on other teams, that's never a good position to be in. And for Toronto, I've been in this type of position where you've secured home place and honestly these games don't matter for them. It doesn't matter. The thing about the cfl is you win first place in your division. You have one home playoff game that you got to win at home and you're in the Great Cup Toronto, none of this, it's all irrelevant when people say that Toronto will be flat, this and that. No, you got to get juiced up for one home game and that's it. You got to show up for one game and you're in the gray cup. And that's the beauty part about securing first. So you don't worry because we've had a lot of debates on our Monday recap shows, you don't worry whatever mishmash of a team we play here through the rest of the season. No, I don't worry at all solely for the fact that in 2015 when we won the Gray Cup, the league did an amazing scheduling job and they scheduled our bi-week in the first game of the season and the last game. So we had first place locked up, we had a bi-week at the last game of the season and we had the first bi-week of the playoffs. So we didn't have football for three weeks. Not only were we fresh as daisies, but if you practice right, you stay prepared. At the end of the day, all you got to do, it's amazing. If you think about it, you show up for one home game, you win one home game and you're in the gray cup. That's what it comes down to when you secure first. So I'm not a big believer in the rust in that because football at this point in time in a season is more about a fresh body in my opinion than anything. Well, and I think also we're paying adults here and this is the job we're doing and I don't know if certain coaches will be better than others, but I certainly have no qualms of dinwitty and staff having them ready to go. But we made the joke about Winnipeg dropping the game to Hamilton, going into their buy here just like they did last year. It goes both ways. B, I see Toronto being ready to go and it's a remarkable how impressed are you? I know we have the hundred 50th anniversary here and just historically I made, it's been a really incredible run for them this year. It really has been. And it's interesting to see because if you look at the history for the past, I don't know, 10, 15 years, Toronto actually wins a lot of great cups. They're notoriously known for being a franchise that's kind of in poverty. They don't get any fans out, the worst fan attendance in the league easily. But yet every second year they seem to win the Great Cup or if not be in it. And here we are back to back years, which is kind of the rarity. And they built themselves a good, good team. They have some good talent over there. It's no fluke that they've come out really where they left off last year from winning the great Cup. And I really think that we're going to see a repeat here this year. I really think it's going to be good. Chances of it, How excited. I know we talked Edmonton, but I know we kind still have the Cornelius ride and he's on another year however they want to and I think the cfl has ways to kind of remedy that if they want to. But looking forward here, I don't want Edmonton, not mathematically whatever, but we have our guy now we know we got Trey, he's our dog going forward looking prognosticating into next year. Are you excited to see where this team goes? You have to be excited. Chris Jones lover hate him. The reality is the defense has played well and that's what he is known for is defensive football. The offense, look, I think everybody knows the elephant in the room. Steven Macadoo, he's well known as one of Chris Jones's best boys. I've had him as a coach, but the offense just wasn't cutting it. You're lasting every stat. You make one change at coordinator and then you make the change at the quarterback simultaneously and boom, you have some in instant success, you win some football games. So if they even come out and run it back with how they're playing the second half the back nine of the season, if they run that back, they're going to be competitive and they're going to be right in the mix or a playoff spot next year. Well respective. I can't even speak if you had put Trey Ford in week three, I mean it is a completely different, obviously you played with Chris Jones here. What did you make of just kind of this whole debacle all year? You know what, dude, I got to be honest man, I was wrong. I was wrong about Trey Ford. I always meant my wrongs. I was wrong about Matthew Betts. I didn't think he was going to be the stud he is. I was wrong about, he's The friend of the show, Matthew Andre, he's a hell of a player man. But when he was in Edmonton his first two years in Edmonton after being a first round pick, he had two sacks or three sacks after two years. But he's come out and blossomed, blossomed as a player. I was wrong there. But with Trey, I had heard the rumblings that everybody said in terms of he wasn't ready and came in kind of out of shape, came in maybe with an attitude problem, this and that. And maybe I bought into some of that too and I was wrong man, they should have played him. I don't care about his conditioning any of it because the minute you played him there was an instant spark and an instant life in that offense that was absolutely putrid and dead. So I was wrong, man. That's good. Chris Jones was wrong because Chris Jones is out here. And again, I'm Chris Jones guy, but he's out here defending the moves of not playing him and defending Cornelius is playing. I'm sitting here listening to it, agreeing with it to a degree, but at the same time it ain't adding up to the eye tests on the field, it ain't adding up. So I don't know why it took until half of the season to make that move, but man, I'm glad he did for his job and a lot of other people's jobs. Well that's what I mean. We taught really saved and it completely 180 here kind of how everything, it was just a weird because we were supposed to have Chris Jones on the media day last year after the season and he was too busy, so too many interviews. So he called in the next week walking around the streets of la, he was there drafting one of the bowls was just have the most delightful conversation with the man completely not even what I was expecting. So then you living through this real time and you're like, what the hell is going on, man? But now you certainly figured it out and I don't know, I don't think we'll ever. I want the book on the trail tell all book trade for tell all about what's going on here. But yeah, we certainly remedy it with enough, not enough to save the season, but enough time to save us job. And you never know man, it's the cfl. So there's life, but it's in other people's hands In terms of, like I said, got to be the game of the week here. Winnipeg going into bc, I have lamented many times as a BC fan not showing up to certain games this year. And when the Winnipeg and got stomped and then what was the Hamilton came in and stomped us, what do you make of this game and how nervous do I need to be on Friday? Keeping it real? It's going to be a very unique game, I really think because you have Winnipeg who's going to try and come out and establish themselves and play that bully brand of football, get Brady Oliviera going and churn up the run game and you see their offensive linemen five, six yards downfield finished in their blocks. So I think Winnipeg's going to come out and try and do that because Winnipeg, I forget, but Winnipeg smacked BC after BC smacked Winnipeg in Winnipeg, right? Correct. So in BC when they beat Winnipeg in Winnipeg that first time their defensive line really dominated Winnipeg's offensive. That was the game. Matthew Betts really took over and was a game wrecker himself as a defensive end. So I think with the game going out into bc, Winnipeg's going to try and control things by having that run game really efficient because BC once that offense gets rolling, and I know firsthand, especially in that dome and I just saw tonight that they're going to be open up the second level there, man, you feel the momentum, you feel it on your back, you really do. Once they start scoring touchdowns in BC place, I don't know what it is, but you can just feel them start to roll and it's like, oh, here we go again and boom, BC can score 21 points just like that and they have the electric offense this year to do so. So I think Winnipeg is going to really try and do their thing in terms of that bully ball. But at the end of the day, I think BC's defensive line come around to it is going to win this matchup for BC again, their defensive line won the matchup last week against the Elks against a very tough guy in Trey Ford to contain and you can tell how prepared they were just in their game plan just by watching them, just by watching how they're pass rushing. And I think BC's going to be just as prepared to come out and stop that run and play that physical brand of football to stuff it right in Winnipeg's face. So I think BC's going to come out on top of this one. To me, this is the season. We've talked a lot on here. I think BC Place is almost more of a neutral site here. I think Winnipeg, I mean I can't see BC going into Winnipeg. I've seen this horror story last year and I saw I was at the Calgary BC game and then I couldn't go to Winnipeg, but I've seen that and oh, we win the first game and I mean they killed Calgary. I don't even think it was close. And then they go in and I know that was the Nathan war and all that, but at best you're at BC place where you're not playing on the frozen tundra with all these fans screaming and yelling at you. It's the truth man. It's the truth. And again, I've played those playoff games in Winnipeg and they're offensive line, they're, they do a great job of drafting in Winnipeg and building from the interior out, meaning from the oline out, they really do. They got some dogs up front, but their main horses, I don't want to say this is the last ride, but we're getting towards the end with Hardrick, Stanley Bryant at Guard, Patty Neufeld, some of their big dogs are getting up there in age. Man, these guys are older than me still playing. And you can see it the past five years they've been so dominant, but this year you can see a little bit of, I don't want to say regression, but kind of back down to earth in terms of their play because they've been so out of worldly for the past five years, but you can see it. And BC was the one who really exposed it earlier in the season with their speed. So I think BC's going to again go back to rely on their defensive line and the domination being indoors at that stadium where it's a track event playing there. And I hate playing in those Winnipeg cold games, man, because their offensive line outside, they just want to lean on you and they just want to lean on you, lean on you and it hurts. And picking yourself up off the turf after five, six yard runs, that's no fun Going into this season. I know myself and maybe others with Vernon and like, okay, we love Vernon, but sometimes it's a little bit of a roller coaster. And I know he had the bad game against Toronto ride and that was kind of the burn the tape game, but to me it's never faltered. You're kind of waiting for the shoe to drop. It's never really dropped. I think he should be incredibly proud. We're talking about him being an M O P candidacy and I think BC wins Winnipeg here and he shows out. I think he's definitely like could potentially leapfrog. Zach, Larissa, have you been impressed with him and what have you made at va? Yeah, you really nailed it with va. I'm guilty of it myself. You're kind of always waiting for the shoe to drop and for his play to kind of, I don't know, kind of come back down to that VA play that we've been accustomed to seeing over the years where it's a lot of highs, but then there's quite a bit of lows that follow the highs. Whereas this year, man, he's been so consistent every game. I mean, shoot, he's the only guy who's thrown for over 400 yards multiple times I think. So his play has been lights out and the play of BC as a whole, as an organization has truly followed VA this year and he hasn't faltered. He has been consistent good. And the fact is they have amazing playmakers out there, so he needs to just go out and play point guard. He doesn't need to go and scramble around the field and then throw for 30 yards. He needs to play point guard, get it to these studs and let 'em make plays. In terms of the other two games, not as exciting. We've got the Montreal home at home against Ottawa here. In terms of Hamilton, we're playoff team now. I don't know if they feel like a playoff team. We talked Bo Levi and all that stuff. Are you impressed with Hamilton? He was kind of in this weird grand experiment this year and then it didn't work out. Man Hamilton again, I'll touch on the Bo Levi in a minute, which I'm shocked that I saw that he's practicing here this week. Again, I'm shocked, but Hamilton's, they've been so hard to peg. Of course injuries, they've not helped them at all. I mean you've gone through how many starting quarterbacks, but Jekyll and Hyde football, they play good and then they're so off, they have a game in b c, but then they just can't show up against poor competition. I just don't know what they are. I thought for sure earlier coming up to the midway part of the season that Coach Steinhower would definitely be on the hot seat solely for the fact that they've lived in this kind of life of just average. They've gotten to the Great Cups, they haven't gotten over the hill, they've been an average team. They haven't been a dominant like 1214 win team always getting into the playoffs. And I thought that maybe he was losing the locker room a little bit as good of a coach and as good of a man as he is. I mean, everybody's message starts to run stale at a certain point, but I mean they're securing themselves a playoffs spot again. And the fact is, once you're in the dance, you never know what can happen with the Great Cup being in Hamilton, they could catch lightning, they could win a couple of games and who knows with Bo man got to respect the career first and foremost. You got to respect, he's a legend in the game, done it all competed against him for many years, lost a lot of games against him for many years. He's one of the best to do it. But I personally think in my eyes don't always lie, but sometimes they do. Not always. I don't think that his arm is even close to what it has been. He's had two surgeries the past few years and you could see it in Calgary the past couple of years. His arm strength is just severely declining. Hence the reason they chose to move on from and go Jake Mayer. Secondly, he's been banged up twice this year, serious injuries. I'm shocked that he's practicing and maybe he'll catch lightning in a bottle, like I said, but he's thrown three touchdowns to nine interceptions. The last game he played in, he threw for five picks. So call me crazy, but there's nothing to get all excited about because let's just look at the stats alone. If you're going to go to a quarterback who hadn't played since July and his numbers on the year were three picks, nine touchdowns, I'm not jumping for joy for that. He's my savior, just keeping it real. Great career. But the numbers are what the numbers are. Well yeah, he played duty before he got hurt. Not to make lot of any injuries, but it is, it's the same thing. And we're similar parallels I thought with the New York Jets and Aaron Rogers, right? And we've got Hamilton's going all in, but it's the same thing if Aaron Rogers thinks you're going to make this miracle comeback and next year we're going to rehab, haven't played football in forever, it's his name with Bo here. You haven't played football since July and you're coming back and you kind of looked like not great before you play the first time. Exactly, exactly. He got hurt in week one. He got shoved down in the end zone there, I remember. And it wasn't even a tackler or anything. It wasn't, it was a pedestrian football hit, man, I hate injuries the game, but it was like, wow, he popped his hip, did something to his hip doing that, and then came back, looked average and got hurt again. So look, all I'm saying, and I don't care who you are in football, we all have a shelf life. I don't care who you are, that's the reality of the game. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, I mean 33, maybe a Warren 33 year old, but still 33 nonetheless mean he's gone through a lot here. But again, 33. But the thing is the shoulder was already declining before this season, so let's keep that into account too. Let's just not look at this season. Calgary, they're very good at determining their future typically. I mean, Jake Meyer hasn't worked out. They normally had passed the torch on, but Huff Ngel, they're smart guys there in Calgary and they benched him a couple of years ago. Jake came in and played well and then they benched him last year. So I look at how it's happened the past three years and there's a serious decline there In terms of the riders and I just, right, we're hanging on to third barely here in the west last year, kind of a do-do season. And I know remember at the beginning of the season, the rough riders, they should break the salary cap, whatever. It's like they weren't even in the plant, not even, but disappointment, I dunno, what do you make of this? I mean, presumably they're going to be a cfl era, a playoff team, but for what end here at this point, Again, they're kind of like I said with Hamilton, Jekyll and Hyde, but man, I would say that they're a lot more hide or whoever the not good one is. I think the doctor is the good man. Sask has been, boy, talk about a rider nation. I kind of have pay attention to the pulse a little bit. Having played there. A fan base is just desperate for a move with the coaching staff. The fan base seems to know what's going on inside the locker room more than the people in the locker room in terms of Dickie's message getting stale, et cetera, et cetera. But the facts are, I mean, the riders, they are not putting anything impressive out there in terms of product of play at all. And they are two poor Elks flukes away from being a team that's really not even being mentioned with a good team in the cfl this year because the Elks lost to them by getting stopped three times in third and won, and then the punt return. So those are two games that the Elks dropped. And I'm not sitting here as some Elks homer saying, oh, the Elks should have won these games. Look, the riders won these games, but all year they've been scraping by and they've just been putting out very average performances sitting with, I believe six wins right now. It's been nothing really to write home about. It's been a very average season. Again, with the cfl you get in the playoffs, you never know, but I think it's a one and done with them in the playoffs this year. Oh, absolutely. I mean, yeah, you figure either way it's BC or Winnipeg going in there and just, they got to go in and just get stomped for that. It's honestly, at this point in the year, sorry to cut you off, I think if they else were to get in the playoffs, they would pose more competition for VC or Winnipeg. I agree a hundred percent with that. I agree a hundred percent. In terms of wholesale changes there though, obviously we've had the whole Trevor Harris thing, and I've looked at this and we've talked, and we probably don't even have enough time today to get to the Red Blacks deep dive in what is going on with them and losing the must win game. But Bob Ds comes in last year, okay, interim and Moli with all that, and then this year you get these passes. I just dunno how many passes we get, right for some of these. And same with Saskatchewan here. I mean they're not planning to play Jake Dolla gala week one. Do they get a pass from you? No, they don't get a pass because there's only so many kicks at the can you get. And I mean, I get that's pro sports. We see the recycling of coaches and reality coaches. It is just an old boys club. It's who you know and guys just get recycled over and over. But look, Dickie's been the head coach now, they've gotten to a couple of west finals with a team that he inherited. It wasn't really a team that he's built, but it's really, you look at the more years that him and OJ had their fingerprints on this and the more years you get removed from the Chris Jones being in SaaS, I mean the team has kind of gotten worse and worse. And I think the overall sentiment, rider Nation, you need to listen to the fans. You really do. You can't always listen to the fans, but when they start to speak with their wallets, which they have, you need to be aware of that and be in tune with that. And look, Dickie, I like Dickie a lot in my opinion. I never thought he was head coach material great coach, hell of a coach, hell of a coach. But as a head coach, that's a different ball game. Never really thought that that's jives with his personality. And look, I think that with a lot of discipline issues that we've seen out of the riders over the past few years, a lot of attitude issues, a lot of, I don't want to say effort issues, but you can just see guys on the field. It's just that I don't give a crap factor and you can really see it with their body language. Look, maybe Dickie's message is starting to wear on thin ears and there needs to be changes in Jo as well. Their offensive line better this year, but has been in Achilles heel for the past three years as a former offensive lineman, you think that would be duty number one for a gm, but that hasn't been the case. I will say, yeah, as a Seattle Mariners fan, I've lived through a very unlistened to, I dunno if you've tried the end of the baseball talk this week, but very much like management, not listening to the fans, coaching, not listen, it's been stressful here. Last game here. So it's the Columbus Day, right at Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, right? Is that on the Monday? Is that what we're happening here? Yeah. You're funny brother. Yeah, yeah, it's on Monday. What is this game? I mean, can we flex this game out? Can we flex this out of the weekend Ottawa at Montreal? Yeah, look, I'll be too busy eating. I'll keep it real. Eating and cooking because that game, yeah, what are we talking about here? I mean there's nothing to talk about in terms of these two teams. There's nothing to Montreal's in and they're playing better football in Ottawa. It's been shambles and I was hopeful for Ottawa, I was hopeful for Bob Deis because he is a hell of a man from my hometown, Winnipeg, former bison coach, former bison. So there's a lot of history there at the University of Manitoba and he's a leader of men, but it just hasn't panned out. It hasn't panned out. There's been some questionable decisions. And it's funny because you question these coaching decisions when they always go the wrong way. If they go the other way, he's a genius and you win a couple extra games, but I don't know what the deal is with Ottawa, man. It's stinky over there. It's stinky. And again, keeping somewhat of a pulse, trying to via Twitter or X, it seems like the fans are really disgruntled and I don't blame them losing. It hurts and people are going to show up with their wallets. And that's the reality of it. And I saw it firsthand here in Edmonton. I'd go to games and I loved bringing my kids to games. Why did I love it? The rows were empty. My kids could run throughout the stadium. They were empty. I didn't have to police them. That's how bad it was here. But people, you win games. This is when Edmonton was playing some bad football. You win games, it changes. There's extra 10,000 people here. So Ottawa, I don't know what it is, man, but they need to just figure out how to win some games next year. They've been in close games, they just haven't finished. Yeah, this is speaking to someone that covers the U S L. We have teams with two years of legacy or xfl or whatever, but I don't know what a red black fan is. I just can't wrap my head around. I know that they had a great million years, it feels like a long time ago now. I just don't know what that is. In 2023, we hadn't lost at home, only not as long as Edmonton. So it wasn't as big of a deal and it is just bizarre. So last thing from the and then we're going go for it. No, no, I was going to say you nailed it man, because you don't know what they are. They haven't lost at home for as long as Edmonton, but they kind of relish the fact that it hasn't been as long. It's like that's good. There was at one point it was I think one of the weeks SAS had, they were like, oh, they haven't won at home in however many weeks. And then Ottawa and obviously Edmmonton, like how many teams in the nine team league and we have current ongoing losing streak at home. It just seems wild To me. It's a bad look. Last thing here, thoughts Montreal, presuming they beat Hamilton, do they make any noise at all or is this kind of last year where they were a field goal away, they could have beat Toronto but they didn't really matter. I really think Montreal could make noise. They have a lot of veterans there on defense and their defense plays some good physical football and that always bodes well in the playoffs and they have a stand back man. William Stanback will allow Cody Fido to maybe be an efficient quarterback living in second and short situations because if you have to live in second and long, I don't think we can ride or die with Cody, but stand back. Playing that physical football I think really helps that offense and it helps Cody become the kind of quarterback that he is, the mobile you can put his legs to use, et cetera. I think they could make noise, man, solely defense, run game football just as well as I do defense and run games, cold weather, playoff football, what does it, if they come out and punch Toronto in the mouth, it could happen. I just felt so bad he was on because we were trying, we had a few going for a while, so we remedied everything and that was fine. And then he got injured and there was all that stuff. So he finally came on the show during the season and like, okay, I came back and I'm ready to go. And then totally just laid the egg in the game and I felt so terrible. I was so excited because talking to him, it's the most infectious. I just want him to succeed more than anything. I don't know if it's the team or him or a combination, but I want nothing but the best. But it does seem hard sometimes. I agree. Great individual, great individual. And I've met and played with plenty of great individuals, but we're playing pro sports, which is criticized to a level that it shouldn't be. And you're playing quarterback, which is face of a franchise. So if you're not doing it right on the field, man, the arrow's pointed at you. Eddie, this has been a delight. Like I said, I appreciate you making the time after everything with the day. It means a lot and appreciate it. We got to do this again, but I really appreciate anything else from you. No, brother, this is awesome. I appreciate you having me on. Awesome, thanks. Well, our guests here I guess went a little viral over the weekend. We'll talk about all that, but I feel like I have a bonafide internet celebrity here. Jess Twe. How are you doing, sir? Well, how are you? I'm good. Crazy week. We'll talk through all that. How's the season going for you? You guys second in the east right now in contention? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seasons has been going well. Lots of ups and downs. Obviously. We had to go set out to be first in the east at the beginning of the year. We didn't quite accomplish that, but we still got into the dance and so that's all that matters. What's the mindset right now in the locker room? How's everyone feeling? Pretty good. We know the task at hand. We're playing a very tough Ottawa team. Again, this is the fourth time we're playing them. Every time we play them. It's a tough game. We're very aware of the stand-ins and with Hamilton and where we are in the standings and winning a game we're mean for us and we're playing at home and every time we play at home, we want to defend our home field so we know where we are. But I think in the locker room we all feel pretty good. We know the task at hand and we're just looking forward to playing a game. Well, yeah, I mean you smacked the auto around a little bit here last week. So I mean looking to capitalize on that, like you said, you got the home field now home and home coming back. You just got to take care of business, right? Yeah, I think anytime you play any team in this league, you can't ever say whether you win by 20 points or five points. You can't ever say it's going to happen again. You still got to show up, you got to execute your assignment and you got to play them tough. And so I think that's what we're looking to do. I don't think they're a bad team by any means. Their record might not show that, but if you watch any of their games, some of the games they've lost come down to the last three minutes. I think most of the games have come down to the last three minutes. So it's not a team that you can take lightly. In terms of you guys hitting stride now, I know stand back's kind getting back up to speed. He was on our show I think pre last season. What's it feel like Cody's kind of clicking to getting now? I know he was banged up. What's it feel like getting everyone back going? I think it is great. They didn't want game us a hit or stride at the right moment. And we feel like we're just trying to do that. Guys are coming back healthy, stand back is starting to run crazy. Our offensive line is playing great. Cody's feeling much better. And so I just think for us right now, we're clicking at the right time and that's all that matters. To hit your stride. As you're going into the playoffs In the huddle or in the locker room, what kind of leader is Cody? What does he give you guys Energy level? I Think Cody's a different type of leader. Not so much a rah rah guy, but a guy that leads by example, he's in here, he gets working, he's in a film room, he's in the weight room. He's the guy that everybody in the locker room gets along with. And I think it's a different, because sometimes you have quarterbacks, they like to be loud, but just because you're loud, it doesn't mean you're doing anything right. So I think his leadership is just being a guy that shows up at leads by example. It seems to me, I've had Armando on I think a couple of weeks ago, and like I said, with Will and it seems like just a really tough both sides of the ball. I mean, how would you characterize your team? I mean Montreal to me is pretty, I mean, I would be killed in anything, but it seems very intimidated. How do you guys view yourselves? I mean, I think in the beginning of the year, coach MAs, the identity of this team was to show up and compete. We talk about ability, toughness, and effort. And I think when you watch play, even if again, we could be down by 30 or we could be up by 30, the goal is to always show up and play any team tough. And so I think, again, any team that we see in the playoffs, if we play to the best of our abilities, and again, play discipline, football, eliminate mistakes as best as we can. I think we're tough to be, but obviously I play on this team, so some other people might have a different opinion and that's fine. But we feel good about ourselves in this locker room. As on any given day we can show up and we can play with the best of 'em. Alright, so what's going on here? We have this onsite punt thing, taking the world by storm. We cover the xfl and U S L, so we're both sides of the border. I'm in Seattle. What's going on with that? Walk me through that. Well, it's a rule book in the cfl. You can, as a pun on offense, you can punt the ball a yard past the l o s and you can recover yourself. So I'm not sure if you saw, but I think a couple months ago when we played in BC Coach MAs, it was the same scenario, second in 18, he tried to call the play. We had to look, didn't quite execute it, came back that week, told him if we got the chance again, call it, and I was going to execute it and so you've seen the play. When I catch the ball, the first thing I do is find the official to my right because standing right at the sticks so I know where the sticks are. I look up and I see the defenders are about 10 or 12 yards off, so it gives me enough time to kick the ball and make sure I don't kick it too hard, but also let it go a yard past the line of scrimmage and so when I kick it, there's a bit of a hesitation because I'm waiting just for it to go past that yard and then as soon as I get on it, I think number 32 on Ottawa and number four put hands on me right away In terms of the finesse needed for that because it's a different skillset. I Mean it's Different than just trucking guys running through or whatever. How do I practice that or how do you prepare for that? Yeah, you practice it and one of the reasons why in Vancouver I didn't quite get a chance to execute the play is because if you watch a one in Vancouver, I kind of have the ball like this and if you watch the one that I executed in the Ottawa, I have two hands on the ball so I kind of drop it with both hands and I kick it instead of just dropping it there shot. But either way the ball was sideways and I just had to make contact with my foot and I didn't. Yeah, but it's a little bit of finish as far as not kicking it too far past the line of SC discrimination, I mean in terms of I saw this go everywhere and we're used and I'm still being sent stuff and I'll remember when it was the punt team back and forth or all these kind of different, especially special team stuff. Is that what you like about the cfl or one of the aspects? I mean talk about just that and the uniqueness. I mean I think, yeah, the C F O is a very unique game as an American. If you've never seen it, like the comments on social media. Some guys, some people love it, some people hate it, which is fine, but I think that's what makes our game exciting. There is so many wrinkles and you really got to be a historian and you got to be a student of the game and that's what having a coach like Coach MAs does, he's always bringing up all these artifacts and all these cool historical facts about the league and yeah, to me it is something that kind of makes it a little bit different from the N F L. We know what the N F L is, everybody knows the National Football League League, but to me that's what makes it cfl fun. What I liked particularly was obviously against Ottawa and you have Coach Dice special teams guy, so I'm sure he's sitting there afterward banging his head or whatever. I like that little aspect wrinkle of it Too. Yeah, absolutely. Coach Dice, great coach, but like I said, the rule book is in there, but I don't think teams utilize it, especially that play because it looks easy to execute, but it's not quite easy. I think it may have been done three times and I might've been the only one to ever execute it, I think. I'm not too sure, but it looks easy, but it's much harder to execute. I just always wonder games like this or whenever something kind of goes off in one of these games, like coming back and checking your phone afterward or whatever, be like, oh my God, What is going on? Was it crazy? Yeah, it was crazy. I think the person that tweeted, I think both who tweeted it and Dov Kleeman, I think that's his name, he's an N F L guy. Everyone knows. Yeah, everyone Knows. And I don't think he didn't tag me in it, but later on people would find out that I'm the person in the play and so yeah, social media is blown up, Twitter is going off and again, lots of different opinions and a great job and this is terrible and all these things, but I think it was a fun player. Yeah. Well, last thing for me here, like you said, talking to Tawa this weekend, what's kind of the mindset here? I mean besides just this weekend cementing getting into cementing second and everything else, what are you looking forward to here heading into the playoffs? Just playing solid football. Like I said, I think we have been a team where we go on a four game win streak and then we go on a three game losing streak and we go on a four game. It's kind of been a lot of up and downs and I think for us and guys in the locker room, I'd say the word is finding some consistency and like you said, hit and has tried going into the playoffs, finding some consistency, closing out the rest of regular season games and making sure we feel good about ourselves Going into the playoffs, if we can kind of run a table here, end up with a good record 11 and seven record, you go in the playoffs, feeling confident in yourself that you can play with anybody else. Not saying if that doesn't happen, we sort of feel confident in ourselves, but I think at this point in the season there is less room for error and more time for consistency and playing good football, playing disciplined football, staying positive and being with each other. Well ion I appreciate it. I'll tag you in this when this goes live Friday and don't think it'll go as viral as the bar still sports or anything, but certainly appreciate your time. Good luck this weekend. Thanks for having me, Reid. Take care. Awesome. Good luck, sir. Thank you. Thank You. Bye. Huge special, thanks again. Like I said to Dan, Greg, Eddie and Jess run for coming on. Appreciate Francis everyone over at the Montreal Ettes for setting up all of that. I think that'll do it for me today, working through guests for next week. As always, I think I have a good cfl guest coming on to kind of talk through all of that and then we'll see we'll what's going on in terms of the merger stuff and the timelines, everything else. With that, I don't expect anything immediate kind of frustrating for fans as we wait through all this. Who knows, maybe we do the 2024 seasons, we shift the xfl schedule, we play concurrently and then we cross promote and figure it out from there. But we'll be interesting to see. Like I said, like I subscribe, I turn on the bell on all that stuff and doing the shorts and everything else as information comes out breaking during the week. Hope you guys enjoy. Thanks again. Have a safe weekend.

CFL 2023 Week 17 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 17, What Did We Learn?

Well here we are back. Happy Markcast Monday. I was just talking Jason before we got on. Good weekend. I guess if you're a Commanders fan, I don't know. I mean they still took the Eagles here to overtime. I'll take that as wind. We got the bears coming up this week, but we can talk Swifties today if we want. I think everyone's a little tired of that. We'll be talking some damn Canadian football here, gentlemen. How are we doing? Evan? Back on the program. Evan, how are you? Yeah, I'm doing well. I know I missed last week unfortunately, but we're back now. Had a couple good games this weekend. I actually saw a couple of teams clinch playoff spots, which is always fun, always exciting. So happy to dive into that here. Yeah, the Mariners can no longer break my heart officially eliminated. We're done. We're done. They're out. It's cracking season all the time. We have a preseason again tonight. We'll be going to, and then like I said, commanders Thursday night football. I feel bullish on that right now, so to me that's the end of the season if we can't do that. Jason, your bills, like you said, diced the fish here, putting up tremendous points. How are you feeling? Tie Katz clinched right as well. We're officially playoff bound. Yep. Great football weekend for me and I mean one thing I wanted to bring up to start was the passing of Hall of Famer, George Reed, who is one of the greatest cfl running backs and figures around the Canadian Football League all time and honestly played his entire career for the rough riders. Obviously me being a pretty young person, I didn't get to see him play, but this guy, just looking at his statistics, 11 time a thousand yard rusher in the Canadian Football League. I ventured, that's probably a cfl record. So I mean just an incredible career for him and he is one of the all time greats, so sad to see him go and rest in power. Yeah, I saw that come out. It was it late last night, right. And I saw Randy and everyone kind of put that out. See, I wanted to make sure we talked about that off the top of the show. A couple other news items, big game obviously coming up this Friday in bc whatever, Vancouver. I will be in attendance there. Dorothy and I, we have our Airbnb and all that, so we will be there making the trek up to BC plays for that game, leaving hopefully immediately after Dorothy's school. So I don't know if we'll be, they're doing a gravy bowl Thanksgiving. I don't you we, I don't know what you Canadians do. We're celebrating Thanksgiving in October, but we'll be up there for that, so that'll be exciting. So if you're around, say hi and we'll be getting drinks afterward. Evan excited get to go back. You were BC place earlier this season. Yeah, I mean it's a really nice spot. I think you'll enjoy it and I'm hoping that, well I've been to BC place a couple times, but obviously we will cross Hamilton off the list hoping to get to a couple more cfl venues, especially the ones that maybe feel a bit more, I don't know if I want to use the word remote, but you went to Regina for the Gray Cup and Winnipeg. I feel like those would all be cool spots to visit. So definitely on my list. I am hoping to get up there at some point. Jason Game of the year thus far. I feel like stakes I think could be higher to me and we'll talk, we'll preview the games, but I think BC needs that first place in the west. Do you disagree of the importance of that? Of not having to go into Mosaic? Yeah, IG field. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely agree. I think the lions definitely need to win this game on Friday night. I mean I take it as basically a playoff game in and of itself because you saw last year how difficult it was even with Nathan Rourke to go in there and get a win at IG Field come playoff time. So I'm really excited for this week's game And we'll talk Lions. It seems like they showed up this week. We had Andrew on the show and I don't know, I liked to get his perspective. I know we've been a little critical about Coach Rick and the locker room and everything during the season and good to see how do they compartmentalize wins and losses. And so if you missed Andrew's interview on the Friday show, the other thing, this is tremendous news I think to me, all respect to Carrie Underwood, Ms. Underwood and the Sunday night football theme song. But Green Day here announced Saturday. I got the email, I was at the a w wrestling event, so I know they did it, I think halftime at the Hamilton game. I'll give my thoughts on this, but I'll defer to YouTube first since you actually are in the target demographic where I'm no longer in the 18 to three four Target demo. Evan, what do you make of this Green Day? I think this is tremendous. Yeah, I mean look, I'll say this much. I wouldn't consider myself to be a huge Green Day fan, but Green Day is one of those bands where it's like, I feel like when I was growing up, they were always on the radio. I know several their songs again, and I'm not a fan. I don't really listen to them regularly, but there's no denying the impact that they've had on music across the US and especially if you look at, I think they peaked back two thousands, right? So maybe nineties. I'm not, again, this is even getting, well, I'm at the very edge of that 18 to 34 demographics, so you can't quote me on any of this. Fine, that's fine. No, man, look, I'm definitely excited. I think you combine this with Carrie Underwood, it's a very good showing. I know that there's been some backlash in recent years of not having Canadian performers at the games, but I completely agree, Reid. I think this is a massive get for the Gray Cup and I was definitely surprised to see Green Day pop up during the announcement, which I think happened at halftime of that Hamilton Calgary game. And this is what's interesting and you're fine. Well, I don't, I kind of know. That's great because you're trying to hit all different demos here. People are tired, the country. Jason, what do you make of this? I think it's fantastic. Honestly, green Day personally is one of probably my top five favorite bands ever. I mean I always say, do they even have a bad song? It's like they have just so many popular songs and they were pretty relevant even recently. So I think that it was a great get for the cfl halftime show. It was funny, I was at the game with my buddy and he was like, any guesses for the halftime show? And I was just randomly, I was like, I don't know, green Day. And then a few minutes later it was announced as Green Day. So that was pretty cool. But yeah, I think it's great because they're, I can't think of many bands that are as popular across a wide range of demographics as Green Day. I know my dad even likes Green Day, all my siblings like Green Day. So I mean they're very popular across a wide age range, which is very important for a halftime show like this. Yeah, I did see Evan was talking and I love Bob, I love Bob Irving, friend of the show. He's been on Green Days is an American band, the Mishmosh of four, the Georgia Lion and whatever the heck country artists we had last year was definitely not a Canadian either. So I think that that's okay. To me it's getting in and you brought up the point your dad likes it. I went to a lesson Jake show a couple weeks ago and similar age range, they're nowhere near as obviously as popular, but they've been doing this now 30 years and you're getting to the point where the people my age and older are bringing their kids to the show. And so it's almost like this weird circle of we were seeing 10 year olds mosh pitting in the safest mosh pit in the world because it's a bunch of 45 year old dads kind of with them helping it. So I think it's great. I mean I think they're mega superstar. I think they have a CD coming out, so that kind of makes sense that they're doing that. But you want to market the cfl Gray Cup halftime show as a big deal. I mean this is widely viewed in terms of Canadian interest per year. Even if you're not watching the cfl, you're going to watch the Gray Cup. And so I think this is tremendous. You guys had Nickelback and Bieber and stuff, but to me, I dunno, green Day, the longevity of it, I think Nickelback probably burned hotter, but I think Green Day has certainly burned a lot longer than the Nickelback had. Yeah, certainly Jason. So Bieber, when did Bieber do it and was he at the height of his power when Bieber was the Great Cup Show? Was that tremendous? Yeah, that was a huge deal. That was for the hundredth Great Cup in Toronto, so it was a huge deal in 2012. And it was Justin Bieber, Mariana's Trench, Carly Rae Jepsen, and I think it was Gordon Lightfoot of all people that was part of that as well. So it was a big deal and they made it a big deal for that game at Rogers Center. Well good. Well we'll be there. Yeah, maybe there'll put together a little media event here. Let's get in with the Green Day. Maybe we can do all that stuff. So here we go. Week 17 here. Coming up, obviously we have our wonderful cfl stats on here. Jason, the Calgary Hamilton game, you were in attendance, we had the announcements and all that stuff. What did you make of that Saturday night? Well, I mean first of all, from the Calgary perspective, I mean this team just looks lifeless. I think you could stick a fork in them even though they're not mathematically eliminated yet because Saskatchewan's just going on a skid of their own. But I just don't see them getting two or three more wins the rest of the season that will be necessary for them to make the playoffs. They just look like a team that's completely, like I said, lifeless at this point. And then for the Hamilton perspective, I thought that this was the best. I think I've seen the Tcad defense look this season other than maybe that game at bc. I thought they looked really tremendous throughout this entire game. They really didn't give up very many big plays. And on offense, it was kind of weird because they gave Powell the quick hook and they brought in Matthew Shilts and Shilts immediately comes in and throws, I think it was like a 70 yard touchdown to Tim White. And that was really the turning point of the game because Calgary was up six nothing at that point. And then Hamilton was able to even that score up and didn't really look back from there. So I thought it was really strong game from the Hamilton perspective, even though they didn't win by a whole bunch. I mean this is a typical Calgary 15, if you can score 20 plus more points, I think you're going to beat Calgary. They just haven't proven. I was kind of reminded me listening to the pregame for the Jets Chiefs last night where they're like, the Jets are going to need to be able to put up 25 points plus to beat the chiefs and they haven't proven that they've been able to do that. Look at the game last night, I mean they weren't able to do that. So yeah, Evan, seeing your boy here, Shilts coming back in this, what did you make of Hamilton? Yeah, I mean this was a very good outing by Hamilton in a game that it was nice to see them sort of clinch playoffs at home. I think again, there was a lot of, a couple of weeks ago it seemed like this might've not been possible and we were very hesitant to kind of lock in Hamilton as a playoff team. But again, they've sort of really built things up in these last couple of weeks here of the season. And now obviously they look capable. We will see how they ride with some of the bigger teams in the playoffs, but they certainly look capable, really impressed to get with Shilts. I know you brought that up, really impressed with his performance. Kim coming in 225 yards on 11 completions is pretty outstanding. You don't see that very often. I mean, again, a lot of big playability, I'm sure that 70 yard touchdown or it was that Tim White helped out. But yeah, definitely a nice performance by Hamilton all around. And then Jason brought up the defense. I know we don't talk a lot of defense on this show, but guys like Jamir Thurman will, Sunland, they all stood out and then yeah, Calgary, I have to agree with everything that's already been said. I feel like Calgary, even if they're not mathematically eliminated, I don't know how you view this as a playoff team. Every time you say that they have to win, you're pulling for, they just can't get the job done. So unfortunately it's been one of those years for Calgary, again, very uncharacteristic for them since they're in the playoffs every year. But it really just has been one of those years where they're never really able to get over the hump. And keep in mind, Calgary has flashed a lot of good things, even though I think we've been a bit critical at times. Calgary has had their games where they looked complete and they were able to impress, especially on the offensive side of the ball where things have been, it feels like they've been really slow and conservative. But yeah, I mean overall Calgary just, this was a game where I thought they honestly had a chance. I thought maybe they could surprise Hamilton just because kind of been in their groove and maybe they were going to get a bit too comfortable. But no, I mean Hamilton stood tall and Calgary was just a bit short, so it's too bad. But life goes on and I think it's a time that it really proves that the cfl is changing if Calgary's starting to slow down a bit and possibly be looking at making some significant changes in the off season. Jason, in terms of Shilts coming in here, and obviously it's early Monday, we'll kind of figure out stuff this week, but is that the game plan moving forward? What did you make of that in terms of getting to the playoffs here? Well, they've had some weird strategies the past couple of years with their quarterbacks. I mean remember last year when they had, at times they were playing Dane and Matthew Schultz in the same game when they're both healthy. So I mean we could see that a platoon situation where Powell starts the game and Schultz comes in again and then they kind of go back and forth with that and kind of ride the hot hand. But I mean I think because Schultz finished this game, he'll probably get the start next week. But like I said, with the strategies that they've deployed in the past, and you also have to bring up the potential for Bow Levi Mitchell's return that could throw a wrench in the whole thing. So it should be very interesting to see who's going to be under center for the TCATs in the coming weeks. Yeah, I mean we do this a lot like xfl, we get the spring football like oh, we're going to ride the hot hand of the quarterback. I mean Evan, do you ever see that working long term? You mean with Shilts? Well just the concept of that. Like I said, Jason, I get what he's saying. It does seem like they've done that before, but like I said, we've seen that in other leagues. Well I think he got a ride one. I don't think you can pull. Okay, you had a bad drive. Okay, we got to pull you. You saw Mac Jones get pulled yesterday. I just think you kind of got to ride or die here. Yeah, I'd have to agree with that part of it. I mean I think at the quarterback position you're looking for consistency and if you're swapping guys in and out of a game all the time, no one's going to really be able to put things together in a complete manner. I know in college, one of the better examples of a two quarterback system was Sacramento State because their team went to the playoffs and they had a very good run at the F CSS level last year with their two quarterbacks, Jake Dunaway and Astro Hara I believe, and Dunaway is actually now with the Ottawa red black. So kind of funny how that all works out, but my point being, it's very rare to see a two quarterback system if that's what you want to call it. It's very rare to see that workout in my opinion. And I feel like once you have a guy in there who's who looks capable, you kind of just have to roll with that for a bit. Bargain, any setbacks. And I feel like if you have a two quarterback system, it just creates a scenario where it's like you've got two siblings fighting over something. It just kind of feels like there might be a bit of a shift in power because again, quarterback's supposed to be a leader, it is a leadership position, you're supposed to take accountability and if there's two quarterbacks, it's kind of hard to follow a certain one. You want to follow both, but then you don't know who's going to be in. So again, it doesn't just affect the quarterback as well. It also affects all the guys around them, the receivers that are catching the ball, maybe one quarterback can run, so you're going to have more option plays or whatever. Again, there's a lot of logistics to go into that, but yeah, I feel like most of the time rolling with one quarterback is the right way to go. So Jason, we're basically looking here, I was trying to look at the schedule here coming up. So if we look at the standings, right, tie cats, we want Home Field Advantage and the semis against the Owlettes coming up, they have, I had here and then, so Hamilton's going into Saskatchewan, right? Ottawa and the Montreal. And then the next week he got BC at home and then obviously Edmonton hosting the Ettes. Any prediction there? Do you think Hamilton's able to make up that game on Montreal? Probably not because I don't see the Red Blacks beating the Alouettes at this point given the poor effort that we saw this past weekend. So I think the Ettes will get a win there. Hamilton, I'm 50 50 about whether or not they're going to go into Saskatchewan and win, even though Saskatchewan's looking very poor right now themselves, that's been a house of horrors for the TCAs. I can tell you as a TCAs fan, I think they haven't won there in seven years or something like that. Even the year in 2019 where they went 15 and three, that was one of their losses that year. So I mean, I don't know if they're going to get a win there and then there'll be a two game gap and that would basically be it from that point. But I do think I like their chances at home against bc I think given what we saw in that first match against them and then the last week of the season they play on the road against Montreal. So that'll be an interesting game if it means anything at that point. So I'm really excited to see what happens the rest of the season, but I think at the end of the day I don't see the Ettes giving up that second place spot to Hamilton. And you're a lot more knowledgeable about all these playoff seatings and standings. So let's crazy world here, BC shows up Friday, kicks the pants off Winnipeg, do they have to stay a game up on Winnipeg or is it because the tiebreaker and all, are we still having to, going into Hamilton here and we've got the host Cal, what do you make of BC the end of their schedule if you're able to get the game up? If BC wins this weekend against Winnipeg, they'll have the tiebreaker and they'll be, because they have the same record right now, there'll be a game up. So they would effectively have a little bit of a cushion there to drop a game if they so happen to lose against Hamilton in a few weeks for example. So I think, like I said, that game on Friday is absolutely huge. I think it decides basically everything. It could have looked even better for BC if Toronto was able to hold on and beat Winnipeg on Friday night. But unfortunately for the Alliance it didn't happen. So they'll have to take care of business themselves. Yeah, if you're looking here, you got, like we said, the Friday game, Hamilton, you're going into Hamilton and then hosting Calgary to end up the year. Evan, I guess any other thoughts? We'll get to the other games here. Any other thoughts? Calgary or Hamilton here? No, no. Evan, Jason, anything else on this? Hamilton Faithful was the hammer rocking? Yeah, it was a great crowd. I felt like because Calgary's not necessarily a big draw. You see the fans really come out for the Toronto games and the games against a marquee opponent like say like a Winnipeg or maybe even a bc. But I think for it being a game against Calgary, I thought the crowd was really excellent. I think it was around 23,000 there on Saturday night. So I thought it was a great crowd and a great atmosphere for that announcement for Green Day as the halftime show. Alright, so let's get in here. Let me get back over. So Montreal going into Ottawa here. We'll go Jason first on this while I get it pulled up. Thoughts on this one? I don't have many thoughts on this one because I didn't get a chance to really watch too much of this game. My main takeaway would be that just the Red Blacks just like Calgary, they're very similar teams. They came out with no fight in this one. Once again, it was 22 to nothing entering the fourth quarter. They had multiple turnovers in the red zone. They had a situation where I think they were down by seven points at that point of the game early in the second quarter and they threw a pick six to Mark, Antoine Qua, who's having an excellent season, by the way, for Montreal. So I mean Red Blacks just a very disappointing effort for them. I thought that this game would be a lot closer than it ended up being, but ultimately they didn't show up to play. And then Montreal, nothing spectacular from them, but defense continues to be a big story. FTA was solid in this one, didn't turn the ball over William Stanback getting some good yardage and efficiency there. So that was good to see from them. But I think the big takeaway was Ottawa just showing up flat once again. Yeah, we had an Arbuckle appearance here as well. Seven of nine? Yeah, I guess so. Like I said, I didn't catch too much of the game, but yeah, I was kind of shocked when I looked at the box score and saw that he got into some action because they were very, very reluctant to play him ever since those first couple appearances at the beginning of the season. Yeah, I don't know. I mean Crump here, like we said, come back down to Earth. I certainly think he's played well enough to carry the team next year at least to be in that contention. Evan, thoughts on this? I know this is kind of the Saturday afternoon or kind, I think it was even earlier than that here on the west coast. I watched a good chunk of this game, I think first half and then a bit into the third quarter. Yeah, this game to me felt like it was over pretty quickly. It was just clear that, I mean, Montreal came out and keep in mind it was slow, but it just didn't really feel like Ottawa had the juice in that game to get things done. But I will say a couple notes, I was really impressed with the way Justin Crumb spread the ball around to his receivers. It almost reminded me of Vernon Adams and BC and obviously he didn't have the r g threw two picks, R Buckle came in after whatever, but Ottawa I think had five receivers with over four catches in that game, which I thought was very impressive. Definitely getting a lot of guys worked in. And then on the Montreal side, I know what's his name? Austin Mack was out this game. So you had Cole speaker filling in three catches for 60 yards stand back. Really impressed me in this game. Wasn't a terribly exciting performance, I guess, but six and a half yards per carry in a touchdown is extremely respectable. Just felt like he was kind of a workhorse and really nice to see him again kind of progress through the course of the season because we had talked about at the beginning of the season he was a bit slow with the injury and everything and coming off that. And then this was kind of I think a big year for him and he's now in these last couple weeks seems like he's finding his way I should say. And he was doing that a bit a couple weeks ago too here and there that there was definitely signs things were going in the right direction. But the one really interesting takeaway that I had from this game, and this is kind of a bit random, but there was a play in this game that really got some traction on Twitter. And I'm talking, it kind of went viral and it was I believe Jeff Montreal. Yes, the onside punt. And I had no idea what was going on or why that was important to me. I thought the coolest play of the game was when I think Montreal missed a field goal and then Ottawa returned it and then the ball went out of Ottawa's hands right back into, I believe it was sisu, maybe he had the ball and then it was this really weird turnover. But yeah, the onsite pun gained a lot of attraction. Everyone was like, why would you do that? It doesn't make any sense. And then I think it was Trey Watson who was in the xfl right now, he used to play with Montreal. He said, man, you wouldn't understand the cfl unless you were reading the rule book during the game. You know what I mean? And yeah, it was just one of those things where I don't know, I was scratching my head during the game, what is he doing? And I went on Twitter and I'm like, geez, this is getting a lot of attention for some random cfl play on a Saturday. But hey, I mean more publicity for the league. And it was definitely talked about afterwards for a bit. So that I guess was nice to see. So this was on purpose? Yeah, very odd here. Yeah, I mean I think it's fine as a novelty happens once. I've never seen this before. I thought it had to travel a certain amount of yards, but I guess not. I mean, he tried to, an himself tried this play earlier in the year against BC and it backfired on him. I think it was a fumble and it ultimately cost the alouettes in that game. But yeah, I think it's fine for a one-time thing, but if this becomes a thing that people try, I think it makes the league look bad. I think ultimately at the end of the day it looks really silly I feel like, and they would have to put some kind of amendment, but I think if it's just this one time, I think it's fine. I just don't get, so we're second and 18 here. I just don't understand what is the purpose of this. It looks more like an accident than anything else For some reason. I don't know why, but it resets the down. So we got a first down of that. It doesn't make sense to me. I think it should be because apparently the rule is as long as you kick it behind the line of scrimmage and it crosses the line of scrimmage and you recover it beyond the line of scrimmage, it's a first down. But I think it should be, it has to be beyond the first down market. I think that makes more sense to me. But I mean at the end of the day, like I said, I don't think we're going to see this on a regular basis. And if it does, I think the CFO will have to do something about it. So I'm taking it back. I tweeted last night during the chiefs game, Hey, I agree, people talking cfl rules better than the N F L and all that stuff. You got Mahomes here. I take all that back, I take all that back that this is a legal forward play and that they were able to something that Evan, this is absurd. Yeah, I mean, oh, a hundred percent. And again, I didn't realize until I started doing some research, I was like, why would he do that? And I realized you can get an automatic first down doing that, but I will say extremely risky play. I'm surprised it makes me, well, I shouldn't say it makes me happy, but at least makes me feel a bit better knowing that someone has tried this before and lost the football. Because the reality is it looks like, I mean, you're taking a huge risk letting the ball out of your hands and having it roll even just for a couple yards. If there's any defenders in that area, someone could fall on it and it's a turnover. You lost the fumble essentially. So yeah, I agree with Jason. It's cool for maybe one time, but if people think that this is a new trick that's going to work every time you've got a long second down, I think you might be sorely mistaken, I hope. Well, I don't hope, but I almost, it's one of those things where maybe we will see it play out where a team unfortunately loses the football and gives up good field position of the other team just to really bring the point home and to learn a lesson. I don't know. That's got to be one of the weirdest things ever I've ever seen in any level of football. Not even just N F L or high level pro ball, but college, even high school. I mean that feels like something that would happen at the high school level to me. Yes, That's in Nielsen on the call. What is he doing? What is he doing? Okay. That's crazy. All right, anything else on this one? I mean you would think of anything that that would be Bob Dice would be dialing that up. Not Montreal. You think Bobby Dice a special team guy would do that. Jason, anything else on this one? Yeah, I guess I'll give a couple show notes for each team. So for Montreal, like I said, William, stand back. It's good to see him playing well. Reggie Stubblefield, I think he's been a really good addition for the backend, for the ettes. He had eight tackles, two sacks and the interception in this game. So really filled the stat sheet. Mark Antwan Dew, excellent season pick six in this one. And then for the Red Blacks, braille and Addison had his best game in a long time. Seven catches for 94 yards. And then Cleon Lang defensive tackle, who I used to think was one of the best Canadian players in the cfl, but it's went quiet the last couple of years. He had a big game in this one for a couple of sacks. And then I guess I was looking ahead here. We were talking before, but yeah, Montreal going, what is it? Ottawa coming into Montreal doing these home at home again, it really feels like set up here for ettes to take second here in the east. Jason, how do you feel TCATs traveling in and will you be making the journey with your boys For The semis? Oh, the semis? No, I probably will not be going to Montreal, but I'd love to plan to make it there one day. That's one of the cfl stadiums I haven't been to along with all the other Western ones, but I think, yeah, at the end of the day I probably won't end up traveling to that one. It's interesting because basically we're going to have almost a repeat of last year's playoffs it looks like, because I think Montreal's going to hold on to second, so it's going to be Hamilton traveling to Montreal. The only thing different this year, it looks like Saskatchewan's going to make it, but yeah, I think BC's probably going to finish second. If they lose this game on Friday, they'll probably finish second. So I mean, yeah, it looks like deja vu for cfl fans. Well, I mean I've said this many times again on here, but yeah, swap out Saskatchewan for Calgary. If the BC's in second place, they'll host them in Vancouver and then travel into Winnipeg. And that is, to me, gets terrifying on that going here, hosting Saskatchewan got a little close at the end, but I feel like some of this was, we took the foot off the gas in terms of defensive stuff here. Evan, we'll talk, we'll go to you first. Yeah, I didn't get to watch a ton of this game. I mean I watched a bit here and there, but yeah, I mean, once again, just another offensive clinic from bc. Again, the defense, it got a bit close there. Saskatchewan I think had 15 points in the fourth quarter, so talk about a rally, but I mean again, at offense is just so, it's so lethal, so potent. I mean Vernon Adams, it's almost like if he doesn't throw for more than 400 yards in a game, it's a disappointment now. And that's a crazy number. I know it's C, F L, whatever, maybe it's more of a passing league, but man, I mean every game, I think he's over 4,000 now, if I'm not mistaken. I think he hit that in this game. So Vernon again continues to be impressive, 27 to 36, 4 58, 3 touchdowns. The run game for BC is still a bit slow. That's something where we've talked about this before and I'm not going to touch on it too much here, but maybe one of those things you want to lean into a bit more before the playoffs, just to be safe, just to make sure that you have everything where you want it before you go and take on Winnipeg, wherever that is again, whether it's in BC or at IG Field. Again, crazy how this is all unfolding now. And we were talking about that being one of the biggest scenarios of the season like two months ago. But anyway, that's a separate story. And then the receivers for bc, I mean, do I even need to talk about them anymore? Hollands Hatcher, I mean everybody gets a nice piece here in that offense, especially Hatcher in this game just had an absolutely outstanding performance. And then for Saskatchewan, I don't know, I feel like they've had a lot of games where they've lost and their offense continues to impress me, but it just comes down to their own defense and some turnovers here and there. And it seems like, I mean, Dola gala threw for 409 yards but did not have a passing touchdown. I mean that's fascinating to me, but not necessarily for the right reasons. And again, their run game, I mean I think we've discussed this before too, but their run game might even need some more work than BC's in certain areas. I just don't even know. Yes, BC and Saskatchewan have both struggled at times running the football, but I feel like bc, at least with my Zelle, they have a bit more of a higher ceiling there, whereas I look at Saskatchewan and I'm like, I don't know. So that's tough. But then I mean they had two, interestingly, BC only had 100 plus yard receiver and that was Keon Hatcher, but Saskatchewan had two of them in Keon, Schaeffer Baker and Jared Sterns who I've talked about, Jareth Sterns at nauseum being one of my favorite players. He was one of my favorite players at the college level, and I've been very pleased with what he's been able to do coming into the cfl. He signed with Saskatchewan, I think in July, so middle of the season type thing and has come in and has really carved out a role for himself there. But yeah, ultimately this was a game I expected BC to win their offense continues to really impress me. One of the more, I think exciting offenses to watch in the entire league. And I say that even with all the teams like Toronto and Winnipeg who go out there and sling it every weekend. I mean, I've seen BC live now and back to back seasons at BC plays some both times. I mean the story was their offense first it was with Nathan Rourke, second time it was with of course Vernon Adams who's there now. But yeah, I mean it was pretty, again, just about what I expected. A couple of things that could have been better, but BC gets to win and they carry that momentum into the big game that you're going to. Reid. Yeah, you're talking here. Yeah, Vernon and this is, we can never tell what the cfl.ca. We have 4,000 over 4,000 yards now for the season. Tremendous for that. Just a couple thoughts and I want to get to Jason, right? Rhymes was back, right? He had been out, so that was good to see Vernon here, crazy 4 58, but giving up, where are the donut boys? You giving up 409 yards to Jake Dag Gala. I mean Jason, you can't give, you got Winnipeg coming in, you can't be giving it 400 plus yards to Saskatchewan. I think that's misleading. I think they gave up a lot of those yards because this game, the Garbage, Yeah, this game was I think a three touchdown lead in the fourth quarter and that's kind of when I stopped watching the game. It was just too far to reach at that point. But then I looked at the final score and Saskatchewan scored two touchdowns in the final five minutes. So I think that's where they got a lot of those yards. Like Evan said, Saskatchewan couldn't get much going on the ground, so I think that BC's defense actually played very well in this game. They were pretty relentless early in the game and on the other side of the ball, I thought that BC's offense was just clicking on all cylinders. So I think they're kind of ramping up towards this matchup. They had a couple of poor performances a few weeks ago as we alluded to the game against Hamilton, the game against Ottawa where they almost lost, but now it feels like they're back in the swing of things and ready for that big matchup against Winnipeg. And I think that if they play like this, they can beat any team in the cfl and could go on a great cup run here. I mean you got to play 60 minutes here, Jason. I don't like giving up garbage time TDS to Jake Dagal here in terms of rushing here and I understand well, we have a million receivers and we don't need to do that, but Evan talked about this, Jason, we're giving Mazel 38. I don't know, I feel like this is the tale as old as time. We got this snazzy West Coast team, we're going to go into Manitoba here and we're going to get crushed. They're going to pound the rock in the snow and in the ice. Have I foreseen the future already? Yeah, I mean that seems like the biggest difference between BC and Toronto and Winnipeg right now it seems like Toronto, Winnipeg, they have these big imposing running backs of Avera and Ette and Andrew Harris, I'll even throw in there for Toronto, whereas BC I believe, I would have to check, but a few weeks ago they were dead last in rushing and I don't think that's changed. So I think they're much more of a finesse team and that makes it all the more important for them to get that number one seed and host the West final. Evan, in terms of our boy Vernon here at Clean Game three touchdowns, we've talked about tremendous season. Is there a chance that he's in the M O P discussion? I know Farhan and Naylor, they like pumping him up, but we keep talking obviously Chad Kelly, but now he's not going to be playing. What do you make of that with Vernon? I think he's in the discussion, but to say that he has a good chance of winning is a bit of a reach, and I think that's more of the emergence. Well, I mean, well, lemme put it this way, Zach, we all know has been established for a long time. Chad Kelly is probably the most likely option to win M O P I believe, just given that Toronto, we've got what a month left of regular season play and they can pretty much rest him. Maybe that does affect his chances for M O P. I don't know, but Vernon, I feel like, yeah, I mean Vernon should definitely be in the discussion. Absolutely. It's just a matter of what we'll see. I think my only issue with Vernon, and this might be the reason that he's discussed, but he doesn't win it is again, yes, he throws the ball a lot. They've been very efficient on offense. He has these games, 403 touchdowns, no problems, but when he has an off day, it tends to be pretty off. We saw that a couple of times against Toronto where he had, I don't even know how many fixed some reg number even against Worm. We talked about that. I guess that was two weeks ago now. I wasn't here last week, but it was just like one interception. Okay, fine. And then you just start the turnover start piling up and that's the only tough thing you look at. If you look at, I mean, I don't know if those are all, well, I don't know if that's Vernon's stat line there, but 28 Down. Yes, I know. So here Vernon's 28 16, 4,005 yards. We've got Chad Kelly here, 21 and 11, 3300, almost 3,400 yards, obviously playing. He was hurting the game, didn't play whatever. And then Calleros really clean here, 30 and 14, 3700 yards. I mean, Vernon doesn't have that Toronto game. I think he's really more in contention here. I mean, Jason, I think Calleros head and should not head and shoulders, but I mean there's clearly a line there, but is what do you make of this? Well, it's funny, we were talking last week on the show, in case you missed it, Evan, about whether or not Vernon still had a chance in the m o P race and I actually said no, but now he has a game like this, and if they can win this week against bcs, it's going to be very interesting because if they finish first in the west and Vernon plays excellent from this point to the end of the season, I think he definitely has a shot to win this award because where you placed in the standings always seems like it has a role or plays a role in who wins these awards. And I mean a couple of weeks ago I would've said Kelly would win it, but I think because of the statistical difference, because of all the missed games and even before that, Claus's numbers were better than Kelly. So I think at the end of the day, Claris is probably still going to win it, but there still is a chance for Vernon to get back into it because of these big games coming up. To me, that's the story. We've had this with Zach and Vernon and he was with Montreal and then he got trading doing all this. I mean, if you guys hadn't listened to the interview when we had Vernon on, I guess it was preseason this year talking about, and I was paying rent in Montreal and I was paying rent in Vancouver and I still had my house in Tacoma and I'm trying to learn this rule book, did have the whole season under his belt here, come back and really kick ass. I think it's a pretty exciting thing, especially for someone that's been in the cfl as long as Vernon has. I mean, I know emotion doesn't go into it. You got to look at the stats and everything here, but it's an interesting discussion. Evan, any other thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, look, again, I wouldn't rule Vernon out and the reality is, I mean if Chad Kelly continues to rest, that might push him out. I mean, now that we're looking at the numbers, if we want to base it off that, I mean Calleros definitely has the best ratio. There's no surprise there when it comes to touchdowns, interceptions, everything like that. But yeah, Vernon, the thing is, again, it goes back to this upcoming game and Vernon can, if Vernon has a couple, that Saskatchewan stat line that we just looked at, 27 36, 4 58, 3 touchdowns, if he can keep doing that for just another couple more weeks or whatever, then I'd feel like he honestly would have a good chance. I still find it hard to say that he would be the front runner, but there's a lot there. There's really something there. And there's no denying that Vernon has been one of the most impressive quarterbacks. Again, yes, he's had some turnovers, he's had some mental errors, whatever, but every quarterback has that. And I feel like right now, I don't know right now it's a bit up in the air, but if in these final few weeks he really goes out there and continues to make a statement, I don't see why you'd take him out of that discussion. Yeah, I'm happy and I think, like I said, if you take the Toronto game out, I think this is an entirely different discussion, but everyone's allowed, you're entitled to do a bad game or two, it's 18 game, 21 week season. I think you're allowed to have that. Like I said, longevity of it. You here's someone that I think a lot of people that had really written off and is in Montreal or he comes, I know as much as I loved him as a person, I was a little worried, okay, and now this year and we got all these toys he's playing with and I think he's been great. I think he's matured into it. I know Angie's a fan man. I know we're big fans in the group. Jason, any other thoughts on Vernon or just the story of where he's at right now? Yeah, I'm really happy for him. I feel like this is his place in the C ffo. It feels like he's really found a home. I mean it looked like a couple years ago. He looked great in Montreal, but I mean things just kind of developed there and for whatever reason, they decided to bring in Trevor Harris and they decided to make him the starting quarterback there. And then obviously he ended up leaving too, but things ended pretty poorly in Montreal. But I think this is really where he belongs in the cfl, and it's good to see him finally settle in here because he's a guy that came to the cfl with a lot of hype and a lot of people were saying, this guy is an ideal fit for the cfl game. And that was like years ago. So it's finally great to see that he settles in here and is in the M O P discussion and one of the name I wanted to throw out into the M O P discussion, he won't get any serious consideration to winning it, but Brady Olivera has had an excellent season, one of the best seasons by a running back we've seen in quite a few years in the cfl. And I mean if we didn't have all these excellent quarterbacks, that's really what happens when you talk about the M O P discussion. If a quarterback's having a great season, they're going to win that award, but the years that there's not really that outstanding quarterback, that's when you usually see a positional player win it. But I think at the end of the day, Oliveira deserves a shout out as well because his numbers this year have been excellent. And then Ken Friedman's just chiming in the chat, he says the two games of the Argos lost Kelly was hurt or did not play. The fact that he's not playing here at the end of the season, they clinch first because of him. I know, I know. But it's like the new cycle. Okay, we're moving on here. I mean you're going to stack compare there. My other thing, and then we'll get to the last game here in terms of Saskatchewan, just because obviously presumably we'll see in BC or whoever has to, I think it's Saskatchewan takes on BC here, Saskatchewan takes on Winnipeg in the playoffs. I think it's a walk in the park. But what do you make here, Jason, and we'll get Evan sauce, we'll move on here real quick, but just Saskatchewan moving forward, kind of wallowing here in the standings a little bit. Well, it's weird because they're almost surely going to make the playoffs, but yeah, it looks like they're just set up to lose in that west semifinal. And I know they've beaten Winnipeg and BC once before, but I think at the end of the day they don't look super close to those teams right now. And the last time we saw Winnipeg play Saskatchewan, Winnipeg destroyed them in that game. In the playoffs would be on the road in Winnipeg and likewise for the Saskatchewan versus PC matchups. So I think at the end of the day, they're kind of stuck in the middle here. They're going to make the playoffs unless Calgary has a sudden resurgence here, Ottawa runs off three straight wins, but I think at the end of the day, don't know what to make of them because they really don't look like they have anywhere to go right now because it looks like they're going to make the playoffs but not do anything else. Yeah, I mean super disappointing again, I mean last year I know there was a lot of heads being called for because obviously them hosting the Greg Cup and everything, but to feel like, I don't know, I don't know what you do here. Jason, any other thoughts? Saskatchewan, I mean Evan, sorry. Oh yeah, Saskatchewan. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I feel like what everyone else has already said, I mean you go whatever they're going to have to do, it's going to be on the road against a really tough team and I don't really see them doing too much. It's been an interesting season for Saskatchewan. I feel like they have a lot to work with. I always say that whether they win or lose, they have a lot of pieces there, but obviously Trevor Harris getting hurt as early as he did, I think kind of, well, it certainly didn't derail the season if they're in playoff contention, but it feels like they've had a lot of shifting components even outside of the quarterback position. I mean, yeah, you went from Trevor Harris to Mason fine to now Jake Doga seems like the guy and I'd be comfortable moving forward with Doga depending on what happens with Trevor Harris. I do think he will be back. But again, dola Gala can maybe go to another team next year, and I think I've brought that up where you have a good showing in Saskatchewan you can go do something somewhere else. But anyway, with Saskatchewan in particular, I just feel like they have a lot of moving pieces and things kind of got shaken up for them early, so it's been a real mixed bag with them. Fortunately, they do have games where they're exciting to watch and they have won against. I think that interestingly enough, I feel like, and if we want to talk about playoffs here real quick, I was just running through scenarios in my head. Unlike Montreal in the east, the Saskatchewan has actually beaten some of the better teams. They've beaten bc, they've beaten Winnipeg before. And that to me really stands out again. I unfortunately feel like that's, I feel like it's going to be too strong in the playoffs and they're not going to be able to overcome that. But I look at Montreal and I'm like at the rate things are going at Hamilton could go into Montreal and I think they could win that game and I think that would set up a very interesting Eastern final. I guess that would be between Hamilton and Toronto. But yeah, just a lot there. It's for Saskatchewan, again, going back to my original point, I would say their season overall. I mean if you make playoffs, I'd call it a success given how much uncertainty there was again. But yeah, no denying that there's still some work that needs to be done. And obviously this was a, this a year of change for them. This was their first year you moved on from Cody Fido, you moved on from some of the coaches, Jason Moss. Yeah, Jason Moss, right. So definitely a change there, but I feel like there is a bright future for a team like Saskatchewan and you can't say that for everybody else in the league right now. L Last game here, we'll get to kind of the weird game. And I thought we had Rod Smith on the show previewing kind of talking cfl going into the weekend. People have been very critical. Why wasn't this game earlier and the Gray Cup rematch really didn't amount for a lot. We saw Brian Scott here, friend of the show did not have the best outing. Jason, what do you make of this one? Winnipeg Toronto felt like they had a shot there. Yeah, I enjoyed the game for the most part, but like you said, when Brian Scott got put into the game in the fourth quarter, I felt that kind of ruined the vibe of the game. Honestly. I thought that there was really pointless to kind of put him in there. I think because you have four other games, if you want to give Brian Scott a full other game, you have four other opportunities to do that. But why take Cameron Dukes out when he's playing relatively well against a very good team that's still trying to win? You want to give your backups really good experience and game situations. You're playing against a Winnipeg team that wants to win this game. This was a perfect scenario for Cameron Dukes to finish this game and try to get Toronto the victory here, even though it didn't mean anything for them, but it was quality reps that you could have gotten Cameron Dukes, but instead you pull 'em in the middle of the fourth quarter for a guy that hasn't played in the league right now, sorry, in the league this season. And I don't know, it was just such a weird vibe at the end of that game because Toronto basically just conceded it to Winnipeg. And I thought that for the most part, Toronto played very, very well in this game. They came to play and I thought that they looked really great in the first half, but ultimately I feel like they conceded the game in the fourth quarter by putting in Brian Scott. Yeah, made me sad here. I love Brian. Brian's been on the show and obviously tracking him going up there and there was a lot of things with the xfl and everything else. Evan, what did you make of Brian Scott's first performance this season? Yeah, well, Brian's been around and I was very pleased to see him come into the game. I understand it was weird timing and I understand it might've not been the right decision, but we haven't seen Brian play since what usfl last year and he only played in the couple games before getting hurt. It's been a long time since he's been on the field and the fact that he's still around in 2023 with a major pro franchise, one that has the potential to win a championship even if he's not starting, I find that to be a very formidable, I guess is the term accomplishment. A very, I mean, I remember when he was like the spring league M V P and that feels like a decade ago now in Football years. Two times. Two times, yes, Exactly. It's been a long time that Brian's been around, but I think the real story here, and again, I'm sure Brian will get another opportunity, hopefully down the stretch here in the next couple weeks. So I know this wasn't his best day, but again, it was only a couple snaps. I'll give him a break. And it was weird timing and all that, but the real story here I think was Cameron Dukes, and of course this one was pretty special. Mike Davis, who I worked with in Vegas, he was the guy who brought Cam Dukes in to the arena game and he played in Vegas prior to going to Toronto. So we were very happy about that, to see him go up there and get the start, and he's almost, I guess, the poster child in a sense. I'm not trying to make a pitch here to anybody, but it's like if you develop your game and you take a chance, things like this can happen where you get an opportunity elsewhere and you can play on a higher stage. And Cam Dukes in this game, he really impressed. He came out there and against one of the best teams in the league, looked like he could start multiple games and not have a problem. He was definitely in a position where you could tell that he had learned throughout the season behind Chad Kelly and he was really taking in all the information and using his prior experience in the arena game. Very impressed with what Cameron Dukes did. And I think a lot of other people were impressed as well on the broadcast. They were saying this game to some degree, we all viewed this was an automatic win for Winnipeg. And yes, they still got the victory at the end of the game, but for a while, I mean it looked like Toronto was just going to keep Dukes in there and they were going to roll past Winnipeg and the entire Toronto team played very well with him at the helm. So yeah, I was really impressed with how that went down and I feel like you see there's too much time left in the season to, I would just take Chad Kelly out of the picture. I think Chad has to play again obviously before they go to the playoffs. And I hope that goes without saying, but again, in this game, prove that if you need Cam Dukes to play, he'll be there and he's going to play in a high capacity. And I think that if you're Toronto, that's very, that makes you feel a bit more comfortable because I think someone mentioned it on T S N, they were saying the only question that Toronto really had was who's the backup? Who's the guy that's going to come in if something happens to Kelly during the season? And obviously it was kind of between Dukes and Scott, nobody really knew. I mean, hell, Ben Holmes was in there at one point, but I can't bring up that name on this show, but nah, overall, yeah, I was still very impressed with Toronto even though Winnipeg got the win. And yeah, I mean I think that, I know that was a lot about quarterbacks, but I mean we can get into some other parts of the game here, but I'll let you talk first, Reid. Yeah, Jason, it's interesting, this has been the discussion here for a couple weeks now with Chad Kelway and everything else, Toronto, I really kind of almost beating Winnipeg with some of the, and I saw a lot of online like, well, they're not resting everyone or, I mean, it's still a football game, mean what did you make? Yeah, I was shocked how intense the Argos were in this game. I mean, yeah, besides the quarterback, I felt like they didn't really rest too many players. I think a couple of guys on the defensive side, like Sean Open, I think rested for this game, but I thought that they played with a lot of intensity. A Joe Ette I think strangely only had the one carry in this game, but it went for a big play and I thought that the Argos play with a lot of intensity in this game and I thought they were legitimately trying to win. And that's why I was very confused by their decision in the fourth quarter to bring in Brian Scott. And let me be clear, I'm not ripping on Brian Scott. I'm just saying that I thought that Cameron Dukes deserved to finish that game with how he was playing and that there were other opportunities to give Brian Scott a full game with the four games they have left in their season. So I think going forward, in terms of Chad Kelly, I think that they're going to play him next week because I think they're going to play him for the home games. I think that's my theory about it because the fans there deserve to see him play. But I think at the end of the day, I think for a game like this in Winnipeg, I don't think they want to show the bombers too much in terms of their starting quarterback. So I think that's why they decided to do what they did. Yeah, I like that theory. Yeah. Play Chad in the home games. Can you imagine a full Brian Scott game full? Brian Scott at the Argos at the helm? We've got all these tools here, Evan, anyone else who want to spotlight here before we get out? Let me take a look. I don't have too many notes on this one. I will say, not that he had an extremely impressive game, but Deontay McMahon was someone that I scouted and interviewed. He went to school out here at McNee State and he signed with the Argos. I mean, I think he kind of signed with them before he even entertained any other N F L opportunity. I think he just decided that would be the best place to go given his status coming from the F C s. But it's nice to see him getting worked in. He was a really impressive player at the F C S level, one of the best running backs. And to see him starting to get some work here late in the season for Toronto, he's another one of those guys where it's kind of like Brian Scott, you might not flashed a lot now, but you've got four more weeks to do something and I'm sure they're going to keep playing him. So that'll be exciting to follow. Maybe we'll talk about some guys on the Winnipeg side of the ball. Yeah, Brady Olivea. I mean, I think that goes without saying at this point, but 25 carries 169 yards, averaging nearly seven yards of car. I mean, that's an absolute workhorse. I mean, 25 carries for that many yards and you're not even scoring, you're just kind of getting the ball and chugging along for a couple first downs. I mean, that's really good to see. And again, I think, I know some people might not want to hear this if you're not a Winnipeg fan, but that might help 'em a lot in the playoffs. I think that's almost like a secret weapon, even though we all know how good Brady Oliveira is. But yeah, Reid, I got to say it, man. I know there's this whole BC deal, but we will see what happens. Yeah, I think that's probably it in terms of guys from that game. Again, I enjoyed watching it. Obviously there were some different faces, but I mean there was enough starters in there. I think Toronto, they had a lot of their starting lineup in, I think they just pulled some guys early, like AJ Ette had one carry and then just kind of left after that. So I don't know. Interesting. Again, kind of an interesting tactic. I know we brought it up with, we talked about Hamilton, like the two quarterbacks. Some of these teams pull some interesting cards out of the hat, and then yeah, having Brian Scott in there at the end of the game, again, hope to see Brian in a larger capacity, having more success moving forward here over the next couple of weeks. But yeah, ultimately that, I think that's it. Well, there you go. We did, like I said, big game coming up Friday. Winnipeg going in there. Jason, any other games you want to spotlight before we get out of here? No, I don't think so. I mean, I will add to Evan's point about Brady, Oliveira being really important for them because I think with Winnipeg they like to hit the big play, but they're not necessarily the best in terms of the short range passing game. I think the running game is very important for their pacing of that offense. So I think yeah, Oliveira very key guy for them going forward. Yeah, here Elks going into the slaughterhouse of horror in Toronto, we'll see. And then Hamilton, Saskatchewan should be exciting. Like I said, I'll be up at the BC game. Should be a good show this week. So obviously tracking the xfl usfl stuff, I think Dan Kaplan's going to come on. I think we're going to get him on giving his thoughts about that. And then I reached out to a couple of cfl guys trying to get one of the cfl panelists has been avoiding me all season. We've been going back and forth trying to get it scheduled, so maybe we can get that pinned down or I'll send another former player another invite to maybe come back on. So appreciate it. Like I said, Jason's doing his other stuff on the channel and I think that's it, unless anyone has anything else. All right, thanks guys. We'll see you next time. And where's my thing here? All right, take care.

XFL + USFL Announce Intent to Merge! Could NSFL Rebrand Signal XFL’s Death? CFL Week 17 Preview!

Coming up this week on the mark cast, well it's official. We have an intent to merge between the xfl and the usfl official statements sent out This week. We are breaking down everything live reactions, Danny Garcia's comments, the rock's comments messages to both the xfl and usfl season ticket holders. What the usfl PA is telling its players and more light, the bat signal time to bring back in the professor Andrew Murray live reactions to all of the days breaking news plus are we watching the death of the xfl? Will the N S F L reign supreme? I appreciate spring football and what it brings. I really do. I love the sport's death and I just want it to be a place where players, coaches and people can have opportunities. I don't want people to lose jobs over this and unfortunately I feel like that's what's going to happen and I want people to have their livelihoods to be able to be continued after all of this. I really do. So whatever this decision ends up being finalized, I hope it's for the betterment of the sport and for the people involved with it and the communities involved with it and not it just be some desperate cash grab and it all blows up in their faces at the end. I really hope Been tons of cfl stuff to talk through Rod Smith, cfl on t S n preview cfl week 17 to Wait this long to have a gray cup rematch and only one meeting this season between Winnipeg and Toronto. I just don't get it. This game should have been earlier and it wouldn't have lost its appeal from the fact that the Argos have clinched and they're resting. Chad Kelly. These things wouldn't be an issue if it happened earlier, maybe even the season opener and that's something that even though they've done it, they've had great cup rematches week one many, many times. I don't know why that wasn't the case this year. And then Andrew Pearson of America's cfl team, the BC Lions stops by to preview a couple big weeks for the lions coming up. We have a Task and we fell short last year so we're still hungry in the same sense that we walked into the season saying hey, we didn't accomplish the ultimate goal so we just got to do a little bit more. So as much as people were saying all these guys are whatever we were at and we're going to be, we fall off since Nathan or whatever the outside talk was, it really came down to it doesn't matter because we came up short last year so we got to do a little bit more this year. Thanks. Just always like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the mark cast read here, was trying to sleep in today. Get a couple more minutes of snooze. Had to take the dog to the vet, jolted literally jolted like cold sweat out of bed to the news. The official news today, the announcement from the xfl and the U SS F L both coming in, the intent to merge between the leagues. Weird seeing like Jeff and Darren both on the press releases coming out from the xfl and the usfl. Lots of stuff to go through today. I was going to do live episode but work commitments and everything. We have live reactions to everything as they came down. A great segment today with Andrew Murray, the professor. Like I said in the top, all of the angles covered. We've got the season ticket member kind of messaging to both fan bases. What is the usfl PA telling the players? What's the rock saying? What's Danny saying? What is the U SS F L saying to its players which is different than what the xfl is saying to its fan base. Everything, lots of different stuff, lots of different kind of live breaking news reactions as we kind go through all of this stuff in real time. So hope you guys enjoy, please like and subscribe for that busy time here. You kind of never know when stuff's going to come down, so subscribe and they always tell you to kind of turn on that bell notification so if I post shorts or anything, but make sure you're tuned in for everything. And then lots of, like I said cfl content, really appreciate. Great segment. I thought with Rod Smith coming on, he's one of the voices for a lot of the cfl games. I think he has two this weekend, a busy guy so really appreciate he's covered the league forever and followed it used to host the panels and all that stuff. So really appreciate Rod and then Matt, everyone over the BC Lions getting Andrew Pearson on. Really appreciate that. He's kind of one of the new standout for the BC Lions in terms of social media doing a lot of segments for them. He's been on the show I think twice before so I really appreciate that. Going to keep this short great segment with Andrew Murray. I thought it was the best one to date. About 45 minutes going through the National Spring Football League trademarks, going through the hub stuff going through, like I said, kind of all the angles of everything from the Rock and Danny and everything else. So hope you guys enjoy. We'll see you at the end. Thanks. Well Andy, I hadn't even had my coffee yet. I had to take Rose Air dog to the vet this morning and I'm sitting there, I got a couple extra minutes here. This sleep jolted me right out of bed pulling up. I saw Mike's message first in the group here it's official. We have intent to merge between the X L and the S l. How are you feeling? Well now I'm not surprised, but if I was out of the loop I certainly would be stirred from my slumber if I knew this was the first thing coming to me, my to my bed. Yeah, I mean the fact that we're actually getting an official statement does obviously solidify everything that came out last week, the Axios article, all of the reporting. But I mean it's still the fact that it's here. There's something that to be said that this is still momentous. This is, I don't know if I want to say it's unprecedented. I'm sure there's other leagues that have fused together in the past or have intended to fuse, but this is certainly something different altogether. Yeah, I'm really glad I have my typo here as well. There it is. Putting this out. Got the press release. So just to set the stage here, Andy and I were on last week talking through when obviously the reports and rumors came out. I really feel like I have everything here today for you guys. We have obviously the statement from the league what the usfl sent out to their players, what the U SS F L has sent out to their season ticket holders, what the usfl Players Association has sent out to their players. So lots of things to go through. We're still going to go through the National Street Football League of it all because we haven't gotten a chance to kind of ruminate on that yet. The news this week that the U SS F L filed for those trademarks, which I do believe signals the end of the xfl brand and it's probably going to be the title of this week's episode is the death of the xfl and then we still need to talk about Neil Stratton and the hubs, what cities and all that. We'll get through all this. We're aiming for 45 minutes here. So hey guys, future read here. Just a quick update. Wanted to make sure I included this before we get to the segment. Andy and I have recorded today talking about all of the different messaging coming out from the xfl, from the usfl, from the usfl P A, Danny Garcia, the Rock, all of that. Russ Brandon also sending out an email to xfl staff goes similarly along with the messaging that Jason Gella sent out to, I know I got it other xfl season ticket holders about its business as usual with the xfl both on an operations and the football side, but wanted to include this like I said xfl president and C E O Russ Brandon writing out to the xfl staff. I'm writing to you with some important news today the xfl and usfl announced their intentions to merge. The combination of these two leagues will anchor professionals spring football with sustainable capabilities and resources to ensure future growth while continuing to enhance the development of our players. While this is big news, until the decision closes, the xfl will continue to run business and football operations as usual, we look forward to sharing more information with you about the deal when we can. Today's news comes after months of productive discussions and most importantly, mutual respect for the success both leagues have achieved. The combined ownership group shares the same vision for the future of spring football and is aligned in its mission to build a scalable platform that benefits players, fans, and partners for the longterm, although there are still more to come. Here's what I can share with you today and this is important Russ. Brandon writes, our ownership group is committed to seeing growth and success of spring football with the addition of Fox. The combined ownership are undisputable global leaders across sports, entertainment, media, brand marketing and business building. Your contract does not change at this time. We'll keep you updated as details become available. This is not only the next chapter for the xfl but for spring football and its role in the greater football ecosystem. So interesting there. Like I said, we're getting this mish moss of messaging xfl business as usual usfl business as usual. We're working towards this merger, Danny and the Rock boat tweeting out more work to come, more details to come interesting, but like I said, contract status currently not changing for xfl employees. I thought it was interesting that they put the combined ownership groups so presumably Redbird and Fox are undisputably global leaders across sports, entertainment, media, brand marketing and business building and that they're obviously committed to seeing the growth and success of spring football. I'll be curious to see how much crossover is there when we get of this merged, whatever amalgamation this is going to be of the xfl and the U S L, but thought it was interesting. Like I said, that was the email from Russ. Brandon sent out to xfl staff today. We'll get into our discussion now with Andy Murray and I reacting to kind of all the other stuff. Hope you guys enjoy this segment. Thanks again. First thing here, it feels nice to at least have this statement out. I mean obviously the rumors and reports over the last couple of weeks. What do you make here seeing a press release signed with Jeff Alser, Darren James, kind of all the parties here for both the xfl and the US F L media. Well it signifies that their intentions are indeed legitimate in that they are trying to create a single entity football league with both of their assets being combined together. Now again, as you mentioned, what does that entail as far as who's actually going to be in the league as far as the branding, as far as the players, the coaches, the personnel, the player personnel, the marketing, the ownership. I mean that's still a big question. We also saw recently there was a statement put out by Danny Garcia, which I'm sure you can get to later. Not a statement, but more of a tweet I suppose, of More to come, which I think mean Danny and the rocker out. That is my understanding of all of this. I think that this was a red bird decision to move on here and we can get into that. Well, I mean not to be too reactionary because I mean this is new information, although I've ruminated on this plenty enough. Our entire group, our media group has been talking about this ad nauseum for the past week, especially after Friday with the letter that came out about the intention of where the leagues were going and what was potentially coming down the road. I'm honestly just, I'm surprised and I'm going to be honest if this ends up being the end of the xfl and Danny and the rock's intentions of running a league, I'm disappointed. I'm just going to say that outright. I thought their entire point was to get into not only get into the business, but to thrive in the business and to be able to create something that would be as I think Danny put out one point saying, making a hundred year league, like making it something that lasted, making it formidable. I think those talks with the cfl certainly shed light on the idea of being traditional, being beholden to something that could last for a long time and perhaps they bit off more than they could chew and they realized that it wasn't going to end up being the case. Now again, that's just speculation from what could possibly be announced, but there certainly seem to be enough reading of the tea leaves to indicate that perhaps both one or both of them are going to be moving on from this. And it's just a shame because I think maybe there was just a realization of how difficult it is to run a league. We've talked about that. Mike's talked about that. Everyone's talked about how, I mean it's hard. It's hard to run a football league. It's hard to run a North American football league. Yes, everybody, their mom loves watching football, but it's still expensive. It's still requires a tremendous amount of manpower and effort to get it off the ground and be able to sustain it. And the throes of the fact that you're already dealing with college football, you're dealing with N F L football. Hell, I know this sounds almost crazy, but high school football is a tradition, right? You're dealing with tradition, you're dealing with decades and decades and decades and familial familiarity with the sport and the spring concept is a fly by night proposition for a lot of people. It's not something that's solidified, it's just an idea. It's a concept, but it's not something that's really fortified in the minds of a lot of people who watch football in this country. So they're fighting against history and they're fighting against trends and clearly they might've seen the writing on the wall and realized maybe that's just not going to work. At least not in the sense of just running an 18 league in the way that they were trying to run it in the traditional sense of just starting an 18 league. And so I don't know. I'm disappointed if that's the case because I really thought that they were going to try and change the entire landscape of the sport and the idea of being able to bring in something new and refreshing and not challenge the N F L. I'm not asking them to do that. I'm not telling them to challenge traditions. I'm telling them to perhaps bring something new that could innovate the sport. And so if that ends up being the case, it's unfortunate. It really is. Yeah, and we'll get into, I want to read through some of these statements and then we'll get into kind of what I think is the long-term play here because this very much feels like xfl is here. We're handing this off to Fox. The initial report from Axios came out, it was more of a merger of equals. We'll see, like I said, Jeff, that's xfl'S, director of communications, he's still on these emails. So we'll see because my fear and I've lamented about that forever, the access, and I don't want to deeply dive into this right now, but the access of the xfl has given us content creators, people at news hub, people at newsroom, people at xfl board, the US F L equivalent of that fails in comparison. It's very, very challenging. And so, and I put this out earlier last week or late last week, if Fox is taking over a lot of this stuff, I don't know how excited I am to bang my head against the wall trying to get access here. But here's the statement, just so we actually read it out today, the us, the United States Football League, S F L and xfl announcer, intention to merge subject to customary regulatory approvals. And if the transaction is consummated, the new league will establish best in class operations based on the most recent seasons of both leagues. Historic combination will anchor professional spring football with substantial capabilities and resources to ensure future growth and continue to enhance the development of the collective players, coaches, and staff that come together. Sorry, it's a very tiny font here. More details regarding the new league will be announced at a later date. So interesting point here. Like I said, there's different wording that they put out that the S F L put out to the players, so we'll go through all those. But new league, not combined league, not a new league. We talked National Spring Football League trademarks being picked up, that was previously the holding company the S F L had. What do you make of that new league here, combining forces? Well, like I said last week when we were talking about it, they better have a plan if that's really the case. If they're going to be starting a new league from scratch, they need to have a plan because that's a new entity, that's a new ip and you already have cachet and familiarity with the xfl and usfl. So if you're going to start a new league, you better, you're going to have to start all over from scratch again. You're going to have to start all over again. It's just like the a f, it's like the U F L. It's like all these leagues you have to start again over. And so if you're going to do that again, you damn well better have a plan as far as what's going to happen to the entities right now, the two that are forging together, what's going to happen when you start to tell your fans of those leagues, this is not going to be the same and this is going to be different. Are they going to stay with you? Are you going to alienate them? I think that's going to be a real question that they have to ask. And are they going to be able to, if they are going to lose people potentially, which they could over putting these two things together, which happens in mergers, you lose people, you lose employees, you lose interest, you lose loyalty because you realize it's not going to be the same product. That's the thing. At the end of the day, this is still a product, let's not kid ourselves. This is supposed to be an entertainment product and when you're product that you've been using as a person or consuming as a person changes, you're not going to keep using it unless it's doing something similar or if not better than what it was doing before. So if you're going to do that, you better be sure what you're doing and if you think the net gain of bringing on more people or getting more public interest is at stake of putting those two together and forming in completely different ip, fine, but again, you better be confident in that or at least have a plan that that's going to work. To me, and I dunno, to me there's too much brand equity built up in both of these and that's why I do feel like this is kind of the death of the xfl. I think that this is whatever amalgamation comes of this, I think the xfl looked at what the usfl did and said, hey, they were able to do what we were going to do. Obviously less crowds, less TV ratings. We were going head to head, but they were able to do it kind of in a fiscally conservative model. I know people are against the hubs. We have the reports on that coming up from Neil Stratton. I think that the xfl is like, to me it feels very similar to them reaching out to the cfl A couple years ago, right? We've gone through all this of we're going to reach out to the us, develop, kind of see if there's interest there. And to me people are very unhappy about it. You're going to find out, I was going back and forth with Scott, one of our listeners, and he goes, well, as long as Seattle, San Antonio, St. Louis and DC are there, I think we're going to be in good shape. I go, well Neil is saying you're going to get one of those. Sounds like St. Louis might be a hub, but I don't think Seattle's going to be a hub. I think if the other reports are that they're looking in Arizona, I see that being a West coast hub. Maybe you get Vegas in there, but I don't see a lot of people being super pleased with this. One note, just if you're curious how the leagues are handling this. So if I have the U SS F L one here, intent to merge, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever, they've got all these impressions, xfl on every single one of theirs, the team release, all the different teams and the league, the xfl communications have turned off comments for all of anything on Twitter, which I just think is very interesting that obviously if you go into the usfl one, I'm sure that there's a lot of accounts I have muted and then a lot of people angry about this, but interesting. Do you think that that's odd how the two leagues are handling that? I do. I think it's just, again, it's putting your fans in the dark and it's saying, well okay, here's our plan, but you can't be part of this plan or you can't say what you Want to. We don't want to hear what you have to say. We don't want to know better. We know better. And I think again, that's playing with fire. Be very careful about alienating the people who have spent money and put the resources into who you are. Again, we'll get into it later with some of the other concepts that have been in the works or potentially in the works for how teams and where they're going to be playing. Go on later on. But again, you have to be really careful with how you approach this and I don't think this is the right strategy as far as letting people look, let people speculate. It's going to happen. Okay, it's going to happen. People are going to be upset about it and that's just what's going to happen. You have to deal with that backlash. You can't announce this and just turn off notifications and just be close the laptop and be like, well, okay, my work here is done. No, you have to communicate with people and if Danny wants to take that undertaking, that's up to her. The rock wants to do it, which I don't think he's going to. He's got a billion other things on his plate. That's the thing. I think he's going to really just move on from this. Nothing happened in my opinion. He's got bigger in his mind. He probably has bigger and better things to take care of. Which again, he Was just on McAfee last week. The f l had changed his life. Exactly What's so weird. He was, or was it two weeks ago before the Colorado game? It was before Colorado and Colorado State it was, But he was just on there saying the F L changed my life. Well, okay, I mean maybe inconvenience for nine months. I don't know. That was 14 days ago. It feels like an eternity. Yeah. Let's get, so we have here, so Tom ERO put out, and this is interesting, he is obviously the N F L Network insider. So this is the letter that went out from the usfl to its players today. The usfl xfl announcer intent to merge. A new league will established best in class operations atop of foundation overbuilt by both the xfl U S L recent season. So all that stuff, this is different. So now we are extremely proud of what we built over the past few seasons we have shown that professional spring football can work, that the professional, a professional spring model can work and in many ways have done what many football businesses thought was impossible. That came to the first league to scale approximately 40 years to come back and play a second season happened because of you. Meanwhile, the f l defined its own success this past season cementing that the time is right to combine the xfl and US development into a joint venture. As such, the US L agreed to terms with the xfl'S ownership group and recently submitted the necessary filings proposed murder regulatory process will go underway if it does not come with any guaranteed outcomes. We remain focused and committed as ever to deliver a heightened level of excellence for the US NFL's third season. We realize this creates many questions. We'll continue to communicate all of that. We are excited about the future and hope to share more details regarding this new league at a later time. This to me says xfl called us if this works out, otherwise we're moving ahead. That's how I read that. I read it as that way too. And also again, when they say at a later date, now we have to speculate, well, is that going to be later this year or is that going to be next year? When is that going to happen? Are either of these leagues going to play? Look, what this also adds is confusion for your players as well. Because I think from what we heard last week, there's a lot of people that were in the dark on this decision. It was mostly higher ups, the top echelon that really knew what was going on and a lot of the other people below them had no idea what was happening. So even players and coaches were as much in the dark as we were. And now that it comes into question, who is going to play next year? Are we going to see both of these lakes playing next year in the spring? I don't know. And when is this merger officially going to be announced? And again, I know it has to go through regulatory processes and it has to be government approved. And That's not a concern I don't think, Right? I don't think it is either. I mean, capitalism rules this country. This is going to get pushed through. No one in the government is concerned. The government's about to shut down. They're not concerned about too small. The National Spring Football League, Yeah, the National Spring Football League is probably item number 937 on terms of priority to be addressed in Congress. So for me it does bring into question what's going to happen next year. I mean we're days away from the xfl draft. What happens with those players? Do they keep getting signed? Are they going to continue to be tossed around? What are they being promised? I think I have to really legitimately question that if I'm a player, what is happening to one or either of these leagues and how many teams are even playing next year? What's going on there? The assistant coaches that were let go from the xfl because they decided to just keep them on temporary payroll that was announced, obviously talked about that. I mean, there's a lot of questions as far as what's going to happen with either of these leagues next year merger or not. Is it going to happen after the season? Is it going to be where both of these entities are going to be going into it? And also as a fan, you have to question, should I be even bothering to put money down for deposits on season tickets or even thinking about going to games next year? Oh, my Seattle friends are out, my Seattle guys, they said we're done. They said we're not. We did this because at this point now it's like a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of we had 20 every single one you said every single one of these, it's just slicing off more of the sheet that you have. Here It is, it's cutting before it's adding. And again, I don't know what it's adding and I don't know when that's going to be added. So as a consumer, again, as I go back as a consumer of the product, I have no idea what it's going to look like. And so for that, there's no really comfort in what's going to happen next. And that leads to insecurity as far as investing myself and investing my financial assets into whatever's going to happen. And so I don't understand why if they think they're going to be able to just pull off two leagues playing separately and then merging down the road, I don't think that's going to work. In fact, I think it's going to be disastrous for some of these teams who are going to try, if they're going to even try to sell tickets to people, why would people buy tickets into something? Look, this is what happened. I mean, this is what happens when a team is kind of almost on the doorstep of leaving a town. This happened in my chargers in San Diego. People stopped going to games. They realized, look, the owner's just going to take this team away anyways. Why should I put my money in here? I don't care. And why they don't care about me. Why should I care about them? I'm not going to give them money. They're going to leave town anyways. That's probably how a lot of fans feel right now with what's going on in this transaction. Well, and I have Jason Ellis tweet pulled up here. He's the main ticketing guy over at the xfl. More information, exciting times, stay tuned, tickets on sale. I respect everybody at the X L office. I don't know anybody right now with so much uncertainty that we'll be putting down ticket sales. The thing to me, like you said, I want to get to the next kind of letter we have coming out in terms of the timing of this, where like you said, we're in the midst of, okay, we're still tweeting about doing the showcases and we've got these drafts coming up and when the xfl talked with the cfl last year or two years ago, whatever it was, a lot of people thought it was because cfl was trying to smoke and mirror from the delayed. We're not going to start on time because of covid. We're having all these talks. It's going to keep us in the spotlight. And then lo and behold, the week before we're supposed to kick off that, okay, we're not talking anymore. And then the season goes, this is just very weird, the timing of this, what do you make? And then I just got an email from XL regarding tickets. So let me pull it up. Do you want to go for it and I'll pull it up. Yeah, the timing on this is bizarre. It really is. I don't really get why you would go through these formal announcements while you're trying to sell tickets again. Wouldn't you try to hold on if I were them. I mean, I guess it's just sort of to quell the speculation. I have a feeling that when those articles came out, maybe that's maybe a little bit premature too early or earlier than they may have wanted it to be announced. I'm sure they probably wanted to hold onto this for dear life before it even got out of the building and maybe even just have people come to the games next year and then announce it. But here we are. I mean, something tells me that this is not the way they probably intended it to happen. I don't, this is really not what they were planning and I think it just the cat got out of the bag and they realized, oh, we have to say something again, this is going to cause a lot of questions and a lot of confusion amongst people who are again, deciding to invest themselves into what's happening next. You have to start to alleviate people's concerns as far as are your teams even going to be here after the next season? Are we going to be playing in hubs? Are we going to be having regular events as if nothing happened? There are no answers to that right now, and that's why the details I'm very curious about everyone is obviously, but what kinds of details are going to come out? We've heard a lot of speculation. We've heard a lot of notes from different reporters, from Mike, from a lot of people, and so it doesn't really lead to any security as far as where we're going next and I don't know, it just feels very I unplanned and fluid right now. So it was almost like we're live right now. I mean, this is really where we were just talking about Jason Gella, season tickets, all that stuff. And then I have the one that the US L sent out as well. So this was sent to me literally right now. I just pasted in the doc. Good morning or afternoon. Love it. I'm right with us in important news today we're announcing that the Excel and the s l announced intentions. We announced that the usfl and xfl have announced their intentions to emerge. I like that we're announcing the announcement. The combination of these two leagues will anchor professional spring football with sustainable capabilities resource to ensure future growth while continuing to enhance the development of our players. While this is big news, until the deal closes, the xfl will continue to run business and football operations. As usual, we look forward to sharing more information about the deal when we can. Most importantly, your money season tickets are safe as we continue to discuss and finalize the deals about what the combined leads look like. We'll uphold and honor any decision you make regarding season tickets. We thank you, our loyal fans. We're incredibly excited for the future. Reach out. What do you make about that? Because I'm going to tweet that out real quick, For lack of a better word. That sounds incredibly ominous. I'm just going to say this because first of all, the first thing that stands out obviously is the bolded lettering saying most importantly, your money and season tickets are safe. Okay, again, what did I just talk about? Yes, you can provide a platform for people to have space for them to spend their money key. Is there any willingness for people to spend their money if they think that that's not going to be in place going forward? It doesn't matter about next season. I'm talking about seasons to come. People are not just investing themselves for one year and then for this thing to go away. It's that how people do this. People invest in themselves because they think there's something that could come from it down the road. So as far as that goes, that doesn't really answer any concerns. Second, as far as the future of the league goes, as we just mentioned at the top, I mean the league could be anything. It doesn't mean, and it says our league, I get that, but I think that doesn't really guarantee that it's going to even be around in a calendar year. Again, the entity and the name could be dropped to me, it almost feels like the xfl is coming, A passed off child first it was, to give a very strange analogy, Vince McMahon birthed a child, right? It's like, this is my baby, this is what I have. It went under some sort of metamorphosis between 2001 and 2020 and it came something that we thought could really become special and potentially really viable in the space. And then bankruptcy happens, COVID happens, and then all of a sudden it's like, okay, well now what's going to happen to the child? And then the two parents, the two new parents like Danny and Dwayne coming around and say, Hey, we'll adopt it. We got financial stability. We'll adopt the child, we'll take care of it. And then they go through a year or two or three of having the child, then they realize, no, actually this is really expensive and troublesome. Maybe we should just put it up for adoption again. Now I feel like it's being sold off to an adoption home and it's being told to change its name. That's how I feel about this league right now, and that's how I feel about reading this email. Yeah, I mean at least they put in here, right? They'll continue to run business and football operations as usual. So here's the one and apologize for this. Brett shared this. Brett runs the xfl and usfl fans group on Facebook. They've rebranded it now to the National Trade Football League with all the trademark stuff. This was a screenshot from him, so I apologize for just kind of the jankis of this S F L season ticket members. So he got this today. Our loyal fan bases are the cornerstone of our success. And as the season ticket member, your support of the usfl is, appreciate it. Following today's historic announcement, we are reaching out to share with you what we know at this time. Recently, you placed a deposit for season three tickets. You likely have some questions about how today's announced might impact your investment. There are several details still to be finalized and it is uncertain The merger will be finalized. Interesting. If the merger is finalized, your deposit for season tickets will remain valid for the inaugural season of the new league. Should a refund need to be issued, you'll receive communication directly from your season ticket representative. If the merger does not close, we intend to proceed with season three of the usfl and your deposit will remain valid. Either way, we will continue to provide you the same quality gain. The experience you have come to expect from the usfl. Your season ticket member representative will connect with you with more information. The future is bright for string football. We appreciate your ongoing support. So That's what you Make of that. That's completely different wording. I mean that's saying, okay, well season three of usfl might happen or we might be merged by then. Okay? There's no consistency in either side right now because I don't think either of them are being told the same thing. I think both of them are being told different things. It Should be the same email to both holders if we are a unified venture. Well, I mean, I guess for business or legal reasons, they can't be told that they can be considered a legal venture and sending those emails out. But that's the thing. Both people are going to be comparing notes because guess what? People follow both leagues. There are people who are in both of those spaces. This is a Venn diagram. There's overlap. There's none of these people like yes, some people choose one side, some people choose another side, and there's a lot of people that are in the middle. You're going to have people who are going to be comparing notes to both of these and saying, well, the consistency in the messaging isn't there. Neither side really tells us what's going to happen going forward. I agree with you. I almost feel like I'm live reacting to everything that's happening. So volatile and it's just really continues to change almost by the minute based on all the information that we've just gotten this morning. I don't know. I really don't know what to tell people who read both these emails because it's so uncertain. It really is. It doesn't give any indication of what's going to happen. Yeah, I like this live reaction. So here's the last, so we've gotten all that. We'll get into the trademarks and all that stuff. I wanted to note that Mike Mitchell at least put out just the fact that he highlighted the cautionary statement concerning the press release contains forward-looking statements. So they're based on the xfl and usfl management, current expectations and belief, and they're subject to uncertainty and changes in the circumstances. The transaction is subject to execution of definitive documentation and the satisfaction of customer closing conditions. So just I want to make sure I get Mike's thing in there. This was the last thing. And again, all angles covered here. Hopefully I can subscribe. This was, and it is very small font. It's even smaller. My laptop. This is what was sent out to the usfl PA players today via text from their president. I actually haven't read through this yet. I just copied and pasted it. I think Sam was the one that got this. Put it in the chat. Here's what I received via text usfl P A. You've probably seen the news at the xfl and usfl R into for potential merger. Here's what we know as of now. Representatives from the s l and FOX Sports reached out this morning to let us know that merger discussions were happening. The League of Fox Sports reiterated the value of working relationship they have with us and your player representatives and intend to keep it no matter what happens. So there's still going to be the union or these potentially long-term talks continue. Long-term talks continue between the leagues. It is business that usual at the usfl and in your union. These merger discussions will no way disrupt the upcoming season practice schedules, player preparations or signings. We'll continue to bargain and enforce our agreement with U SS F L, which helps provide security for our jobs and earnings of the players under the union contract. Through standing together Unity, we successfully bargained and won enhanced economic and medical provisions, included the five week injury reserve and the contract ratified in January. Contract also includes provisions to protect our interests and ensure we are treated with have the respect. It is exactly why we voted to join whatever, regardless of what happens with a potential merger. We look forward to the future growth of professional football, ongoing relationship with usfl. Stay tuned. We'll pass along updates. Okay, so I mean that sounds more solidified in terms of there being a season next year in the S F L, but again, I don't know how the usfl PA can say that confidently, given all the mitigating circumstances and all the changing information. I'm sure they're just kind of saying, look, we have our stance, we have our players in this union, regardless of what's going to happen, and we'll figure it out later on. I think that's more of a, I can see why they're more confident in that stance as opposed to the marketing teams from either side who are just not even sure if they're going to have a job in about five minutes. So I think that's why maybe this wording comes off as a little more stern and focused. But again, I mean, I just wonder about people like all these PAs and the relationship with the SEAL Workers Union and how that affects this entire operation. What's going to happen there? Again, there's no unification on this. And I will say this, I mean to me, and it hurts me to say this, it's almost like I feel like if you're somebody watching from the outside, if you're a cfl fan watching this, you're just like, oh my gosh, what is this? This is a disaster. I mean, this is all over the place. You can say what you want. We've talked to ad nauseum about people in the C ffl and where they're going as a league, but at least I can sit here at the end of the day and be like, well, they'll be there next year. I know they're going to be there and their PA will be there and everything else will be in place and solidified. But this, wow, and this is all over the place. This is completely just, it's going in 20 different directions as far as where people are going, people leaving. I know there was information about Doug Whaley potentially taking a new job and potentially moving on as well. There's still speculation as far as that goes. Yeah, I don't know. It's all my mind is trying to wrap itself around all of this as we continue to read it. Yeah, so that's kind of where we're at with that. I want to make sure we touch on all the trademark stuff here and the hubs and all that stuff before we get out. Yeah, I agree. I am curious, did the Axios report make them jumpstart this? But we've already said on here, it just seems like such a weird time where we're already, we're going in, we're preseason. It's one thing that this comes out, and apparently Mike had said in the chat, they've been talking since July. That makes sense because you kind of got the summer to figure all this out, and really all we're doing is kind of signing and player rights back and forth and doing the showcases. But now, I don't know. I mean, we've had, I know Jason with the X Fan show was talking about, I wanted to make sure we mentioned as well, Danny and the rocks, like emails bouncing back. A lot of the staff members emails bouncing back. Obviously the xfl transitioned, a lot of their, we already reported on here, the assistant coaches being kind of relegated to seasonal employees already felt like they were shedding. To me, this feels like as much as we've lamented the usfl is kind of a lean approach. Hey, maybe the xfl was a little too heavy here and they saw what the usfl was doing and kind of wanted to get in on that. Well, I mean, we had already talked about that happening last year. They talked about doing a hub model from the beginning, and then everyone, Mike included, and everybody said, are you kidding me? You can't do that. You're not going to be able to sell tickets. You can't get anybody involved. That's ridiculous. Why would you do that? And look, I'm still going to come on here and tell you that I hate the hub model, and I know that's a strong word, but I think the hub model is the detriment of entertainment. And as far as watching the game and watching football, look, you have to realize there are different things that people consume the sport for. Some people consume it because they genuinely love the sport and they love watching players and they love watching everything involved in it. Some people love it for the pageantry. You can pop your collar and gefa at it all you want, but there are people who really like to watch it just for the drama of it. I mean, look, there are people watching the Kansas City Chiefs brow beads, the Chicago Bears last week. You think it was because of the game? No, some people just wanted to watch it. They wanted a shot of Taylor Swift. That's how some people are involved. You just have to get used to that. There has to be entertainment value in what is going on on the product in front of you. Look, the Spring League was an idea from Brian Woods that created the idea of player development. Do a lot of people care about player development? No, but I care about player development. People like Evan who's going to have a job in player personnel. He cares about player development. Of course he does. That's his baby. And it's something that he really is impassioned by a lot. And I'm not saying there aren't people who are like that, but the thing is, if you're going to be a viable entity as far as selling your product, again, you have to get people involved who actually want to engage in the product. And having people in the stands is a huge part of it. I'm sorry. It just is. You have to get over this whole thing of like, well, we'll just have teams and people will latch on. No, you have to be involved and you have to have the communities be involved. You have to have people who are actually engaged with it in a local aspect too. You cannot just put a team on TV in front of an epic stadium and expect people to latch on. It's not how it works, it just isn't. And I wish this lesson was learned from both of these sides. Well, let's go through that then, and then we'll do the trademark at the end. And I will say, just thinking through what you've gone through or what you've said here. We had Corey tweet out last week. We were talking about him during the live stream, the Orlando season ticket hold, the season ticket wrap there. I couldn't imagine if I was someone with the xfl. I know we have Haley. That's a friend who does the sea dragon stuff. Just to think that you dove into this. So headstrong for a year trying to really make this be a viable opportunity. And then to have the plug pulled this quickly if we do kind of go to the hub model. Very disconcerting. So let's get into the hubs up just to make sure. This came out late Friday, and it was funny. I got the email. I'm on Neil Stratton, he is with the inside the league, and I buy this information. And again, this is fluid. Something that was true yesterday might not be true today. It doesn't mean it was false. But Neil, they're the ones that run all the Zoom calls with all the agents talking about the showcases and stuff. So Neil works with Russ, works with Doug, works with everybody there. He was saying, and I tweeted this out and no one really did anything for about 20 minutes. So I was like, am I reading this right? And then the world exploded here, I got 150,000. It went pretty crazy. But the, he's hearing, because obviously we had Mike on and it was 10 teams, he's hearing 12 teams, each league contributing six. I would imagine Vegas would be gone from the xfl potentially Orlando or Seattle, usfl coaches, respective statuses seem less certain than those in the xfl due to the way the contracts were written. Been one year deal. Our sense is that the new league will have a slightly more xfl feel to it. They've heard that they'll play in six hubs rather than in the teams home cities. The latest information was Detroit, Canton, St. Louis, and then they're looking at Arizona and Louisville. I've done shorts about this, we've talked about this. Anything else from that six and six more of an xfl feel, but still in a hub. I don't see how that works. I don't either. And again, I don't know why teams are being punished by being taken away fan bases. And again, we just talked about alienating fan bases and telling people and not making it certain that their teams are even going to be back after next season or even next season at all. Now you're telling them, well, we're going to go into a hub model and we're going to take them out of your home stadium. Why would they follow you? Why would the DC fans follow you? I wouldn't. I mean, that's negligible and I don't like it at all. Why can't they just both practice in one hub during the week and then go fly out to their stadiums? Is that impossible? I know there's a lot of logistics to that, but look, the Arlington hub was what it was, and people practiced out of it and they trained of it. Was it a little weird and awkward? Yes, but it worked. Same with Birmingham. Go back to Birmingham and practice in there. I know Protective Stadium isn't the best thing, although people have been talking about protective stadium and attracting people. I don't think it's the stadium itself. I think it's the surrounding area. And I've been saying that over and over and all the southerners and all the Birmingham, I can come after me, I don't care. But you and me both went there and realized that infrastructurally, at least at the time, was not working as far as getting people around the stadium. So look, deal with that as you can. But the point is, I think you still have to find a way to have these people trained together. And if you want to save money, that's fine in the hubs. But having six different hubs just is not going to cut it. You're not going to have these teams trying to play in front of these empty stadiums, the DC team playing in front of the battle hawks crowd, but not playing against the battle hawks. No one's going to watch that. No one's going to go to that. And that's a waste of space. Well, and it is tearing it away again. Now, not only, it's one thing, and I hate the USS L model, but it's one thing, okay, here's the hubs. We're working towards getting them in their stadiums. Right? Okay, Detroit. Okay, we got it this year, we're working on can. But to rip it away again, I don't, and I get it, it fiscally might all make sense. I know Connor Folk put out a tweet last week, one of the quote tweets when I put this out. He says, I get it. I get the hub model. I get everything about it. I get why it works. I get why executives think that it works. But from a fan experience, and like you said, from a TV experience, it just doesn't. And I just don't know how you can ask fans to kind of, I mean, I'm already a foot out in the door just doing this whole venture, let alone if I'm just Bill from Seattle and I like the sea dragons. Oh my God, I got 'em back again and I never thought of bankruptcy. And then you're going to take 'em away again. I just don't, how's Van going to feel about this? I mean, I don't want to go do a big diatribe, but Van, the superfan dragon man, I don't know. Yeah, you're taking away, you're subtracting and you have no way of adding. And also, I don't know how you can promise people that they're going to come back. Right? You can't. You can't. You can't. You can't. And that's disillusion. And I don't think you can have that with fans. You can't do that. That's disrespectful. It just is. It really is. And I don't think it's fair for people to expect to continue to support a team that's not playing in their own territory. Look, I know I've been banging the table and I've talked about it a million times about wanting a San Diego team, but if a San Diego team's not playing here, that takes away from it. It takes away from the building and the sense of community, and it's not going to be able to actually add to my enjoyment of having a team. And I know, look, I support a team in Los Angeles. Well, they were, at least in my city. I grew up with them that I have a connection to them that's different. That's a very different proposition. And the N F L is just a different beast when it comes to that. At least I know they're going to have supporting them. But the thing is, with this, you can't guarantee that because you're still a new thing. You're a new idea to a lot of people. You're a new concept and you can't just tear this away from people and expect them to continue to follow you. It's just not viable. And that's the thing, the tone deafness from the executives who are trying to expect people just to latch on because, oh look, we gave you football. Here's the football. You want the football, go watch the football. And we call it, and we call it the Louisiana Cornhuskers, like, okay, or Louisville, whatever. Here you go. It's your team. It's your Team. Again, if the Rock wanted to have a league, if the Rock and Danny Garcia wanted to have a league, and they call it the Remona zoa, the R F L, it's the Rock Football League, rock Football League, I don't care. Whatever, start a league and play, but you've got to play in the cities, okay? We have to continue this. I'm banging this from as hard as I can because there's just a disconnect between people who are actually engaged in the product and the people who are trying to save money. You want to save money, I get it, but you're going to have to put something in before people are going to give up. Look, I'm going to use this just a quick analogy one more time. Look, I'm, I'm a San Diego sports guy. I am going to be, I don't care. I support all San Diego sports. The San Diego Padres failed this year to make the playoffs because they basically didn't, for one reason or another, just had a lot of turmoil in the clubhouse and their chemistry. But you know, who continued to show up day in, day out and sold out tons of games, the fans. The fans came because at least at the end of the day, they looked at their own or Peter Sedler and said, you know what? He's investing in this team and he's trying to make this right and this isn't going right on the field, and sometimes it's not fun and there's a lot of discontent around maybe the clubhouse or around how people feel about the team, but people still showed up because they're trying to put themselves into the team and they're trying to win and they're trying to be viable and they're trying to be entertaining to the public. I don't understand why that disconnect is there with these people who are trying to run these leagues. I really don't, and you have to realize that you have to put something in if you expect people to give you something. We'll get out of here real quick. I know Andy's got a time out. We'll do, I'll always laugh. When the U S L started and they're Fox owned and they said, well, we're going to be airing spots and doing things because how do you make whoever care? And they go, oh, well, we'll have Houston. We'll have the Houston Fox station talk about the gamblers or whatever. I worked at the Fox station in Seattle. If we do this and the Seattle Sea Dragons are playing in Arizona or whatever, I can tell you, I know the people in the Seattle, in the Q 13 news sports department, they're not doing segments on this. They're not. I know Aaron Levine, I shot many standups with him. He will not care about this. It doesn't work that way. You have to have an incentive for these stations and people to want to care for it. Last thing, we talked about this last week, the reports out, Hey, usfl, they own the National Street Football trademark, so this came out, might come do this. If I'm saying that right, I tweet it out time's the flat circle here. Here we are. So I feel like that's what the league's going to be called. If it was me, I would just call it the usfl. I would absorb, I'm serious, say whatever you want about Reed and being the xfl Homer, I'd keep the U SS F L I wouldn't bother with all of this. Maybe they're just doing this for tying up purposes. What do you make them actually filing the trademarks? Like I said, they better know what they're doing and marketing that to people and expecting them to know what it is. And also do you think it's too familiar to the N F L logo or the N F L brand because it's one letter away. There's going to be something said by the league offices about, Hey, there's too much familiarity in the branding here. I don't like this and I know they can make a different logo and all that, but that's one letter away from the biggest football league in the world, so you got to be careful about that. Again, I agree with you. Choose one or the other, become the X L or become the usfl, but don't try to make one and just expect that people to latch on. Again, you're going to alienate people by doing this. It's just going to happen. Your loyalists are going to be gone. If you think you can bring in enough casual people to make it happen, fine, but you're going to lose people over this. It's just going to happen because it's a completely new territory and it's a new idea. It's a new brand. F C F people are different from T S L People from U SS F L people from xfl cfl, they're all different leagues and there's just people who are in all of them. Do I enjoy all of them in different ways or forms? Yes, but at the end of the day, there are people who follow specific leagues because there are just people who put their stakes in the ground for certain entities and this is one of the cases where you're going to lose people from both sides, even though you're trying to just smash them all in the same room and be like, here you guys go, this is going to work. At least if we have some breaking news on here, we're going to follow up here in just a second and we're going to get you out of here. Oh, now what? At least if the U SS F L kept the name, okay, we're going to absorb whatever. At least then you can point to like this won. They won the battle, if you want to call it that. The usfl, they survived. Their business model works. We're absorbing some of the xfl. This feels murky to me. Like I said, you battled the lawyers for two years trying to get these trademarks and pissed off Steve Erhardt and I loved covering all that stuff, but we went through a lot of stuff to let it all go and to let the xfl brand go. Last thing here, the Rock tweeted, we've lamented, we talked Danny's tweet earlier, more work to be done, owner xfl, final thoughts here, we'll get you out. More work to be done as in where he is going to be vacationing after this is all said and done because hey, look, I've just got to be honest, I don't know where he's going to stand here in front of the microphone telling us in terms of where this is going to go or if he's going to continue celebrating this league. And that's the other thing. I didn't know who Danny Garcia was before the ex fellows bought. I'm just going to be honest. I didn't follow her story as much as I did. I wish I had before, but now I have much more and obviously I've gotten to know more about the rock and his proceedings and how he runs himself as a person and all of that through all of this. That has led me to investing more of my time in learning who they are as people on Redbird Capital. And now it just seems like it just feels like the ship is sailing. It really doesn't feel like there's going to be a continuation of their services moving forward. I mean, it says more work to be done, but work done by you or by other people. That's what I want to know because this is so uncertain and I don't know if this is going to include one or both or anybody involved with the xfl management going forward, so I don't know it. It's walking into a dark room. Well, I think that's a good place to end it. We'll get Andy out. He's got to get to work. I appreciate it. As always. We'll have Rod Smith coming up here talking to cfl, and then we have a good chat with Andrew Pearson as well, America's cfl team, the BC clients. Andy, anything else from you? I thought that was a great way to wind it down. It was so fluid, it felt like we were debating live. It really did. So props to you for creating the atmosphere during that whole time. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know where I stand in all of this. I'm going to take time to process all this information. This is a lot and I just want to say I appreciate spring football and what it brings. I really do. I love the sport to death and I just want it to be a place where players, coaches and people can have opportunities. I don't want people to lose jobs over this and unfortunately I feel like that's what's going to happen and I want people to have their livelihoods to be able to be continued after all of this. I really do. So whatever this decision ends up being and finalized, I hope it's for the betterment of the sport and for the people involved with it and the communities involved with it and not it just be some desperate cash grab and it all blows up in their faces at the end. I really hopes. Yeah, we'll see, I mean I kind of tweeted last week and depending on how all this goes, I don't know how invested I am in a weekly format about hub football, kind of whatever. And that has nothing to do even with me like, oh, Seattle doesn't have a team, I really don't care. I have to believe in the concept and I at least felt like the usfl was trying to get somewhere right where the xfl was. But we'll see. To me this has never felt like 2020 any of this. And I know it's obviously different being in the media side of it now, but it doesn't have that same joy. So we'll see. I'm having fun writing through all this stuff. This is at least exciting to me and the people are talking about it and I'm getting called to do shows and everything, but we'll see. But make sure you're subscribed, Andy, I appreciate it. I thought this was a good segment today, so thank you. Well, here we are. We had this guest on last year, I think similar timeframe. Glad you could come back on. We have Rod Smith here, cfl on t, SS N. We don't have the shiny twins at the door today, so we're safe. Rod was checking out my Twitter strange happenings here in West Seattle, but yes, we're alive. Yeah, good to talk to you again, Reid, and glad to know you're okay because there was kind of a likeness there on Twitter. I was wondering if Halloween was coming early. There you go. Well, rod, we're here week 17. I got a lot of questions for you because it's kind of a weird week because Toronto and everything else just 30,000 feet view here. How are you looking at the season so far? Well, I mean it always has interesting points to me. I mean even though there are really three teams that have been a lot more dominant than the rest of the league being the Argos, Winnipeg and the BC Alliance, I'm most curious to see how things go at the top of the West Division because Winnipeg's being challenged. I mean they've lost two of their last three games. I mean you could frame it that way and in between one of probably the most dominant victory of the season in the banjo bull in the rematch against Saskatchewan. But Winnipeg is, there's still a really good team and you could still argue with the best team that all has to be played out, but they're 10 and four BC's, 10 and four, they each are at home with winnable games and then they face each other to decide the season series next week. So that's the most compelling thing in the East, not as compelling, especially with the Argos at 12 and one already wrapping up first place in the division with still a full third of the season to go. Now they did play one game into that final third last week and won it, but still five games left. And it's just a matter of strategy now for how Ryan Denwood either head coach, rest key players and make sure they're ready to go when it matters most, which for them is not until November the 11th and the Eastern final. But that game Toronto with Winnipeg several weeks ago, we were all really looking forward to it. And it doesn't have quite the same, it doesn't draw quite the same interest for obvious reasons just because it's not a game that the Argos have to win and they're resting their star quarterback Chad Kelly. Yeah, I saw that Cameron Dukes getting the primary start there. It is weird. I mean we've talked about it on our recap on Monday. It's kind of a first world problem here. Oh no, we have so many weeks to go, but this isn't Kansas City wrapping up the A F C and resting Mahomes a week. I mean, like you said, it's almost a third of the season here. What are you making of that and the strategy? Because I think depending on how the season ends up, I think you could have questions about how this is handled. Yeah, you could and you certainly, I'd tell you the biggest question would've been a lot of people would like to see Kelly play. They'd like to see the Argos dress, all of their best players, anyone who's healthy enough to play and really challenge Winnipeg even though they don't have to win this game, the Bombers, of course it's a lot more important to them than it is to Toronto. You'd love to see that. But Ryan Dinwitty said something to the effect of, I guess facetiously, I guess I'm an idiot if I don't play him and I'm an idiot. If I do, he can't win because if he plays them and he gets hurt and he is not available for the most important games, everyone probably including those who think that sure, you should let him play. Everyone's going to be questioning why he would take such a risk. So I mean Kelly will play, I think Dinwoodie's plan was out of the remaining six games, he'll play four of them. So he did play against Hamilton last week, so that means he plays in three of the remaining five, and I doubt he's going to play in Winnipeg. He is dressing, by the way, he's listed as the third stringer behind Cameron Dukes and also Brian Scott. But I understand it, and I think you're right, it's kind of an embarrassment of riches. I mean that they won so early, they have this luxury, but now his coaching's going to come into question as to did he give certain players too much time off and then they're not exactly sharp come playoff time or did he play them too much and then they get banged up. So it's interesting. And Michael Shay, by the way, Reed had to do this almost to the same extent last year. Winnipeg clinched the west I think with about four weeks to go. So they had about a month to a month and a half where they had to make similar decisions. Like you said, it is kind of a lose lose because either way, whatever it ends up being, right. So they're talking the Toronto game, I think it's the week after they're going to do their big anniversary celebration, is that right? So people are like, well, least Chad potentially is going to play for that, if that makes sense. I know it's not the marquee one against the Blue Bombers. Yeah, I think that's it. They're celebrating the existence of the Argonaut Football Club goes back to 1873. I mean that's long before the official formation of the cfl or even the Gray Cup for that matter. But they are celebrating their 150th year as an organization and they're going to have a lot of stars there, including Doug Flutie and Damon Allen, and I think they want to that more of a spectacle. They're hosting Edmonton and I would expect Kelly to play in that game. Although again, Ryan Dinwitty had some practical reasons why too. Winnipeg is a really fired up team coming off a loss on the road and a bye week and they're back home. It's really noisy there. They're expecting a sellout and that stadium, I mean relatively speaking, we're talking in the low thirties in terms of thousands of fans there, but it's kind of got that Seattle design where it really collects sound. I've done a number of games there and it can get really, really loud. And I think his point is why subject Kelly to a road game where they're going to be really loud and there probably is against that defense, Willie Jefferson and Jackson Jeff code a greater chance of getting hit harder perhaps getting hurt, and he's please playing it more cautious. It'll be a lot friendlier, of course, for their offense on the field at home the following week. So I do think that's a factor as well. Yeah, I saw a friend of the show Cody Fudo there a couple weeks back, really struggling. I mean, I could not imagine, and we've gone back and forth of like, oh, if the BC Lions, if they get the home field advantage for the playoffs, and I think it's kind of a neutral at that point. I think Winnipeg going into bc, I don't think the Lions playing in Winnipeg to me is a very different beast and it's probably the biggest home field advantage, in my opinion, in the cfl. I mean you could debate that with Saskatchewan as well. I was going to say it would be between the two and just the way that things are going better for the bombers right now. The fans have reason to be louder compared to the way things have been going for the Rough Rider, but that would be either or. I mean I've heard Mosaic Stadium can get really loud as well. They're passionate fans is, I mean you follow the cfl for a while and I mean they have that reputation too, but that's an interesting point. And they are for the bombers and the Lions and they meet for the final time of the regular season next week at BC Place. And that looms, I think even regardless of what happens to these two teams this weekend, that's looming large because the winner gets the first tiebreaker in case they finish up with the same number of points in the standings. And yeah, I think BC, even though the Lions did win I think back in week three in Winnipeg, I think they would like their rods a lot better if they got to host the Western final. If it's against Winnipeg, then have to get the buy beforehand instead of have to go to Winnipeg. They had to last year. We will talk Lions here. I got thoughts, but Winnipeg, I think it is like their third sell out in a row really seems big success right now. It seems like the fan base is really involved. Obviously that's not to be surprised just with the success they've seen the last couple of years, but that's got to be with all the things going on cfl, whatever, this is kind of a shining spot right now in terms of a successful franchise. It Really is, and it really goes back to, well probably even earlier, but I do think of 2019 when they finished in third place in the West and they didn't have the luxury of playing at home. They had to go win in Calgary, they had to go win in Saskatchewan, and then they went back to Calgary for the Great Cup where there were underdogs against Hamilton and that it just worked out. It's not often a third place team that has to just go on the road can do that. But since then, I mean it's always been a great football market, but in particular in the Mike Oche years that go back, well, his first season was 2014, but they've gradually improved and become more interesting to watch better players and yeah, they're the biggest success story. I mean the Argos are the defending champions right now and they have the best record in the cfl this season. But in terms of overall success at the gate, going back a few years, it has been Winnipeg and you're right, I mean if ever it's going to stand a reason there because they've won so many games. They've been a really entertaining football team to watch, Even though Winnipeg and BC both kind of wins loss here. Same in the win-loss column. My faith in BC right now is on a scale of one to 10 at Sub-zero at this point, I Really, and you are a Lions fan, right? I Am a Lion fan, yes, yes, they're American's. cfl team, we have the Donut Boys and the Shutouts, and we're go to Winnipeg. And then I don't know if it's like we get high on our own supply, Winnipeg still to me, I have the most trust in them. Am I alone in that thought? I mean, even though they, they're tied in the stand, I mean very drastically different mentalities I think right now. Well, I think rightfully so, and that's no disrespect to the Lions to say Advantage Winnipeg. I think people should see it that way until the lions win the game that they have to win the most. And that would be the playoff game. In this case, we're talking about a rematch in the Western final, whether it's in Vancouver or in Winnipeg, but I would expect the Lions to feel that way until they've each beaten the other once. Now it gets more interesting if the lions win next week and say they took two of three that maybe they should be considered the favorites and fair enough. But as it stands right now with both teams at 10 and four, the bombers in the west are still the team to beat in my mind. I dunno, BC has just had the weirdest season came out really strong, and then just some of these super winnable games they've dropped. And even last week I'm like, I could see them going in Edmonton cleaning their clock. I mean, I was following along and then watching everything after the fact. To me, I don't know if they show up to these big games and not even that, that was a big game, but God forbid here next week at BC plays, I'm trying to get up there. I got to talk with the wife about it, but I'm very scared for that game. Well, it's interesting. I was in Vancouver for the one I guess about a month ago against Hamilton, which surprised me. They were by their own admission, they were kind of in that one and good for the tie cats that took advantage of it. They were big underdogs in that game. And Ottawa, they trailed by 19 against the Ottawa Red Blacks in the fourth quarter. And again, good for them, got the big return by Terry Williams. I mean, they did what they had to do for one of the greatest, if not the greatest comeback in franchise history. But you're right, it's been touch and go against the lower teams in the league. And so that one tonight, or not tonight, but this week they have Saskatchewan at home. Be curious to see how that one goes and yeah, you know what your point just emphasizes how important next week is not only to get the tie break and the chance at first place, but to make the kind of statement that they made back in week three when they went in to IG Field in Winnipeg and just in the last few years, nobody wins there but the bombers and not only did they win, that was a beat down, that was I think Matthew Betts of what three sacks I think. And their defense was awesome. They had Callis on the run. Vernon looked so good. I mean, the Lions can look great. They definitely have the ability to look like a really great team, and I don't know if they ever look better than they did in that game back in week three, but I think they're faced now. I think there's more onus on them, especially at home next week to prove it. If they want to be considered better than Winnipeg, they have to prove it next week. Yeah, I mean, we're in the a l S right now with baseball and tracking the Mariners. We've had some very, And that's the thing, is it if you eek into the playoffs, does that do anything when you're going to get knocked out immediately or whatever? I mean, BC dropping the game to Saskatchewan and then like you said, Hamilton coming in, I remember I was filming a wedding that day and I'm watching the score and I just wanted to throw my phone across the field. I'm like, these are games that you have to show up for, and I just don't, we saw Winnipeg, the big Tre Ford experiment the first week and okay, they're down 22 0 or whatever, no worry, we're just going to go down score bc when Vernon was throwing all those picks against Toronto, it's like, oh my God, okay, we got it. We got to, they just kind of have this panic mode they get into, which doesn't seem to work, at least for Vernon. I think it's a little shaken. Well, that's been his reputation in the past. I will say it though, for VA more this year and that game, you're right, they went in, I think a three and oh into Toronto and they were competing for a while. But yeah, I mean the six picks, and I think Adams really, really took it on. So I think he was very hard on himself after that. But I admire the way for his season anyway, the way he bounced back. And even one of the best games I've seen him have, and I don't know if you agree, but it was actually a loss in Saskatchewan, the one you referred to, and he threw for like four 50 and he looked great. Some of the throws he made in the fourth quarter were just outstanding. So I think he's from one game to the next, and even within a game after throwing a pick, I think he is certainly better than he used to be in his Montreal days at shaking it off and getting back on track. And I'll be curious to see, because it's going to matter more next week's game that I talked about, and then they get in the playoffs, and if they have to win a game before getting to the West Final, I mean, that's going to be the truest test of where not only Vernon Adams, all the BC lines are going to be. Yeah, Vernon hasn't been a problem at all. I mean, he's been, even in their losses, like you said, I mean he's throwing for great numbers and I think for the most part it's been protecting the ball, not kind of that manic that it's been in the past. I can't figure out what the deal is. And the defense, like you said, there's something, they give up these big drives, Winnipeg comes out, okay, 60 yards, okay, we score. You're already down before you've even started. Yeah, you're right. And I've seen that on the Lions and really I think you could make a case that every team in the league has shown a trace of that, can't figure out who they are except for Toronto, the Argos of one loss. It was after Chad Kelly got hurt and Cameron Dukes came on and a couple of things happened too. There was a punt fumble near the end zone at the final play of the first half. I mean, it was really the perfect storm and credit to the Stampeders. They ended up being the only team that beat them. And when they played later, even though they lost them in Toronto, they racked up a lot of offense against the Argos had more success against that defense than most teams have. But that said, the Argos have been, even after Clinching still look dominant against a Hamilton team that was coming off a win over Winnipeg and had that win over the lions in Vancouver. And then you see Hamilton come out completely flat against Toronto sometimes I can't figure the T cats out or the rough riders. Certainly it's harder to figure out Calgary this year after so many winning years and Winnipeg just destroying Saskatchewan in that banjo bowl game, that rematch from Labor Day and then going and losing in Hamilton, which I don't think for the second straight year, which it's so even the bombers as great as they are, have had a few of those games where they're tougher to figure. And yeah, BC has it, but I don't think the lines are alone in that department. Well, that's the thing. I mean you're talking even in terms of Calgary, I wanted to get your thoughts on that in terms of, because that's going to be the other game you're on this weekend, save for the Elks in a month ago. It's like Chris Jones, we need to fire him, burn everything down. We played Trey Ford and now it's okay. They at least have hope maybe for next year, whatever they have started Trade four Calgary I think would look even worse. Obviously Calgary looks bad right now. What do you make going into Hamilton here? Because feels like Calgary. I don't know what Calgary does next year. I really don't know if ever they had a head coach that deserves the benefit of the doubt. It is Dave Dickinson, we were talking about this earlier today, me and my colleagues, that Dickinson's time in the cfl, which began in the late nineties, I want to say as a player, I think he was a third stringer behind Doug Flute and Jeff Garcia, or he was at least a backup, sorry, he was a backup to Jeff Garcia and Henry Burris, but he was part of great quarterback lineage coming out of Calgary and he had winning seasons, then became a starter winning seasons there, went to the N F L, he was with the Chargers for a while, came back with the BC lines, won a great cup there, becomes a coach. And just as Calgary is really in the John Huff Nagel year is getting really good again, and I have to just confirm this, but looking back, I don't think that Dave Dickinson as a player coach in the cfl going spanning two decades, he's had a losing season. He's guaranteed a losing season this year, his first year as coaching gm. And I don't know, I'm not suggesting the added responsibility has anything to do with it. They've had a lot of injuries. I mean, goodness knows every team has had to battle a lot of injuries. Calgary certainly had their fair share, but this is just uncharted waters. I mean, following the stampedes for a year. I think 2004 might've been the last time that they had a losing season, but it's been a long time and it's crazy to look at the standings and see that their chances of making the playoffs looking really slim now. Well, and especially, I mean here we've seen Crumb come in, have some flashes, right? Taylor Powell come in and get some flash. Jake Mayer was supposed to be kind of the promised one coming in here like, okay, he's had a couple years and he had those flashes starting for Beau, was it two seasons ago? And then, okay, now we're it, I don't know, we just can't figure out is it a mayor thing, is it a play calling thing? Is it a mixture? What's going on? I think he's part of it. I think he has struggled with his consistency this year, and yet again, he's another one I mentioned Vernon, two of the best games I saw him play we're both losses. One was in overtime at home against Ottawa, and another one was the second game they had against the Argos where I think he was over 400 yards passing. And he's such a good deep ball passer, but turnover's really costly against the ettes this past weekend. And yeah, I don't know. He has certainly shown enough moments that suggest he could be a star quarterback in the cfl, but consistently not enough of them, certainly in 2023. And I wouldn't hang the record all on him, but I mean as he's the quarterback and a quarterback driven league, I mean certainly he has to take his fair share of accountability for it. I'm sure They're going to be facing Hamilton weird season. Like he said, Hamilton shows up, gets knocks down. Winnipeg, kind of the same they did last year, which I was talking with Derek Taylor about Weird that literally the exact same thing happened with Hamilton and Winnipeg last year, them going into the buy and don't sleep on this game or whatever. But Hamilton basically guaranteed kind of the least be in that playoff picture. Ettes slumping here. What do you make of Hamilton this week and then overall in the East? Well, I mean definitely the way things are going for Calgary right now, advantage Hamilton being at home, but you do wonder again, and I am sure Alando Steiner wonders too, which TCATs team is going to show up because with the exception of they just not played Toronto well at all, they haven't really been close to winning any of those games against the Argos. They got swept four of them, but against every other team they have certainly they had been looking better starting with that win against BC in the second half of the season. So again, I do wonder which one is going to show up, but they certainly showed flashes that they could be a threat to those better teams. But Montreal is the one that they're chasing right now. And if the season ended now, they'd have a playoff game just like last year in Montreal. And the Ettes have played them twice, both in Hamilton, and they beat them both times. So they've already won the season series. They meet one more time in Montreal. But that ultimately is going to be what the TCATs are going to need to do. They're going to have to prove that they can beat the ettes before they can even think about playing Toronto again. But I mean, being at home against the struggling Stampede team, I certainly would think that their favorites going into this one Is Montreal, are they a good team? I know there was a lot of question marks going into the season and kind of reworking everything there and Cody and the new it's look Saskatchewan team in Montreal kind of a little bit, but it seems like they were hot, Cody got hurt, came back. I mean here they're what? They're 500 right now. I just can't get my head around it. Yeah, I look back at what the ettes have done, and I think they're seven and oh against teams with losing records, and I think they're oh and seven against if you do, let's see, they lost to the Argos three times. They lost to the lions twice and they lost to Winnipeg twice. So there's your seven, so oh and seven against the top three. So I mean, that's a pretty telling stat. I mean, even look at Hamilton. Hamilton hasn't beaten Montreal, but they've beaten two teams of Montreal hadn't beaten in four tries. So it really, that's another, they're enigmatic. I mean, I think they've gotten better defensively by adding Darnell. I think that's a great add, but I still do wonder about 'em. I mean the jury's out on them, not so much against Hamilton, but if they make it to the Eastern final, that's a big hill to climb. The games in Montreal against the Argos have been very, very close. But the games in Toronto, the ones they played or the one they played was not. So that's going to be the thing. I mean in the east it's pretty clear. I mean, for whoever does make it, and at this stage, Ottawa is still hanging by a thread, but at this stage it's Montreal or Hamilton got to figure out a way to beat the Argos. But yeah, I mean the seven and oh oh seven stat, that's pretty self-explanatory to where they fit. Yeah, we will round out here. It just does feel like whatever happens, they're running into this buzz saw in terms of it was Winnipeg and it still is. I mean, like I said, BC it's a little bit more intrigued there, but it really does feel like someone tweeted the other day, it was like Argos, Winnipeg, huge gap bc, huge gap like everyone else. It does feel like that bottom six. I guess my last question I was going to ask before, and I forgot we were talking to Argos, I saw Naylor this week talking the league's broken because Toronto clinching all that stuff, wanting to do a division list. Division list. So do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, I mean you'll find on most things with me, if we ever went down that road about whether we were talking about xfl merger, Canadian rules, size of the field, number of downs, everything else, and then I'll even include two divisions. I'm old school, I'm old guard, and you're probably not going to change my mind on it. And I understand the argument to one division for cases like this, but I still was born and raised into just the tradition of eastern Canada and Western Canada and the champions of each division would face each other in the gray cup. And I love that model even though there are some years where it looks really flawed if you get a time where all the dominant teams are in one division. But I mean, his point being it's not so much. Usually that argument comes up because all the good teams in the west and there's no good teams in the east in this case, the best team is just clinched so early that there'd be a lot more to play for in terms of play positioning if they still hadn't clinched yet. So I mean, I get the reasoning behind the argument, but I'm still a traditionalist and probably always will be, unless this just keeps going on for years and years. But it has to be a problem for a number of years before I'd consider ever going to one division or wanting to go to one division. But Reed, I was just going to say a flaw that's very, very correctable is in the scheduling. And I don't know logistically what the schedule makers have to go through, especially in an unbalanced league in nine teams and in BMO field and Toronto, the scheduling is always more of a nightmare, I think, than other cities. But to wait this long to have a gray cup rematch and only one meeting this season between Winnipeg and Toronto, I just don't get it. This game should have been earlier and it wouldn't have lost its appeal from the fact that the Argos have clinched and they're resting, Chad Kelly, that these things wouldn't be an issue if it happened earlier, maybe even the season opener. And that's something that even though they've done it, they've had great breakup rematches week one many, many times. I don't know why that wasn't the case this year. Well, we couldn't even get the Gray Cup champions in week one, so let's not go crazy here. They didn't even play. So Rod, I really appreciate it. Like I said, making time before you got to fly out, safe travels with everything, it means a lot. And we'll be in Hamilton, so hopefully I'm sure you'll be around and we'll catch up. But I really appreciate your time. Oh, my pleasure. Good chatting with you again, Reed. Take care. Well now, I mean, many years ago you were on the show, I think fighting for kind of a position and getting one of your first starts, then obviously having success on the field now you're like a bonafide internet celebrity. I wouldn't call it podcasting, but short form video con, we have Angie Pearson here, America's cfl team of the BC Alliance. How are you doing, sir? Well, thank you. Yeah, it's been a while. I think before the season started in 21 after the season, last year's last time we chatted. So good to see you again. Good to chat. It's good. I got the questions. We will talk bc, lions, everything. It is right orange shirt weekend. I mean make sure we get that plugged in the matter like that. But how's life for you? We're week 17 here. Crazy going through the season. Yeah, I mean it flies by week by week. You're kind of in the mud, but big picture things, the season does fly by. I'm well, things are going well. Love my team. This team's special. We have something really fun here. We do a lot of activities. We have lots of fun here outside of football and on the field as you can see, we're still having fun and the success is a byproduct of enjoying having fun and everything like that. So I'm doing well. Health is good. Everything you can control that I can control is good, family is good. So no complaints over here. In terms of obviously the length of the season, you're talking health and stuff, just conditioning, physicality, how much does that wear here, kind of the elongated season and everything you guys have to go through? Yeah, it's one of those things, the longer in your league, the more you kind of figure out that you have to do the little things like taking care of your body becomes such a tedious task I want to say, because you're doing the same things over and over and over again. You're ice bathing, hot tubs, stretching, working out all the things. It's really to kind of do different stuff here and there. But body maintenance is one of the biggest underrated things about a player's success. Maybe not underrated, but it's a huge contributor to a player's success is having confidence in your body to go out there and play physical and play fast and try not to take any time off. Yeah. In terms of, I mean I say we, it's not we, but you guys stellar in terms of receiving core, right offense, especially dealing with injury kind of all year and shuffling. How has that been and Dominique back or whatever, Keon is going crazy here last week. How's it been getting the main and offensive core together? Yeah, I mean we got so many horses in the stable just speaking of receivers, and it's awesome when you have guys that do go down, it's unfortunate, but then the next guy steps up and you saw that with Justin, right? He went out there and when Doms went down, he took it on and did an awesome job. And that's just one example across the boards and there's a couple horses in the stable that haven't got out on the green grass yet. But yeah, I think having that culture and having that ability to stay ready is a huge thing. And practicing with the intention that, hey, anything can happen week to week, so I need to stay ready. And that's as older guys and you kind of try to tell people, Hey, right now it might not be your time, but you don't know what happens next week or the next week. So you have to stay ready and make sure everyone's locked in. So when your name is called, you feel confident, ready to go and speaking on experience. That was me in 2018, my rookie year, we had a good core of veteran guys in the O line room and I was so far down on the dev chart. My rookie year I was on the practice roster with two centers in front of me and two centers went down. So you just got to stay ready in practice and prepare your starter, and then when your name is called, you get to go out and dominate. So I think that is, it's kudos to our leadership group here, all the veterans and making sure that the guys behind the starters are accountable and making sure that they're ready to go when their name is called. And speaking to the defense too, you got a number of guys go down and other guys step up. I mean luckily we're getting Bo back, but heck, you plug and play anyone right now and our defense is buzzing and the secondary same thing. And so I think it's just got to do with the whole team and the way we approach things. In terms of continuing off of last season, a lot of success obviously, and even just removed from the Nathan work of it all, just the team and assign a bunch of big names, carrying that into this year. Did it feel different going into this year now that maybe there were more expectations on you guys? Because last year I think everyone's like, this might be a colossal failure with this Nathan Rourke and then in retrospect, but there's a lot more, I guess, target sites on you guys this year compared to last year, I would think. Yeah, it's funny because last time we were on, I think we were talking and I was like, Hey, I think everyone's going to be pleasantly surprised with Nathan Rourke. I'm going to stamp up my name on that one. I was here in the offseason working with him. I said, this guy's special and kudos to him for following his dreams and we're full behind that. But it's funny hearing, hear the expectations, but in this world of football and sports in general, you have our group and there's the outside world that says what they want to say. Now people can use that as motivation. Maybe we have a target on our back or maybe we're the underdog like we were a year ago and this year we were in a different position. But ultimately it just comes down with we have a task and we fell short last year, so we're still hungry in the same sense that we walked into the season saying, Hey, we didn't accomplish the ultimate goal, so we just got to do a little bit more. So as much as people were saying, all these guys are whatever we were at and we're going to be fall off since Nathan or whatever the outside talk was, it really came down to it doesn't matter. We came up short last year, so we got to do a little bit more this year. And so that's kind of what it comes down to. And we're not done yet. That's still the conversation that we're having right now. We're still in the mix and you want to use anything as motivation, but the end of the goal is we have an opportunity this week, opportunity next week, opportunity three weeks and four weeks, and then we'll see where we're at. So yeah, Obviously you don't want to dismiss Saskatchewan this weekend, not having, it's been a rocky season. We will talk about that game, but looking forward to next game. Winnipeg, I got to talk with Dorothy. I'm feeling like we're going to make the road trip up there for that. Let's go. In terms of just the back and forth you guys have had with Winnipeg having that date, obviously you circled on the calendar, what are you looking forward to the game next weekend? Yeah, I mean it's the opportunities that you want to have. You want to be in those games. You want to be looking down at the end of the season and say, Hey, this is where we're going to be at, and we want to be in that position where everything's in our control. So to be honest, you think about it because it's obviously a big game and we should have a good crowd this week and next week, but it doesn't mean anything if we don't go out and do our job this week. So as much as I want to think about it, we got an awesome Saskatchewan defense speaking as an offensive player. We got a great s defense that got us the first time that we played them, and then last time we didn't just execute on opportunities and we had it in front of us at the end there and we came up short. So I think it's a great opportunity just to answer your question, to be in the mix, to be everything's in our control, and if we do our job this week, then I'll talk to you about how cool and awesome that Winnipeg game's going to be. Yeah, I think there's been high highs and maybe some lower lows this season, total annihilation, Winnipeg the first time and Edmonton and all that stuff. And then obviously we got the Hamilton game, the Saskatchewan game. How does coaching, how do they talk to you guys? What is the message after the game and how does the team kind of internalized? There has been a couple games this year where you're like, man, maybe we really let that get away from us. I know Coach Ick does a really good job when we come in after a game, no matter what the week goes, don't ride the highs too high and don't live in the lows too low. We got to stay even keel throughout the whole season because if you get too high, then you're knocked off the high horse and if you stay too low, then you're kind of breeding this negativity. We need to stay even keel and kind of just trend upward the whole time. We had a little negative spiel there, but we bounce back and I think that's what's cool about this team is that hey, look ourselves in the mirror and say, Hey, we just got to do better. Nothing's going to be handed to us. Just because we played some good games doesn't mean that someone else Hamilton comes into our barn and shows us what's up. So that was a good opportunity to learn from it and say, we got to show up every single week with a chip on our shoulder and say, Hey, we got to come to work and give our best football each week. And if we do that, good things happen when we play our style of football, when we execute the little details and everyone gives good effort, good things happen and the talent kind of shows. So I think that's kind of mentality this week too is like, Hey, to your point, a lot of the things like, Hey, what about win? Hey, we got a good SaaS team in front of us. We can't be looking too far ahead right now. We got something right in front of us, right in front of our eyes that could throw a big hurdle into our goals. So I think the ability to bounce back from the negatives of this season and turn it around and make some good games. And that Ottawa game, we got knocked down, and I think Keon Hatcher said in one of our meetings, he just said like, Hey guys. No one was pointing fingers that game. No one was saying like, Hey, come on. It was, Hey, we just got to do our job, do our job, and good things are going to happen. And the ball started going special teams, defense made big stops we made on offense, we started scoring. So I think there's a lot of character to this team, and I'm looking forward to this final stretch here. In terms of SaaS coming in, anything specific from them you're expecting or looking forward to Physical? I'm expecting a physical game. They have a really good defensive box and linebackers. So from a run perspective, we really got to be on our details and establish physical play and let smoke be the athlete that he is and be the great football player that he is. And they're going to throw some wrinkles at us. They always do. And the good thing that their defense does is they kind let them be athletes. They're not going to robots. They're kind of free flowing and twisting and doing different stuff. So that kind of poses a little bit of a difficulty to being an offensive lineman when there is this kind of free flowing athleticism that they let them do. So we just got to make sure that we show up and give VA a little bit of time and create some holes for smoke. Smoke, that's our nickname for him, and good things are going to happen. Lastly here, it was cool seeing at least I think BC has always been more on the forefront of doing a lot of the social media stuff and the videos, and obviously we know Matt, Nick, and Ottawa has done the behind the R and the arrow up and all that stuff. So pleasantly surprised that earlier this year, seeing your beautiful face show up on behind the helmet, all that stuff talk about, you had told me before we record, like, Hey, I've had this idea for a while, but not every team needs to be receptive to doing things like that. And not everyone, lots of people have lots of ideas, but being able to see that through and have the opportunity and let the organization, I guess, help you be one of the faces of the franchise, what does that mean to talk through that? Well, one, I'm extremely grateful and privileged that they allow me to be myself and to kind of do these things and be fun and get out there and show my face at different community events or media or anything like that. So I'm extremely grateful and privileged that I get this opportunity. Ultimately, what it came down to is that we have so many great characters in our locker room and we, David Mackey, and I mean, we kind of brainstormed an idea of how can we showcase some of these characters in the way that we get to see them in kind of a lighthearted way. So we took some motivation from between two Ferns, Barstool does one Sunday conversations. We kind of just picked and choose how we kind wanted to script this, and it came down to picking the players. We try to pick some players that fans, we knew what kind of person they were, so kind of taking them out of the normal interview question kind of situations where even I fall guilty into that, where you're just given the same crisp answers and allow them to open up and we ask some ridiculous questions that kind get cut and to loosen them up, and then we kind of go right into it and allow them to showcase what kind of people we have in our team. And there's a couple more. We were talking before, there's a couple more coming out here that are some of my favorites, so be on the lookout for those. But I'm grateful that we were kind of worried about the reception, what people were going to think about it. But I know in our locker room, it was hilarious. Even two days ago, I had Alex Hollins asked me, Hey, when can I get on? And I'm like, oh, he'd be hilarious. So the best part is they just don't know when it's coming. We just tell 'em that it's a T S N interview and they walk in and then they see David and I in a shirt and shorts and asking awkward questions. But yeah, it's pretty cool that we get the opportunity to, here's my idea, can we do it? And then they got back to me saying, yeah. And I said, just a heads up, we're going to ask some questions that you probably won't clear the final cut, but that's on you guys. But you mentioned it to, kudos to Nick and Liam and Steven and our whole marketing department on all the awesome work they do. I mean, every week it seems like they want up each other, and it's great for the team, it's great for the fans of the BC Lion, and ultimately it's great for the league to see some of the other side of players that they could see on the tv, see what kind of person they are and why we're not just teammates, but friends with a lot of these people. Well, and to me, this is always the thing that the cfl needs to lean into, right? We are this, I think so too. Yeah, Community driven, fan driven, all of this stuff. And so especially for the teams, I do a lot of these player interviews and you get a lot of, you can tell the guys have I got my five, six minutes of soundbites that I say and certain people are, I get it and some guys like doing it not, but especially where you guys obviously have the familiarity there too. I just think it's helpful. So no, I think it's great and just anything like that to it's content. You guys are in the building anyway. We're doing this stuff, Nick's doing whatever. So I like it. I think it's good and obviously wanted to give kudos for that and for you where it is, maybe not the first person you would think of like, well, we're going to have Brenda and Adams do something. We're going to have, I just think it's cool to put a spotlight on maybe guys that wouldn't necessarily get that spotlight in giving you those opportunities as well. Yeah, yeah. Well I'm equally, I mean, Mackey's one of the funniest guy, one of my best friends and one of the funniest guys. So it's pretty good when you have chemistry with someone like him sitting next to me that that's actually our humor. What you see on the video is literally how we joke with each other too. So it comes off very, at least in my opinion, it comes off very authentic and I think that's what makes it kind of fun for, at least for Dave. And I have the most fun doing them. I mean, we're laughing in our heads at some of the questions that we're going to ask and all that stuff. So yeah, hopefully it keeps going. I mean it seems like the engagement's been really good and I'm really looking forward to some of the ones coming up. I don't know, I won't plug any names. We'll just keep 'em on, keep people guessing, but some big names coming up that I think what people will really like it. But yeah, Lucky's Lucky's had a really good reception and he's one of those guys. He is authentic though, so you already know that side of him. But having VA someone that's very professional and he's hilarious in the locker room and such a great guy. So asking him some funny questions and trying to throw him off of his textbook answers was a treat for us too. And TJ Lee, same thing. Appreciate the feedback there and looking forward to keeping going if we can. Well Andrew, big weekend this weekend, big every weekend now big here through the end, so you got support. Good luck, everything. We're excited. But yeah, get the team here, get 'em motivated going down the stretch long season. So I appreciate your time today. Means a lot. Yeah, no problem. I appreciate you and always love what you do for the lions and the whole league. Sounds good, man. Take care. Yeah, cheers. Huge special thanks to all of our guests today. Like I said, Andrew Murray making time before he's going to work. We have a cracking game heading to in a little bit, so really appreciate Andrew making that work for me. Obviously Rod Smith taking the time before he's flying out to Winnipeg to cover the games. And then Andrew Pearson on a busy week, a couple of home games with the Saskatchewan Ruff Riders coming in this weekend. And then the Winnipeg Blue Bombers coming in next weekend, two BC plays. That's going to be a big game. I'll be in attendance with Dorothy got our tickets and Airbnb last night, so anyone, if you're going to be at BC place on October 6th, we will be there. Rocking and rolling. So appreciate it. Like I said, busy times, lots of stuff. Always appreciate you liking and subscribing. Really good. Just kind of gives me good feedback. A lot of the work and stuff we have going on here, so I appreciate it. Stay tuned. Try to do some live reactions next week as everything we'll see when everything comes out, but appreciate it. Take care. Have a good weekend and thanks.

CFL 2023 Week 16 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 16, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Markcast Monday here, back inside home studio here. We will get back in the home office with the lights and everything here eventually, but I always like the casual nature of the Monday morning ones here. Have Jason standing by. I think Evan's getting logged in here. We'll get it going early Monday. Jason, I don't like you very much today because you, you're Buffalo Bills to the sch. Slacking to my Washington Commanders. How are you? I'm doing good, Reid. A little bit of a mixed weekend obviously with the bills beating your commanders yesterday, but the TCATs getting clobbered on Saturday so a bit of a mixed weekend for me, but overall I'm doing good. Yeah, Mariners got swept in Texas. We're going to see them tonight. Houston's coming here. Obviously BC Lions won, commanders lost Seahawks are barely hanging in there. They got over the Panthers or the Andy Dalton, which it says, I don't know if that says more or less than you want to know about the Seahawks, but yeah, it was a mixed bag and then obviously I got my cracking hat on pre-season. Starting tonight, we're doing the split squad. I think half the guys are going to Calgary. I'm not quite sure how that works, but a lot of other news here, obviously we've been talking the xfl stuff and the N S F L and the hubs and all that. We're going to leave that all on the table today. We're going to talk cfl overall, a little bit of a sleepy weekend. It's hard with these N F L games to compete. What did you make overall the sleep? Yeah, I would say it was one of the weaker weekends of the season. I thought the BC and Edmonton game, I watched that one. It was pretty entertaining I think throughout, but at the end of the day it wasn't really that great of a finish either. So I mean just one of the weaker weekends of the season and hopefully we get better in the coming weeks. You see here the cfl is still not working on this zeros across the board. Exciting times here. Let's start here. Let's start with the one that you were at at BMO Field. Ty Kat's going in, this is weird, and I talked with whoever the heck was on the show this last week, Derek Taylor, everyone else like Toronto's in a weird spot now. We don't need to play. We want to play, we don't want to be. It's like that rest versus rust. It's just weird where it's not a week or two out where we're five, six weeks out here. What did you make of the effort Tran put on? I know Cam Phillips did not play, he was on the show this last week as well. What did you make of Toronto's roster? Well, I think the major difference between the roster compared to normal was Agio Ette, they arrested him for this game. Andrew Harris was put on the sixth game injured list I think trying to get him ready for the playoffs. So those are just the main differences from the roster and they just really kind of hit the ground running in this one. We're able to really just take it to the TCATs. Once again, it's like I was saying before after Labor Day, I've seen this game like three times this year, but it's the exact same game. The Argos pull away in the first quarter and Hamilton tries to play catch up the rest of the game and they just simply cannot do it against this team. They're just such a talent gap it seems between these two organizations right now. Are you surprised that we're not seeing Chad's still running out there? I mean he did not have the cleanest game. He had the two picks and it was almost two pick sixes, right? If I was kind of watching, we're not seeing Brian Scott, we're not seeing Ben Holmes, we're not seeing anyone else. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised that he stayed as latent into the game as he did actually stayed the entire game for the Argos. So I was surprised that they didn't pull him out in the fourth quarter, but I guess it was still a two score game at that point. Not that they needed to win the game like you said, but I think there's some incentives in Chad Kelly's contract about I think if he wins M O P. So I think that's also a motivating factor down the stretch and the fact, like you said that there's six games, you can't rest everybody for six weeks in a row, so it's going to be very interesting to see how the coming weeks play out for the Argos. Yeah, I mean it's a good problem. It's a first or problem they're having to navigate that. I mean certainly you would take the first division buy kind of all that stuff. Just surprising to me it felt very much like Patrick Mahomes running around yesterday against the Bears and you're up 40 to three and Taylor Swift's in the suite like, okay, Patrick's got his ankle rolled up. What are we doing here? Do you think that Chad Kelly at this point is the M O p? I know we've batted that around in our group chat and obviously Zach Claros and he's kind of always perennially there as well. What do you make of Chad Kelly's chances? Well, a few weeks ago I would've said Chad Kelly over Calis even though there was a statistical gap, like Claus's numbers are better I think just plainly stated, but I think what I was going to say is that Chad Kelly is really the story of the cfl season and the narrative we see time and time again in sports plays into these awards and the fact that Calis has won the last two years, I think there would be a little bit of fatigue, but Claris is just separating from the pack at this point just because of some mediocre performances from Kelly and the fact that the Argos don't really have anything to play for down the stretch here. Whereas Winnipeg is probably going to have to play out the spring here the rest of the season. So I think it's Clara's award to lose right now. Yeah, that's kind of the interesting part about it. Winnipeg and I've got here this tab up tight division and we'll obviously we'll talk the West Blue bombers being on the buy this week. Certainly at least them a chance to rest up. But I mean va, you don't think Vernon's got any chance? You think he's played too sloppy? Yeah, I think the turnovers have just piled up too much. It's one thing to say he just had those six turnovers against Toronto earlier in the year, but there's been a couple of games like that the last couple of weeks. I think two interceptions in this past week and then last week against Ottawa. I think he had three, so they're piling up in a hurry here. In terms of Ty Katz here, six and eight, red black seemingly out of it, how are you feeling the welfare check kind of tie Katz fan right now resign to be playing the Ettes in the East semis? Well, I think you can look at it two ways. I mean you can look at how they play against the Argos, which they're oh and four on the season, they've looked completely uncompetitive, but you look at the other side of their season, they're six and four, the rest of their games, they're six and four this season. So I mean they've proven that they can beat a lot of the good teams in the cfl other than Toronto. Obviously Winnipeg and BC they beat. So we'll have to see how they do down the stretch this year. I'm not overly concerned that they're going to miss the playoffs or anything, but this loss combined with Montreal's win on Saturday makes it very hard for the TCATs to potentially finish second, and I think they really need to have that game at home given how the ettes have kind of dominated them recently. I know the Ettes won both of the games in Hamilton this year, but I think in a playoff environment, Hamilton would have a better chance to win that game if they had that game to Mors field. So I think the chances of that are pretty slim at this point. Given the results of this weekend in Montreal owning the tiebreaker, I mean I know obviously geographically they're close tie Cab fans travel pretty well to Toronto. Was it when you were there on Sunday? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Almost every time the TCATs really boost the attendance there for the Argos. I always make a joke to my buddy on the weekend. I was saying, I've got to go out to the game because I got to boost the Argos attendance numbers. So we usually do that. Me and me and my friends usually go to Toronto every time they're in town. So just didn't end up on our way this time. Don't get, wasn't that they had the big fights there a couple of years ago with got a little out of hand the rowdy out there. In terms of your quarterback here at Taylor Powell, I mean aggressive here, 27 42 obviously had the couple of picks on that butler getting a little bit of work. What did you make of the offense that tie Kat's put together? Honestly, they played terrible in this game. I mean 14 points obviously not a very good output, but I think they looked even worse than that. I think they really were only able to move the ball in the fourth quarter when the Argo's defense backed off a little bit. Very few big plays. There were a lot of to and outs, there were a lot of pre-snap penalties. Taylor Powell threw one of the worst passes you'll see in the cfl this season interception on a flee flicker play. So usually when you run a flee flicker play, you're looking to throw it deep, but he decided to throw it right back over the middle, got picked off by Winton McManus. Winton McManus had a great game in this one with two interceptions, so the tight hats offense just did not look very good in this one. Taylor Powell also had an intentional grounding penalty in the end zone that led to a safety for the Argos, so did not have a very good game in this one, but like I said, it's weird because he plays so poorly against the Argos but recently against the other teams of the cfl, he is looked pretty good. So it's hard to get a read on Taylor Powell at this point. You were going to say you see one of the worst passes of the weekend, I saw the Sean Watson throw probably a worst pass down for the Cleveland Rounds but no, in the cfl that's fine. We've been talking with this and I don't know, I mean we're still talking. Beau comes back, I don't know if 16 weeks of rested Bo doesn't anything at this point. I dunno what the tie Katts do next year. This feels like I said, kind of going into the slaughterhouse. It is the ettes just, and I know was it Hamilton beat Toronto in the semis? Was it two years ago when they went to the Gray Cup? I get it, it can happen and all of that, I don't dunno. What do you make of the long-term play here following the season for Hamilton? Well, it's worth noting that Bo was reportedly back at practice last week doing individual drills, not with the team but working out in his own section of the field. So it's worth noting if he gets back on the practice field this week, we could potentially see him on the field as soon as this week against the stamp Peters, which would be obviously a revenge game for him. So that would be very interesting to see what happens with that. But I think at the end of the day it's not really an inspiring option given what we've seen from Beau Levi this season. Powell has shown some signs but also some signs that raise red flags for you. I think he holds the ball way too long sometimes he doesn't have the best decision making. I was having a discussion with somebody on Twitter, another TCATs fan. He was saying that he's kind of afraid of basing contact a lot of the time shies away from hits. So it's very interesting to see what the TCAs do with their quarterback room next season because they could go the young and cheap route with Powell who's still under that rookie contract. They could bring back Bo if they're insane or they could go and bring in someone from somewhere else in the league. So it'll be interesting to see what they do this off season and how this season ultimately ends for the tca. I don't know, I just so bad. Obviously we talked preseason, we've talked a lot here and Thai Kat's making the big move and doing all this and we're hosting. I know when we were there two years ago, they're like, this isn't the real Gray cup and Covid and all that stuff. Okay, now we're going to give it to them again. And there was all that controversy. How come Hamilton gets it again, whatever we're doing it, it does sound like the events around everything are going to be great. I know we have someone from the Gray Cup Festival going to be coming on here at some point to kind of preview a lot of that stuff, but it does feel like kind of this wasted year of we're doing it again and Thai Kats just last year was really forgettable and it feels like this year is going to be pretty forgettable as well. Yeah, it just felt like they never really got off the ground this year. Obviously with the oh and three start that doesn't help matters when you dig yourself that big of a hole and they still haven't got back to 500. If they won this game, they would've got back to 500 for the first time this season. So I mean really tough season to watch as a TCATs fan, but I mean honestly when you look at it from a year ago, I think they actually have a better record at this point of the season than they did last year, which is saying something. Yeah, last year was kind of burn the tape that was and Dane kind of going crazy and all that. In terms of Powell long term, has he succeeded well in this? I mean we got Shilts floating around as well. Do you feel like whether it's with the tie cuts or elsewhere has kind of proven himself through all this year? Well, it's worth noting that he is a true rookie in the C ffo. He is not one of these guys that sat on the bench for a year. This is his true rookie css. And so I mean he's been asked to do an awful lot for a guy that's in his true rookie season, the cfl, just like Dustin Crumb. And I would say between the two of those guys, I have more confidence in Taylor Powell's passing ability than Dustin Crumb's passing ability. But Dustin Crump brings that athleticism to the table that you really can't teach. So I mean it's tough to say who I would choose between those two guys if I had to pick a team, pick a guy going forward between those two guys. But in terms of Powell going forward, I think I would ride with him the rest of the season If even if Bo doesn't look good in practice, I wouldn't throw him out there to start. I mean I think Powell's shown enough to continue to start and I think the thing with Matthew Shilts is I like Matthew Shilts, but it seems like every time he gets a chance to be the guy, he gets injured after two or three games. So that's just the sad reality of his career. He is a great backup quarterback for a couple of games but doesn't seem like he's anything more. Yeah, I think people are high on pal. I know Derek Taylor is really high. I mean people seem to think he has a lot of promise and like you said, being thrown in there, it's so hard and learning on the job and you got all the heading into the season, you got everything built around and you've got this megastar coming in and all this world kind of falls apart. I think Dustin's done as about as well as he can as well. James has a comment here, crumbs on his first year as a star, but next year he's the top four quarterback in the league and Tim Capper check in here, I guess talking to excited Hamilton in Ottawa or excuse me, and Hamilton will be playing back to back in weeks 21 in the East semi. So we'll be excited here coming down the stretch. Any other comments? Anything you want to make about this game? I dunno going into the bus out here again, Hamilton. Yeah, I mean it'll be interesting to see how the rest of the Tyca season goes from here. Like I said, they have Calgary at home next week, which could be a massive game obviously for the Stampedes. It's basically do or die next week. So that will be a huge game for both of these teams. And then I think they have BC at home, Saskatchewan on the road and then Montreal on the road to finish out the season. So it'll be interesting to see how many wins they get out of that last four game stretch. Yeah, just looking ahead here. Yeah, if you got Calgary, if you had Bo coming in at least to play a little bit there Calgary at Hamilton, that would be exciting on here. We talked about this and we can talk more later, but this Toronto at Winnipeg could be interesting, could be not just because of the way that Toronto is playing there guys right now, but let me get out of here. All right, so let's move ahead here. The other game, speaking of Ettes Ettes at Calgary here we say every week these are kind of do or die games for Calgary. Calgary doesn't come up big. What did you make of this, the ettes? The Owlettes showing here against Calgary? I think it was more so the Calgary Stampeders losing this game than the Ettes winning it. Sad to say, I think the Ettes played pretty well in this one. Fido had the one mistake, but I think overall they had a very clean game, whereas Calgary on the other side, it was just full of blown opportunities. They had a couple picks. Jake Mayer had a really awful pick in the second half where they were down by, I think it was 11 to eight at that point. Early in the third quarter they have the ball inside the Ettes 10 yard line throws a pick in the end zone. So that was a huge play in the game. And then the Allos, the next drive down to extend their lead with another touchdown. So I mean just so many blown mistakes. Mistakes this year by the stampeders and I think that it's starting to look like a lost season for them. I feel like this clinch is their first losing season in a long time now with 10 losses. So I mean they're not completely out of it because Saskatchewan will get to it. They lost to Ottawa on Friday night. So I mean this was just a great opportunity for Calgary to get themselves right back into it because if they had won, they'd only be one game behind Saskatchewan and then Calgary would they have a head-to-head against Saskatchewan in a couple of weeks. So they had an opportunity to pass them in a couple of weeks here, but they didn't take advantage of it. And we'll have to see how the rest of the season plays out, but do not have any faith in them at this point. I feel like something's missing and something's off with that team right now and they just have no ability to win games. They don't have that composure latent games, even though they've been in a lot of close games this year, even though this wasn't one of them. Yeah, I dunno, to me, we've talked about this a lot, kind of the elks of it all and just how different I think the season would feel if Edmonton even losing to BC here over the weekend played really well and I thought that I have no faith in BC at all, but to have Calgary play as poor as they are, if the Elks had even had semblance of a game plan going into the season, I think Calgary would look even far worse than they do and they look terrible in the standings anyway. Four in 10, but god knows what that is. It is so weird to me this Jake Mayer and it feels kind of like Mac Jones sometimes. Like okay, we get a bunch of completions, we're moving, but you're never really moving the ball. You're kind of just check down, check down, check down the whole way down the field. You've talked about that kind of the lack of aggressiveness that you think that Jake Mayer has. I just don't know what the game plan is for them as well. I think we were talking Taylor Powell, you get to this point in the season, what do they do next year? And I don't know what Calgary does if there's enough there or not to kind of blow it up or do you just ride with Mayer again? Yeah, exactly. And to build on our point earlier about Dustin Crom and Taylor Powell, it's easy to say, oh, these guys could grow into something next year and you see their trajectory. But the thing with Jake Mayer is we thought he was fantastic. His first 10 or so starts in the cfl and then the next 10 starts, the next 15 starts. Once the defense gets film on you, he looks like a completely different guy. You just never know. In the c l there's been a lot of one year wonders. So I mean hopefully he can rebound from this and have a better season next year, wherever that may be if it's in Calgary or somewhere else. But I don't think that his starting days are over in the cfl. We've seen guys get multiple chances, look at Nick Arbuckle, how many chances he got to be a starting quarterback in this league. So I mean I don't think it's over for mayor necessarily, but at the end of the day, just a godawful season from him and just the Stampeders overall. It's so weird. And I remember those first couple games when he came in and played when Bo went down, was it three seasons ago now? And right, they lost right at the buzzer against the alouettes, but he came in and threw, was it 300, 300 plus yards for that? The promise there. And I know we had him on and Calgary High, it's just so weird that yeah, you're right, this is someone we thought, oh, this is the next star. And Calgary's got their guy for the next decade here and now it's so unsure with that. And I don't know if it's game planning or what he just, like you said, you get tape on it, it just feels like he's a different quarterback now. And this to me was always the sure thing like oh Calgary, when the Patriots drafted Mac Jones, like, okay man, they're set here, man, they had this and they're set like, yeah Bo, now you're going to have Jake for that. I think he's a really good guy. I want them to figure this out. I think the cfl is obviously in a better position when all the teams are successful, but especially Calgary, I mean it's just a shame when you see these empty stands right now and it seems like they're in a little bit of a loose footing, if that makes sense. Yeah, for sure. And just to add another player to that comparison, another guy that hit the wall was Dane Evans last year, right? Again, looked great that first season as a starter back in 2019 when Jeremiah Mazzoli went down and then looks pretty good in 2021, got them to the Gray Cup again and then last year just completely hit the wall. Once he made those first 10 or so starts and after that just the defense figured them out. So I mean, like I said, it's very tough to tell with these quarterbacks. Well, and yeah, and you Utah Dane, and even with all the injuries this year they were talking, oh BC are they going to trade for Dane or what's going on? I mean he didn't look phenomenal. Was it in the one star he played when Vernon was out? I mean I would take Dane over a lot of guys, but it wasn't like he was setting the world on fire of Oh, BC's got, we kind of thought hypothetically before we saw Dane play. Yeah, exactly. It'll be interesting to see if one of these teams, this off season makes Dane their starting quarterback and free agency. I wouldn't rule it out, I'll tell you, and I know there's all this going on with the xfl and the usfl, I would start looking at some of these guys, we got to move on from this carousel. I think you're right. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the Rucks of the world and the data, I dunno, let's expand the pool here. Let's get some of these guys up. Like I said, Toronto, let's see what Brian Scott has. Maybe you could go trade him for something or do whatever. Some of these guys, I dunno, I don't know what their harm there is in trying and I know that there's a lot of legacy in these teams like Calgary and we got to go with the shirt. I don't know, I would kind of throw it up at this point in terms of the ettes here, Cody little bit better. The one pick on this, what did you make of the Ettes win hero? You said earlier you felt like the Calgary gave it the way. So what did you make of the ettes efforts? Yeah, I think this was more of a defensive story for the Alouettes. I think their defense has kind of been their driving force pretty much the whole season. I mean I want to point to two in-season editions this year. So earlier this year they brought in Sean Lemon. He had a big pick on the first drive for Calgary when the game was still zero zero. So that was huge. That's his second interception of the season. Had one against Hamilton earlier this year when I went to that game. And he also had a couple of sacks I believe in this game as well. So John Lemon making a big impact, it seems like he puts up numbers no matter where he goes in the cfl, I think he's played on every cfl team now other than Hamilton. So it'll be interesting to see if he plays for Hamilton before his career's done. But lemon's just been huge for them and really been a missing piece on that defensive line. And then Darnell Sankey, who they brought in a couple of weeks ago, xfl, Arlington Renegade, he was the cfl tackles leader last year and in 2021 with Calgary. So a bit of a revenge game for him going back to where his cfl career started. So those two guys and it was already a strong defense before they came in. I think it's really the missing piece for this defense and big concern with the Alouettes is just their offense and their lack of explosion. I think that they're just not that high upside of an offense and that they struggle in these matchups with BC or Toronto or Winnipeg because those guys could put points on the board quickly and Montreal just can't keep up. So I think at the end of the day, that's just kind of where I'm at with the Allos. They improved a seven and oh against all teams that are not Winnipeg BC in Toronto. So that trend continues with their season, so we'll have to see if they ultimately go 11 and seven this year and that trend plays out the entire season because they don't have any games left against those top three teams. So the Ettes very weird team this year and they're very well positioned to get second place in the east now. I like how, yeah, they said during the progress they're like, oh Sean Lemon revenge game here. It's a revenge game against a lot of teams. If you're Sean Lemon, like you said, except for the tie cats on that. I've always liked the Alouettes defense. We had Armando Bel on a couple weeks ago, I just remember the first Alouette scam I watch here, whatever it was a few years ago, always felt like they're coming at you and it felt like big tough at defense. I like having that. Like you said, Cody, you want him to play better. I do think on the defensive side, I think Montreal can keep it locked down. They don't seem to have enough points a lot of the time to keep up on that. I forgot to say we were going to say during the Argos recap you were recognized at the game. That was exciting. How was that? Oh, it was awesome. He just came up and said, oh, we've been watching the Monday recap shows and that he loves the insight that he said specifically that I give on the show. So it was pretty cool. Honestly, that's been a thing that's happened about a handful of times now, mostly at Tigercat games, but it was cool to see it happen in Toronto. Yeah, you get a lot of, when I was in Regina I got a lot of, Hey Mark, what's up Mark? It's a very controlled one time because obviously it's very niche market there when you're at the Gray Cup celebration, whatever. But one time I was at the yard house here and someone came up and they're like, Hey, I'm from bc, I'm down here. That was the most random. Normally it's like it's fellow YouTubers for podcasters. That's awesome man. Tim's checking in here. Lemon is one sack away from a hundred career sacks. Well I bet he's probably going to do that before the end of the season. We'll spend a couple more minutes on this one. Stand back, had a couple of big runs on that, like we talked before, it feels like he's getting back up to his form here, headed into the end of the season. I don't know. I mean I think the ettes take care of Hamilton. Do you predict any different than the East semis? No, I think that Montreal's kind of had Hamilton's number recently. We saw that in the playoff game last year. I mean I think Hamilton only won one game in the season series last year. So so far this year Montreal's two and oh against them and then the last game of the season if it means anything, the ettes have already won the season series against Hamilton, so it'll be interesting to see what happens. But I think at the end of the day the ettes have the edge in that matchup. Speaking of the Owww, I posted this over the weekend. We were obviously talking about the merger stuff and playing in the hubs and all that. Gary Stern's still sticking around here watching cfl exciting pass football, US l l still have lots to figure out. So Gary always, always omni president and Gary kind of everywhere and nowhere all at once. Looking ahead to the ettes here, going into Ottawa feels like a little bit of a cakewalk here for week 17. What do you make of that? Them traveling them? Well it's funny you say that because both of the games between those two teams, one of the ones I went to in Ottawa have been very, very close this season and this is actually a back to back. So they're actually playing the following week as well. So I mean I was doing a playoffs scenarios video last week and I was just saying this is how Ottawa mathematically can still make the playoffs and the biggest factor would've been Montreal losing to Calgary on Saturday. Unfortunately that didn't happen for them, but if Montreal had lost that game and Ottawa had they pick up the win against Saskatchewan and then they won the last two games here against Montreal, then they actually would have the tiebreaker over the Alouettes. I think it's, even though Montreal has won two games in that season series, they've only won them by a combined nine points or eight points or something like that. And so whenever it finishes two two, the tiebreaker goes to the team that has the point differential. So the Red Blacks can still win that tiebreaker technically, but with Deitz picking up that seventh win, it makes it very, very difficult for Ottawa. Anything else on this one? We'll get to BC at Edmonton. Just want to touch on one thing that is coming up in a lot of conversations is Micah Allway linebacker for the Calgary Stampeders actually leaving the league in tackles this season, I do believe, and he's been fined multiple times for very aggressive hits this season and he had a really bad spearing penalty in this one. I think it was a 25 yard penalty. You don't see that very often. So I mean I think that the cfl probably has to suspend this guy at some point because it's just been such a reckless pattern of behavior from him. But I mean he's a great player, but I think at the end of the day you can't have that in our league because at least on a repeated basis like that, Well good there. Let me get this up here. So I caught up on this one, but this was Friday. We were going in and we had all the xfl usfl stuff came out that really went crazy. It was so funny if anyone's not tracking the report came out, they're going to be in the hubs and it's going to be 12 teams, all this kind of stuff. So I was like, oh my god, I got the email, I'm probably whatever. Anyway, I emailed or I tweeted out and I'm kind of watching the Mariners keeping an eye on because it was the early Friday game before BC came on. I'm kind of keeping track of everything and then obviously people saw it, it just ended up going crazy. It took a little while for people to kind of figure out what was going on, but I had left, Dorothy and I went out to dinner, we were seeing our friends. I have no faith in BC at all. Like I said, I predicted Edmonton at home. Evan who I maybe Evans is sleeping in today, which I would imagine Evan's texting me updates, he's like, okay, they're driving. No faith in this. Went back caught up on this. This was a very exciting game. Obviously BC won by a score. It doesn't feel like as dominant a win as I would expect. What did you make of this one and then we'll kind of get into the specifics. Well, even though they gave up 29 points of this one, I really thought it was the return of the donut boys. I thought that the BC Lions defense really set the tone in this one shut down tray board's running ability. He really didn't get anything going on the ground this entire game. I think he finished with 40 yards, but those all came basically on that last drive. So they really hemmed him and made him become a passer and he really just couldn't beat the lions defense with the pass. So I mean I thought the BC Lions defense looked really, really good in this game and I thought the only reason this game was close was because of the turnovers from the BC offense. Vernon had to pick six in the first quarter. He had a pretty bad pick I think in the third quarter as well. So there was a fumble along the way somewhere as well. So a lot of mistakes from BC's offense in this one, but I thought the defense looked really good in this game besides maybe a few drives, but I think the lions, this was one of their better weeks in a while I would say. Yeah, Trey looked very, very uncomfortable trying to happen to scramble, like you said. I do think they took away his rushing ability on that 20 of 27 no picks, but the two tds on that in terms of Kevin Brown, a pretty shut down as well, not doing a lot. I don't know. It was exciting. I mean there was a lot of turnovers and I think there was a fumble, there was a punt return for long. It seemed a little more back and forth and maybe the score would dictate here at the end. I don't know. I had predicted Edmonton the other way on this. Should I feel more confident now BC headed in now to the kind of final stretch? Well, I actually picked Edmonton to win this game as well on my channel, so you're not alone on that. But I mean I still have confidence in bc even if they had lost this game Edmonton, I just had a lot of faith in going into this game, just the vibes around that team. But clearly BC is still the better team between these two. I think the talent really, the talent gap really showed in this one and I thought that, like I said, if it wasn't for the turnovers, this game could have been like a 20 point deficit. You getting Tyquan and Elle back in here, obviously we had talked about the lack of brushing the last couple of weeks and playing from behind. Good to see him there on that. I love Vernon and I just don't think Vernon can throw 30, 35 times a, I think you need to have a more developed offense there with that in terms of, oh, I had a comment that I was going to lose. Oh here I was looking ahead next week, Saskatchewan at bc, I would say, oh, well that's a cakewalk. I don't feel that way right now. What do you think of a hungry Saskatchewan going into BC next week? Well, I mean it's tough to say given what we saw the last two times, the last time these two teams played where Saskatchewan upset BC and that was one of the upsets of the season at that point. So you can't count Saskatchewan out, but I think this time BC is going to remember that game and they're going to be able to win that game at home. But nobody can be counted out in this cfl this year. There's very few teams that are just lay down and don't put up a fight. So I think that will be a close game, but I think BC will probably win it. It's so funny when talking with Derek Taylor with the Blue Bombers last week on their buy and we were talking about, because obviously Winnipeg had just lost to Hamilton and that big game and he said it was the same thing last year and hey, you're playing Hamilton right before the buy. They didn't show up, whatever. Same thing this year. He doesn't know if it's human nature or something. There is something to be said for that. Your BC and Saskatchewan who caress whatever playing down. I mean look what happened to the Cowboys at the Cardinals here yesterday. I think certain teams you just think you can sleepwalk through and then we saw what happened with bc, a couple of those games on that. Do you have any comments on that? And then I have a question for you. Yeah, I mean that's just the nature of football really is that any given Sunday or Saturday or whenever they're playing in the cfl. So I mean at the end of the day, any team can beat any team and we've seen that this year look at Ottawa beating Winnipeg earlier this year. That was crazy. In terms of Trey, you said obviously BC keeping him locked down, does this give you cause for concern with Trey moving forward? Have teams started to develop defenses against him or is this just like BC played really well? This will definitely be something that he has to work through? I think that teams are going to have adjustments. Like I was saying before, the first handful, the 10 starts in the cfl, you may be able to catch defenses off guard. I mean you look at Dustin Crumb with that running ability when he first came in he was able to really torch teams with his legs, but I think that eventually teams adjusted and made it tougher for him. But I think that Rey forward is a little different. I think that Rey Forward is a much more dynamic athlete and not all teams have the defensive personnel to kind of slow 'em down like BC did. I think BC has a lot of team speed on that defense, the defensive line for bc, such a mismatch against the Edmonton offensive line and I think Matthew Betts, he had a massive game in this one, so that was really good to see for bc. But I think in terms of Ford going forward, yes he's going to have games like this where he struggles to pass the ball. It's just something that he's going to have to improve on as we go forward. But he has been blessed with incredible gifts in terms of his athleticism. So I think that with that in mind, I think he'll be able to still piece together some good performances down the stretch here and not completely hit a wall. Yeah, you saw Bat side, a really good game really came after Trey either kind of friended the show that they're on that so good to see. I don't know. I think BC I just worry about, I see this again, I see them going into Winnipeg, I see the defense giving up a couple long drives, Winnipeg goes down and then BC struggling to keep up and Vernon kind of having to do too much. I think the defense has to keep Vernon kind of calm in that where it's like, okay, I can just go out. I don't feel like I have to make up all these points on my own. They need to keep things manageable. I don't know. What do you make of that Vernon's headspace going into the playoffs there? Yeah, I mean he is just such a frustrating player. He is always been like this ever since he became a starting quarterback in the cfl. I mean probably the best version of himself was in 2019 with Montreal where he was a borderline M O P candidate in the East division. And I think even then he had a lot of up and down games. I mean there's games with him that just the decision-making just isn't there. I mean I used to say his biggest weakness was his accuracy because he used to be a lot less accurate of a passer. It used to be in the 50% range in terms of a passer. But I think that aspect of his game has really improved and I think it's more so the decisionmaking at this point. He just cannot throw the game away for the lions. And I think that that's going to be the key when they go into that matchup against Winnipeg because it's really looking like that game is going to decide a lot in the cfl and it's worth noting that that game is in bc. So it'll be interesting to see what happens in that game and ultimately who gets the tiebreaker there because it looks like whoever wins that game is going to finish first in the west. Yeah, I was looking and I need to talk with Dorothy about this. I think that that could be a doable game here going up to bc, especially the seven o'clock start. We'll see about that. I think we have dinner party the next day, but I would like to be there for that. Looking forward to the playoffs. If this is in IG field, I just don't think you get frazzled and I get frazzled as a fan watching. I couldn't imagine being there and having 40,000 people whatever, screaming and yelling and kind of all that stuff. I just think it's really easy to let the game slip out of hand on that. And I think mayor gets that way sometimes too. With Calgary. You get frustrated and you're trying to do too much. I mean obviously we've seen Dane Evan's kind of do that in the past as well, but we'll see. This would be exciting. The seven o'clock on the sixth might have to, I mean that could be literally the playoff preview there. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Anything else on this one? Vernon Defense looking good, Mizel running, we talked about that. Keon Hatcher had a day on that and tds, but obviously huge targets on that. I saw him running around. Anything else from the BC or Edmonton side? Yeah, I mean you mentioned Hatcher. I was going to shout him out. Javan Katoi had a really nice catch and run in this one for a touchdown, so that was nice to see from him. Like I said, I've said this a million times because he just had so many weapons. I mean Jovanka Toy might be the fourth fifth option in that offense and he could still create some dynamic plays for them. And then on the Edmonton side, Jake sores and I thought had a really good game pressuring Vernon. I thought that the Edmonton defense wasn't that poor in this game. I thought that in terms of the run defense was probably where it was the biggest Achilles heel. Mizel had a really good game for bc. So I mean I think Rez had a really good game. And then Dylan Mitchell, a wide receiver that I was really high on going into the season, had a pretty good game for Edmonton, so that was good to see from him. Yeah, it's good to see him. He's had a tough season. I know he had some injuries, right? Wasn't he involved in some of the mazzoli whatever? And I think he was fine a little bit. He's a friend of the show he's been on in the past. Good to see him kind. I don't know, I think it was probably kind of a messy first half of the year for him with a lot of that stuff going on. So good to see him bounce back from that because unlike God, what was the guy's face? Garrett? What was the Garrett Marino? I don't think Rez is going in there trying to rough up or do whatever. I think think you get caught up in the moment sometimes. I think there's a lot of that. Yeah, for sure. And I think the thing with Marino, it was just the way he acted after he did that and just the way that he never really apologized for it. Look at Pete Robertson when he did that headbutt a few weeks ago, TOIs, and we don't really talk about that now because he was a man. He talked about it except the responsibility for it apologized to Claris for it. So water under the bridge from that point. So I think the thing with Marino was just, yeah, he just had that reputation That headbutts still wild. I remember showing Dorothy that I was like, what is going on here? So what is this? So Edmonton late by here, week 16, right on the by and then they're going into Toronto again. We don't know what Toronto looks like here. Edmonton, are we totally out of it? I mean, do they have any chance here? You track this stuff better than I do? Yeah, I think they're cooked. I think they're done because now they picked up an 11th loss that's even more losses than Calgary has. And I mean I'm really low on Calgary's chances at this point. Edmonton doesn't have the tiebreaker over Saskatchewan or Calgary, so that's not good news for them. And I don't think there's really much more than a mathematical chance of making the playoffs at this point. Well the good news is we've lived through this long enough now that I think Chris Jones is going to be there next year. I think people are going to be happy. I think Ford's going to be the quarterback everything that we've lived through this year. I do think that's probably what I don't see even just six weeks ago. I mean, am I wrong in that I see them trotting this out again next year now? Yeah, I bet they might as well given how they've kind of turned their second half of their season around and so they don't have to deal with those football operations penalties as well. So I think, yeah, Chris Jones is probably pretty safe at this point Going in here. Let me get this up. Last game here, the early Friday night game feels a little bit like the battle of the mids here. We got the Saskatchewan going into Ottawa. What did you make of this 1 28? 2 36? Yeah, I think the story in this game was Saskatchewan played pretty well out of the gates. They had a couple of nice touchdown drives to begin the game, but right at the end of the first half there was a sequence with less than a minute left where Jake Dagal throws a pick six to, I think it's Deandre Lamont is the guy's name for Ottawa. And so he got a pick six and then they get the ball back and then Jake Dagal fumbles the next play and they get a field goal out of it. So that's a 10 point swing in the last minute of the first half. And Ottawa was able to carry that momentum forward and made a ton of big defensive plays in the second half. Got a couple of more takeaways so they were able to finally break that losing streak. Yeah, I mean if you're Saskatchewan here and you're looking at the standings, where is my standing tab? I don't know if this is more worse than the BC drop in some of these games. How do you drop a game to Ottawa here going in when you're still in playoff contention? It is crazy to me. Yeah, I mean this was a game I had circled when I was doing that playoffs scenarios video last week because I was factoring in the possibility of Calgary getting a win and getting closer to Saskatchewan and really making them pay for losing this because I thought that Saskatchewan will probably beat Ottawa, but if they do, they open the door for other teams behind them to kind of catch up. But unfortunately none of those teams took advantage of it this week. Edmonton included. So I mean, yeah, just weird week where really nothing changed in terms of the standings, but very disappointing game for Saskatchewan regardless. Ottawa has literally nothing. I mean they have less than nothing to play for at this point. I just can't figure out going in. Crumb looks pretty good here, not running well I guess, right? Yeah, 53 yards I guess. Kind of scurrying around here. Dustin, are we higher, lower on him than you were a week ago? Probably higher. I think that I was not totally out on him. I think he's had some gains where he's kept the team in it and just the situation around him. Again, like I said, Taylor Powell, he's a true rookie, so it's hard to expect too much from him. But I think he's learning a bit each week and I think that Ottawa could easily have a couple of more wins right now. I mean they had the game that I went to against Montreal where they completely collapsed in the fourth quarter, obviously that game a couple of weeks ago against bc. So I mean that's two wins right there. So they could easily have six seven wins right now and be right in the thick of things, but obviously the season didn't go that way for them Last week. People calling for Bob Dice's head, are we feeling better or worse now? I don't think he's the guy. Some of the decisions I've seen this year, I just don't really have faith. I know a lot of the players like him, he's that classic player's coach that everybody's kind of vouched for over there. But I mean I'm always skeptical when teams hire. A lot of people are the promoting from within in terms of football, those pro sports in terms of hiring their head coach and whatnot. But I'm always kind of skeptical of that because I'm like, is the best person really inside your building? What are the odds that the best person is really inside your building? And I think that Bob DySIS is probably one of those guys that's better suited for a coordinator role in the cfl. Obviously has done that very successfully for a long time, especially on Ottawa special teams. But I think in terms of being a head coach, the lead guy, I don't think he has it. It's hard. I like him. I think he's a really good guy. I think he's a good leader of man. It is just hard. It's like you said, PR promoting within, it's kind of like Jason Moss kind of getting fired and getting a promotion in Montreal. I don't know. We talked a lot about this in the corporate world that you fail up until you get promoted up until the only way to know basically your ceiling is to go there and then kind of fail or not do a good job at that, but you just keep riding up and okay, this is where my ceiling is. Like you said, maybe that's where it is. I don't know where Ottawa goes from here. I mean obviously we had the LA police stuff in hindsight. Was that good to get rid of him? I mean, do you feel like that, has Ally changed anything? Well, I think he was kind of the same thing. I feel like he was a head coach before he was in Ottawa. He was with Winnipeg back in the day. And then funny enough actually became Winnipeg's offensive coordinator later on. I came back to Winnipeg and then obviously got the job in Ottawa. But I don't think he's really a cfl head coach either, even though he has a bit of experience from that. So I mean they had to make a change last year. I don't think that was the wrong move. Moving off of Powell Appis as the head coach in Ottawa, but I think at the end of the day the dice hire just wasn't the right one to make. I think they needed to look outside the organization, but I mean that's kind of a general problem in the cfl that the coaching talent pool is pretty low and with this football operations caps, it kind of limits how much they can pay and how much head coaches can assemble a proper coaching staff around them. So yeah, I don't know where Ottawa goes from here. I don't know if they get rid of dice, they probably hold onto 'em for another year just because of that operations cap, but we'll have to see what they do. Yeah, I think you need to be able to, and I get the players and all that and you have the seller cap on that. I think you need to be able to allow some of these teams, and I mean BC is fine right now with Rick Campbell, but if Amar Doman, Hey, if we want to make some moves here to bring it whatever, I think you should be able to do that. I mean you see that down in the N F L and the Walmart family with the Broncos, Hey, let's bring in champagne. Let's do all the, we see how that worked out. And this, I'm putting you on this note, what's the highest scoring the cfl ever has been? Obviously we saw the 70 to 20 Broncos Miami Dolphins game. Well, I remember there was a Gray cup. I don't think this is the highest scoring game ever, but there was a gray cup in the 1990s. I think it was the last one before 2021 that was in Hamilton and it was Edmonton versus Toronto. And I believe it was in a full out blizzard. It was like 40 to 40 something. It was a classic game I think the nineties were pretty high scoring if I do recall correctly. And I mean we did see some really high scoring games in the early 2010s when we had these great quarterbacks, Anthony Calvio, Henry Burris, Ricky Ray, all those guys were really at the height of their powers, so we saw a lot of shootouts, but that's probably the highest that I can remember. The cfl being, I got it here, 111 points at bc, 68 to 43 against Toronto. Damn, that's Pretty exciting. That was exciting because I saw a lot of, just speaking of the Seattle, the Hodges of the world and I'm like this no fun league down in America. We got the fun, fast, exciting football up in Canada, but here you, so there you go. 68 points. The most team. Circling back to this before we get out of here, Saskatchewan, Della Gala, I still hear people talking about Trevor Harris coming back this year. Does that do anything for you? Trevor Harris comes back at this point? Well, I think he would be their best option in a playoff scenario. I think Trevor has been, that's a narrative that I think is completely false, that he's kind of a bad player in playoff games. He has actually had some great playoff performances. I think looking back that first year in Edmonton in 2019, he had I think 33 completions in a row to start the game or something like that in that playoff game, one of the best playoff performances I've ever seen. And then the year before when he was with Ottawa, he beat Hamilton. This is the last time that Hamilton has lost to Ottawa. He was with Ottawa and he threw six touchdown passes in the East final that year to send Ottawa to the Great Cup. So Trevor Eris has had some big time playoff performances and if he's healthy down the stretch, I think the big thing is how likely is that and how likely is he? A hundred percent. But if he's ready to go, I think they got to throw him out there because I think he stands a better chance of keeping up with Vernon Adams or Zach Claris in a potential shootout in the west semifinal. I get what you're saying. I don't know. I fundamentally have a problem with if you get to the dance with whatever guy and then bringing him back in, I get it. And it was the same thing last year where we had Vernon Adams played fine. I think BC had such a lead, such a lead in the stand, it didn't matter. Right. And Vernon was I think basically like 50 50, but did enough got him there. Obvious you're going to put in even Rourke who wasn't a hundred percent like, okay, we're putting in Nathan Ker. I don't know if Della Gall gets you. I don't know if he gets you there and you're really going to pull him, and I get what you're saying and Trevor Harris, to me it is disrespectful in that way, but mean I get it, it's football and you kind of got to do it. Yeah, it's easy to pull. For example, Taylor Powell off the game that he just had, but we were talking last week, I mean people were arguing amongst TCATs fans. Who gets the start when Bo's healthy? Does Bo go back in there? How do you take Powell out at this point? That's what people were saying, but I think some factors play into this. How much is the player getting paid? Obviously Bo is getting paid 550,000 this year. So I mean I think Hamilton, they have that motivation to put him back in and I think Saskatchewan's kind of the same thing. So yeah, we'll have to see how it plays out, but I do think there's something to be said, like you said, for playing the young player or the player that got you there. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how some of these teams navigate their quarterback situations as we get towards the playoffs. Obviously this is now a moot point the way that Zach Wilson has played the last two weeks, but when Rogers went down, there was all this, he makes it back for the playoff because Rogers is doing some experimental whatever brace surgery. It's like if Zach Wilson gets the jets to the playoffs, Zack Wilson is going to play for them in the playoffs. If you're even in that position, it's because of obviously the work that Wilson has done. Anything else on this we can start looking forward to next week? Anything else from Saskatchewan or Ottawa? I don't know, it's just a weird game here with Ottawa getting the win. Yeah, just a quick shout out. I want to shut up. Braylin Addison, he is kind of the only cfl jersey I actually own from his time with the TCATs. He scored his first touchdown in a long time. I think it might've been since 2019 in this one. He's had terrible luck with injury issues, so it's good to see him get back on the field the last handful of weeks and got his first touchdown and this one had a pretty good game. Yeah, it's interesting. So high enough on him that you'd buy the jersey. Yeah, well in 2019 he was cfl All-Star, so he was, him and Brandon Banks were the best receiving combo in the cfl. I think he had 1300 yards, so he had that one great year and I mean he was a big star at Oregon as well, so I was a big fan of him and unfortunately in 2021 when he came back he actually changed his number to number zero. So right after I just bought his number 86 jersey. So just my luck, but I'm a big fan of his game. You can't do that. I can't remember who was it? I think one of the guys for the Vikings or something that Switzer numbers and then they said if you bring it, I'll give you, you can swap it out. You swap it out for the new one. Looking ahead here, I'm too far ahead time travel week 17, we've talked about this Toronto weird roster stuff. What do you think, I was talking with Derek Taylor last week, what does Toronto do here on paper you're like, oh, this is a huge matchup, but when you kind of think about it, Winnipeg has a lot more to gain here. Yeah, I don't really know what they're going to do because I don't think they want to go in there and get their doors blasted off by Winnipeg and I don't think they're going to be sitting a whole bunch of players in this one considering they're about five weeks out from the end of the regular season. So I don't think they're going to be resting a ton of players in this one, but at the same time, I don't think they want to reveal too much because of the potential likelihood of a Gray Cup matchup in the coming months here. But it'll be very interesting to see how that game plays out. Obviously we were looking a handful of weeks ago, that game was one of the games that we were circling, but I'm not too sure it's really going to live up to any kind of hype. So it'll be interesting to see how that one plays out. Yeah, I'm looking here. If you're bc you cannot lose this game, especially with Winnipeg coming in the next week. You're back to back home. You don't have to travel to me if you're looking further ahead here, right, okay, we're going into Hamilton. Sorry, Calgary's coming in. This is a must win. You got to do this, you got to pile the wins and then you got Winnipeg the next week. This has to be a get ride game for bc. Let's shut down. Do you have any other opinions on that? Yeah, I think it will be huge for BC if they could just have the same record as Winnipeg going into that matchup next week. So in two weeks I should say against Winnipeg because then if they win they'll have the tiebreaker plus be one game ahead of Winnipeg. Whereas if they lose and then Winnipeg wins this week, then if they win the following week they would be tied and they would have the tiebreaker but they would be tied in terms of the actual record. So if they win this game, they keep pace with Winnipeg and they win next week, they will have a very good path for first place in the west. Been looking here Montreal at Ottawa, I got like a voicemail. It should be a slam dunk for the outlets. You have any different opinions? Yeah, I mean like I was saying before, both of these games this year they played each other twice. Once in week one where it was a seven point victory for the Ettes, that was a game that Nick Arbuckle started. And then the other game was the game I went to in Ottawa and Ottawa blew an 11 point lead with four minutes left in the game. So Ottawa easily could have split those two games at this point. And so I think it's going to be very, very interesting to see if Ottawa can take a game or two off of the Alouettes in this home and home here and it would really kind of shake up the East standings, especially for Tigercat fans. Are you going to be going to the Calgary game? Yes, I will be. I will. I'll actually McMaster University homecoming that week, so that day I should say. So it's going to be very busy, the restaurant that I work at, but I'm going to be working during the day and then I'm going to be running right to the game at seven o'clock Eastern. Well good. Well no Evan today maybe he was in class or asleep. We appreciate it. I assume he's okay. I hope everything's fine with that. Jason and I kind of locking this down here for the episode. I appreciate that. Obviously we have a lot of xfl usfl stuff going on. We talked about doing kind of a welfare check episode today. I don't know if people's schedules will accommodate that, but keep track. I do know I have Rod Smith coming on this week. I think we're going to record Wednesday preview in the games for the weekend for the cfl. So that should be good. And then I need to send out some emails to see if we can get some players on, but otherwise I'm sure Andy or Pat or someone will come on to react to the xfl stuff. Jason, anything else from you? What are you working on? Not too much. I'm trying to think what I'm got going on this week. Obviously I have my N F L show on Tuesday nights with Coast to Coast Gridiron. That's who I collab with for that. So that is available at 9:00 PM Eastern tomorrow night on his channel and then post my channel on Wednesday morning. So check that out. Been a new podcast over there. And then I'll probably have a couple of cfl videos sprinkled in this week with obviously the preview for week 17. Yeah, be kind Sam Howell. It was only his fourth career start, so let's not go too crazy here with Barry and the Commanders yet. I don't know. We were talking before we got on that first couple drives and we're like, okay, we're keeping them in check and then Hal throws the interception, all that stuff all went to bed. So don't kill the commanders too much. But if anyone on here say a prayer for the Mariners here, we got seven games at home to wind out the season here. We're going tonight against the Astros. I hate the Astros. I think Lander is pitching tonight as well against Castillo. So this could be a rough one, but just say a prayer. We're trying to win the a l s here. So anything else from you Jason? No, I think that's about it. Let's put this one to bed. Awesome, thanks guys. Appreciate James. Keep it up. Best damn cfl show. Appreciate that and we'll see you guys next time. Take care.

Episode 163 - The Merge!

Coming up this week on the Markcast. Well, here we are. Familiar streets. Feel like I've been down this road before two competing spring football leagues in talks about merging feels just like CJ from Grand Theft Auto. Ah, Here we go again. So this time we will channel our inner Jeff Probes. Everybody drop your buffs. It's time to merge. I don't dare play a survivor clip on here. C b s gets a little trigger happy with demonetizing YouTube channels. Big show this week. You know it's big when we bring on the professor Andrew Murray, you know him, you love him. All the latest xfl usfl merger talk. What teams are going to survive? When is kickoff going to be networks? The games are going to be on everything up to the minute last details. This is a stunning rollout of events. I am genuinely shocked that we are here at this point. I could not believe the announcement that was made on Tuesday. Well not the announcement, but the reports that were being made about a potential announcement for a merger. I never in my wildest dreams thought that these two were actually going to merge. I'm just going to say that right now because I thought as Evan had said before on your podcast yesterday, I just thought there was too much egotism involved And then still talking cfl on the podcast. Headed into week 16, we have Derek Taylor, the voice of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers coming on to share his knowledge. I wish I could give you a real solution for it because all week long we talked about last year's game at this time of the year against Hamilton. It was, oh hey, you guys had just won a big game and then you went to Hamilton and got whacked. What was the deal with that? And they said it wasn't that complacency. It wasn't that we took them easy. It wasn't that we were looking ahead to the bye week so they were aware of all these things and then the exact same game happens a year minus a day later and they go into Hamilton with the bi-week looming coming up a big win and they get whacked. And then if you're a fan of the xfl or the cfl, you'll know this gentleman Cam Phillips of your 2022 Gray Cup champion Toronto Argon nuts stop you by the show. Catching up with Cam Even at the beginning. You can't win 15 games at once. You can't go win a championship the first week. So it's a process. So I think the coaching staff and even the players which we've bought in and that's really the culture now we come to work, we are who we are, but when it's time to work, it's time to work. Should be a good one. Like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the mark cast. Read here. Busy week. Certainly wasn't expecting this right now. Mid-September driving into work, I had a week long gig here filming at a convention. Get a text from a friend of the show listener, Seth, the xfl and the U SS F L are merging. Not kidding, here we are. Exciting times. We've been down this road before. If you're new to the podcast, we went through all of this with the cfl and xfl talks back two years ago, so been down this road, not any spring chicken here if you want to call it that. But we'll get you covered here. This is kind of the exciting time. Football's fun, it's fun talking the cfl week 16 and all of that. Of course love getting the expertise of all the guests, but this is our bread and butter. I built this dang podcast talking at merger talk so I will be darned if we won't continue here giving you guys the best information. Most UpToDate we can coming off our big, really well attended, really well viewed live stream with. We had Evan and Anthony and then of course our Ville Insider, Mike Mitchell on that went almost two hours on Wednesday night. So if you guys haven't had a chance to check that out, Mike, dropping lots of details that Andy and I will react to today in terms of the combination of the teams who he is hearing from the xfl is going to survive, the cuts, who he hears from the usfl, the networks, the games are going to be on time of year, everything's going to be played, all of that stuff. We're going to bring on Andy today to react to all of that. Talk through the two hour. I love the livestream episode. We get to do kind of all the listener interaction and all of that stuff, but then I think it's helpful to kind of bring Andy in. Okay, let's contextualize all this. Let's boil it down, talk through everything a little bit more in depth, so I think that'll be good. If you haven't seen the livestream, make sure you check that out. But we will obviously recap all of the big news in the podcast today. Really appreciate Derek Taylor coming on. Voice of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was going to hop on last week when Jeff and I had our scheduling kerfuffle, but getting Derek on the bye week and then of course Cam Phillips really appreciate him and everyone at the Argonauts for setting that up. Big weekend for them. Hosting the Hamilton tie cats there, having the tremendous season camis and then of course the team. So really appreciate them taking the time. That'll do it for me today. Big show. Have no idea how long Andy and I will go, but I'm sure that will be a fruitful conversation. Like I said, make sure, please thumbs up the video. Got a lot of good feedback on our live stream, but thumbs up, tell us YouTube, the algorithm that you guys are like in the video and then subscribe, turn on notifications if you have. It's going to be a busy time here with all this news and when everything's going to break and so we'll be posting shorts and episodes and live streams and all of that stuff so make sure you are, please subscribe so you don't miss any of that. I'll see you guys at the end. Thanks. Well here we are back again. We have the professor Andrew Murray. I went and got a little happy hour with the wife she had back to school night and it's been a really stressful week with all of this year before. Said we'll see recorded everything else. Had all my Derek Taylor and Cam Phillips interviews here. We can be a little more casual with Andy. Andy Murray, the professor back. How are you doing sir? I'm great, thank you for having me on. I was so tempted to jump on your live stream yesterday, but I had other things going on and honestly, I mean it would've been walking into a fighter ring. I felt like there was a lot, just a lot of emotion going on at the same time from a lot of different angles and I really wish I could have jumped in on it, but actually I'm more happy now. I have kind of ruminated, I've thought a lot about what's going on and I can really have a much more clear approach to what I'm going to say today. So I'm excited to be on, but boy, I did not expect to be on this week. Lemme just put it that way. Yeah, let me put it this way. We bring on Andrew Murray's kind of like the break glass. We need the professor, we need 'em all. We have a lot of new subscribers. We've added 40, 50 new subscribers here over the last couple of days. I think we hit 3000 views over the last 28. However YouTube tracks it. It's more than a day. But appreciate everyone joining. Andy has been with, we've been doing this a long time and I just welcome to the show. I did my intro and everything, but we've been doing this, Andy and I, we've gone all the way back through and the trademark stuff and the usfl and the xfl and coming back and we've gone through everything. I appreciate everyone joining us. This is week 163 of the podcast. Never missed a week maybe we're not the longest running, but we've certainly been doing this as consistently. We'll get into all the news. I think this is good because we did the livestream. If you guys haven't seen the livestream, check that out two hours, Mike and Anthony Miller and Evan on there. That's great. Hopefully a little more concise today and just more focused because that was obviously craziness. Before we get into everything, I have my national spring football league hat on and I wore this specifically today. I just tweeted about this and this is my only little grandstand here. We'll get into all this stuff. I've had messages sent to me all day comments on the YouTube because Mike and I think it came up last night in the YouTube video, like, oh, they're getting rid because the rumor is they're going to get rid of the xfl or the U SS F L branding combine whenever this mega super league comes together. And Mike and I had joked, oh, it's a national spring football league because of Mike, and I know it's a joke because when the U SS F L was originally acquiring, this is how long we've been doing this, when they were originally acquiring all of the trademarks for all the new teams that they were going to roll out, they had a N S F L a, national spring Football League L L C, that kind of acted as a catalyst. They were kind of able to acquire all the trademarks, transfer it because Brian Woods owned some of 'em. He was with the Spring league. It was just really mess. And so they used this holding company and that's where the name came from, the National Spring Football League. When they obviously transferred everything to the usfl that went away. I registered the trademark for the clothing brand because I thought it would be so funny. People were freaking out like, oh my god, it's not going to be the usfl. What's it going to be? I went registered it since then. They emailed me and they're like, oh, trademark office. What are your intentions with all of this? When are you setting up the spring football league? All this stuff. Realize that there was this maybe further of a joke than I wanted to go. So I let it go. Abandoned gotten a lot of things sent to me today. Hey, Fox Sports owns the National Spring Football League trademark. No, they haven't. Never have. I mean they might. They can. I mean they certainly can. Now I have it abandoned. You go search the trademark office N SS F L or National String Football League. The only thing that will come up is my abandoned dread dead trademark for the clothing and whatever. So I just want to get that out there. I just emailed f o s writer, he had an article out today. Oh, Fox Sports. We've been doing this a long time. Welcome to whatever. I know there's been a lot of blurring stories right now, so I don't know, hopefully that wasn't too long of a ramble, if that makes sense, Andy, I mean you were ahead of the game far before anyone else was. We do maybe before we even realized it. You are a trailblazer in that way, but I just have to say this is a stunning rollout of events. I am genuinely shocked that we are here at this point. I could not believe the announcement that was made on Tuesday. Well not the announcement, but the reports that were being made about a potential announcement for a merger. I never in my wildest dreams thought that these two were actually going to merge. I'm just going to say that right now because I thought as Evan had said before on your podcast yesterday, I just thought there was too much egotism involved. I really thought that philosophically these two entities would never be able to come to the table and be able to agree on anything. And look, we still haven't really even gotten maybe even past other preliminary discussions. I mean there's so many logistical things that have to be ironed out, but as far as we can hear from and see, it seems like this is going to happen. And I did not have it on my bingo card. In fact, I'm not kidding. I was in the midst of writing an article about why it specifically was not going to happen and that either a leak was going to be a contempt with or content with basically both of them falling away. One of them was going to die and whoever was the last one standing was going to survive and be the king of all spring leagues and grandstand and say, look, we made it. We did it. We are the champions. We've solved spring league football forever and now here we are with both of them basically coming to the table and realizing potentially that they have to merge if they're going to survive. And I did not think that was an ultimatum that was possible. I really did not. So I'm just as shocked as anyone. So just to set the record or to set the table here, and like I said, Mike was on last night, a lot of credit to him and the work that he's done. I know there's been a lot of, I guess Mike Mitchell hate, I don't know, it was just really weird. Mike came on last night. I thought it was a really good stream. We had I think record viewership we've ever had concurrent, it's done great views today. It felt really good and there's been a lot of like, well, Mike doesn't know what he's talking about or this is wrong. And I posted this in the group chat last night. I stand by everything that we report on this show. I stand by everything that Mike reports. I know Mike says things to us in private that may or may not, and then if Mike puts it out there, it's something that he feels good enough to source and I welcome that. If there was anything that has been fictitious that we've ever reported. I worked in news for a long time before getting into this. I don't want to get into this like he said, she said whatever, but I genuinely stand by the work that Mike does, the connections that he has. We rely on him a lot. I know Mark relies on Mike a lot. We all do. So to me there's just been a lot of credibility questioning of that. So I dunno where that comes from, but Mike, the table we have, we're looking at combining of the teams, looking at potentially some from the xfl, some from the usfl, getting rid of the roughnecks, getting rid of the Vipers, Houston taking over there and April kickoff, and then the mixture of games between the A B C E S P N and Fox. Anything else I guess jarring that stands out to you from that? And we can kind of go through those piece by piece. I mean the teams that Mike announced yesterday really surprised me. I can't believe that the roughnecks would be on the chopping block before the gamblers. Roughnecks have played in the market twice in two different iterations of the league and have an established fan base. And look, you can tell me all you want about the gamblers franchise. I'm sure they have fans. I'm not talking about the fans dating back to 1985. I'm talking about fans now. And look, if people want to come out of the woodwork and support them, great, but this is not the entity that I thought was going to be chosen. This is not the IP I thought was going to survive in this negotiation. If that indeed ends up being the case, that would be absolutely wild to me because listen, logistically, which coaching staff is going to end up staying? If you're going to talk about chopping off one of the Houston teams, it's Curtis Johnson versus Wade Phillips and his staff and I don't know which one is going to survive there as far as the other teams, I was surprised to hear Birmingham. I mean that's your champion. That's the two time defending usfl champion that you put a hub in for all of the teams in year one and you put in year two with them and the New Orleans breakers. I don't understand that one. I don't Really Well, you got to to keep it. I mean you can't get rid of that. I mean if you're merging, right, you can't get rid of the stallions. You would think after how much capital and how much Time. So they're in, I mean they're in, right? So it's stallions, nepsis, the Ohio, I got the tweet up here from the U SS F L stallions. The Memphis teams are presumably the Breakers and Ohio based team. That's a mess there you have the mallers and you have what the generals there. You have nothing there in Ohio and then the gambler is taking over on that. So that's 1, 2, 3, 4. And then I guess we would be waiting on the other 10 teams total. So then it would be the six from the xfl. So if I'm doing my math there, right? Yeah, I had a drink Just for me. I mean the teams that I thought would potentially be on the chopping block were from the U Ss F L sides. Obviously the teams that were not home stadiums, that would be Houston, that'd be New Orleans, that'd be Philadelphia, that'd be the New Jersey generals. And quite frankly that also include the Canton team because there is no Canton team. The mallers are included in that, but if they want to convert one of those teams into an Ohio property, then fine. Then you convert that into one of those teams and then basically that leaves four out. And then on the xfl side, I thought the only one that was really in danger obviously is the vagus vipers. They were obviously in their own tumultuous relationship with their venue and basically whether or not they were even going to exist next month. Meanwhile, their team account just keeps tweeting away like nothing's going on. And I didn't think they were going to survive either way, but I thought they were going to be relocated. I know people throwing out the Orlando guardians because of the attendance issue. I am glad that you mentioned Corey last night, the guy who does all of the great social media for them. I'm glad that you mentioned him. He was very thankful about that on Twitter as well. And look, they put in their effort and also I thought that was Danny's team too. I mean I know maybe Danny, Danny Garcia is willing to make that concession, but to chop it down to 10 teams, that's just such a loss of not only fans but just capital in terms of what you have to go from 16 down to 10 in a basically merger league. I mean that just feels like a huge net loss. I don't really even know if it feels like a merger anymore. It just feels like one league bought two teams and then kicked everyone else out. That's What, and we've gotten a lot of negative feedback. I mean that's the thing is there's always casualty when it comes to any sort of merger and acquisition. You're between talent, between staff. It is hard and I understand people's frustrations. Sorry to cut you off. No, but that's the thing. Look, people can be frustrated. I understand. To me it's baffling too. I don't understand it, but I'm not directing any of that towards Mike or anyone on the stream because basically Mike was just doing his job and he was reporting what he was hearing. If anybody wants to get upset with Mike, you come at him. You come at the entire group. I'm just going to say that right now. I will defend Mike Mitchell to the end. He is an incredible man and has done a great, just fantastic work. More than anyone will ever do in this space or ever has done in this space. I will defend him to the end. I don't care. And I don't know if that comes from some echo chamber somewhere and some concoct his part of the internet. I don't care. Mike has done his job and so any frustration that needs to be directed here, it needs to be directed at whoever's making the decisions. Okay, look, this needs to be thought out logistically correctly. I know the big wigs, the top ends of both leagues are discussing this and apparently a lot of other people are in the dark. They better know what they're doing because you do not want to alienate people and you not want to pull out the wrong pin because if you do, this could go really badly. I'm just going to say that right now. You have to be careful with what steps you make. If you're going to completely rebrand both leagues and has to have one entity, you better be damn sure it's going to work. Which again is almost again wild to me that that could even be a possibility because both of these brands by themselves were so strong and were so renowned and in the public space, you're basically starting from ground zero again. You might as well just start a whole new league period. Why even combine the teams? That's the thing. I don't get, it just feels like so fly by night methodology because nobody really seems to be going about this way of maybe planning out, I don't know, five or 10 years in the future. And I know the usfl and the X L talked about having their plans, but they basically abandoned them after year one and two and just are throwing them a, casting them aside for this measure, which I'm just going to say right now just feels like desperation because it feels like it's desperate based on how it's coming together, how the logistics are working out. I mean, again, all these brands, all these ips, what do you do with all the merchandise? Are you going to sell it off all of a sudden? What are you going to do in terms of we like The TV deals, Interlocking, the TV deals, the Disney deal that Mike brought up, they're interlocked with Disney until 2027. What's Disney's thoughts about this and their relationship with E S P N? I mean, and then of course the thing that gets me in this whole thing, and not to go on too long, but the thing that really got my CR about this is the players and the coaches and the people that whose jobs are at stake suddenly because of this. And look, this is a capitalistic venture. This country is built on capitalistic ventures and part of that includes takeovers and mergers that happens with companies. I've been part of a company that had a takeover. Things changed. I didn't like it. I left people followed me afterwards. I've been reading about different kinds of mergers that have happened in the past. Obviously the most and famous one I can think of is Sears and Kmart. I know it's not a football league, but that obviously blew up in both of their faces when that happened. You have to be really careful with when you decide to pull the trigger on this kind of decision, you're going, you're going to upset a lot of people and you have to be careful with where you go forward, but you need to have a plan and I hope that they have a clear plan of what they're going to do and how they're going to accomplish it and not just say, let's throw everything together and see if it works because that's not going to work. It's not going to last and we're going to be back to square one again. It's interesting. And so just to, I guess add further context, and Mike's been reporting this and word is football ops on both the U Ss F L and xfl side. And if you know the history and the crossover, I'm not going to throw people under the bus here, but if you know the history and the crossover of the usfl and the xfl and who's been in both to me, I can connect the dots very much of who from the xfl was talking to WHO of the usfl. I actually messaged no soul, this person, no soul. I didn't want to dig too deep throw anyone under the bus, but apparently year one concludes football ops, both sides. They talk and they go, okay, well let's ship this upstairs and see, and Mike has said in our chat, the room in which kind of this sphere of who in the L and the USS L who actually know what's going on is very, very slim. I mean we're talking Russ, Brandon, Danny, Dwayne Moose, who else would be on the, because Ed Hartman's, whoever is on Eric Shanks or whatever on the US L side. And because that's my question to you is, and I'm trying to figure out timeline here, I had a conversation today with someone who was talking within the executive at Fox. They're saying, yes, the axial report said the merger is going to be complete here ahead of the 2024 seasons, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the 2024 season is going to be a combined US xfl spring League, whatever amalgamation they potentially could merge, continue to act as two separate entities very much like the A F L whatever back in the day run concurrently. Maybe you have a little bit of crossover play and then move towards that down the line, which I would like. As you noted, Vipers and Battle Hawks we're all kind of tweeting on and what I don't know truthfully is is this blissful ignorance like, hey, we're just going about our business, this is what we're doing. Do they not know, is this a directive? Does it not matter Because yeah, we are still doing the showcase next month. We are still doing the draft xfl is going to operate on its own. US development has its timeline and then we can be merged, but it's kind of a slow zipper effect versus I think a lot of people right now and especially on the stream last night is like, no, this is all happening before April. Which in my sense is not maybe necessarily the case as I knocked my microphone over. I mean it's a panic button if that's the case. But yeah, Which to me, I think it's a little more thought out hopefully To that I'll say, I mean we only know what we know. We don't know everything. And I've learned just from my reading and going through a lot of people in comments, a lot of people don't know anything about the situation and a lot of people are pretending to know that they know a lot of things. Look, a lot of us are in the dark here, okay, this is a transitioning phase right now for a lot of us. And look, these leagues, I don't know logistically again, how they would be able to accomplish this. I mean we're getting to the end of September, here we are coming up 2024 is not that far away and I don't know how in the world you would be able to conduct this merger and be able to get everyone on the same page that quickly and then drop if it means dropping teams, I would not advise that if it's going to be down the road, if it's going to be a year after 2024 and they somehow logistically are able to keep as many teams as possible and are able to sort of brief people on what could potentially happen down the road that's a little bit more amicable and that I understand a little bit more. Again, I don't want teams to drop, but obviously it seems to be a fantasy land proposition that all the teams would stay. I think that's what maybe is such a disconnect here is basically anytime that the idea of a merger was brought up amongst anyone in our group or people in the fan bases or anybody, peripheral people on the outside, maybe casuals, everybody talked about it like, oh yeah, well you just get all 16 teams in there and howdy duty play same rules and that's it. And clearly there seems to be a disconnect between what people want and what the leagues want or at least they think they can use in order to be viable and be able to survive. So to me, I mean it just would seem so hasty if they just kind of dropped teams and they were just rushing into this next year if indeed that was the case. Because I mean look, the xfl was talking to the cfl for four months between March and July of 2021, and in between that time they realized we're not going to be ready for 2022. Let's cut our losses and move back and get ready for that season. Which in hindsight was a good move and some would argue they still weren't ready for 2020. I mean you can in some ways they still, but again, I think that was ego more than it was preparation. I know Catchman Field was a disaster, but that's because they really thought it was going to work and it didn't. I think they tried their damnedest, they gave themselves enough time and whatever they tried, it didn't work. So that didn't come to fruition. As far as this goes though, I mean this would be even this is even closer to that timeline, even if it's, I know it's pushing back, that would be pushing back to April, so it would still be two plus months, but even then it still just feels very rapid. And again, it's so much bigger in terms of not only just starting an A team league, but to just get everyone on the same page. I question whether or not they seem to know what the timeline is here. And this is just so fluid and I think that's the thing about it. It's very fluid and I don't know when we're going to get that official announcement. I mean we may not get it for months. That's the thing. We're getting all this reporting, but clearly it may not even transpire in this month or next month or the month after or who knows when. I think, like I said, the more I've thought about this and ruminated because obviously, and I believe Mike when he says this is very close to finalization, whatever this is, and the Axios report is obviously saying ahead of the 2024, it leads me very much more like we're going to shift xfl back. We're both kicking off in April. We're going to try to maybe align our programming schedule so it's more complimentary because what I think has happened going into this stuff is we talked about this last night. This is a very niche market we're in and even more niche than I maybe imagined getting into all of this world and who caress to listen to about it. But when you're trying to segment that viewership, especially dealing with football fatigue, dealing with the overlapping, we got March mad, all these things, I think they realize, okay, this whole real football, Hollywood, whatever versus the xfl, I'm like, we know we're competing with the s l, but we're not going to talk. They're kind of waging the Cold War in different ways back and forth. To me, this feels way more amicable of at a minimum, how can we not hurt each other and then how can we then move forward with working together in the future? I think it's kind of a multi-step process here for a number one, let's not be firing bullets at each other and then step number two, let's figure out, because if you are basing a large identity of your league around supporting players, getting players to the N F L, Dwayne and Danny all the time, and I believe that I've talked with players and hey, Danny was there, we feel this connection with ownership and we feel like they want to be a part of that. You can't do that and then also operate the business in a way that knowingly is self-sabotaging. And so to me that's where I'm kind of reading into it of let's not turn the guns at each other. Let's be firing together here and kind of try to build a platform that these players can thrive off of And that's fine, but again, just be careful about which platforms you use and if you're going to take things away. Again, I think that's the other thing, it's hard to take away when you give something to people, especially in this country, people do not expect to give it back. It's like, no, it doesn't just become your property. It becomes everyone's property and basically if you allow that to happen, then it becomes a problem for many people. And so for me, look, the timeline for the calendar, I've never been a fan of the April to July timeline just personally it's getting towards summer. I just think about the players and having to play it on turf in the Midwest and the south when it's hot and it's humid. I just do not prefer that for them and quite frankly, it's not a very enviable destination for me as a West Coast person to go into that kind of territory. Now, if you're going to have West Coast teams, great, then I can just stick around with those. But as far as that's why for me, for the usfl, it was just harder to convince myself to go travel to a game among other things, but that was really a big thing for me and I think it's a big thing for the players. And as far as the calendar thing goes though, it's interesting to me because one of the biggest reasons the xfl thought their calendar was better lined up is that it would allow players to get into mini camps and be able to train and get ready for the N F L and be able to have better opportunities ahead of all the S F L players. Well, as we have seen, while a lot of players did get signed, not a lot of players made the 53 MAN roster Two the one man. Exactly. People want to call me home or whatever. I mean usfl got more players on the rosters at least right now and everything's shifting, whatever that did not play. You're saying it didn't play as big a part as we thought it would, Didn't ultimately. I mean now I know it's their first year, but that was the whole idea. Okay, well they have more preparation, they have more time, and it was just a wash really. I mean both of them had pretty much equal amount of players. I think it does stay to me at least that both of them have talented players and they both have players that are with sticking around. But as far as the calendar goes, I mean it clearly didn't seem to make much of a difference, which maybe that's a concession that the Exo L Brass is willing to make now just saying, okay, well we didn't prove that point. I guess then we're okay with moving along with the April to July calendar, so maybe it ultimately didn't matter in that regard. So again, if you're going to be playing at the same time next year, fine, I hope that if both league are allowed to exist and coexist with one another, that they're able to have all of the teams, at least for next year, and I would hope in some way, shape or form going forward, but again, that's not my call logistically, but I hesitate and I worry and get nervous about not only just losing ips but just losing fans and losing people who are saying, really, you just gave this to us and now you're taking it away again, and I think it's hard to just dangle the promise of, well, the team will come back eventually. I think that's a hard stance to take. I'm just going to say that right now. I think that's a really hard thing to promise. If nothing else I do, the April is hard to me, I would kick it off. I am not the biggest college fan with the basketball. I know I went to Gonzaga, that's terrible to say. The second March madness is done, I would kick this league off. I would want to get out as close to summer. I think going into July is too late, I think end of June and kids are gone and you're going on vacation, all that stuff. But I will say, and this does not matter in the long term, but at least next year, I think the Rock is very much rumored to be headlining WrestleMania 40 against Roman reins, which would be early April, and that really would be if you wanted to, whatever you call this, if it's the double league or you have a new name by this point, whatever, that's a great runway of like, Hey, he's going to be on TV every week. It's WrestleMania 40. It's huge thing that does play into at least that part of it, but otherwise, I've never liked the April originally. I said, oh, I think this is the best. And then once we kind of lived through it with the US ballet very much firmly. February might be too early to come back right after the Super Bowl. I think April's too late to start. I'm glad you brought up the Rock. The other thing, this factor in this whole thing is the whole buildup of the xfl is that the casual person, no disrespected Danny Garcia. I understand what she does and I know what her job is and I understand what she does and what she represents. People know who the Rock is, they know his brand, his identity and everything. If you're talking to the person on the street and you tell 'em like, oh, the Rock has a football league, they're like, the Rock has a football league that has cachet. If you're going to merge these two entities, are you going to have the Rock just saying basically it's his league of the N W S L or whatever it's going to be called, or I guess the National Spring Football League, sorry, the N S F W L. It's like if you're going to have that, then are they going to be okay with the fact that people are just going to probably automatically assume, oh, it's his league. He owns all these teams and he has all these things with them. Are you okay with that branding and that messaging? You have to be careful about that because I don't know how does he readjust this? How's he juxtapose this now because, and I know he's talked about Danny and he's shared all of the things with him and all that, but can Fox share that? Are they okay with that? I know they obviously have a big stake in wwe, that's fine, but are they willing to kind of play along with that gimmick because that's of it, right? That that's part of the notoriety that's part of the show, and I just wonder how, again, that's why philosophically I thought these two would never be able to get on the same page. I thought they were just so disparate in how they not only ran their leagues, but just in terms of the fan bases. Everybody just felt so different in terms of how they approached football and they approached the product and they approached the idea. I don't know. It's going to be really interesting to see these two ideas potentially melding. The other thing in talking about playing nice together, when you talk about that as well and curious about this, I was having a conversation today, just even just the very idea that S P N A B C, Fox and then whatever N B C is involved in this, at least in through the next year. I think N B C has got a three year deal. They're paying to air, right? U SS F L owned by Fox N B C paying for part of that to air. It's just weird that to think that they would play nice on that, I mean a very weird surreal kind of moment of that even to add onto why we never thought that this was going to happen, right? Egos and business plans and the way they operate, and Danny always wanted to own the thing and Fox, okay, well how can we get cheap programming? Especially now we're losing WWE E next year we're going to need even more stuff. Just even this E S P N and Fox kind of playing, well, you don't see that often and maybe Fox makes a concession because they own it and you can pay out to license whatever the X L can pay for some of that airtime or whatever. I dunno how you negotiate that because in this day and age, that to me feels very odd to have two competing networks kind of sharing similar properties like that. It does. Again, the synergy of it is very strange and I don't know if that is going to come together cohesively. I am surprised that Disney or e s, ESPN or whoever is involved in this decision making as well was presumably okay with the melding of those things. And again, you've had bullets flying from both sides as far as who does what and what does better and all that. Here's one thing I think that does need to change as far as if they're going to be able to run this thing, if we're going to have this merged property, as far as visuals go, you need to be able to get out of the hub concept. Look, you can't have both of these sides doing two different things. If they're going to merge together in ideals, you can't have one not playing in hubs and the other one doing that now, I guess they're going to do it still next season. The US F L is still going to have the four hubs. I haven't heard anything about venues being selected for any of the teams that don't have it. Are they going to be able to continue that? I don't know. We'll see. Again, as far as this time last year, I mean we didn't even hear about the Memphis Showboats coming along, if I'm not mistaken. There was no word on it yet. I have to double check the date, but it seemed to me like they were still in the process of just moving the IP from the bandits. And so could they do that again? Could the US F L just decide like, oh, actually we're going to drop this team and we're going to go pick another one. They have all those brands and they're just going to throw 'em in one of the hubs. Again, it's much different than the xfl who put all the teams in the markets and had to make a very tough conscious decision that has been reported about them potentially taking Vegas out. That requires a lot of movement. So again, if you're going to have these two teams operating in tandem, I don't think you can have them showing those philosophical differences. I mean, the fans might want that, but I don't think they really can afford to do that because one of the things that I think we talked about last season is does the average person know what the difference is between the US F L and F L game? I don't think they do. They're not there sitting there and being like, oh, they do this point conversion in this league and they run this and all the kickoff is like, no, no one knows that You have to, I'm people are talking like, oh, what rule book are they going to use save for the kickoff? I don't think anybody could tell you the difference between the usfl and the xfl. Yeah, I remember was it last week with the Vikings game where, what's his face? Justin Jefferson, when he fumbled the ball into the end zone and I tweeted out like, Hey, in the usfl, this isn't an issue. And whoever texted me like the xfl does that same rule. I'm like, see, say for the kickoff, I don't think the rules is a place to handle that. I mean, look, the rules are the rules and they're going to have to be consistent in some way, shape, or form. But again, are you going to have these entities just become conferences and can you convince people that they could be conferences? I mean, look, the A F L and the N F L was a very different time, obviously in terms of merging. First of all, you didn't really lose teams. You ended up gaining teams, if anything out of it. But also the only thing that really changed naming wise was the A F L became the A F C, and then you had the N F L brand being the overall AR piece of it, and then you had the A F C and the N F C conferences, but it wasn't that much of a change. So here it's like if you're going to have a new name, are you going to change one of them to the X F C or the U SS F C or something like that? Like the United States Football Conference and the Extreme Football Conference, whatever that X stands for. I'm still trying to figure out what the X stands for. Sorry, Danny and sorry Dwayne Johnson. I'm still trying to do Stands for the intersection of the dreams and opportunities. By the way, when they said that, did they say that in terms of two leagues coming together? Is that what that was? It was two. That's Like, I like that. Yeah, here's this side, here's this side. Maybe it was foreshadowing, maybe we were really just being dumb the entire time. It was just massive foreshadowing to the two sides coming together at the intersection of the X. I mean, it's just mad. Look, that's the thing. It's all just madness right now, and I'm trying to, every hour I, I'm thinking about what about this, what about this thing and what happens to this? My head's still spinning. It's been two days and it's still been spinning and it hasn't stopped spinning. So I make sure we, I don't want to go forever on this. I want to make sure we talk through everything. Teams shifting. I don't think Vipers is the biggest, no offense to the 6,000 Cashman field fan. I don't know if that's the biggest loss, like I said, but I do want respect to be given to that fan base, though it is really easy to write that off. Like, okay, we're moving. These are people that spent a lot, spent money, bought merch, bought the xfl, the $80 jerseys or whatever they were, had them shipped and all that stuff to not write that up. Roughnecks is a big, I know Mike Mitchell incredulous about, and Evan and I mean, not just Mike, we were all kind of incredulous about the gamblers on that. Any other notes on that about the gamblers taking over the roughnecks on that? I do think that that to me, roughnecks are, say for St. Louis, you talk defenders like Roughnecks and the PJ Walker and the undefeated of it all, of any legacy, and this is so long ago, we're talking now xfl 2020, but to me that has one of the stronger ones that you would want to keep in the regard. Again, it's a strong brand, it's a strong ip. And again, you have Wade Phillips as the head coach of a Houston legend, basically parking his services for that team, and they've been able to have an established identity and they've won a lot. I mean, that's a big part of it too. They're a winner. I mean, in the regular season, you're talking about a combined record of between both seasons of 12 and three, and now I know they've bowed out in the playoffs early, but I mean, they've had success and they've had players who have moved on and done things in the N F L. I just think it's hard for me to be convinced that they're the ones that are going to go by the wayside. And I wonder, is it just because of the venue change? If there's no change in the venue for moving out of, They are a roughneck stadium, yeah, they're out, They're moving to Rice Stadium. If that doesn't happen, does this become part of the conversation? I wonder because at that point, maybe it's just the venue insecurity that is part of this whole transition for them and saying, well, they're not established at Rice. So the gamblers could be, I just wonder because if they weren't moving out of that stadium already, if they weren't moving out of the University of Houston, maybe this wasn't a conversation. I have to wonder if that part of it maybe caused concern from both sides as saying, well, maybe there's not really much of a difference here. But again, which team has been there? Which team has already been there? Which team already has a fan base? And again, I'm going to say something that's going to be super homer here. That's fine. If you're looking at this, I besides Birmingham, besides Detroit, besides Memphis, if you're the xfl, you're like, what are we selling the breakers at? What are we selling the gambler? Maybe you just made that concession and you go, yeah, you can take that. It's negotiating, right? You're like, okay, we're trained back. It's like Monopoly like, Hey, I'll give you a two park place in St. James. Okay, take it. Take Houston. I just think maybe it's that simple, right? Maybe it's that simple. Well, we can have seven teams and three US L teams. We got to have it be a little bit more, I mean, I think that that could be it. And I don't want to be the homer, but you look at some of the established fan bases, Houston is more established than a lot of the US developments. But that's the thing. You can't treat it like monopoly pieces. Not when I know, but I'm just going to say this and it's probably going to make a lot of people upset. I think the usfl has treated a lot of their ipss like monopoly pieces. They've just said, well, we'll trade this IP for this one. We'll move around and we'll just go to this city and wherever we can play, look. And that's their strategy. That's what they've said. The xfl is not doing things that way. And I think that's why I would be alienating to just go ahead and put the gamblers in place of the roughnecks. I mean, it's like this isn't, isn't the girl I went to the ball with? Who is this? You swapped my date. That's how it feels trying to get somebody else in there. I don't think they have to be really careful about how they go about this. Again, now I know there's the untouchable brands, right? The battle hawks do not touch them at all. DC do not touch them. They're God's gift to earthed in spring football leagues, you can't do that. But all these other ipss, you got to stop treating them like they're puzzle pieces. I mean, again, it's not only alienating, it's disrespectful to people who put their time, money, and effort into these teams and been able to put their energy into it. And I'm just saying from my perspective with the usfl teams, they haven't been in a home market. And I understand there's fans, there's people online, but reasonably speaking, how much has really been put into them as teams in terms of capital gains? And that's what I'm talking about here is capital gains as far as what has actually made any sort of momentum forward and getting people involved in the market. And that's part of the game. If this is a capitalistic venture, wouldn't you go with somebody that's already familiar? You go with a brand that's familiar, you go with a team that people already recognize. Again, that's why it just doesn't make sense to me. Anything else you want to make sure we hit on the team thing? We talked the broadcast, we talked the timeline conferences. I don't know. To me, I was surprised today because we didn't know what Mike was going to say last night coming on, and obviously, and he was recording with Mark as well, and I'm glad that we could kind of get a little leg up on that, but expecting the team slim down, expecting losing staff and kind of things like that wasn't expecting, I don't think a lot of people were like, it's been a little bit of a negative reaction today. And even some of the kids that I know that when I post on Facebook and, okay, they're liking everything and they're liking everything. There's a lot of angry. They're angry. And I know it's not to me, I know it's kind of the news. I know these people are very passionate about that. And I was talking with listeners, Seth today on the phone about just how passionate the spring football fan base is. Were you surprised this was not wildly accepted? Well, I think by anybody, US L or xfl fans, I mean, it's something that I, again, did not see coming at all as a curve ball. But again, maybe it's just speculation. But if that's stuff that Mike is hearing, clearly it's being part of the discussion. And look, here's the thing that people need to understand is when Mike is hearing things, it means it's part of a legitimate part of the discussion. The xfl thought about being in hubs last year. They thought about being in the Arlington hub and doing the same thing as usfl. Clearly there was backlash to that idea. They backed away from it. And you know why? Big part of it was because of Mike's reporting, because he said that, and everyone said, you can't do that. That's the same thing that USS F l is doing. I thought we were supposed to play in our own markets. That's the whole point of having all of these brands. You can't take away the Battle Hawks fan base. You can't take away the DC fan base. You can't take away the Houston fan base. What are you doing? Don't do this. And that's part of it. So now you have this, I guess you call it backlash. I'm not sure. I think it's just general mass confusion about what's going on. But at some point it's going to come to a head and maybe some of the execs or some of the people in the higher ups of these organizations are going to realize, oh, maybe we shouldn't. This is the wrong Jenga piece to pull out, otherwise the tower might fall. We can't do this. And that's part of reporting, that's part of getting information out there. That's part of getting people informed and getting them in the know about what is happening. So no, Mike Mitchell did nothing wrong, and he is doing his job. And again, maybe that doesn't come to fruition. Maybe they changed course and they say, nevermind, we're only going to drop two teams, or we're just going to figure this out along the way, and we'll get back to this later. We'll come back to the table. But again, yes, the initial reaction, it should be negative because it's just taking away, it just feels like more subtraction than it does addition, even though it's supposed to be a merger, which is kind of the wrong feeling to have. It's not supposed to be it. Maybe it is supposed to be addition by subtraction, but it certainly doesn't feel that way. It's like that old show, was it Sister Wives with the Mormon guy and the wives. It's like love should be multiplied, not divided. But I will say this, and just to make it as a serious just thing here, because we've talked about this a lot and I have nothing but love to the people of the xfl and a lot of the people that run and do, and I was so glad that Corey shared that today. I do mean that. How do you get ready. You have these people that are working every day and then it's like, whoop, we're not doing that. Respect for everybody. Everyone knows I only do this, I certainly don't do this for the fame. The money is certainly doing this for the love of all this. But when you have Danny and the Rock, having just gone through the DC and the black Adam and knowing how, for a lack of better word, toxic kind of the fan base can be. If you're messing with things that they like, well that's not the cannon, or that he didn't have that in that comic book and his socks were yellow and all that kind of stuff. I always go back to the initial xfl logo and we're doing the rebrand and the website's going down and we've been tinkering here in the lab and this is the first thing we're going to show you guys. We took over, we did that Black Friday hack, this is the first thing we're going to do. And they come out with it. And nobody liked it. Nobody liked it at all. And you're like this, you are in spring football, man. This is community. And I say the same thing with the cfl. It kills me a league that is so community driven. I've never had an interaction with a single account on Twitter ever in three years of like, Hey, really appreciate liking it. Like, hey, watching the C ffo get xfl, does that be a part of this community? And it's the same kind of with this as well. Well we went up to our ivory tower at Fox Sports or if you did it red, we kind went up and we concocted this plan. They're like, here you go. We came up and you're like, I get that you can't run the business by committee. But I've always felt like spring football is a different, it's just, does that make sense? You can't run it by committee, but I just feel like you have such this die hard fan base that has gone through so many different twists and turns and have the rug pulled out from them 1800 times. It's really hard to buy in. And I get these people, here we go again in the beginning of this podcast, I have CJ from G T a, Santa Andreas like, ah, here we go again. I dunno if you've ever played that video game, it just feels like, all right, strap back into the rollercoaster. And I think that disconnect is part of it that seems to upset a lot of people, and I get it. Yeah, it is like a community. It is. It's a very niche thing. I've never thought that it's bigger than it actually is. I wish it was bigger. I think all of our efforts are in trying to get it out there because we want it to succeed. We want it to be a great thing for players, coaches, people involved in the league. It is fun. It's something that's supposed to be fun and it's supposed to be engaging and it's supposed to be able to continue the lives and dreams of people who otherwise don't think they have any left in this space. And for them, for the people who are making the decisions, sometimes it just feels like it's completely disconnected from that idea. And I know cfl people would say something similar to their league. In some ways it feels like there's a lot of disconnect from what's going on in the league office versus what's actually going on amongst the fans and the teams. And so I think that's why this is also frustrating. We don't want this to go wrong because it can go very wrong if things are not handled properly, egos get involved. Or again, if the wrong pin is pulled and it blows up in their face, if we lose all of this, if all of these teams go away, that's devastating. It's huge. And I'd hate to be doing glue, but I don't mean to be like that. I don't want to be so morbid on this show, just we haven't even gotten the official announcement yet. But I just worry about what's the plan going here and is it going to be executed properly going forward? And I have to have my doubts so far just because it's new. And while part of it's exciting, I'm also very anxious to see what's going to happen and what's going to transpire from it. Yeah, we'll wind this down here. I think this will be good. I will say if all this goes away, I'll feel really bad for the players and the staff. I think my mental sanity would probably be better off. But certainly a lot of these fans and the people that listen to shows, and I appreciate everyone. We've added even just subscribers on the channel here since we've been recording here, which is just really incredible and I really appreciate all that support. But the staff and the players, that's who I care about. And I know that is who you and Evan and Anthony and Mike and everyone. That's why you do this. And it's to give these players opportunities and whether they're going to go into the N F L, I had my interview that'll be on here later on this episode with Kim Phillips and talking with him about, he was someone cut, bounced around, went to the xfl, and now he's a great cup champion and he's on the trend of Argonauts for, it'll be his third season now. They're probably going to win the Great Cup again. Or at least having the historic run of this. Here's someone that wasn't just because of the xfl, I mean the Cam Phillips worked his ass off and played, but that was part of his journey. And so even if it's not the N F L for everybody, which it certainly can't be, I mean you can never be, but to see that as a stepping stone for a lot of these guys I think is cool. And obviously that's why we do that. So anything else from you, Andy? I appreciate it late here, at least for West Coast. It's not like sometimes I feel bad. I got Mike on until 11 o'clock and I'm like, oh God. But anything else from you? I appreciate you working late tonight. Yeah, absolutely. No, thank you for having me on. I was chomping up the bit to say something. I was really, really excited about this. But again, I appreciate you and putting out this platform and giving everybody a platform to talk. I mean, you've been doing double duty. I mean you did a cfl and xfl back to back, that's almost as good as your draft marathon that you had months Ago. Nothing will top the eight hour draft top the eight hour draft. That's A true marathon. So appreciate you and all the hard work you put in. Thanks everyone. Like I said, check that we got cfl coming up. Derek Taylor if you're interested in the cfl stuff. And then even if you're not cfl Cam Phillips and his journey is part of the xfl as well. Really excited to see him. So yeah, check back in after the break here. Well, this guest was going to bail me out last week when Jeff Hamilton and we talked about that on the podcast, had a delay, got him on here. But we have Derek Taylor, very excited. Weird weekend with the blue bombers. I want to get your thoughts on that and everything else but voice of the Blue Bombers. How are you doing sir? I'm good, I'm good. I didn't rear end any other drivers? Is that what the Hammer's problem was? I don't know. Hamilton's such a good dude. I hope everything's okay. I hope I see you back in practice next week. Yeah, no, this is good. So first off, we'll talk bombers and it's bye week and I want to get your thoughts where we stand here week 16. But a really weird game last week I was filming actually an old folks like event. I was out filming. I do a lot of event filming and I'm tracking the score during the first quarter. I'm like, what the heck's going on here? So I ended up pulling the game out, putting it on my camera so I could walk around and watch it kind of. I mean I didn't expect the bombers to lose that game, if that makes sense. What do you attribute that to? I wish I could give you a real solution for it because all week long we talked about last year's game at this time of the year against Hamilton. It was, oh hey, you guys had just won a big game and then you went to Hamilton and got whacked. What was the deal with that? And they said it wasn't that complacency. It wasn't that we took them easy. It wasn't that we were looking ahead to the bi-week. So they were aware of all these things. And then the exact same game happens a year minus a day later, and they go into Hamilton with the bi-week looming coming off a big win and they get whacked and three turnovers on offense and the defense looked vulnerable in ways we haven't seen in a little bit. And you go, how did the same thing happen again? How is it that you've lost going into the bye week four of the last five times you've had the buy when over that span, you've only lost seven games. I honestly, I've just come to start thinking, are they as human as kind of we are. Those of us with Monday to Friday jobs where you go, it's a long weekend coming up. Maybe I don't take Friday as seriously as I do on a regular Friday. Honestly, I don't know. But I'm starting to think that maybe football players are human beings after all, which is kind of a dumb, slightly sarcastic revelation to come to, but maybe they have some of the things that folks like us in office jobs have too. There's got to be, at this point I'm like, there's probably something in there Because it does seem, and we'll talk in terms of the lions and stuff and other teams. To me, I feel like the lions are a little undisciplined and it feels like they're, I don't know if that's a locker room thing or whatever, Winnipeg, OSHA has got 'em and we're marching forward, but you're right, that was the game last year where Dave Evans went off and wasn't that the game of the year last year for him and it was that Winnipeg game against Hamilton, right? Yeah. That's probably the best game Dane Evans will play in his life, right? It's the best game a lot of quarterbacks would ever play in their life. Five touchdowns and no picks and just raining fire on a team that's on its way to a 15 and three record. That is a game that I feel like at the very least Dane's family will remember forever. Remember how unbelievable our kid was that night. It was remarkable. So in terms of, I dunno, is this cause for concern, I mean obviously with the team and everything, but of the time that we've lived in the cfl here, it feels like they're a little bit like you said, more human right now. Is this cause for concern? It might be. Here's the thing, the bombers have this going for them that no other team does. They are incredibly healthy, incredibly healthy. Before this Hamilton game, the banjo bowl against Saskatchewan, if you looked at the 24 guys they started, those are probably the 24 guys they would've wanted started coming out of training camp, right? Nobody among their starters on the injured list, which who does that happen to? Other teams are getting decimated by injury. Other teams are on their fourth quarterback. Hamilton was on his third quarterback, didn't have Dylan win, didn't have its all-star defensive back, Tunde Ade. There were a ton of guys Hamilton did not have access to, but the bombers do you go, oh, okay, well that's really good. So however, for this Hamilton game they lose, they lost Jackson Jeff coat, right? A guy Coach O'Shea says was born to pass Rush and you really saw the impacts of it. I do the games with Doug Brown who's a hall of fame defensive tackle. So whenever he starts talking about defensive line, anything defense and anything football obviously, but when he gets down to defensive line, my ears really perk up and he goes, oh, they're really taking advantage of Celeste and Haba, the rookie who was in for Jeff Coat on this one. And they would crash him to make sure that Powell could get to the edge. And it seemed like Powell could get to that edge on the rollout whenever he wanted. And I went, oh, okay. Well that's something that Jeff Coat would change and we've seen it in bomber games this season. If Jeff coat's not there, the backend is under more stress and the backend has some cracks in it. Man, I hope that the reason they left Jeff coat out, they said it was just kind of give him an extra week's rest and not that he's going to be injured. You hope that's absolutely the case because I mean they've lost four games already this year. They lost three all of last year and you thought they might lose a couple more because of wacky bounces and stuff. But Jackson, Jeff Coat is incredibly important going down the stretch in this one for this team because not that it doesn't work without him, but man, it certainly does work with him. In terms of the Hamilton side of it, they're quietly here and I know it's the east, but it feels like Plumy a little bit. Hamilton a little bit on the upswing. Did they do a lot well or is it more just kind Winnipeg gave it away? Oh, I really think they did. Yeah, they did a lot. Well, I mean offensively we talked about getting Powell out of the pocket and it was the first time I'd seen him in person in extended action. I'm like, okay guy's, very calm. Oh, it's breaking down. Okay, well now he's sliding up into the pocket or he's on a roll. I was super impressed with Powell, his interception. Yeah, I get why you threw that. It's in the end zone. It takes away his score, but okay, I get that one. The fumble, you get smashed by a large human. That stuff's going to happen. I came away super impressed with Powell. They didn't have much in the run game with Butler in that one yet they were still able to just put up 29 points. Their defense, I still can't get over this and it's a play that I don't see every defensive end do, but I saw it in this game. I went, I dunno if it's a special play, but it's on the road towards special where Malik Carney's lined up at left defensive end. He does a zone drop to replace the linebacker who's going to pass rush. And then he runs all the way over to the right side of the field to step in the lane where Zach Callis is throwing the football and I forget if he's throwing a stick route or what it was. I'm like, how does Malik Carney, I was just taken aback during the broadcast and I'm not getting any less incredible to me as you and I are talking here. And wow, that's a real play. And then there's a couple of, Zach cars had one where can you throw that ball? And we've had a few plays this season where he went, should Zach have thrown that ball to Kenny Lawler in double coverage in previous examples? And you go, yeah, well he has a ton of confidence in the best receiving core in the league. So yeah, maybe he, he's taking some shots and hoping they come and sometimes if they don't come right, they're going to go bad. So that was kind of my read. And then I mean basically the kicking game, which has been rock solid with Sergio Castile this season gives up six points, missed a field goal, missed a convert, which went back for a two point defensive convert and you go, well there's the six points between 29 and 23. That score wise made a difference, but we're a part of the story of that game And it really surprised you. I mean Sergio's been on, I think back when he was with Edmonton and obviously going around, but yeah, I saw Hodge had a bunch of tweets out. The Mark Legio of it all kind looms large. Well, someone phone the coaches show on Monday and said that Mark Legeo is better than Sergio Castillo and Coach Oe wasn't in studio, but we both kind went, I mean for the game, sure, but it's not overall the case Castillo, I think in my adjusted rankings was fourth in the league and Legeo was 10th with a bullet. Legeo hit all his kicks Castillo. But if you're doing it over a season, I think bomber fans and bomber coaches are more secure in Sergio Castillo despite the one head-to-head matchup that goes awry. Wanting to focus a lot here on week 16, but looking forward with Winnipeg coming off the buy, Toronto's kind of in this weird spot where they don't necessarily have a lot to play for moving down the line kind of clenching and they're clinched number one with a bullet in the east Six weeks to go with six weeks to go. They have the home playoff game and they know it. So I'm interested to see, we've had teams clinched with a couple weeks to go and see how they handle their roster, but six weeks to go, well, we have the east final at home, we want to be a hundred percent healthy. We've had guys injured. I'm really interested to see how Ryan Dinwoody and company approach it. Yeah, because on paper I'm looking, I'm like, oh, this is Toronto at Winnipeg. This is a huge matchup, but then you don't necessarily know what that roster's going to look like. And I mean Toronto has the advantage of what do you want to show when the next time you two would play would be in the gray cup? Hey, we can show them everything or we can just kind of go, we're going to keep the powder drive for the playoffs in case we happen to meet you guys in the playoffs. Winnipeg's no guarantee to be there, right? Because BC is for real. But that's one of the angles of what do we give them? What do we not give them? Who do we show? Who do we not show? I will not be able to diagnose a smarter football man will have to diagnose, Ooh, Toronto did this but hadn't done this before. Interesting. If they busted out anything new, I'd be shocked because why not just keep that quiet until November? Yeah, there was a weird in the xfl last year, it was like the 10 game or whatever was also the first playoff game and so the week 10 game was atrocious because neither team did anything and then the playoff game obviously ended up having huge ramifications. I want to get your thoughts here. BC going into Edmonton, and we talked about this obviously BC getting why they would have to have a comeback from behind win against Ottawa. But if my trust level in Winnipeg was at 10, I'm like a negative 0.5 with bc. I wouldn't want them to watch my children or watch my house or take care. I just don't. Wow. I Could see why is that? Why do you doubt them so much? Because I just think that they're built on the hype this year. I think they've really bought into everything. I think that they had a couple big wins early in the season and I don't think they show up ready to go. I mean it just feels like that was the away thing. Okay. We always went at home and then what was it, Hamilton came in and beat 'em at home. Was it Ottawa? I'm sitting there watching the game last week and I'm like, how are you losing to Dustin Crumb here? You're supposedly this elite defense and I'm frustrated, but I see them going into Edmonton. I mean, I would put money on the Edmonton here. I mean I see that them playing with a lot of momentum right now with Reforward. What do you make of that? BC needing a missed field goal return for a touchdown to get back in that game is remarkable, right? Because 50 yard field goal on misses a return for a touchdown, literally 2% of the time that is as thin a margin as it could possibly be. And to need that against the team with the worst record in the league, and Vernon threw three picks in that game. Both the quarterbacks of the top teams in the west threw three picks on week 15. Man Edmonton is just entirely different. The bombers saw them in the first start for Trade Ford. So nothing was kind of, it wasn't gamed out, it hasn't progressed as far as it is now. Eton's just a different deal. And if they could find a way to catch Saskatchewan, that's a long two wins is a lot to make up. They'd be really intriguing in the playoffs. Pretend that Stephen Dunbar is back off the six game injured list alongside Gino Lewis who's now healthy. Manny Arsenal underneath Gavin Cobb can do some stuff down the field. Speedwise Kevin Brown is back to Kevin Brown of 2022 and the defense with Chris Jones, they're settling in on personnel be that because of injuries, this is who they've got or this is the guys that they want. Chris Jones on defense can make some stuff happen. You go, oh, I don't know that I really want, I don't want to have to get through Edmonton to get to a West final on the road. So yeah, I really think I'm, part of me is still stuck on BC and week number three when they came to Winnipeg and thrashed the bombers, part of that is still stuck in my mind even so that I forget that the bombers then thrashed the Dane Evans that the time led BC Lions by putting up 50. So BC that offense has, man, that offense could be real good this week still no Dominic Rhymes, but at some point they ever figured out how to run the ball in addition to all the other stuff they do. They could really have some things going. But yeah, they just got away. I didn't get to see the game against Ottawa, but watching on my phone going, really? This is to Ottawa a couple of weeks, like you said, after Hamilton. Really? Really? So they're a puzzler and so I'm with you at the right price. I'd be on Edmonton for sure. And we talked about this in our recap and I know that they were, when you're behind and you're okay, we got a pass ball, whatever. I mean Mazel had 13 yards rushing. It's insane to me. And that was the problem is that before, okay, because two, three years ago, and then we get Butler and we build him up and then obviously you kind of let him go. But I don't know, it feels like, I don't know, it feels like the defense just lets too many big plays go in my opinion. And then you get Vernon freaking out. Or if it's Dane when he was down, okay, I got to throw for 5,000 yards here and it just doesn't feel like Winnipeg, like you were saying, when Edmonton goes in and it was 22 0 whatever, 22 3 at half Winnipeg can build back and not panic and do that. It just doesn't feel like BC is built the same way to play patient football. I could buy that Winnipeg, there's zero panic in Winnipeg, none whatsoever. They need the touchdown to get back. Within six of Hamilton they went beep boop. Oh, we're denying everything up top beep boop boop boop boop boop boop. And they went super fast getting snaps off at 18 with the clock live. You go, okay, yeah, this team is conditioned, they couldn't make the one that they needed. But yeah, I don't feel the same confidence in BC and yeah, I just had to pull up my zell's rushing game log for the season and I'm not the biggest proponent of the run game, but we've seen it with the bombers this season that if the past game isn't going, they can rely on Brady Oliveira to absolutely crush dude's souls. And that's incredibly valuable to have both those ways to attack it. You win throwing the ball in the cfl, but if you have to win running the ball, it's Winnipeg, Toronto and then everybody else. My thing is just if you have someone like Vernon and he's having an off or you throws the pick and then you just see it, he just gets in his head there and it would feel nice to have another arm here where we could move the ball down the field. Another means to do that. Yeah, I mean I don't know where Dominic Rimes is at, but that guy's the leader that receiving core, right? And if you had rhymes, Hatcher Hollins, if McKinnis is your Canadian, you threw a fourth one American. Oh boy. Okay, well this is back to being BC one of the top three receiving cores in the entire cfl, which would give Vernon more options. You can't underestimate how big a deal Dominic Rimes injury is because that guy is, I mean not only the contested catches, but the thing we'll note is man, that guy makes contested catches like few others do in this league. Saskatchewan here, I mean I know we talked to Ottawa and they're kind of a dumpster fire, but Saskatchewan is, they're alive in the west here. What do you make of them? And I don't know, it feels like one week we're high on Dagal the next week. It feels kind of like a roller coaster. I don't really know how to feel about it. He had a real good in the Labor Day game, as we call it, the banjo bowl warmup game. He had a real good, real good performance in that one. In certain areas. He seemed very composed in the pocket. His depot was off by enormous margins, 10 yards here, five yards there. But he was composed, he hammered those out routes. Intermediate and deep outs went, oh, okay, here's something. Oh under pressure. Oh okay, this is good too. And then he had nothing in the banjo bowl in the big games. So that gives me pause. I mean you look at a completion percentage for the season of under 61 in a league. I'm just going to check to make sure, oh, 66% this year. So it's down a bit. You have to complete more passes than that. You have to be more accurate than that. So that would be my primary concern to me. Saskatchewan season will end up being, does Trevor Harris come back from injury? Because I didn't believe Mason Fi, I don't particularly believe Dola gala though he was really good in the ban bowl warmup game and I don't know what you do with that. And then again, injuries. We talked about how Winnipeg has none SaaS this week doesn't have Jamal Morrow doesn't have Anthony Lanier. Just start naming guys and they're probably on the injured list because Fortune smiles on some teams and it's not currently on the Saskatchewan rough Fridays. It's a pretty rough spell right now. What was that like being at IG Field, having Winnipeg go up 51 6 in Saskatchewan? I was filming another event. I listened to the entire Labor Day game and going to overtime and the headbutts and all that stuff. Crazy. What was it like bouncing back there that next week? So in, what was it, week seven when the bombers just absolutely mauled the BC Lions, I kept saying the scores 50, right? I just put a little emphasis on and 50 and for the whole game when it got to 42 by halftime Doug Brown, my partner was like, what are you going to do at 60 now? Because getting towards 60, how are you going to say 60? And that's the kind of things you got to think about in 30 minutes of football that really didn't mean anything, right? You had time to contemplate a lot of stuff. It was unbelievable. Like six drives in the first halfs, all six ended in touchdowns, huge plays all everybody's getting a piece of this. The big bomb to Kenny Lawler at halftime when they're already up 35 to six, I think it was at that time. Oh man, this is as good as it gets. And everybody's just, the second half was just almost anticlimactic, right? Because the bombers just wanted to, let's keep the clock going. Boop, field goal, boop, field goal, oh, fourth quarter boop, field goal. It was almost 30 minutes of clock time to celebrate, man, what an incredible first half and look at this offense. This is what we all kind of knew this offense would be. So it was loud and then it's just better for bomber fans when they do it to the Saskatchewan R fighters. It makes everything better. And this year there was no, the entire team was throwing up and taking IVs last year was an awful experience for the riders, whatever it was. Was it norovirus or food poison that was going through there? They were not who they could have been this time they were there. They could have been. And there were no excuses for bomber fans like, nope, we're 50 points better than this one. I highly recommend it to every broadcaster to call a bloat in favor of his own team. My fan base is like Seahawks Commanders, Mariners. I don't get a lot of blowout. I think Mariners this year had, I think they won 14 to two at one point. That was exciting. I've never lived through that being up 50 points on another franchise. What was the Super Bowl against Peyton? Was it like 41 to something? Yeah. Oh yeah, we did have, yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, that was a while ago, right? But yeah, to do it to your biggest rival would be is the text line was pretty happy with how that was going. Yeah, that was probably the last, I was working at the Fox station here and we were filming at a casino and they were showing the game on the big screen. They didn't want to send me the, I didn't get to get sent to the Super Bowl like everyone else did. So yeah, I was filming auditorium of people watching that game. They were having a lot of fun. Those are the days and I mean that's the bombers at their peak, right? The defense allowed absolutely nothing. Six points and a third field goal attempt and six touchdowns on six drives and scored on the first nine drives of the game. Yeah, this is the Lawler shown Demsky, Ky Bailey, Oliveira, COIs and Company offense. This is what it could be. And we kind of said out of that game, if the bombers play their 100% game with their a hundred percent roster, they're going to beat anybody in the league. It'll be a matter of how close to a hundred percent are they in the playoffs and how close are they to a hundred percent and their opponents are to a hundred percent in the Great Cup game because man, there is no shortage of talent here. Before we get out of here, I'll let you go soon, I promise. Welfare check Calgary, how are we feeling here? Injuries were, I mean, injuries are everybody's deal, right? They were the one team, they haven't lost mayor for any games to injury, but they've lost so many other spots around him that you go, wow, James VODs was a force early on and then I believe he did his Achilles and he's definitely out for the year. And you go, okay, well that guy was a dominant pass rusher and gone for the year and just, it keeps adding up injury here there that I kind of looked at them as a team and went, they lost talent in the off season for reasons they don't normally lose talent in the off season. I don't have any concerns if I'm an opposing team with this receiving core. Sure they might be able to run the ball. Well K, even Carey had a fantastic year with that offensive line last year, but they're not overwhelmed with talent was kind of my thought of them this year. And I didn't know that. I think I kind of wondered, you kind of keep quiet if you think Calgary isn't going to win 10 games because they'd won 10 games in every 18 game season from 2008 to last year. So you kind of keep that hushed up so you don't look dumb upon reflection. But I kind of wondered, are they the fourth best team in the west this year? And it's unfortunately for them played out that way. Injuries did not break in their favor as they have for some other teams. And yeah, is Jake Mayer redeeming himself to keep his job for next year? I guess we'll see, but he had a real rough stretch. I think it was four straight games of one 50 or under or 1 75 or under. It's been real rough for Calgary this year. And yeah, some of it is on them and some of it is just on the injury. Gods biting them in the butt. Yeah, I just don't know. Whatever happens this year, do we roll out mayor again next year? Here we go. I mean he looked so promising and there was a lot of buildup and kind of the passing of the baton. I just don't know if you roll that out next year, if Calgary fans are excited about it. Guaranteed money though, right? That's going to be the thing. The N F L, any N F L show you watch, you hear conversations, they'll involve dead cap money. Oh, they traded Matt Ryan and it's a $42 million dead cap hit. We're approaching that in the cfl Taylor Cornelius and Jake Mayer. Taylor Cornelius is now the third string quarterback in Edmonton. He's guaranteed money for 2024 according to reports mayor's guaranteed money. I think we've maybe seen some from mayor, but again, this is something that people inside Calgary would know way better. But there's just something with the offense they let Mayor run and how it's not servicing him to his full potential or mayor's talent doesn't allow them to have the offense at its full potential because it's just underneath stuff and it can be real hard to watch and it doesn't move the ball consistently and effectively. And sure he'll put up four 50 in a game, but you go, okay, but do this every week. So Calgary needs kind of needed this one and then just flush this. We'll have our bad luck season, we'll have our bad injury season and hopefully we're back next year. But if you continually let talent walk out the door, you're, you're going to reap what you sow in that case. Well Derek, I appreciate it. Bye week coming on doing some work here. It means a lot and good to catch up with you and I'm sure one way or another at Winnipeg in Hamilton and we'll be around. So I hope to see you there, Man. These next two weeks are the best two weeks of my, I've been waiting for these two weeks for six weeks now I've been talking about it. Can you imagine what it's going to be like when they play Toronto and BC back to back? This is going to be, it's going to tell us, okay, well best of the east, best of the west, and then the battle for first place in the west. The playoff spot's on the line 1, 2, 3 weeks from now in Vancouver. The first place you want to finish first because more than 60% of the teams that finish first go to the gray cup. I am so excited for the two weeks that are ahead. Oh man, I'm looking here. I'm like, what am I doing on Friday the sixth? I might have to talk to the wife about that. Maybe we'll come up the corridor there. I love it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, let me know, let me know. We need guests in the two hour pregame show live on six 80 C J O B. Just me screaming about the donut boys. Derek, I really appreciate it. Like I said, coming on the bunch, it means a lot. So thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Well here we are talking with a gray cup champion here with the Toronto Argonauts back again this year. Ken Phillips, how are you doing sir? I'm all right man. Thank you for having me man. I know people are excited. Like I said, we cover xfl cfl, all this kind of stuff. How's your year going? Argo's kind of killing it right now. Yeah, man, we rolling man. We got a good thing going right now. We were able to get it done last year and really retain a big part of that team. So I think we just got the right guys in. We're professional. We're making all the right plays and stand together. So like I said, it's good to be a part of What's the vibe right now? Obviously the team's rolling. What do you guys, what's the locker room vibe? I know you're sitting there right now kind of after practice and the meetings and everything. Yeah, Yeah. I mean believe it or not, I'm not the only one in the locker room, which is the way you should want it. We finished practice what around one something and guys are still here. We have meetings, getting treatment, just working together to just continue to build that camaraderie because it is a team game. We need everyone to do their part and it is a real family atmosphere that we have here. And I think that is the biggest thing when you can play for one another because you don't want to let down your teammate or your brother in this sense. So I think we have a lot of that going on. So guys just being themselves and just able to be free and whenever you can be free, you're not really worried about anything, I think we're really just playing free right now. I was talking with Mike Mitchell covers the Argos telling him you were coming on, I think you were out last week. How are you feeling now? Getting back up to speed? Yeah, man, just dealing with some soft tissue stuff, but it is nothing crazy to worry about, just seasonal stuff, just the grind of a long season, especially being in the cfl, the amount of running that the receivers do. So it's nothing crazy. I'll be all right. It was more like a precautionary thing the last game. But yeah, I'm okay. In terms of rest and where the team's that you guys are in a weird position kind of locked up everything here, six weeks to go in the season, how does that feel? How does the team approach that? What are they thinking? Really the same way that we've been approaching every week, man, and that's just going one and oh this week just the most important game is the next one. It doesn't matter because you can't even at the beginning, you can't win 15 games at once. You can't go win a championship the first week. So it's a process. So I think the coaching staff and even the players which we've bought in and that's really the culture now. We come to work, we are who we are, but when it's time to work, it's time to work. And I think we make the workplace environment fun too. It is fun to come to work. Winning of course helps nobody, I said lose, but that's really it, man. We just come in and we know our job is to win a football game, just win one game and then you try to stack bricks that way and then you end up with a house, something nice and stable. But like I said, man, I think we got a really good thing going and just this is a good problem to have, have all this rest. It'd be different if you need guys and it's like, ah, we kind of need you to rush back or whatever because we need to win these games. But it's like, no, we are in a great situation and we just, like I said, just come to work and then everything else will take care of itself. I've had on people from the Argos, especially like Mike Hogan was on a couple of weeks ago, voice of the team there and historically speaking and a lot of this stuff is before you or I were even a thought in anyone's world, but the Argos are doing things right now, historic. Do you guys care? Do you know? I mean I know it's one week at a time and one win at a time. I get what you're saying though. I mean everybody is telling you how great you are when just last year it was a different story and even this year it could have been a different story, but that comes with the pro game man, whenever you high or you're doing good, they want to tell you how great you are when you're not and they want to tear you down. So it is been cool though. I had no idea. I think somebody told me we have the best start out of any Argo team in history. I had no idea. But it's like when you hear stuff like that, it's cool man. It's like you want to hear it but you got to just take it with a grain of salt. It's like that didn't just happen. A lot of work went into that. So I just think, like I said, everybody is on board with what we're doing and we just got a great atmosphere here man, and I think we'll keep it going. Curious your thoughts on where you're at. You're someone and we followed you back with the xfl and going up to the cfl and working your way onto the roster here. We were in Regina last year when Toronto won the Great Cup. We were there covering it to feel like the journey you've been on. Where does it feel like now sitting where you're at and how do you feel? Yeah, man, I'm just really appreciative of the career that I've had. I've seen different types of football, met a lot of great people in different places, learned a lot over the game and learned a lot about myself as well. I think last year with the xfl being cut short, last season was my first season playing a full football season since that. So for me, getting through that and going through that, I was really excited, man, I was on a high even after the Great Cup, I was on a high for maybe a couple months. It was just a great feeling, man, to be back a part of something and actually contributing football is a team sport. One person can't win it all. So for me, I just try to be the best that I can be, make the different types of plays that present themselves for me, whether it be a block for somebody else, a first down catch or even a route that's to get somebody else open. I understand I guess this point of my career and being one of the leaders on the team of the receiver group, how important everyone's job is. So I guess it is more team success. I really just want to win. Winning is fun when you win, coming to work is fun. When you lose it is stressful. So I just try to be the best example that I can be. I think that's where I'm right now. Of course there are things that I would still love to do. I still think the physical shape, I'm fine, I'm great and it's just controlling what I can control really. I think it's a great situation here and I feel really wanted because this was really the first team with Hamilton, but that didn't work. That didn't Work well. You Argos hate the tie cats anyway, so make it works out man. It's so crazy man. I don't know what it is. It's just something man. It's just something. But I feel like I'm in the right place for me and I feel like just where I am in my career, I'm in a really good position. I just try to take it day to day and control what I can control. I can't throw the ball to myself. I can't call the play. So it's like just control what you can control man. And that's really what I try to let everybody else know around me because it can get frustrating going through a long season. Maybe things not going how you want it to go, but I think if you can have that mindset because it applies to more than just football. It's like a life is life and just taking that, I hate to say day to day, but that's really, we harp on that. That language is being spoken every day here man, just want to know man, it's a new day, it's a new play. You make this play work as good as it can. Then the next play, it's a new play. So that's really how I take it. How much do you attribute where you're at now to your time in the xfl and just alternative leagues in general, having that opportunity for guys? Yeah, I think it's great for guys that may not have gotten a shot or the chance that they wanted or thought they were going to get. It's a great way to just, I wish more guys understood that. It is professional though you're a pro so you should handle yourself professionally, work on your craft. Still the same as if you were getting ready to get drafted. But I've been able to, I think I say the mental fortitude of it all, just going back and forth and kind of that covid thing, man, it was so much uncertainty, but it was just like, I'm just grateful that when I got the chance to play again, I really appreciated it. So I think that helped me, just the different experience. And it's funny because I'm only 27, but in the locker room and in football terms I'm like an old guy. So it's weird. But yeah man, I'm one of the oldest receivers we have. And then the experience that I have and I guess my level of play I can be counted on. I'm being considered as an older, more veteran guy and this is my second year playing cfl football. It's like you're a veteran though, so I appreciate all that it comes with though. Last question from me. What would be, as someone that has just had to fight your whole way upright and even get into the cfl, get into the Argos working your way up, what would be your advice to guys, we have a lot of players in all these leagues and here you're someone that never gave up, worked through Hoist in the gray last year. What would be your advice to those other players? Yeah, man, I think when you go through every high school college player thinks they're going to go to the N F L and thinks they're going to play 10, 15 years, signed two or three contracts, man. But it's like you don't, and even though the numbers suggest that when you get there, you realize the turnaround. It's like every year it is new people on new teams, just new obstacles you got to overcome. But just when it doesn't go as planned, you can question yourself. Even though you could, in my case, have the most yards and catches in Virginia Tech college history. So it's like you can play ball man, you know how to ball. But it's like when things don't happen that way, you can just start to doubt and start to look externally when you should be looking internally more just control what you can control, man. That's how you show up. That's the effort you put forth and really that's it. And once you are okay with that, then it's like everything else can just happen because I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to do to make it happen. People say you got to be at the right place at the right time or it's who you know, not what you know. It's like you can't control none of that, bro. So the more you think about the things you can't control, the more upset you're going to be. It's like, oh, I'm better than him or I should be on this team playing it. It's like none of that matters because at the end of the day that's not the situation. So the real situation is what you're in, how you wake up, how you attack work. I need to go to the gym today. I don't feel like it, I'm still no, go to the gym, handle your business. And that's really all I can, that's the biggest thing I would let guys know. Well Cam, I appreciate it. It's been awesome watching your journey. I'm glad we could finally get you on here. I appreciate Chris setting it up. I have a feeling we'll be seeing you in Hamilton. We have our flights booked, so I have a feeling we'll be seeing you there. But good luck with everything. We'll be watching and keep killing it. I appreciate it. Thank you so much man, for the time and interest man. Thank you so much and I hope the podcast and everything continues to go for you, man. Awesome. Thank you Real, really appreciate all of our guests today, Andrew Murray, making time after work watching I presume Thursday night football here with a side eye doing everything to bring you guys the latest F L and usfl merger news. I never thought I would say that. Still kind of getting used to that. And then of course Derek Taylor making time on the bi-week in Cam Phillips after practice in the locker room always means a lot in the Argonauts for facilitating all of that. So thank you guys so much. Really appreciate that. That should do it for me today. We're going to keep tracking this as news comes out. I have a big cfl guest and one of the T S N members coming on next week talking cfl work on some more cfl player interviews. And then of course we'll be covering all of the xfl and usfl news merger talks here. Latest news, like I said, like and subscribe. Doing the shorts, doing the live streams, doing the episodes like this every Friday. So we'll see you guys next time. Have a safe weekend. Enjoy the cfl slate of games and take care.

XFL & USFL to MERGE Ahead of 2024 Seasons, Which Teams Survive and What's Next?!?

Well here we are. Here we are. Interesting times here. I think the episode title for Friday is going to be Jim Carrey and that me, myself and Irene, like Here we go again. Live through this. Live through the entire XFL CFL merger talks. Could have pushed me over with a feather yesterday driving to work. Listener Seth text me. I see it pop up. I'm driving XFL and US L to merge. Not kidding, I saw Sam Shady posted in the group chat. Mark's article quoting Axios. This is wild. Wild times crazy. Yesterday I was filming, happy to get on today. I did my little instant YouTube shorts reaction yesterday talking and kind of trying to get, I was stuck filming a conference for the last three days, like 12 hours filming every day. Happy everybody could stop on today, but it was funny, I was watching all the content creators yesterday going crazy and I'm like, dang it. I built this podcast talking merger talks. It's kind of like Dr. Dre. Everybody acts like they forgot about DRE because we are here. Evans standing by Anthony Miller's going to be coming on. Mike Mitchell's going to be coming on if people want to call in. We got comments going to be wild here probably for hour 15 or so. We'll see how we do. Evan, how are you doing? This is the wildest timeline. Time is a flat circle. All the different things right now. Yes, it's a wild time and I'm still stunned that this is even up for consideration. I understand that we have to keep in mind this news is not official. It has not been announced by either league. We're going off a lot of rumors right now, but there is a lot of evidence to believe that this will happen and obviously the timeline. I think being one of the more surprising things, like I put out a tweet saying that I never really thought this was totally possible, but we've obviously brought it up in discussions many times, but that was for way down the line, I mean 2025 at the earliest, but now that we're already looking at this after only one full season of XFL play and two seasons of USFL play, that's a major development for all of us and not something that I expected. It's very interesting to see how fast this has developed. I mean it went from really nothing at all to boom. There's an article out that's got all these details in it, but you can tell it's happened fast because there's a lot of people in both leagues that from what I understand, have not been read into the situation. So definitely a quickly changing time for sure. Definitely a lot on the plate here and excited to dive into it and go through some of the details or at least all the details that we can cover in an hour and 15 minutes because there are a lot of questions surrounding this topic and even myself, my mind is still spinning, racing through all the possible scenarios. I guess we should just preface here, so we have the Axios article, right? Scoop Football League executive L and U S L and merger talks. Like I said, Seth is sending this to me yesterday. It's weird whoever you talk to and I know Mike's been talking to people and he's going to be joining. Anthony I think is going to be on here at the top of the hour. I've heard Mike said they were talking in July. They've been talking since post F L USFL, champ chip game in July. Talking through that, I've had listeners I post on Facebook, I was just emailing ticket rep people last week for both the F L and the USFL. I'm like, they didn't know about this and I've been texting people and like you said, whoever you talk to, it's either been going on since July or going on, not at all. Obviously the article here talking written by Tim Inger, Dan EK and Sarah Fisher talking. The most surprising thing about this obviously is the pre 2024 is when this is planned to take place because obviously like you've said, we've talked and okay for years and this is going to be a five-year plan, a 10 year plan. Obviously everyone, I predicted this, everybody's talked about this happening sometime down the road, nobody, and they're like, wow, this dream is thought 2024, this is happening. The speed of that surprise you Evan, that we're going at this. I mean we're September right now, we're already doing season ticket deposits for the Vegas Pipers and even that was already in question. Oh absolutely. In the words of Drake, zero to a hundred. Real quick, man, this is I again, just so many things to think about and to the casual fan who doesn't follow these leagues, I think it's very interesting because I've seen a lot of comments for people who don't understand that there is a big separation between the two. There's people who think that they're the same thing, they can't tell the difference between the other, so for them it really doesn't matter that much. But I've gone on record for one several times saying that this was impossible, that this would never happen. The egos are too big, they get in the way. Both leagues have quietly taken shots at one another and I believe at one point Danny Garcia acknowledged that the existence of the USFL, it was a question that was brought up about competition and even on the USFL side of things. I think Darrell Moose Johnston has brought up things like in terms of ratings, he was very open at the end of the 2023 season and I think the reality here is there was to an extent some disappointment on both sides. You also get a lot of these people who are, well, the XFL is coming to save the USFL and the S F L is coming to save the XFL. It's not either of those. It's meant to be an equal partnership as this article states where both leagues can benefit. Obviously we don't have the details yet. We don't know what any of this is going to look like, but this isn't really one league I think trying to completely dissolve the other or a buyout or anything like that. I mean that would be a completely different scenario you have to keep in mind now this whole talk, yes, they've been talking since I think the date was July 1st and it was Redbird capital from the XFL who reached out to the USFL about this situation to see if there would be any interest. And if you want to go into how this started further, I believe Mike Mitchell was the one who was saying there were two personnel people or football ops people on either side of either league that kind of came together, had the idea discussed it, brought it to a higher level, and those people at the higher level who had greater control over things said yes, this might actually not be a bad idea and we do have some level of interest. So again, I think that's kind of the initial knee jerk situation from again what we've been able to gather. But again, very, very interesting. And the timeline as you've pointed out, that was the main question for 2024. I don't think anybody really saw that as a possibility and the logistics would be difficult enough even if they announced the merger now for 2025, I feel like again, the logistics would be very difficult to figure that out, but the fact that they want to do this in less than a six month timeframe is staggering and I have doubts if they're going to be able to pull that off at least in the way that they want it to. Maybe the best way I can wrap my head around it now is maybe they have some sort of tier system. It's like, well in 2024 we're going to have tier one of the merger that involves some elements that are easier to put together in the timeframe that we've allowed and then maybe in 2025 you move into tier two, which is a full merger or merger to whatever extent that they had an idea of in the first place. So again, there's a lot of scenarios that could happen there. I'm sure we're going to be talking about plenty of hypotheticals as the show goes on, but again, ultimately that timeline that they've put in place is very short and maybe what ends up happening again is whatever the full merger is just isn't exactly what we think it is and there's a lot less terms around it because I think in a lot of people's minds you immediately jump to it's going to be one big league and all the operations are going to be put together. That's very possible. But at the same time, that's not stated anywhere. That wasn't a part of the initial release. It wasn't we're going to have one big league with all these teams. None of that's laid out yet. Right now it's just both sides are talking towards an agreement and the talks have advanced since they began in July, which a lot of people did not know about, and therefore that's why this news seems so sudden, even though it's been nearly, I guess what, three months since this has begun. Which again, if you think about it, if both sides of both leagues have been talking for three months, then maybe there is a bit more truth to the situation then if they just started talking yesterday and then you go from there. That would just seem silly. But I think just my last bit about the timeline, and this doesn't really have to do with 2024, but it actually has to do with this year. One of the things that I thought about when I initially heard this news was I XFL season ended in May, right? You had the championship game in mid-May and then the report about the rock losing 60 million came out end of May, early June, and this 60 million, the rock, that whole number connection whatever has been a big piece throughout this XFL off season. You have been talking about that at nauseum saying this is going to be the downfall of the XFL. They can't afford to lose that much money. You've already seen the XFL change some of their operations. They laid off a lot of their marketing people and now you have coaches, at least position coaches moving into seasonal seasonal employment or part-time employment where you were only being paid during the season. So there are cost cutting measures that already seem to be in effect. There's some restructuring that has already gone on quietly, and I find it interesting that a couple weeks after this report came out about the rock losing 60 million that Redbird reached out to the USFL saying, Hey, would you be interested in developing a relationship and possibly merging elements of our football operations together? So that whole 60 million number and the timing and this possibly becoming a merger. My theory behind this, and again this is not going off anything that I know, this is just what my thoughts have kind of led me to create some sort of conclusion here in the moment when we don't have a ton of information on paper, is I wonder if, I don't think that 60 million number ever signaled that the XFL is not going to have a season in 2024. I think anybody who thinks that or thought that the league was going to shut down, then they don't know what they're talking about. But I think it signified maybe if they were going to have a season in 2024 that they were going to have more change than they initially planned for. They thought that there was going or they believed that there would have to be more of a shift for the season to happen the way that they would want it. And in order to do that, perhaps that's why they're pursuing this merger. That's the best way I can think about it right now. Again, I don't think that 60 million number will matter much in the long run. Again, it was a big deal. A lot of people were talking about it and some people still talk about it, but I do think it could have played a role as to why all of this has happened the way that it has. And again, I can't get over that sort of timing where just a couple of weeks after the XFL season, you have redbird reaching out in what seems to be sudden and now clearly I guess things may have been going on for the past couple months that we didn't know about. Even some people in the leagues clearly didn't know about, and now you're this area where it feels, I mean they were saying something could come out as soon as this week, next week. I mean you're really talking about not a lot of time here, but if you think about, again, nearly three months of discussion behind closed doors, we don't know what's happened. So again, a lot of uncertainty, but with the timeline specifically, there's a lot of surprises there as well. Yeah, let me get a couple things Anthony standing by. I'll bring him in a minute. Paul gave it to you a little super. You could do a little super chat on here. Really hope to keep the USFL brand leaving the $2. A couple of things before we get into all of this, a lot of people watching, a lot of people watching on Twitter, just make sure you like and subscribe, but really appreciate it. I know these are a lot of our normal listeners and Jenna's on here and Harrison's on here and Max and Brett and everyone, but we've been here every week. This is week 163 talking the XFL USFL CFL, saw a lot of people come out the woodwork yesterday and oh, there's stuff to talk about, like we've been carrying the flag this whole time. Just appreciate that. There's a lot of work that goes into this. Evan comes on a lot of these shows, Anthony comes on and Mike Mitchell who's going to be joining us. It takes a family, it takes a village to kind of get this going. So I really appreciate that. Just before we get too deep into it, really this was an interesting article because the only thing that was definite that we know is that they said that it was going to be structured as a merger of equals would require regulatory approval. Well, I don't think there's big antitrust things we're going through here and then games would be broadcast split between Fox and Disney because obviously Fox owns that, whatever, we don't know where N B C would lead it, be left with that. They're paying Fox and a lot of a good portion of the money that Fox is getting quoted as a non insubstantial amount of money is coming from N B C for that. But just curious to me, with this AIO report, like Evan said, I think more things will be coming out, but those were the definite things We knew merger of the equals, so I e, it's not XFL absorbing USFL or USFL absorbing XFL and then obviously the broadcast slate. I was glad, very glad to have a non league branded specific podcast for this very reason. We went through this with the CFL and we've been through these merger talks before that got drug out for four months. I'm hoping that F the XFL S F L talks don't go on as long as the XFL and the CFL talks did. Although we got a lot of podcasting out of that. But really curious, just my last thought, we'll get to Anthony here. It's so weird where all of these things have been in the works. We had Russ Gilio on the podcast. He's was director of scouting. I can never remember his specific title. Vice president of football officiating or whatever. We did the showcases, we did the draft, we're doing the supplemental stuff. It feels like we're kind of rolling. If anything U SS F L really goes kind of dark in the off season where XFL is, Hey, we're doing this and they're still tweeting out. We've got showcases coming up and the teams are still tweeting out, Hey, even today I tweeted XFL, the Battle Hawks and the Renegades both tweeting out, we're doing local charity events, local ticket things, and being the part of the community like XFL, it just seems like business is normal. Just feels like a very odd time for this all to be coming about. Anthony, what do you make? Anthony covers the renegades. We know the team over there and everything else. What do you make of all of this? Still trying to process it. I feel like I'm going to be the doom and gloom guy, but while this is all very exciting that this is something we've been talking about behind the scenes for a while and oh man, I'd love to see the Xon U S F O merged together. While it's exciting, I also think this is desperation time. I think both leagues have to make this happen. This is not like when the XFL was talking to the CFL about whatever partnership it was. It wasn't the end of the world. If it didn't happen, this could be the death of either one or both leagues if this doesn't come through. So I think this is a very telling sign for me that really shows that both leaks financially are in trouble. It may not be in depth. I don't know how much in trouble they are, but it's enough for them to entertain the idea where there's been subtle shots taken at each other from the XFL and the USFL side for now. They're like, okay, let's put our differences aside and let's see if we can make this thing work. So for me, if the X F O and USFL can't get it happen, I'm going to be honest, I think next year is the last year we're going to see both leagues survive because either one is going to survive for 2025 or both are going to die after 2024. So I hate to be the doom and gloom guy, but this is desperation time. They need to figure out how to make this work, whatever capacity it is, whether it's just having eight teams, if it's having 16, whatever it is, however they need to work it out, they need to happen now on the exciting part is they can utilize each other's relationship. I mean, you just talked about the television deal. We can finally stop complaining about all the crappy cable games we've been getting on FX and ESPN two and FSS one. We wouldn't have to put up with that anymore. This is a great opportunity for those leagues to be like, we could put almost every single game on national television. They can put it on box, they can put it on N bbc, they can put it on A B, C. Maybe you put a game on E s, ESP N or ESPN two here and there, but this would solve the television problem where you're going to do really well in the ratings. So I think in that aspect, that's massive. I think it's going to be a big win for them. Hopefully it can push some of these USFL teams if they bring some that don't have a home, finally you can get a home stadium to them. But it sounds like a lot of them that don't have home stadiums or may not make the cut for the league, but it may force some of them to do that. So I think at the end of the day, like I said, this has to happen. I don't know what needs to be done. I don't know what egos need to be put aside, but I think both leagues realize if this conversation doesn't end with them actually merging, I think we're looking at the end of spring football. I've seen it too many times with the Alliance of American football with the U F L with so many spring leagues in the last couple decades where finances have always doomed them and I think we're getting close to this. Doesn't happen. It's going to be the same ending for them. Let me give a comment. We'll go back to Evan. Yeah, it's interesting and I would just love to know and have candid and kind of frank conversations with a lot of the stakeholders in both of these leagues because I remember when Paul and I launched a channel, I mean whether are we talking 163 weeks ago now? I remember we recorded the first episode and it's like the X L is back. I'm like, man, we're going to put this thing on YouTube. We're going to get thousands of you. It's going to be crazy. I can't wait. And this is a really, really niche thing. And even I have clients now in my professional world and they're like, oh yeah. I'm like, oh, we have 2,800 subscribers. Oh, it, it's a really niche thing and especially the hardcore fans, you're going to be doing this. I just am always curious what the expectations were. I do think Fox thought we were going to commit, like we're going to blow this out of the water. This is going to be the next big thing and we're going to be able to fill content and get millions of viewers, especially when they kind of did the first season on their own and oh, we did 3 million for the kickoff and simulcast. We'd love to know with Danny and Rock and Jerry and everybody thought with the XFL, like, man, we're going to come in. We've got highest selling spirit in the world. We just launched an energy drink. Anything we touch, this is so niche and I've never thought gotten that either one of these networks or not networks, leagues really get how niche the product is. Evan, thoughts on that or anything else? I'll just toss to you. Yeah, well now that we've kind of gotten the initial knee jerk, there's an actual discussion of these leagues possibly merging out of the way. I've been trying to think about a lot of the positives and the negatives about what a merger would look like. And as Anthony's already pointed out, I think one of the main reasons why a merger would even be a discussion is because of television deals and ratings. It's no secret that for both leagues this year was somewhat of a disappointment when it came to just viewership and overall interest. Like Reed, you said it's niche, it's so niche, and I think sometimes maybe the leagues don't totally realize that they're so caught up in football ops and everything. You kind of forget like, hey, how many people are actually watching what we do? So I think a leading reason as to why this merger is even being discussed is because, and again, Anthony said it already, but they would be able to put all the games of this combined league onto bigger platforms and you don't have to deal with again, fx, e, espn, two things like that where it's just you're going to be able to get the product in front of more eyes and we all know how much viewership and TV ratings can determine the survival of these leagues outside of the biggest glaring topic or perhaps issue in some cases, which is finances. I mean that's in every football league and every aspect of those operations, it's all about how much money do you have and how are you spending it and where does it go and what does the budget look like? So that I think is a positive. If you merge the two leagues together, you'll be able to get a better overall TV deal and you'll be able to get whatever product is put together in front of more people, which I think is good. But the main negative I see from this merger is if they're trying to do this for 2024, which is what the report has stated, doing that with all 16 teams between two leagues to me seems impossible. And even if they wanted to have 16 teams in 2025, I don't know. That also seems very farfetched to me. And you have to keep in mind because the U SS F L has stuck to their hub format for the past two seasons. I understand they have expanded the hubs into different cities, but they're not in all of their home markets yet. I don't see how that would work out where they would be able to get all those existing teams that don't have a home stadium into their markets by 2024. Even past that, I think the USFL was pretty firm on sticking to their hubs for the 2024 season, even though that was against what a lot of people wanted. And then so what you ultimately come to once you've determined all that is it's two things. It's I think we can all agree that it's not going to be a 16 team league in the merger. My educated guess would be that there's 12 teams, and to be honest, there could be even less. There could be 10 or maybe if they're really being frugal, they just go to eight and they figure out which markets are the best between where they've already been. But personally, I think this is a 12 team league. I think you're going to cut some teams and the ones that are going to be cut are ones that either don't have a home or are in a competing market like Houston. I was talking yesterday about how I think the gamblers in this situation would be the team that gets axed because they don't have an existing presence in the city of Houston. I understand there is a historical element there that the gamblers were in Houston in the 1980s, but I highly doubt anybody in Houston was really involved with the gamblers because they weren't playing there with the roughnecks. At least you've had two seasons between 2020 and 2023 of established brand familiarity. And while I understand that the roughnecks are moving stadium, they're going over to RICE next year from what we've been hearing due to renovation. So they don't necessarily have a place locked down either. I still feel like the roughnecks are safe. I mean, again, people might not want to hear this, but I think again, based off everything I've seen and everything that I've looked at, there are more USFL teams here at risk. Now, the Vipers, yeah, I don't know about the Vipers. They're exploring their options, Arizona, Tennessee, I don't know. We don't know a whole lot about that. That in itself, there's a lot of uncertainty about that franchise moving forward, just like there's a lot of uncertainty about this merger happening and what the details are going to look like. But the U SS F L, again, you go back to their hub format and the fact that they haven't even two years into the league's existence have not been able to get each individual team into their home market in a merger situation where the other league has already been in home markets for a year and you still have, again in the USFL teams that are going on year three and they still don't have a place to play in their designated city. That puts the USFL at a real disadvantage here, and I would not be surprised if I understand that the most equal way to do this in a merger that involved 12 teams would be to get rid of two XFL and two USFL. But something tells me that, again, despite whatever's going on, that the USFL teams are more at risk, even the ones that do have played in their whole market. I look at Michigan, I think they were in Ford Field, which given the fan reception that the USFL has and their unfortunate lack to fill certain stadiums, I don't know what happens to Michigan. And then obviously the teams that don't have a home, the breakers I could see going away because they haven't played in New Orleans. There's this whole situation again that was obviously weird in the USFL last year, but even weirder now in a merger where USFL has this huge focus on Canton but never actually established a team there. So that puts Pittsburgh and New Jersey I think at risk because again, neither of those teams have gotten into a whole market. Do you scrap the Canton Hub entirely or do you somehow merge Pittsburgh and New Jersey into one entity so you could play them in Ohio? Again, all these questions that we're going to, there's a lot to break down, but again, for me, one of the glaring things here is what's going to happen to some of these teams. And I feel like, again, the USFL, because they were hesitant to move into designated markets because of their budget, I don't know. That might mean that a lot of the USFL teams that we've seen might not be around. And again, I understand not every XFL market is great either. I want to be fair here, I understand Vegas didn't work out clearly. It looks like they're not going back there barring some last minute miracle or if they can't get in anywhere else, I understand all the XFL markets aren't great, but when you've at least been in a city for a year and you have some brand familiarity, I think that means you're a bit safe as opposed to bringing in a team like in the USFL where say like, yeah, the Houston gamblers, it's like, okay, but the gamblers have never played in Houston. So it would be very strange to bring a team there and maybe perhaps, well, I'm not saying again, I don't think the roughnecks are going anywhere, but to bring a team in there and get rid of another one where there's already an established presence, that just doesn't make much sense to me. So that's one of the roadblocks you run into with all this, and that's the most glaring issue to me. Again, I've got a lot of other thoughts, but again, I'd say merging leagues for a TV deal would be the biggest positive, but the biggest negative is you are probably going to get rid of some teams. And obviously what that means is guys are going to be put out of a job if you take away four teams from this new league, well that's four rosters and four coaching staffs that are just kind of left saying, Hey, if this merger is supposed to be a benefit and we're supposed to be keeping spring football alive for a couple more seasons, how is that a benefit if I'm out of a job and I'm not able to make money doing football? So now this is a separate conversation where for me as a football personnel guy, Let's get let's into that in a minute here. We got a lot of different stuff, Alright, it's be a Long night, it's going to be a long night, Be a long. And David brings that up. He says here, thanks for the special coverage. My first instinct was worried about the health of the leagues and concerns for, I mean that was one of the first things that came out like, hey, U S N L, they got their C B A as a union. Are they going to be happy with losing these teams? A couple of quick things. I did like this. It's a no brainer maybe to move the gamblers to Vegas. That's almost too tongue in cheek Will, talking about moving the Portland breakers, I tell you the New Orleans breakers go away. There's a small child crying somewhere in the basement, wherever that takes place. I'm curious about that. The interesting thing, and I'm going to get Anthony's thoughts on this, Mike's already talking about that in the group chat. I don't know if he's reporting it, whatever, but at least in the group chat, hey, get used and we're going to get Mike on here. He's wrapping up, get used to an April kickoff talking like, Hey, we got a lot of time, we don't have a lot of time. We got February and they push everything. Obviously they gives him another three months. What do you make of that in terms of extending maybe kicking the can down, giving them some more time to get this all figured out? It's so tough because I think the players benefit better from a February through may schedule because they have more time to heal up their bodies. They have time to sign with N F L teams, they have time to go to mini camps and get tryouts with the USFL schedule you're running from April through July and that can be a challenge on trying to get onto an N F L roster, especially right before training camp. I mean at the same time, weather is going to be better. I think television ratings going to be better. Look, you won't have to compete with March Madness. We saw the impact that college basketball's March Madness had on the XFL, how bad the ratings were that weekend. It was the worst weekend of ratings when they had to compete with it. And then you have games like on a Thursday night, you're watching Seattle and Houston at nine 30 at night and you have fans staying up till 12, one o'clock trying to watch a game. That doesn't logistically make sense. I think from a television rating perspective, the league has a much better chance of winning the ratings battle if they're in the summer because there's not going to be any new episodes of TV shows. You're only really competing with Major League baseball. You might have to compete with the N B A playoffs and stuff like that. But from a television perspective, I think it's better to do April through July. I think you have a better chance of winning in that aspect. But I think you put the players in a position where they don't have time to heal up before training camp and they're going to take more of a beating. So there may be less of a chance for them to make an N F L roster. I mean we've already seen the impact. We've seen more XFL players get signed than USFL players this year because the XFL finished their season early and N F L teams got up to a fast start signing them right at the beginning of May. So we saw an impact on that aspects. But then again, if you're going to play these teams in colder weather conditions, you probably want to play in the summer. You probably don't want to play February through May because you have a shot at, if you have a team in Philadelphia, if you have a team in Canton and Detroit, whatever it is, you're going to run into some bad weather through it. So I don't know, I'm very split on it. I don't like the USFL schedule, but if they want to win the television battle, I think it's better to do it April through the summer. I like and we've talked about this, I mean it really is two sides of the same coin. I think with them both having different positives to bring to this where the XVE has some of the established fan bases, much as we want to tout the trademarks or the USFL owns. I think the battle HOKs in 2023 carry a little bit more cache than owning, like we've said, the Houston gamblers kind of trademarks or whatever with that, before I forget, we have almost a hundred people watch on the YouTube here and the people on Twitter and everything else. Just make sure you give it like the video here and make sure you're subscribed. Just appreciate that. But we've got good viewership here on a Wednesday. Wasn't sure how this would turn out, but yeah, if everyone could give it a like and what do they say? Thumbs up, turn the bell and all that. And I did have, where was it? Oh, I like to respond to negative comments as well. This Mark guy's going crazy in the chat. I hope it's not Mark Perry under a pseudo name. This kid talking, I assume that's you. Evan is more on the X l lost 60 million. The s l show, the profit, it's whatever the SS L wants to do. Tell me you don't know how startup businesses work without telling me you don't dunno how startup businesses work. U S L is owned by Fox who's able to write off a large portion of everything that they do. A through Fox B having their commentators, announcers, TV people, social media people, web people, everybody working. They're already employed by Fox continuing to do that work for the USFL XFL hired, what was it, 108, Anthony, what was the number they had when they had the big town hall of how many people? They had like 800 people they had hired over the course of the year. Yeah, something like that. Hiring 800 people starting establishing. So get out of here with that nonsense. The USFL lost money too. They just know how to, it's not cooking the books, but it's like I had to go film yesterday and get some money. I'm able to charge my parking and expense it to the company because I'm doing it for work. Get out of here with that. I'm really tired of the L loss. 60 million. I'm like that's some sort of blight on the earth. Evan, we'll toss back to you. Any thoughts on that or any other continuation? Yeah, I mean a couple things. I don't know. I mean look man, comment like that. I mean again, I said earlier it's not about USFL saving the XFL or XFL saving the USFL. I don't know why that's so difficult to get through people's heads. Again, I've also said before, don't focus so much on that 60 million number. Okay, I understand it's important. I understand it might mean more to some people than others, but at the end of the day it's a number I've said before, I never thought that that was going to affect the league too much going into the 2024 and I still don't, even with these merger talks, it might change some things a bit in the way that they go about things. But X L's handling that and life goes on. What I was going to point out earlier, what I want to get back into, well, I'll briefly touch on the schedule here too. I think the February to may schedule is probably the best option. Again, you give more guys time, the rest in the summer to go on the N F L and even for other leagues, I work in arena football, our season goes through July. So you want to play outdoor ball and then you still want to do something after come midseason if there's a spot and stay healthy whatever. And then obviously CFL season starts in June. So some guys maybe, depending on how the contract clauses work, can go from one of those leagues here in the US to the CFL. I mean I understand this might not be a direct example, but Darnell sank you who played in the XFL with Arlington this season is back in the CFL now signed with Montreal. Now obviously that was much later. He just signed last week and the XFL season ended in May. But you get my point, if there's still guys that come down from Canada to play in these leagues, maybe there's still an option for them if they finish in May to go back up there and play another full CFL season depending on how the contract clauses work and if they are granted a release to go do that. The other thing that I'll touch on here too, talking about other leagues and how this kind of connects for people who don't know, I do football personnel work in the I F L with the Vegas Nighthawks arena football, and I've gotten questions from people about how this affects what I do. And I think about if the league goes to 12 teams and there are four teams that don't exist anymore, for lack of a better term, you will be able to get, I guess it's a benefit for me in a sense because I will be able to, I have an opportunity to bring some of those guys in. You don't know who's going to be available, but you have an opportunity if you like some of those guys that might get left out of this to bring them in and to come play arena football, you give them another opportunity. But that's not really how it should work. I'm not saying that's obviously it makes it easier for me, but in the reality, taking opportunities away from guys is going to be a very difficult challenge if they do downsize, which I think is going to happen. And then the other thing I think about from the football sort of personnel perspective is this is something, again, it's not really at the forefront of a lot of people's minds, but I know I thought about it kind of off the jump yesterday when I first saw the news was the I F L has a partnership with the XFL and it's a rather quiet partnership, but it is one that has developed, and I was at the combine between these two leagues in August in Vegas, the I F L XFL combine and that event, there were a lot of people there, but ultimately it was a success and I think it was one of the first major things that these two leagues did to really make it be known that that partnership does exist. Because again, a lot of people weren't queued in on that. And I understand, again, this isn't probably something a lot of people are thinking about in the bigger picture, but I would say it's important because from that combine, there were several I F L players that were picked up by the XFL, one of the most notable being M V P TJ Edwards, the quarterback from the Frisco fighters who was picked up by the San Antonio bras. So I guess my biggest question on the personnel side now is if the XFL and USFL were to merge, aside from the whole number of teams debate is would that partnership still exist between our game, which is indoor arena football and this I guess whatever new version of the outdoor league that we have? Yeah, I'm just glad that we'll see some real football here in the February. I'm excited about it all I wanted to say here, where's the comment I had? I have it started. Ryan's talking National Streak Football League tm. I will say I was mad. I was sitting there last night, how do I get on this? I was sitting there last night and I was thinking, boy, oh boy, I sure wish I wouldn't have abandoned my trademark for the National Spring Football League that I owned for about six months until the trademark office emailed me. And they're like, so what are your intentions with this trademark? Do you plan on establishing the league? They had this whole litany of questions I had to fill out and they're like, where are you going to operate out of and what time of year and how many coaching personnel? And I'm like, I'm not prepared to take this gimmick too far, but if they want to use that name, I think the National Spring Football League would be a good one. Anthony, what do you got here? Coaching staffs. What do you want to talk about teams? Do we want to talk about time of year? Do we want to talk about what name stays? That's my question too. What do we do with the brand? Let me say I think the league look, we have to learn from the mistakes of past spring football leagues. If you look back at the US F L back in the eighties from season one to season two, they nearly doubled the size of the league adding all these teams and thinking, oh, well if we just add more teams, we're going to get more revenue. That's not how business works. And a lot of those teams ended up folding a lot of them. But the San Antonio gunslinger story where the players were driving speeding down the highway to try to get to the bank first so they can get their paychecks before the other players try to cash it. So we don't want a situation like that. So I know 16 teams is the sexy number and even 12 is probably the sexy number. I think if these leagues they merge, the right thing to do is eight to 10. I know that's not what people want to hear, but if you want spring football to work, we're going to have to slow this thing down a bit. It doesn't make sense to expand to keep all the teams and go to 16 because then you're going to run into the same problem you had before where each of these leagues are trying to figure out the financial part. I hate it for the players, I hate it for the coaches. Obviously I want all of them to have jobs. I want them to have their opportunities, but if spring football is going to work and it's going to work the right way, you have to go a little bit slower. I will give the USFL all the credit in the world. I've always been blunt about this. I absolutely hate the Hub city idea, but you know what? They probably are doing a little bit better financially than the XFL. The XFL went all out and wanted to be in the home stadiums so they paid a little bit extra of a price, but at the end of the day, we got to make this league work. And if they merge, I think you start with eight, maybe you go up to 10 if you feel comfortable in 2024 in terms of who stays and who goes. I don't think the Viper should exist. Just get rid of 'em. I think if you look at the Orlando guardians, sorry, I think you got to get rid of them too. They don't have the attendance numbers. I think you got to go off attendance. I mean whoever were the worst teams in attendance who are the bottom two? You get rid of them in the XFL USFL, obviously I think the Pittsburgh Mallers should go unless they're going to go to Kenton, Ohio. I'm trying to think. I mean New Orleans breakers, I don't know if they have really connection with anybody. You're going to have to get rid of teams especially, it almost feels like it has to be a little bit more in the USFL side just because they don't have the stadiums. And I hate to say that because there's actually a lot of, I think there's more pull with the names that are in the U SS F L than the XFL, but they don't have stadiums. And I think you got to go off the ones that have the stadiums have the fan base, you got to follow where the money is. And a lot of the teams in the USFL simply, I mean they have to lean heavily on Memphis. They have to lean heavily on Birmingham. They have to lean heavily on Detroit to step up and make the profit for the leagues. And the one comment about the losing 60 million, I mean the USFL, it's kind of hard to lose 60 million if you're not really making that much money in the first place because you're not getting fans in the stadium anyway, so let's just make that comment. They're not really making the money to lose 60 million, so let's just leave it at that. But I mean, my thing is if we want to make this merger, if we want to do it the right way, we're going to have to do a slow progression with this thing. So it's got to be maximum 10 teams. If you do anything over that, I think you're just going back to square one with the same problem you had before and you're going to go through financial issues. I'm curious just, and I want to get, well, there's a lot here, but because you're talking like, okay, get rid of the guardians, right? I mean that's just the knee jerk. Get rid of the guardians, Corey, they're to sales guy has been on TikTok, what do you do? I mean, I understand that it's like, and this goes for any s l team or the Vipers or anybody. Well that wasn't a big fan base. Yeah, I mean it still, Vegas had 6,000 people coming out. There's people that were working there. It's just such a weird time to do this here where we're already having the season tickets. I mean there's no real good timing to kind of pull the plug on this, but I don't know if we make an announcement like XFL and USFL are going to finish this season and then look and maybe that will be the announcement that comes out and we'll look forward to reevaluating at the end of this season. So then you don't have people buying season tickets into the next year. I just don't know what you do, how you resolve that. We have our other guest, Danny, by here. You could listen to him later or you could watch him live and interact with him now. I appreciate this very much, Mike, how the heck are you? Mike, can you hear us? You can't hear us. Mike Can't hear you guys. I dunno if you can hear me, We can hear you. I can't hear you guys at all. Okay, well I'll text with Mike here. Evan, you talk and I'll text with Mike. Alright, well I'll touch on the branding for a bit. I think we've already gone over what cities might not be there, what markets are better than others for both leagues. One of the fun ideas I had for branding, and again, this is an extremely hypothetical one, but people who know me know that I was a big fan of the Spring League T S L, which is really the springboard I think for USFL. I was Brian Woods's project and everything. I was a big fan of T S L and their teams and their branding and everything like that. Even the general's name from T S L was revived in the USFL or carried over as the New Jersey Generals. I like the T SS L brand. Very simple. The Spring League, I mean you see all this crap that's being spewed about U S XFL and I'm like, all right guys, we all know it's not going to be that. I think if they merge, there's going to be a fresh rebrand. I don't even know. I mean, you could carry one of the existing names, maybe you retain the U SS F L name, you retain the XFL name, just get rid of the other one. But of course then that creates another debate. And then this is trying to be an equal merger, but unfortunately a lot of this stuff that we've been discussing might not be very fair or equal. Again, if they just get rid of four teams and say goodbye, sorry, this didn't work out. I mean some people are going to feel like they were cheated on. They put in a lot of hard work and effort on both sides and it might just, unfortunately, if this merger does go through the way we think it will, or at least a full version or whatever, some people are going to get left out, people will lose jobs. And I think it's very ironic to me because the XFL calls themselves the league of opportunity. Their entire brand has been about giving players opportunities, whether it be in their own league moving up to the N F L level. Obviously that was a big talking point, but it would be very unfortunate if they, again, we've talked about XFL marketing, that's a separate discussion, but it would be very interesting if the XFL USFL merged XFL calls themselves the league of opportunity and proceeds to put a bunch of guys out of jobs. Right now, I don't really see a way around that. So I don't know. Again, there's a lot of questions and a lot of hypotheticals. Everything we're talking about isn't concrete and you have to keep in mind throughout this stream, I said it at the top of the show, but I'll say it again, at the end of the day, these are still all rumors. There's been some talks, but it doesn't mean anything has been finalized. There's not much concrete evidence. We do think that something will happen. At least I am a believer because again, some of the things that were laid out in that article, they seem concrete, they seem believable, they don't seem random or just some guy trying to make up something for clicks. There is some believable evidence there. And again, we can all agree while we didn't think something like this would be discussed this early, I mean, I feel like everybody in the back of their mind just always wonders. What if these two leagues merged? And we've joked about it at times, even had some very lighthearted discussions. And again, to people who maybe aren't as queued in on the subject, USFL and XFL are virtually the same thing for them anyway. So to them it's like, well, what's the big deal? We're sitting here freaking out on the stream and I'm spewing out all these hypotheticals and things that we think could happen when in reality people, most people are looking out and what the hell are you talking about? People can't, even at the N F L level, there were so many times you saw Shefter and Rappaport I think do it a couple times in their tweets where it was like Viking sign, USFL standout running back Abram Smith. And everyone's like, oh, great. And then we're like, well, hold on a minute. That's the wrong league getting the wrong idea. So things like that. Again, this just goes to prove the point that it's super niche and it might seem crazy for us to be saying some of these things when really one article came out and a couple of things have been piggybacked off that. And of course neither league has commented on it for obvious reasons. Again, it's a very highly sensitive subject, something like that. And again, I've put it out on Twitter, but if this is true and if this is something that is really possible for 2024, but even beyond that, even if it was 2025, this would be the biggest development in spring football. And I'm not completely against it as I've pointed out. I think it is easier to follow one league and to just have everything together and it will make it easier again, for the casual fan, someone who's not us, who isn't living and breathing these leagues all the time, to just follow the one entity and have that entity on larger major networks. Again, just makes the fan experience a bit less of a pain if you're not somebody who's a complete nerd like myself. But ultimately there's just so many logistics that you have to get through and I just can't imagine it's going to be so much work that needs to be done on so many elements. We focused on some of the more outstanding ones, some of the more glaring issues that would need to be solved immediately. But I think there's a lot of things where even if these teams merged and they played things out as a merger or they would discover certain things throughout the course of this new season with the two leagues together where it's like, Hey, maybe we need to figure this out, or this wasn't something we thought through before the merger, and well, that could potentially create some problems down the line as well. Let me bring on here. I think we got this figured out here. We got over a hundred, 110 people watching. We got our X L insider here, Mike Mitchell. Mike can hear us, I believe, like I said, like and subscribe. Thumbs up the video, make sure you're subscribed to your, Mike comes on the bunch. I appreciate him joining us live. You're answering some questions. Mike, I'm sure your phone has melted in your hand over the last few days. How's everything going? Everything's all right. My head's spinning. Good to see you guys. I know this is a hot, hot, hot topic right now. There's just so much to go over. Yeah, it's been pretty crazy. The most fascinating part of this to me is how in the dark everybody is on the USFL and XFL side. Only the bigwigs know about this. Every coach that I've talked to, offensive coordinators, assistants, personnel people, directors of player personnel, GMs, they're waiting to be briefed. They're waiting for the top big dog executives to tell 'em what's going on because they don't know what's going on, and it's a little bit fearful. The fun side of this is the possibility of this super spring pro football league that comes together. Major networks does all these things, but the scary side is that the real possibility that a lot of jobs could be lost, that we could be talking about going from 16 spring pro football league teams to 10 and then so there's really, right now there's that fear that would be a lot of jobs that are lost in this space. So while as a fan, this is like fan fiction for us, it's like something hard to believe. It's like DC and Marvel getting together kind of thing, like Superman and Hulk doing a movie together. But for us nerds, it's like that, right? But the possibility of this, I keep hearing the term consolidated league, where you have maybe four on one side that emerge and stick around and maybe six teams on the other side that stick around, and so could be fun with everybody in their markets and all that, but it's also a shame to say goodbye to the, they won't say it in the press release. The stars and the generals are going on pause. The Panthers are going on pause. That's what they'll say is the pause thing. They won't say they're going, nobody wants to hear that. There's going to be quite a bit of backlash here. If we get to the point where there's no Michigan Panthers, there's no Houston roughneck, there's a little bit of some scary scenarios, and right now a lot of it is rumors and speculation. But could you imagine AJ Smith, the offensive coordinator of the Houston gamblers? I'm not, honestly, I hate getting into rumors and speculation, but from all the crazy stuff I've been hearing, don't rule it out. I know that sounds really ridiculous, but to try to contemplate that. But right now, basically we're in this situation because I've said this a million times before, and I'm privy to all this stuff because I actually talked to people. I was surprised that Moose Johnson came out and said he was disappointed with the attendance in Birmingham. He was disappointed with the ratings for the league. I know for a fact the XFL would never want to make this public, but that's why I'm here. They were disappointed that they didn't reach their revenue markers in 2023. That was Russ. Brandon had a conference call with all the employees to explain why they were going from full-time employees to seasonal, and the reasoning behind it was they didn't reach their revenue markers. They thought they were going to do better. So the way this all worked out is there are key people in the USFL side of things, up the ladder on the football side and on the XFL side as well that have close relationships with individuals on the other side. And they suggested the possibility of a merger of the two leagues coming together, and then they pitched it upstairs to the big bosses. And then this thing accelerated because I thought it was just going to be exploratory talks, preliminary stuff. I'm thinking 2025 maybe if people can set aside egos. So the fact that there are news outlets saying that this is imminent, this is going to happen. It's very close, it's mind boggling to me. I'm still in disbelief that we're even close to this happening So quickly. What is Mike Mitchell hearing? Right, so I'll just tell you what I'm hearing. I hate doing this, but 10 teams, April start, Fox, N B C games, a, B, C games, 10 teams, five games a week. You'd have a game on A, B, C. You'd have the rest of the games on Fox and N B C. The teams that I've been hearing, I'm going to get in trouble for even going out of the limit saying all this, but the teams I've been hearing are Birmingham stallions, Memphis and Ohio based team with the generals, the stars, the Panthers, the breakers all going by the wayside, and the Houston gamblers surviving on the USFL side and then on the XFL side, I'm hearing that the roughnecks and the Vipers may not be a part of this merger. So that is scary. Now, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me to say goodbye to the roughnecks. And so what do you do about these coaching staffs? What do you do about Anthony Blevins who's just hired, he left an N F L job. It's not a guy who's about to get fired. It's not a guy who got let go from his staff. He left an N F L job with the giant. It's a sitting job to become a head coach in the XFL takes the Viper's job. What if there's no vipers? Where's he going to end up? So that's a really unfortunate side of this. So while the fun fan fiction stuff of like, oh my God, how cool is this USFL versus XFL and them being together as one league joining powers, it's fun that the negative side is you're not going to be able to make everybody happy here. There's going to be backlash with XFL and USFL fans that are upset. And then there's going to be people who lose jobs, which is the tough part of this. In a perfect world, if it were me, if they were listening to me, and it's easy for me to say because I'm not putting in the money, but I'd have a 16 team league where you'd have the USFL still in existence, the XFL still in existence, some inner conference games. They play the seasons at the same time end of the season. The XFL champion plays the USFL champion, whatever it is, Renegade stallions, battle hawk stallions, whoever it is. That's how I would do it. But I'm not in charge here. I don't call the shots. And this is a business decision. Make no mistake about it. This whole thing is a business thing. We could get into a scenario where the U SS F L side Fox saves money because they don't have to fund as many teams. The XFL side saves money. They don't have to fund as many teams. They split the cost and expenses. They're all in a hub in Arlington. How crazy would that being next year with Anthony out there in Arlington watching the stallions practice with the renegades or something like that. It'd be just the C ZR world stuff. So right now it's very difficult to believe. We live the XFL CFL stuff. So we're almost waiting for a snag to hit here. It just doesn't seem real. I don't want to use the term, doesn't seem right, but it just doesn't seem real at the moment. We're going to find out shortly enough, the XFL has a draft supposedly on October 4th. If you're going to announce a merger between both leagues. With all these teams coming together, are the stallions drafting behind the defenders and the draft order? How are we working this Reed? If you don't mind, Reid, out of curiosity, Mike, I'm really interested. You said gamblers over roughnecks. Why the gamblers when they don't? To me, they don't have the, I mean they may still have the fans at the end of the day because it's still football on Houston, but I feel like they're more connected to the roughnecks. It would not be my choice. It would not be my choice. There's no disrespect to the gamblers. I understand that they're going back four decades, 40 years, but this recent iteration of the gamblers, it doesn't play in Houston. The roughnecks have roughnecks actually have, I hate to put it this way because people think I'm being a home or something. The roughnecks actually have fans in that city, whereas the gamblers, I don't know. There are very many gambler fans in Houston. I'm sorry, I'm not from Houston, but the roughnecks have actually, they built something the last few years there. So yes, Anthony, I'm not saying a hundred percent that the roughnecks are not going to be part of the league, but I got to tell you, that's what I've been hearing and I understand right now because there's only a select few people, Russ, Brandon, Mark Ross, Doug Whaley, Eric Shanks, moose Johnson. There's only a select few people right now that know this stuff. They're happy that finally something didn't get out. They were very upset that I'm sending company-wide emails publicly on social media as directly from the president to the employees. They're not happy about that kind of stuff. So they're happy that they're able to keep this close knit and quiet to the point where I've got people on the teams contacting me, asking me what's going to happen? What have you heard? I got that from a coach on the Dragons. I've gotten that from Coach on the roughnecks. I got that from a GM in the USFL A, recently hired one. So I mean, a lot of people are asking questions they don't know. They've been kept in the dark on this. So roughnecks over the gamblers, this is not me picking one league over the other. I'd rather have the Roughnecks franchise than the gamblers. So don't, that's a question in a press conference. Whenever this press release comes out, they'd have to explain that one. They can get all cutesy in a PR thing and say Teams are on pause and we're doing this to build for the future, and all these great franchises will be back along with the dead bandits, the semi dead bandits. So that's kind of the story there. It is surprising when I heard that, it just doesn't make sense to me. I even had people today call into question the future of the Birmingham stallions in this merge league because their contract with the USFL runs out after three years and because there was disappointment on how they drew fans there and the cost issues in relation to there. So this is just bizarro world right now, trying to wrap my head around all this stuff. And normally I don't go forward with a lot of this stuff, but I just want to tell you guys what people are saying in these leagues to me and what I'm hearing, I don't have any of that stuff confirmed, but I keep hearing, like I said, 10 teams April start, and certain teams going by the wayside. You're going to have backlash on all sides on this. I know that people mock the USFL teams that are not playing in their cities, but if all of a sudden the stars are gone and all that, you're going to have a lot of people upset that those teams are, those teams are gone. I'm sorry, it may be a small majority, but there's going to be a group out there that roots for the breakers. And then what happens to all these great players? Now you got to figure a Mark Thompson, the McLeod, Bethel Thompson, west Hills, all these guys will end up somewhere. They're too talented not to end up on a team if their teams are known. The stars are announcing resigning. Luis Aguilar, I think Sam just had an article about that recently and that's awesome. What if they're in a week from now? They're not in existence for 2024. That would be very awkward, strange, weird. And I would be extremely disappointed. The whole idea of this whole merger to me is like, oh, cool. Everybody goes in their markets. So selfishly, I want to see the generals go into the tri-state area. So I'm like, oh yes, cool. I don't care where they play here the parking lot in New Jersey. I don't care less, but as long as they're in that general tri-state area rather than playing in Ohio. So part of me is, oh, cool, they're going to get a little bit of that XFL rub and put these teams in their markets that should be in their markets. No breakers should be in New Orleans, et cetera. So we're going to see how this is handled. But to make no mistake about it, this is everything they're doing is business related on both sides. They both don't see the light at the end of the tunnel and there's no guarantee that if these are separate entities that we see the USFL last beyond another season or two, and there's no guarantee that the XFL, because the XFL is adopting a lot of what the USFL has done. They're now all of a sudden the coordinators and the head coaches are supposed to be under two year deals, but all the assistance are being told, okay, you're going to be laid off. You have to file for unemployment. You're going on. Did mic freeze there? Hey Evan, let's get Mike back on. Let's get your reactions to the roughnecks. I know that's the team that you cover potentially, and this is per, I trust Mike's sources, but roughnecks not be involved in this. Let's get your reaction. I'll try to get Mike back on. Well, it would be an extremely surprising development to say the least. I would be extremely disappointed for one if the roughnecks left. But at the same time, I understand there's a lot of uncertainty and I understand that. I mean, business is business. I just think the one thing that I thought about when Mike said that about gamblers maybe being there over the roughnecks was Wade Phillips, our coach in Houston once said that he wouldn't want to coach for the gamblers because they didn't play in Houston. So it would be kind of awkward if there was a transition where the roughnecks weren't there anymore and the gamblers became the team in Houston, which keep in mind Wade Phillips in Houston. I mean that connection is like he's one of the most well-respected people in that entire city in market. So man, that would be something that's a lot to process immediately. I won't look. I understand. It's all speculation. Nothing's concrete, but yeah, I can't believe it either. When I was told this with this setup, the gamblers would play at rice, so they would be in Houston. It really make it doesn. Honestly, it's not the choice I would've made. And like I said, I would have all 16 teams there, but that's maybe the football fan in me. So I'm not saying that the roughnecks are dead here, but I'm just telling you, I'm just the messenger here. This is the stuff that I'm hearing. There's going to be some backlash here. What rules do you adopt? I keep hearing that the N F L really likes the XFL kickoff. So if the merger happens, the XFL kickoff will stay, but there's a lot of XFL coaches that like the USFL rules, they like the ability to kick an extra point. They want to be able to do a two point conversion from the two yard line rather than whatever from the five. So there's some aspects of it that XFL side would like to keep from the USFL side. And so I didn't even bring up the other stuff. The other stuff was the talk of the XFL brand, not existing anymore, the USFL brand not existing anymore and that the league becomes a whole new name. So rather, and that my friends is another backlash because the XFL has built up brand equity, love it or hate it. Paint new paint jobs from 2001 and the USFL has spent the last two years building up their brand entity. So I think it's a mistake if they all of a sudden become the National Spring Football League, go N S F L, I think you're really doing damage to your own identity, your brand identities there. I think people want that N W O W C W, that kind of Marvel DC thing. I think W W E W C W kind of thing. I think that people want to kind keep that while the two leagues merged together. So how you figure that out, I don't know, but there's some, as happy as we are as a potential merger, there's going to be some blowback and potential backlash if certain things come into play, which I don't know them for a hundred percent to be, but when I've been hearing some of this stuff, it hasn't exactly. It hasn't exactly tickled my fancy, for lack of a better term, some of the possibilities here. Especially the part about 200, 300 player jobs being gone. I want to get Mike's and then we'll toss to Anthony here. One more question. I'm going to go get some water. I'm going to listen here. I want to know what, when you're talking to the XFL people, you're talking to you. This is all coming out of nowhere, right? And you said it's just a couple and is it panicking the XFL side? Because I've messaged a couple people, but I've been working and I certainly don't have the connections you have. Are they like, oh my god, the world's burning I, and I'm sure it varies from person to person, but overall, are we excited? Is this a new venture? Are we like, man, this is the last ditch effort. We're trying to figure this out. I've been in contact with a couple of, it's been differing opinions. I've been in contact with a couple of different head coaches that are not exactly excited about this. There's some head coaches that are upset with the XFL for their new system with the assistance where they're not paying them until they show up for work. So there some, and then they were sold a lot of USFL guys who came over to the XFL were sold on the idea that the XFL was going to be a more superior league, a better run league, all this stuff. And now all of a sudden to merge with the other side. There's a little bit of a conflict. There are some personnel guys I spoke to on the flip side that are very excited about this possibility that love the idea of the league expanding. This is a way of expanding a league without actually expanding it. So to go from an 18 league to 10 or 12 or more, like I said, in a perfect world, I wish it was 16, but it doesn't sound like we're headed that way. Maybe they'll surprise us when the public relations thing go. I don't know how you guys feel about all this stuff because I'm having a hard time wrapping myself around it. How would you feel, Anthony, if I know you cover the gamblers if all of a sudden the gamblers are the replacement franchise for the roughneck in this new merge league? I mean, so I think Mike, what you said about having 10 teams starting in April, I actually think that's perfect. I know that that sucks. It's going to mean a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. But before you had hopped on, I had mentioned that I think if we want this thing to actually work the right way, they're going to have to start small. They're going to have to start with eight to 10 teams. Because I think if you try to push for 12, 14, 16, you're going to run into the same problem you had before where you're struggling financially. So yeah, perfect world, we'd love to have 16 teams, but both leagues will still have the same problem. They have to financially support these teams and they can't do it. So 10 is the perfect number. I can't wrap my head around gamblers over roughnecks. I guess I can kind of get it. I mean there's more historic Wouldn't be my choice. Wouldn't be my choice. Yeah, I mean there's more historic name brand behind gamblers over roughnecks. But again, like we talked about, people are more connected to the roughnecks over the last three, four years in Houston than they are with the gamblers. And honestly, I feel bad for Curtis Johnson. He's done a fantastic job as a head coach, but we all know he's going to get replaced with Wade Phillips. So, and AJ Smith definitely going to be the offensive coordinator. So there's a lot of good people on that gamblers coaching staff who actually did a lot better job than they thought they were going to got 'em to five and five last year with a team that was pretty awful back in 2022 and they were able to kind of flip that franchise to be in a competitive team. So a fortune, there's going to be a lot of coaches that are going to be lost out of that, but you got to think that the roughnecks coaching staff is probably a little bit stronger, so they would probably go with them, but I don't know. I mean it's wild. I mean it's just wild to think about the gamblers. I'm hoping I'm Be there over the roughnecks. Yeah, it was me personally, unless you're putting the gamblers in Austin or something like that, I would ride with the roughnecks. I know some people would think that's some kind of homer choice, but that would be my choice. I dig the gamblers' logo and their colors and I get the history and there's so many good players on there on that current team and all that. But maybe if Mark Thompson was on AJ Smith's offense, he'd actually run the ball maybe a few times at least. But yeah, so when they announced this, I think there's a chance it's going to get a lot of positive feedback from the mainstream crowd, the casual crowd that's not like us who's into these leagues and pays attention. Every little thing they're going to say, wow, that's so cool. Those two leagues merged. But for us hardcores, it's going to be tough to see certain franchises not be back and all that. And it could create, you might have USFL fans go, why the hell I wish this never happened? You might have XFL fans go, I wish this merger never happened. Where's my breakers at? Or where's my roughnecks or whatever. So hopefully they handle this correctly. I got to say both leagues, they've shown a propensity to make some big mistakes like playing in Ohio, but not having an Ohio team playing in Vegas and that disaster. So it's not like the judgment calls by the USFL and XFL side has always been sound. So hopefully they make the right calls here with their proposed merger. Evan reactions to all this, and I'm glad I didn't make the same mistake I did last year. Remember Mike, when we were on that zoom call many years, that was You were draining the sea dragon. Luckily we were never recording Evan react to all this. Well man, if my head wasn't spinning before, it's probably flying off right now. A lot of information to process right off the bat until more comes out and I talk to some people, I'm going to reserve my opinions, I will feel a certain way about it. Probably as Mike's pointed out, I hope the right decisions are made. Again, I understand business is business. We're supposed to be doing things for the greater good of continuing spring football. But I want to go back, just getting off this for a minute, I want to go back to the football personnel side of things because Mike, I don't think you were here on the stream when I was talking about it, but I pointed out that, well, there's a couple things here and maybe I can get your opinion on this. What you might think. I don't know if you even have an answer, but I'll tell you anyway. Obviously I do stuff in arena football, I F L player personnel to me, I wouldn't want anybody to lose their job. I understand some teams are going to get cut. I mean, geez, if it's six teams that end up getting cut, that's going to be a lot of guys that are out of a job. So for me, I kind of view that as a benefit because I would be able to recruit those guys, some of them into the arena game, at least guys that I know you don't know who's going to be available. But I know enough players now to where I feel like that could be maybe a possibility if those many jobs are lost. So I would be, I guess excited about the opportunity to have some of those guys come play, but at the same time, it would suck if they were just out of a job because of a merger that was, again, supposed to be a positive thing and supposed to be helpful. The other thing that I was talking about earlier was the partnership between the I F L and XFL, which I understand is a very niche thing and I'm probably more queued in on that than anybody because I work in the I F L now. But I just wonder, man, what is the future of that going to look like if there's a merger between those two? And is there still going to be some interest between a merged outdoor football league and the ARENA game? Because for a long time arena football up until, I mean other than the CFL up until the XFL and the U SS F L have come around in the past couple of years, arena football I feel like was kind of one of the only alternative options in the us and I understand that it is a bit of a different game. I'm becoming familiar with myself that now through doing personnel work. But just wanted to get your thoughts on some of that, what it might look like for the guys who, because like you've pointed out already, some of them, some of the really good guys that get displaced through a merger will get picked up by other teams in the new version of this league. But maybe for the guys that don't get picked up, I guess my question is do you think that that would help people like myself in arena football and even in the CFL, I don't think we've really brought in much of a CFL connection. Absolutely. Obviously you're tied in with that and I know you care a lot about the CFL too. Absolutely. It's funny, I just did an interview before I jumped on with you guys and I brought that up, that CFL thing. I know there's a lot of CFL fans right now. They're like dreading this that oh wait a minute, the USFL and XFL emerging, but if in fact they're going from 16 teams to 10, that opens up a lot of ready available talent to come up north. And yes as well towards the indoor leagues. It's unfortunate in the states, these players are much rad. Play in the states and play the N F L style game and be closer to home, then go up north in Canada and make a decent living. I don't know the wind bonus structure, what it's going to be like. I know some players in the XFL made close to 90,000 in the 2023 season like Abram Smith because of the wind bonus structure. I know the average salary in the US F L is 53 K. So in the indoor game, the reason why I bring up the money is the indoor game. No one's getting paid that there might be an exception here or there, but no one's going to get $90,000 or whatever. So yes, it could benefit the XFL and the USFL becoming one and having fewer teams, having 10 teams, 12 teams, 14 teams that could benefit the CFL and could benefit indoor leagues. It gives you a bigger pool, more players to scout. I know the indoor game's much different. That's awesome to you. I know of you said it a million times in group chat, congratulations to you Evan, that's really awesome that you're in that position. Thank you man. Could lead to a lot of appreciate, yeah, it could lead to a lot of things you never know. Maybe if these leagues are around, maybe one day you're working in personnel for one of the gamblers or whatever. I dunno, we'll see. But anyhow, but yes, it could be beneficial. That's one way of looking at it. So the c F guys, people who dread the XFL and USFL even existing and then merging together to try to become a superpower. That's the positive side to this potential superpower spring football league is that if they're not at 16 teams right out the gate, you're going to have a lot of talent. And these CFL teams like my 11 and one Toronto Argonauts are really good at finding American talent. And you can see that with the jevon leaks and the Diante Kie and all that. So it could benefit some of the CFL's teams if they're contracting and consolidating and they have fewer teams in spring here in America and it could benefit you in the I F L, the more leagues the merrier. I just don't think major league football is going to benefit. I don't believe Frank, me and his $50 and a bag of chips budget is going to really make a dent in this. How can they compete? Anthony, other question from Mike, otherwise I'll circle back. You don't believe in major league football, Mike? What the hell is I like the name. I like the name, I like the name, I like the name. Unfortunately it's hard to believe in those jamborees and the $50 bills and all that stuff. Is that what that could be? The name of this new league could be major league football. Just saying That's not bad. That's not bad actually. If they could just sell that off, maybe they can Finally M L F P can produce something to this landscape. This is what's hard for me here to kind of fathom. So we have literally the entire entity of this, everything about the US is tied into these trademarks. We fought over these trademarks, we've got sued over these trademarks. That was my favorite time span ever podcasting about the show. Even more so I think than the merger talks with the CFL was having Michael Cohen on doing the trademark discussions with the us but we have all that Danny in the rock and I know it's not millions and millions and millions, but 15 million, all the debt, all that stuff, we're spending all this money to acquire XFL goes the season and they're like, red Berg goes, we got to reach out to the USFL. USFL entertain this. That's what I don't get is and it is easier said than done. When you look at the books at the end of the year and you're like, man, I really thought I was going to do it this way now. It just amazes me that we have two sides that were both so bull hardd on their brands and everything. They're like, yeah, let's just do a new thing now and it's September and we're going to kick off in April. I was shocked. You're right Reid. I wish really how this all panned out. I know there's a lot of different reports and stories. Really how this all panned out is the two football sides sold it to upper management and they sold the idea. What if the two football sides came together and said, what if we were together on this? What if we came together? And so then they said it would pretty great and they said let's shoot this up the ladder. And so they pitched it up and then they helped facilitate and it started off innocently enough and they helped facilitate the meetings that took place. It wasn't Jerry Cardinal's outside of Eric Shanks door knocking, Hey dude, you got to help me out, bro. Brahma's attendance wasn't so great. Or it wasn't like the USFL going over to Jerry Carne and Redbirds offices in New York and saying, Hey man, this really sucks man. We have awesome ticket prices. We give away tickets for free and nobody freaking shows up to our games. We need help here man. Help us out. So it wasn't that, it's not that kind of one side reaching out with hat in hand kind of thing. It really was what if we put our leagues together and work together football wise and then the football guys sold it to the guys upstairs and then however this worked, they actually sold themselves on the idea. So that's the surprising part to me. I thought this would take time. Yeah, because we all could have told them that this would've been better off. I mean that's like everybody for three years now could have told 'em. And I think financially we got to remember, read the tea leaves on here. We know for a fact this is documented fact. The USFL FOX has tried to drum up investment money up to $200 million. They haven't been able to do it. Red bird and everybody can look this up. This is documented out there for everyone to look up the XFL I even published an article about this. They've been looking for investment money. They haven't been able to do it, so they haven't been able to drum up investors. That leads me to believe how do you make your property more profitable, more viable, more interesting, more sexy? And that leads us to where we're at right now in terms of this sexy two worlds meeting colliding kind of like let's merge this, put this together, put our resources together, our exposure together and build this up. Because they see, like I've said this a million times in the last couple of days, both sides don't see the light at the end of the tunnel where they currently stand, but together they see potential for something bigger and greater. So I want to see them execute the vision. I've got to be honest, there's certain aspects of the USFL and XFL that I have not been impressed with that they dropped the ball with. It's both sides. So I've been vocal about it a million freaking times. Don't go to Ohio if you're not going to have Ohio team, don't go to Vegas. So I mean you abandoned New York guardians and did all that. You got rid of your best TV market that had the highest rated non N F L game in history. The New York guardians did back in 2020. You abandoned that huge TV market and then you replaced it with a team that had 4,000 fans with broadcasters almost falling off of Stepladders calling the games at Cashman Field with that stupid ass field. So was nothing more Bush League than that. So they really dropped the ball. I was told every XFL fan defended the Cashman field that I Was, it was so funny. I did an XFL power rankings article and I listed Cashman field as number nine in my power rankings. And then I put pictures in the article, the actual field and told the, I got heed for this. I said how Bush league, the XFL looked how if you were a casual fan, you turned on, hey, I want to see Josh Gordon. And you saw that garbage setup at Catchman Field, that garbage field, you're like, whoa, this looks like a minor league because the mainstream thinks these are minor leagues to begin with, rinky dink leak. So that was not a good look. So in more ways than once. And then the USFL also has the same element with casual fans. You turn in, you listen, you look, there's no fans in the stands, but you got piped in fake. Yeah, fake piped in crowd noise. That sounds like it's like a hundred thousand fans in there when you know that there's not a single soul in the stands. So both leagues look low budge on many different aspects based on their decision making and execution, how they've handled things, fantasy and gambling. I need to see them execute better than they have. I'm glad they exist. I love these leagues. I watch all the games. I'm a maniac. I write about both these leagues. I'm going to watch every single game and talk about every single game. But I think in order for them to be a success, they need to be able to attract the mainstream. They beyond us crazies. They need to be able to attract the mainstream, the casuals, the football fans who mock these leagues need to start paying attention and showing interest in this leagues how you're going to start making money. And so hopefully whatever merger they decide upon is the right call. I got to be honest. I consolidated, take away these teams, rip away these teams kind of thing. It sounds like more cost cutting to me. It sounds like the USFL and FOX is like, hey, this is great. We only cover the cost for four teams and then the XFL is like, hey, agree, this is great. We only cover the cost for six teams and now we don't have to pay people full time. This is awesome. So it sounds like a lot more cost cutting. Yeah, you guys are really good at survival, but start doing things that make your leagues thrive. So anyway, there goes my rants. Another question then we'll figure out what we want to do here. So on one side I think you can congratulate both USFL, the X develop for pivoting here, right? Okay, whatever. And we harp on here a million times and do this or do that. Okay, so we're doing things right, we're actually pivoting, but do you view this as pivoting or as freaking out panicking? Maybe a little bit of both. I think they're both smart enough to see the short game and the long game and I think they both see that the long game alone is not promising based on the current results. And so I think that they see this as a necessary, the US F L was so disappointed in year two. They really thought them coming back for year two was enough proof to, I was told it was the best I was told. It was Their ratings went down completely across the board. Their attendance went down in Birmingham, a market that they shouldn't have gone in. They paid a lot of rent at Ford Field and that was a disaster having like 70, 80, a hundred fans. And I know that there's the Bill shas and all those guys who tried to paint a different picture. They were trying to get favoritism with a certain league, but they're really, and then the evidence of proof will be in the pudding if this merger happens and there's no Michigan Panthers how they felt that Ford Field thing turned out. So that's kind of the story there. But I do think there's, I wouldn't say panic, but I think it's like reading the tea leaves. I think both sides understand that in order for them to thrive, they're going to have to do something grander or bigger because it was stagnant for the USFL in year two and the XFL underperformed for what their expectation level was. They did really well, 18 to 49, which was something they waved the flag for. I get that. And that's important. That's the key demo for advertisers. And they were ranked very high there, but their attendance was very good with DC and St. Louis. But we knew that was going to happen because they inherited that from 2020 and they didn't really do a good job. Promoting San Antonio was a disappointment. Orlando was a disappointment. Arlington didn't do as well as it should have. I feel you're the hub site, you probably should do better. I know Taylor Swift kicked her ass during one of those games where she had many people come out to see her rightfully. But anyhow, but I feel like these two leagues underperformed and they came reading the tea leaves. There's a big question whether or not the public has an appetite for these leagues and even cares about them existing. They've been brushed off. There's not a lot of people came back to watch the S F L product and the people that did sample the XFL product, they were like, yeah, this is okay. This is all right. So it wasn't really attracting the mainstream or the casual fans to coming in. Rock wasn't enough. Just having the rock in an extra small renegades jersey wasn't enough on opening day. So anyhow, Hussey's got a question here. Hussie was on our CFL stream. He texted in the chat, he said, killer numbers, right now we have 155 people watching on, I can't see what's on Twitter, but on YouTube. And I said, this is a little bit more interesting. Our CFL stream is right now. He says he's not sure if you answered this. Do you think we'll see a team in a new market that doesn't currently? You talked about the Ohio base that might be in place of the Mallers or whatever. We're not going to a new city here in 2024, right? The original idea was for the Vipers to be in a new city was for them to be Arizona or Tennessee. But now in a merger situation, it may not be a Vipers at all. Interesting stuff with the Ohio deal, if the generals go away, there's been a little bit of rumblings and talk about the Mike Riley taking over the Ohio franchise so that there would be actually be an Ohio, actually be an Ohio team. Riley's very close, by the way. I keep mentioning his name throughout this about the connection about how this all started. Wasn't Jerry Cardinal knocking on the door with a tin cup? Moose Johnson has a connection, deep connection to Mike Riley. So any kind of merger, Mike's going to be a part of it unless he retires, even if there is no generals, so whatever. It would be nice if Ohio had their own brand. Forget about the Ohio malls or the Ohio Generals. Let them get their own brand. And if you're going to play in Ohio, which I think is an awesome choice for a spring football league to play in the Hall of Fame stadium to play there. Ohio's a great market. But if you're going to play there, have an actual team with its namesake there. So that might be the best thing about this merger is that Ohio's actually going to have the team playing in Canton. That's probably maybe one of the better parts of this. Evan, what do you make of all this? I want to make sure we got everyone else back in the conversation here. Yeah, I mean there's a lot. I have another question for Mike, but before that Yeah, go for. Well I'll touch on a couple of things first briefly. I had brought up before, I think we've talked so much about how odd it was for the USFL to they sold that Canton Stadium quite a bit. Football Hall of Fame. They had the championship game there. They made it a big deal, but it was so odd to just not have a team there. And again, Mike, before you came on the stream I was talking about, I said, well, there's a couple of different things you could do there. You could remove the Mallers and generals entirely or you could merge 'em together and create a new franchise there in Canton, which I think would be the best option because again, you already have, I mean you've already played there. You already have at least some brand recognition and I think Ohio is a decent market. But my question is, we've talked about how this connects to some of the other leagues. I think some stuff goes without saying, but at the top of the show we talked sort of about the timeline and I know we've brought it up with you here, whether or not this is really possible to get done before 2024, which is what this report states, and that's direction things seem to be trending in. I guess my question for you, and this is extremely specific, but I mean you can just give me an idea or give us an idea I suppose, when is the earliest that you think that we would hear some sort of statement from one of these leagues about sort of a public acknowledgement or maybe the official announcement because I heard something, it could happen this week or next week. It could happen extremely. So I'm interested to see, do you think that's really a possibility or do you think that was said just to get some attention? We might not hear anything for a couple more weeks or even months, but again, I doubt it's months because if they want to get it done before 2024, they kind of have to act fast at this point. Yeah, the news reports made it seem like it's eminent. I talked to a couple people who told me, Hey, watch out for Thursday. And then I've been in touch with public relations people who said, we'll give you a heads up, Mike, but we're not hearing anything about any Thursday or Friday or anything like that. So I would assume that this is going to go down within a week if it doesn't go down this week. I know people are dying for the answers right now. So maybe we do get something tomorrow. Maybe we wake up tomorrow morning and all of a sudden it's all laid out for us in clear and perfect detail and we have an understanding of this, but hopefully, but I think it would have to come soon, especially if the XFL intends to have dirty draft on October 4th. How are you going to have a draft with eight teams and then all of a sudden have a merger with a bunch of different teams in your league and maybe some league teams disappearing that were very strange vipers to be making a bunch of draft picks and then a week later they're not in the league anymore. So they're going to have to make a decision. They're going to have to, I'm just so surprised they've reached this point where they're ready to make this kind of grand decision. There's so many moving parts here, there's so many hurdles to me. So I would have to assume that if they really are close, as the media outlets are saying that they've worked out all the finer details, they just haven't told their employees about what's coming, it's a little bit scary too on that end because there's a lot of employees that could be losing their jobs in the PR side and the ticketing side, all that stuff. So there's the staffing side, so you might have to break it to 'em. You might not have two PR guys as part of this show. Like I said from the beginning, there are a lot of people in the dark about this whole setup, and I think we should get something soon if the reports are accurate. I'm surprised it's soon, but unless there's some snag, you have the regulatory aspect here too, where if you're 200 or 300 people losing their jobs, there might be some people that are not going to prove that or think too highly of that. This merger might cause it, especially if the merger is somehow deemed to be something where it's just being done for more cost cutting rather than for building. It's just done. So Fox could spend less and Redbird could spend less, might not get approval on that. So we'll see. But I keep waiting for some kind of snag to come in, so forgive me for being the doomsday guy, but that's like, especially in this space which I've been following my whole life, I always expect a snag or something strange to happen. So maybe within the week, Evan, I would with the draft coming up, unless you're going to push that back right Back. Yeah, that was my question because Mike, and this is one of those, okay, let's keep business on as normal here. But I mean nine minutes ago they tweeted, we got the showcase coming up, we got the showcase coming up. Do we do a showcase here in two weeks? I dunno. But my real question is this, and we spoke about this on the group chat today. You're talking people losing their jobs. If U sef L, if Fox whatever, just absorbs a lot of these position like hey, we got social people that can do, or we've got web people or we can do, like you said, that takes the burden off of the XFL of it's always been with USFL, it's felt like Billy is doing FOX on N F L Twitter and then also gambler stuff 20% of the time if they take over some of the XFL stuff. Are we looking at a drop of a communications for podcasts? I mean XFL has been far more blessed me and I know a lot of people in covering this. Does the social go down? There's been the complaints about the, obviously the USFL social, that's my question. If a lot of this gets offloaded to USFL, yes, okay. TV exposure and everything, but then some of the complaints we've always had about the U SS F L now is laying on the XFL as well. How do they balance that? Well, whatever this merged league is called, whoever's in charge got to do a better job of transparency, providing game notes, injury reports, they got to do a much better job. I don't care who's at the head of the wheel, red bird, whoever, even the XFL had their failings on the PR side, promotional side and all that, but it wasn't as bad as the U F L. I'll give 'em a break. They're undermanned, skeleton, crew, all that. Like you said, Billy doing this job and that job and the other. But it is really kind of pathetic. Their lack of interaction and transparency with media members who cover the league and then they wonder why they have no attendance, why the ratings went down, why there's 42 yahoos in the stands who all got in for free. So you wonder, so they have to do a better job. Whoever in this merged league, joint league, whoever's in charge of pr, they have to step up their game. They shouldn't be, I'm not saying you want to overspend, but you shouldn't be scaling down. You didn't exactly knock it out of the park buddy. So I'm sorry. So you need to do a better job with that. Both sides need to do a better job. The XFL PR group, they tried the USS F L PR group, they really bad math skills too. So that's kind of like the story there. So hopefully this joint league does a better job when it comes to promotion and public relations and connecting with the media transparency, giving the public information on your teams and players. It's kind of important while the game's gone on. So that's kind of the story there. But anyhow, but yeah, you would hope that this leads to a betterment of the overall product and presentation, not a weakening kind of like we're scaling back some more. That's not what you need. Anthony, thoughts on this? Yeah, I mean I had a really good experience with the XFL when it comes down to the PR stuff. I mean the renegades were absolutely incredible with me. Gamblers not so much, never, if I'm being honest, never really heard much from them. So that's why my coverage is a little more heavy on the XFL side. They were just more communicative with me, so I did more with them. So if these leagues combine together, they need to figure out how to, on the USFL side, they have to figure out how to communicate with media better because it really did, from my perspective, it seems like it was either you had to be a part of a media group that was only for the USFL covering news or you work for Fox. And that's really, it just seems like everyone else, even if you're covering both the XFL and USFL, it really did seem like we really had to struggle to try to get interviews, even just to get some kind of communication on depth charts and injury reports and stuff like that. It just seemed really tough to get that communication. So I mean, to be honest, I hope the XFL can keep their people more and help out on those other teams for the USFL because I think the PR people for the XFL have done a much better job than the U US F L. It's funny, Anthony, I'll just make this one minute. During this season, it got so bad with the USFL side, I'm doing the weekly previews for the New Jersey generals that I had. Brandon Anderson, our buddy make me a graphic, a general's breakers depth chart graphic. Because I got the started because you didn't have, I didn't have it. I got the starters from the teams through my sources and I said, Brandon, could you do me a favor? These are the starting lineups. Could you make me a graphic because I suck at this stuff. And he did it for me. So thanks to him. But that's pathetic that I had to go through those lengths to write an article and I covered the CFL, the Toronto Argonauts organization top to bottom. They know how to obviously win on the field and off. And their PR department is tremendous. I'm in the midst of all this crazy XFL stuff and they're giving me information and I'm writing articles, Michael Pinball, Clemens and all that stuff. The last couple days, the two extended contracts of key members of the organization. These leagues need to be like that, be more like that. I don't know about all the CFL teams. They're not all in the same league. Argos are in a different stratosphere. But I wish the USFL was like that. It would make it easier to write articles. There's not transparency. You ask questions. Have there been interviews for the special teams coordinator job? Who's on the staff? Are there any new hires? Nothing. They don't give you anything. So you ask about players, you ask about profiles, you ask about anything. There's nothing. They don't give you anything. So you have to on your own. I have to on my own ask players, okay, did your two year contract with the USFL expired is your new deal for another two years? Hey Toby, have you decided to resign with the deal? I got to go through all that to just write an article about that. So it was just funny that I had, I would've done it. It would've been funny if I did it in crayon. I should have did the chart crayon and just taken a picture of it and then put that as my main picture photo in the article. So it would've been kind of the move there. So yeah, whatever this consolidated merger league is, hopefully they do a good job with the PR side. I think your mic just got knocked over there. We had a question, extra, extra points. I assume there will be an allocation of drafts for the remaining teams who draft top players. Yeah. What happens? 10 teams out of 18 or 16. 10 teams. I can do math. 10 teams out of 16. What happens to the, we've talked staff and Evan, but what do they do with these players? I mean, times 50 it's a lot. It is a lot. You have to put a bunch of players in a pool and then it's like if all of a sudden the Breakers, west Hill's available, there's going to be a lot of teams that want him or anybody other players from the Breakers. If the breakers aren't a part of this merger or Viper's players. We'll see if Peter makes his way back. He's not currently on an N F L roster, but you got players like that, the Jeff ADEs, all those kind of guys. So if the vipers are no longer in existence, so they're going to have to figure, there'll have to be maybe a supplemental draft with just those players to divvy 'em up and try to create a fair system. Might be a little unfair if certain teams just all of a sudden load up. The stallions would probably absorb the breakers and become even more super teams than they already are. So anyhow. But yeah, I would think they would have to figure that out because obviously player rights are no longer belong to teams if those teams are not in existence or are on pause, which could be the terminology that's used. I'm going to have to land the plane here pretty soon. I got a heart out here in a little bit. Evan, thoughts, I want to make sure we get any other questions. I got maybe a firm 10 minutes here if anyone else has any questions in terms for what we've got, Mike and everyone on here, Evan, thoughts? Thoughts from you here while we see if anyone else has any questions coming in? Yeah, I don't necessarily have a question, but I have a talking point that I was thinking about just with everything that's been going on, and this has to do with football personnel as well. We've been talking a lot about players that might end up displaced and how they would find their way onto other rosters, but I think a lot about the guys, and this is XFL specific, but you've had a lot Wrights drafts and rights claims by these XFL teams and it's going to be very interesting to see what happens to some of those guys if their team just doesn't exist anymore. I mean, I understand there was a lot of confusion about how those worked out. A lot of people thought those players were under contract. It didn't seem like that. So did those guys just disappear and was that all a waste of time? Because I feel like that at least, again from the personnel side, I just think about all the DPPs GM type of guys where you bring in all those players. You spent so much time evaluating 'em, you put in a rights claim and then suddenly it's like, hey, sorry, your team's not going to exist anymore and all your players are suddenly just gone, including the ones that you were going to add to the roster for this season who have never played a snap, have never really gotten an opportunity. So that was something I thought was kind interesting because that has been a big chunk I think of the XFL off season is yes, everything that the XFL has done really in the off season has been very player driven. I think about the combine, all that stuff. Again, all the rights claims they've had these little drafts, the I F L XFL combine that I was at even that was a thing that was obviously very player centric. So yeah, I don't know. That's just kind of another random thing. It's like, well, are those players included in this draft pool and is there an opportunity for at least them to rebound in one of these leagues if they've had their rights claimed? I don't know. Again, it's one of those things that I think about that, well, again, maybe not one of those things that I think about, but one of the things that just comes up as we talk about all this stuff, I mean, again, we can't stress how much information there is regarding the subject and obviously we've been talking for nearly two hours, but we've only been given so much and it feels like to an extent we've just scratched the surface. There's only so much that we know right now. Mike, thoughts on that? Yeah, well as far as player rights and all that, I guess everybody, all these teams are just going to carry over the players they already have on their roster and they're going to have to figure out how they're going to do the drafts. But I would say with, it's really easy for these teams because when we think about it, these players don't get paid all off season. We're talking about coaches now, not being year round employees. A lot of these players that are on these teams, the Thompsons, all these guys on the gamblers, they're not getting a single check until they get to training camp until they actually, their feet hit the turf. So your USFL season ends in July. If you didn't latch on with an N F L team, you're going several months without a single dollar. You might have some medical coverage that maybe helps you out with certain things, but that's basically that. So it's the same thing with the XFL player. The XFL championship game ends in May. If you didn't latch on with an N F L team or go play in another league to go up north to the CFL, you're not getting paid for a while. So these rights things are way these teams to add players to their roster without actually having to pay them. So it doesn't harm the financial model whatsoever. And you can add rights all day. It's going to be interesting to see how far they expand these rosters. Last year the generals got in trouble with the league because they kind of broke rules and it had too many players on their roster. They got punished For it and tens of people were affected And tens of people were affected. So I don't like the US NFL's roster rules. They're supposed to expand this year. I don't like the fact that they only have on game day, it's better than it was in year one where it was like 35 players, but it's like 40 active. I think it's supposed to go up to 42 active. So there's a lot of hurdles here. There's the three year C B A that the USFL has. The XFL doesn't currently have a C B A, so that's very complicated too. So there's a lot of moving parts here to try to figure out when it comes to players and teams for sure. So we haven't begun to unravel all of that yet. Anthony going to want to to you? Yeah, I don't know. It's been the last two days just processing everything. Just thinking about all the possibilities that can happen with this thing. I think at the end of the day, I think we're all just getting too excited about it. For me, I'm just thinking about the human element of the situation that if this thing does merge, we know this is going to get smaller. We know it's not going to be 16 teams. I think we can all pretty much assume 99% it's going to drop to 10 to 12 teams or eight teams, and a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. And I think just somebody made the comment about this is part of mergers, this is part of life, is that people lose jobs at the end of the day with a merger. So I think there's going to be a lot of good people that lose jobs. There's going to be some players and coaches that are going to end up losing jobs and that's kind of the shameful part of it. So after Reid just disappeared right there, but He's Moving the temper around. No. Well, thank God they said no. I was trying to do the comment and I swiped my track pad too much and that was cool me out Like old school Hollywood squares or something. Anyway, the human Anthony Element Anthony, Yeah, people losing their jobs. Tough, tough stuff for sure. Yeah, it's a shame. But again, something I talked about this and Mike, I know you're the gloom and doom person. I am too. This thing has to happen. I mean to me what this shows, this is a telling sign if the two leaks talking to each other, like you said Mike, there's not a light at the end of the tunnel. And I think we've been through this too many times over the last 2, 3, 4 decades where we've seen these spring leaks just die out after a couple of years because of finance. And honestly, if they don't merge together, we're going to see the same thing again. So yes, people are going to lose their jobs, but this league has to think about the long game and if they don't get it done right now, I'm going to enjoy the ride with the U SS F L and the XFL to the very end. But I have a feeling that end is going to come within a year or two. So I would just tell everyone price for impact if they don't merge. Yeah, that's why I think so too. But it's going to be strange if we're sitting here going saying go N S F L. So it's going to take a while to get used to that one. Yeah, You screwed up there, you screwed up there. The Branding's available if they want it, I've abandoned it. It's free to go if you want to take it over And the N SS F L. So I mean maybe it's just a fan in me. I really wish this was a 16 team league. I really do. I mean I really wish this was like a full-on full-blown merger. Put the two leagues together like my crazy concept XFL conference, USFL conference, inner conference games, league championship at the end of the rainbow. That's what I want, but that's maybe not realistic. That's fantasy world stuff for that to be a reality. I do think that the fact that both sides were receptive to this tells you that they realized that separately they might not be able to make it in the long haul. So I think this, but you have to do this, right? Mergers don't always work. If you're a wrestling fan, you might remember the w e buying W C W and then doing the alliance with W C W and E C W and that was watered down and it was awful. And then they rebooted E C W. So it sounds great on paper. Holy cow. But sometimes it doesn't always work out. We'll see. We'll see how this goes. But I agree, Anthony, I think this is a last dish effort to make this a success. I think they realize they can survive and just get by, but I think both sides wants to do more than just get by. They really want to be successful. They want to hit a home run, they want to win a Super Bowl, they want to win a championship. They're not interested in just having an eight, nine season and just barely missing the playoffs. Redbird must've been really, I know we talked and the 60 million in Evan had really great comments on that earlier, but the restructuring, the firing, the marketing people laying off of a lot of this stuff, Redbird must've been quite displeased with how everything wound out here. Just with looking down in retrospect how far this has come since July. Absolutely. I think they had this vision that they saw XFL 2020 success and they had this vision that adding the rock to it would really make this a mainstream hip. You have a female owner, you have the rock, it's going to make it even better than it was in 2020 and that didn't really pan out. I do know people within the industry think that the $60 million loss is a lie. They think that's a low figure that they should have lost maybe 300 million, 400 million, not 60 million. 60 million to launch a new company, a pro football league with eight teams. If you just start doing the math of how much each team costs and you spread 60 million out over eight teams, that's really not that big of a loss. So that's expected. Actually you're supposed to and what a pro football league, you're supposed to lose money, especially in the first year or two. So anyhow, but yes, Redbird, they didn't hit. Like I said, that's information that people in the league, if they listen to this, they know I'm not lying at the end of this season, leagues higher up. The president was basically telling the employees we didn't hit our revenue markers. That's why we're going from full-time employees to seasonal. And so everyone who's in the league and hears that, they know. How does Mike know that? Well, I know it. So they can't hide from that fact. And that's just a fact. They fought they were going to be a smash success. They thought they were going to hit a home run. They hit a single, they got on base, it was all right. But Redbird is not in this to hit a single, they're not in this. Fox is not in this to just say get by. They really think this concept has a chance to be a major money maker. And so that's what they're trying to do. That's what this tells me right here is both sides are like, all right, how do we thrive here? Let's do this together. The fact that they were willing to listen to each other and if this is truly a 50 50 split and there it's cool that they were willing to listen to each other and that whatever they were saying on both sides of the table, it takes two to tango. One side could come over and say, Hey, let's do this. The other side said, get the hell out of here. So you got to really sell them something really good for them to go. Yeah, yeah, that sounds awesome. I'm in, I'm in. So let's see what their vision is, let's see what they put out and then we can judge it from there. Whether or not this works, they might get more attention from the mainstream and casual crowd. How much of it I don't know, but there are a lot of people that are not going to bother to watch the USFL and season three. Not going to bother to watch XFL in season two, but if you tell 'em there's a merged league between the two, maybe it sparked some extra interest. Let me check this out. What the hell are they doing? So it might, we'll see. Alright, I think we're going to put this to bed. I appreciate it. This has to be our most successful live stream and we've got 161 people. I can't remember how much we have for the draft or whatever, but appreciate it's late for Mike making time. Evan has been on this with me since whenever the hell time. We started talking to the CFL Anthony making time game plan here. Standby mode tomorrow. The professor Andrew Murray and I are going to record tomorrow if news comes out. If not, we'll do a deep dive about all this because obviously sprawling two hours here is great. But we'll do a segment for Friday's episode. Derek Taylor always said the Winnipeg blue bombers will be joining me as well talking CFL. And then interest here, you would believe during this live stream I booked Camp Phillips joining the show, a former XFL now at Toronto, Argonaut Star. So Cam Phillips, we're recording tomorrow. Book that during the live stream, so I appreciate that. But we'll have him on the show Friday as well. He missed last week's game with a groin injury. Hopefully he plays this week. So he's been great. Been leading receiver for the Argos this season. Yeah, I'll get some questions from you Mike, off cam, but I appreciate, like I said, make sure guys, everyone please subscribe, give a thumbs up. Ken's saying great shows CFLs. Yeah, if you're not subscribed, God bless you, please subscribe. Give it a thumbs up my giving us all this information. Pin a tweet over on the Mark House Twitter, talking about the cities or the teams and April start and all that stuff. But God bless everyone. Like I said, it takes a village to put on these productions. I appreciate all of you guys and it's me just facilitating all you guys, smart people. So Evan, thank you Anthony and Mike. It really means a lot. We'll see you guys and how do I get out of fear every time I forget. We'll see you guys next time. God bless.

CFL 2023 Week 15 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 15, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Markcast whether we Wednesday here, busy day. Welcome to the first part of our double header. Today should be exciting talking C F O week 15 and then lots of news on the XFL front. Another merger here. I was just telling him we've lived through this before. Nothing new here. Here we go again. Jim Carrey and that. What was that? Me, myself and Ire or whatever. Here we go again. I think that's going to be the theme for Friday. Should be excited here. But first we are talking C F L. We have Jason and Evan here, midweek. Jason, how's your week going? Pretty good. I mean the weekend was great. I'm really great weekend on football on both sides of the border, so I'm happy from that perspective and my week's going pretty well so far. Evan, I know we have lots of other things. We'll get to XFL here at 4 45 Pacific. How's your life going here, CFLand otherwise? Yep, it's been a busy week, man. Lots of news coming out on so many different fronts. I think I've touched every league this week to some capacity, but sticking to the C F L, excuse me, I got to be careful there. Sticking to C F L, obviously what this stream is about, it was a great slate of games over the weekend. I think I was pleasantly surprised. Every game I felt like was really close and this was the first weekend in a long time where I was actually able to sit down and watch every game since it was equally divided up between Friday and Saturday. So it worked out really well and I was very pleased with the football that was played And again, late this week. I appreciate everyone but we've made the commitment. I feel it's important to do this every week on here. I had to work Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday all day every day, so this is the first time we could do it today. Evan's got class, I appreciate it. I think it was Tuesday last week and Wednesday this week, but darn it, we've made a commitment here. I had a great weekend that commanders at two and oh two and oh here left hand up. I don't want hear any of that hating on that. Taking down Russell Wilson and then the BC Alliance, I really was about to, Mariners got swept by the Dodgers at home BC I thought was going to get, I said you cannot lose until Ottawa at home. This is a must win. Looked like they were going to until about the last few minutes. Jason, are we after Labor Day games counting more, are you feeling like the CFLis peaking at the right time? Yeah, absolutely. I mean I just compare it to the previous two seasons since we've came back from Covid and this season has easily been way more exciting than 2022 or 2021. I just think we've had so many more close games and dramatic finishes down the stretch and a lot more offense this year just in general. So I think it's been great from that perspective. Yeah, Evan, I feel like this is kind of what was promised all along. We all got into this obviously during the other merger talks and the 2021 season was a little sleepy I think, and as much as CFLapologists wanted to say hindsight, whatever are you feeling? You said you sat down, enjoyed the whole slate of the games we had, the dual dueling, you felt like everything worked out? Yeah, I mean I've talked a couple times this season about how I feel like there were peaks and this was the best football that we've seen since CFLcame back from Covid and the canceled season in 2020. I've been overall, yeah, I've been really impressed. I feel like in this third season, back teams are finally getting things together and of course I think we still know who the top teams are and we still know who the bottom teams are. I don't know if that's changed too much. Well I think definitely been surprised but Winnipeg's still there and all that, so some things I think have stayed the same, but ultimately there have been a lot of surprises and there's been a lot of shakeups a lot of the season, even though there's only nine teams in this league, A lot of it has been extremely unpredictable even for I think people who have devoted more time than myself to covering this league and have been a fan for longer. So yeah, overall I've been very impressed and I think we are sort of peaking again. This season has been the best since Covid and I don't think it's necessarily close. Yeah, let's get into this. I'm looking at the INE here obviously, and I was filming, I was filming, I do work for a elderly service provider. They do transportation and meals and housing and all that. So they had this game on and they were going to do, they had cornhole and you could do giant chess and Jenga and they had bands and stuff and I think they probably expected a few hundreds of people to come and there was maybe 50 people there. So needless to say, by about the third or fourth hour of this event, I had a little time on my hands. I had my phone mounted to my camera walking around turned on because I'm kind of tracking the score for the first little bit of this Winnipeg Hamilton game and then I'm like, what the heck is going on? I turned it on. I guess we will get to that game in full, but it had so many ramifications leading into this BC game. Jason, did you think that BC was going to take advantage of the Winnipeg loss? I mean it really did seem like kind of a weird outing for bc. Yeah, I mean they just saved their chance there. I think what you call it. It didn't look like they were going to take advantage of that until those final few minutes where really just gave the game away to bc. I got to give the BC credit as well, but I mean at the same time it looked like the Lions did their best to try to give this game away through three quarters and then ultimately they turned it on in the fourth and b BC scored 23. You see that right there on the screen, 23 fourth quarter points. Yeah, you're not going to win many games if you're Ottawa if you do that. Yeah, Vernon here, a little bit of a messy game three and three, Evan, like I said, I started watching this game after the Winnipeg literally turned it off, kind of discuss and then had it back on at the bar. Kind of seeing that the final three and a half, four minutes of that, what did you make of this game overall? Yeah, well, very rarely do I turn off a game early. I always like to ride things out, stick it through, but I just had a gut feeling this game was over when Ottawa had that pick six. I think Vernon if I remember correctly, had an interception and then I think he threw another one and ended up being a pick six. And then after that I was just like, you know what? I think this game's over and usually I'm right, usually whenever I turn a game off that feels too out of reach. I had been correct in the team who was leading wins, but this was a rare exception where BC just had some sort of fire in the fourth quarter and they said, you know what? Hamilton blessed us in a way with their win over Winnipeg and now we're in a position here to really make things interesting late with the standing. So they really took advantage of that and hats off to BC for getting it done at the end. But I think really the main storyline coming from this game is it's another Ottawa collapse. We've seen this happen so many times where they just can't finish and it's unfortunate. Bob Dice who's a coach, been in the CFLfor a long time, somebody that I very much respect, but you just can't have that. You just can't do that. And a loss like that is a loss that can cost you a job. That's a real red flag I guess you would say on the resume or on the slate. And it's not the first time that something like this has happened to Ottawa, but this was definitely, I guess one of the ones that happened in more dramatic fashion. I think we can all agree BC pulling the south, I don't know what the odds are. I don't know what the percentage was after Ottawa went up, whatever it was, 37 to 20 or something. I don't know what the odds were that they were going to win, but I have to imagine they were pretty damn high. And I was honestly stunned when I had turned the game off by that point I was watching college football by then I'd put on another game and I was talking to Andy and he was like, yeah man, BC's right back in it. The decision again, and this is not the first time there's been a specific questionable coaching decision, sorry I can't speak today on behalf of Ottawa and their coaching staff where they kick that field goal, the 50 yarder I think it was and kick or misses, and then the ball is returned all the way back for a touchdown and is a coach. That's kind of like the ultimate face palm moment. And that was what really more than anything spearheaded the BC comeback. I think that was the point in the game where everybody knew, okay, there really is a chance now and ultimately they went on to win it with the Lucky Jackson or not Lucky Jackson, lucky Whitehead, excuse me, touchdown. And that was that. So very surprising game. Definitely I think more disappointing for Ottawa if you're BC great comeback win, but you know that the game shouldn't have been that close and you definitely escaped with one. But yeah, honestly I was amazed that they were really able to pull that off and it says a lot about that team's. I think culture and ability to win in tight moments. BC has been criticized more on the road I guess than at home this year when it comes to certain games where they just seem out of character and you're not really sure what to make of 'em, but I still believe this team can't go to the Great Cup and this game proved it to me with the way that they played at the end. Yeah, I have a couple questions and obviously my minute recollection of all of this game is a little taxed right now, especially after the weekend and working there, whatever, but to have a couple big picture things because the two takeaways from this was it really feels like this is the first time that people are calling for Bob Dyson's head. Here it is Colin and he's in the hot seat and we've had discussions on here and he came in last year and you've got no mli and he's trying to rip the ship and people gave him a lot of credit. I interviewed him in the off season and the CFLmedia day and even this year you're like, okay, well you're fighting through everything and you're losing mli and our buckle didn't work out and Tyree Adams, right? Am I right? That didn't work out. Now we're onto this play. Bob Ds was a special teams coach. That is kind of the first one of this, but Jason, it feels like the tide has shifted here where people now are kind of anti Bob, am I missing, was this before now or is this really where it started to come out? Yeah, I think now there's starting to be some heat under Bob D's seat in Ottawa, but I think the thing is when you look at this and the struggles that the Red Black have had, they've had multiple general managers, multiple head coaches, multiple starting quarterbacks during this four year period where they've been just so bad. I mean without having that 22 game home losing streak, we would've been talking about Ottawa since the beginning of this season and just the season or season struggle they've had and I mean just epic fails this season and failing to close games. They've been a very competitive team for a lot of this season, but I think at the end of the day the game I went to Montreal and Ottawa, they had 11 point lead with four minutes left. They blew that one. This one there've been other games they've been in that they haven't been able to close out as well so they could have a much better record than they have right now. And I mean obviously they've had some bad luck with the quarterback injuries, but you can look around the rest of the league and say a lot of other teams have had bad luck as well. So yeah, I think the red black hot seat is heating up for Bob Dice. Jason, let's see if your internet's peaky just a little bit. Let's see if it catches up here Evan, because that's the thing, we deal a lot with this and especially the US F L or well U US L and x L, but you had a lot of Buckley this last season like, hey man, I had to build a team from scratch. It was really hard and you're like, yeah, so did every other head coach. This is not a unique problem. And like Jason said, that's a great point. Obviously Ottawa has had the injury bug especially at quarterback, but other teams have been able to navigate that. Evan, are you thoughts on Bob Deis? I know you said high on him, but do you feel like the walls are closing in on him a little bit? I do and it's more because Ottawa has just struggled so much. I feel like people might not be calling for his head as much if Ottawa wasn't going through such an extended rebuilding period and maybe had they won more before, we wouldn't be sitting here right now talking about his job being at risk. But again, football's a winning business and that goes without saying and Ottawa has had their fair share of controversy to say the least, not just this season, but over the past couple seasons really since they've returned again from that covid year, there's just every year it just kind of feels like a disappointment and I can't imagine I have again, a lot of respect for everybody in that building. I know they're all great people, but when you don't win games it's just harder to have a happy atmosphere. And Ottawa, again, there was a point this season where everyone was really high on Ottawa, it looked like they could go to the playoffs, they could stun everybody. The crumb sanity that we always talk about now, all that is long gone now it's back to, I might've said it on the show last week, but it's just kind of like you already feel like you're getting ready for 2024. Yes, there's still a couple of weeks to play in this season, but it almost feels like the white flag has been waved and that was really what I felt like when I watched this game. It was such a winnable moment. I mean for a team like that, to go on the road and win against one of the top teams in your league that's not in your division is a really big deal. That was going to be a monumental win for Ottawa and to be honest, had they did pull that off and BC just kind of stagnated in the fourth quarter, I would probably be talking about a completely different thing right now. I'd probably be saying, you know what, Ottawa still has some firepower in them that they still have a drive and a motive and I understand that there's good players there, but right now it feels like there's still pieces missing to that puzzle and I don't know, I don't know if change is the right answer because they've already had so much change and you can only change a team around so much before it just becomes a mess and it might not necessarily improve the situation. So we'll see what happens. Definitely a team to watch and again, one of these teams where I'm really interested to see what they do in the off season, particularly with free agency and again, possible coaching changes, who knows what happens with the front office. There's a lot that goes on there when you don't win, but I agree, the excuses I think are kind of running out. Yes, you've had a difficult season, you've lost some people that you thought were going to turn things around, but as a football team you're supposed to win, you're supposed to find ways to win and other teams have been able to do that. I mean you look at Hamilton, there was a point in this season where it looked like they were going to throw in the towel as well and just kind of move on to 2024, but I'll talk more about them later. But ultimately, because again, I've always thought that they had better personnel and some better experience, they still have a lot of concrete pieces there from the times that they were in the Gray Cup, they still had an opportunity to turn that around and now it looks like they're a playoff team. They're coming off a huge win this weekend against Winnipeg. I thought that that was one of Hamilton's best games of the season. And again, we'll get into that in a minute, but just bringing it back to Ottawa, I understand things are tough, but football's a winning business and the CFLseason in my opinion is long enough to where you should be able to turn it around if you are struggling and unfortunately they have not been able to do that so far. Yeah, like I said, I like the Bob hiring. I know that there was a lot of, he came in and I like the idea of the guy that was elevated that's kind of been able to the ship as much as they can during the season to get a full shot kind of the next year. Okay, let's do that. Let's not hire in. I saw criticism and oh, Bob Dice is a lazy choice, but I don't dunno, I think you got to give him this season. I think like we said, he's had a lot of different adversities to work through. My other question and we'll go, Jason, we'll see how your internet is or we can figure that out. Did BC finally wake up here? I feel like we've kind of been in a fog for about a month and I would, it kind of felt like maybe they finally got their head in gear and like, oh we are, because this was a gift. Winnipeg losing was a gift. Okay, let's at least be able to get one game on them. I'm watching the Mariners right now and the Al West and you're hoping when the other team loses that you're going to be able to capitalize and I was very afraid that, like I said, I think the optics of a now three in 10 team beating you at home, this unbeatable defense and donut that boys and Ryan Phillips and all that, I think the publicity around that would've been quite bad. Do you think BC finally woke up here? They're such a weird team because I think they're a team that's capable of beating any team in this league. We saw them going Winnipeg win convincingly, but they're also team that's capable like what we saw this past weekend a couple weeks ago against Hamilton losing to any team in the league. So I think at the end of the day BC they're just a strange team to try to figure out because they're never truly out of a game because they are capable of making a lot of big plays. I mean Justin McKenna had a massive game in this one. He's really their fifth or sixth best receiver when all their guys are healthy and I mean it really just shows you the depth of, and I mean if Vernon Adams can avoid the turnovers that he had in this one because I think that's the only thing that really kept this game close and really gave Ottawa that lead. So I think at the end of the day, if Vernon can avoid those turnovers which have plagued the season this year, I think this team is right in the thick of things to get first place in the west. And I mean that's a huge game coming up in a few weeks. Evan has bc do we just not run the ball anymore here if we just completely, we traded James Butler Vernon, we just throw it all over as long as he gets 300 yards. We got Elle here, 13 yards rushing. I mean Vernon's scrambling. This is insane to me. Looking at the stat line, Well, it's a couple things. I mean I think losing James Butler in the off season has proven to be a very significant loss given what he's been able to do in Hamilton and he's really carried a large portion of that offense throughout the season or at least up until Taylor Powell has found his stride. But I think this game was a bit different. Typically when you're playing down that late in the game, you're not going to be running the ball that much. You're going to rely on the pass game and throw it more. You see this really in any level of football, whether it's N F L college, anything like that. So it doesn't surprise me especially because BC has their entire offense I feel like has been a pass first system for this entire season. You can't not throw it given the receivers. They have Keon Hatch or Alex Hollins all of our favorites. So yeah, I mean you could maybe argue that Misel should be getting a bit more work, but in this game in particular, I just feel like there was no point in running the ball when you're down however many points of 17 or whatever going into the fourth quarter. So it's something that's up for debate, but personally I feel like they're fine doing what they're doing and obviously they were able to win the game, just kind of throwing it and then having that boost on special teams with the return touchdown. I think that was all the funny tweets I have for this. Farhan was on the call good for him and being able to be there live and call that the 19 point fourth quarter comeback, the largest in BC alliance history. Jason, anything else on this one? I want to deep dive the Hamilton Winnipeg situation. Anything else from you? No, I think let's move on to the next game. Okay, so we had here, let me get out of this, I'll reset like I said, so I'm filming the old folks get together here listening to the Hamilton, texting in the group chat like what the heck is going on? I'm tracking the score, I got my sofa score, whatever going on here. Winnipeg following to Hamilton. Jason, were you at this game and what was this like? Unfortunately I had something to do attend to that day, so I had to watch it on tv, but I mean I was just as happy watching it on TV as I would've been if I was there. I mean what a performance from the TCA's. Totally unexpected. I mean something weird about Winnipeg playing in Hamilton. Zach Ris is actually the last TCATs quarterback to lose to the Winnipeg blue ballers at home. It's been quite a long time since Claris played for the tcat, so I mean just something weird happens when Winnipeg travels to Hamilton, but as a fan, I'll take it three. Evan, what did you make of this one, Jason? Let's see if we can get you logged off and logged back in here. Evan, like I said, I just couldn't believe this. I turned this on. To me, Winnipeg always kind of feels like, okay, we can work our way, way back, we can work our way back. It really felt like this lead to a safe, even if the score was a little closer at the end, Yeah, this game was a surprise and I watched the full thing and the entire time I just kept telling myself, Winnipeg will find a way they're going to find a way, they're a winning team. This is not a game that they can lose. It just didn't seem like, I don't want to say it didn't seem like a Losable game for them, but again, we've seen what they're capable of doing. They're one of those teams where every time you think that they're going to let something happen, they come right back in it. There's a big play and they kind of pull through. But Hamilton just kept going. They kept finding things. I thought one of the most interesting plays of that game was I think it was wasn't a missed field goal, it was a missed extra point and Tite McAllister returned it all the way back for two points. I thought that was a very, I guess you could say pivotal play in the game even though it was only worth two points as opposed to six. But things like that really just, I feel like it was the little things in this game that killed Winnipeg in the long run. And I wouldn't say it was an outstanding performance by Hamilton, I feel like it was, I mean obviously they did enough to win, but I don't feel like was anything, it wasn't a blow your socks off type of game. I mean yes, they beat Winnipeg obviously that's a big deal given Winnipeg's past and I think there is a bit of maybe bad blood between those teams given the two gray cups and I'm sure Hamilton is, they definitely feel probably disrespected considering that Winnipeg beat them twice in the Gray Cup and again, one of 'em was at home, so that makes it, that's a whole nother thing. But yeah, I was impressed by Hamilton in this one and the fact that they were able to win this type of game further proves my point that I made several weeks ago about how I thought that this was going to be the surprise playoff team because again, it all comes down to experience and again, I mean I think it goes without saying Hamilton's roster, while they might not have performed well at All Points throughout the season, it's been very up and down. I feel like they just have so many different dynamic playmakers. They have on paper one of the stronger rosters in the league and again, that's why I still viewed them as one of the top teams going into this season. There were a couple things to be concerned about and I think some of those issues were amplified throughout the season, but Hamilton's rolling right now, I feel like they're in a really good spot. I feel like they're confident and maybe there's some chance some way, and I'm not saying this is going to happen, but hey, gray Cup's going to be in Hamilton, we're all going to be there. It would be really cool to see that team at home in the Gray Cup Again, I know Jason for one would probably enjoy that, but again, there's no guarantees. Again, I'm not going to make any predictions like that, but ultimately I like what they're doing right now and I want to say this was the most surprising game of the week, but I think the next game that we're going to get to Saskatchewan Edmonton might've surprised me a bit more. Yeah, I love this. And if Taylor Powell gets to tie Kat here to the playoffs, and it was kind of the same thing where we had Aaron Rogers go down for the Jets and everyone's like, well, if they make it to the playoffs, Aaron Wilson's going to, it's like if Zach Wilson gets the jets to the playoffs, Zach Wilson's probably going to be playing in the playoffs by God's will. Taylor Powell here gets the tie cat in. I don't know how you bring Rusty ass Bo back after 18 whatever weeks. They're like, all right, Bo, get in here. Like, Jason, what did you make of this? Because Taylor Powell had a pretty pedestrian game here. I mean all things considered obviously Winnipeg and the interception third D really taking over. We talked about the missed field goal or the missed extra point that for some ungodly reason it's only two points going the other way, which I don't understand. What did you make? What did you attribute Hamilton's victory to? Well, I think there's certain things and elements of this TCATs team that are coming together over the last month or so, the connection and chemistry between Taylor Powell and Tim White. Tim White over the last month has been arguably the best receiver in the C F L. We saw that last year where he had a slow first half of the season and then really turned it on. So that's good to see. I think they've had a commitment to the run that they have not shown over the last several years when they had Tommy Condell as the offensive coordinator. They've really committed to the Run and James Butler, even though James Butler I think averaged under four yards per Gary in this one, they committed to 'em, gave him like 22 carries I think it was. So that's good to see. I think they had really good commitment to stopping the run in this one. Brady Oliveira who was really just chewing everybody up in the running game throughout this season was kind of shut down in this one. So that was really good to see from the TCAs. I think there's elements of this team that have improved steadily the last several weeks and they're peaking at the right time in the tight cats. It's worth noting they've always kind of been a second half of the season type of team. I think there was one year where they were one in seven and they finished nine and nine, I forget what year exactly that was sometime in the last 10 years, but they've been a second half of the season type of team before, so maybe I shouldn't be most surprised, but given how poorly the first half of this season went, I definitely was not expecting this, especially the victories against Winnipeg and BC a couple of weeks ago. Well, I, and I know that I'm just looking at the standing shirt, if you had told me it's a three game swing between the Thai cat season and the BC Lion season, I feel like Hamilton every week and the end of the world and welfare checks on Jason and then you look here, BC's got three more wins. It's not like it's really not that big. I mean all things considered here and I know the divisions and all of that they're playing, but it does feel interesting. I had tweet here, a friend of the show, rod Peterson, who just, I guess plug, we'll be on Rod's show this Friday coming up talking night, got to get the XFL guy on again, we got XFL news, but Rod is saying the good times are over for the bombers. I like this hashtag for the l Evan Bombers. This has been the least dominant season. We've lived through them and I mean obviously they're still kicking the crowd out of many teams, but kind of a different world. What do you make in the Winnipeg? Well, I don't know if the good times are over. I think once we get to the playoffs we might see a different level of aggression from this team and hell, I mean we've already seen a good chunk of aggression from them at times this season. I mean look at the, I guess it was banjo bowl against Saskatchewan 51 to six, they came out there and destroyed that team. We all know that they're still capable of doing that, but there has been several times this season where Winnipeg has looked, I guess you would say uncharacteristic. I don't think they're as complete as they were on the previous Great Cup runs. And again, it doesn't mean they're a bad team. I still feel like they could easily go back and we might be seeing them in November in Hamilton. I don't think that's out of the question at all. But they have lost a couple games where you do scratch your head and you wonder will they let this happen when it really matters. You could say that about a couple other teams too, like BC I think will be even more interesting when it comes time for playoffs. But yeah, I mean Winnipeg right now I feel like there's still some questions and again there there's no denying. There's no denying you're going to get some people that say, well, the dynasty's over Toronto will win again. And very, I feel like if Toronto does win this gray cup, if you're Winnipeg, you do have some bigger questions to answer in the off season than maybe you anticipated. But right now I know they've had a couple losses and I know this game again was a surprise to a lot of people, but it's not the end of the world. It was one of those days and as Jason pointed out before, when Winnipeg travels to Hamilton, it seems that weird things just happen. And specifically for Calleros, I think weird things happen too. So I don't know that can be debated, but me personally, I think Winnipeg's going to be fine. I feel like I kind of have a trust factor here and I feel like if the Toronto Argonauts were a person, I have ultimate trust, you can watch my house while we're out of town, take care of our dog. I have total faith in that 10 out of 10 Winnipeg is right there. I have zero faith in BC Lions right now. I would pay the BC Lions to stay away. I have zero trust in them, but I just feel like where last year Winnipeg, there was just so many more like this is a guaranteed win and the games that Winnipeg has dropped has been kind of surprised in this year. Jason, what do you think? What is your trust factor of Winnipeg here? Well, I do still trust them. I think a weird thing that I've realized when I looked at the last couple of years, they've played worse against the East than they have against the west. It seems like they really bring it with the exception of the Labor Day game this year in that a game earlier this year against bc, they've been pretty dominant against West Division opponents, which are ultimately the ones you're going to have to go through to get to the Great Cups. So I feel pretty confident if BC and Winnipeg play in the playoffs this year, I would probably be taking Winnipeg, even if maybe it was in BC place, I probably would still go with Winnipeg. But I think at the end of the day there are some cracks in this team that have not been shown over the past couple of years. They're giving up a lot of big plays on defense. They've had some pretty poor performances on defense this year that we haven't seen the last couple of years. So I mean that's concerning from that perspective that Claris has, I believe 15 or 15 interceptions on the air, so that's pretty high. Had three of them in this one, that was really huge for the TCATs and getting the win. So I think there definitely are some issues with the bombers this year that we haven't seen in the past, but I think they're still one of the teams that I would just put them right behind. Toronto right now is the second best team in the league still. Yeah, spoiler alert, whatever home field advantage BC has being inside in the doma, whatever is pretty beneficial. The boat. I think Winnipeg's Home Field advantage we're used to playing in the frozen tundra and you're not, our water bottles are frozen on the side of the sidelines. I think that even if it wasn't BC place, I think it's a wash. I think Winneba has a home field advantage. I think anyone kind of comes in there. Evan, other thoughts on this? I had, where was my tweet here about Sergio Castillo missing again, he's a friend of the show, Benon former, he was in the XFL and Chris and Mark Legio is real them letting him go. I'll be curious, I have Derek Taylor, a voice of the bombers coming on this week on the bike to get his thoughts on this collapse. Evan, any other thoughts on this and anything else on the game? I don't think so. I'm really interested to talk about this next game between Edmonton and Saskatchewan. Had a lot of takeaways from that one. Alright, Jason, anything else from you? We'll go on. Yeah, let's move on. Alright, so we have here Evan chomping at the bit to talk Edmonton Elks, the Saskatchewan Rough Riders. This has to be at least the most points that Edmonton's put on the entire season. I'll give Evan the four here. You seem excited for this one. Yeah, well I'm excited for this one because I've started to notice something that I think is really positive for Edmonton and I haven't pointed it out on the show yet, but we talked at the top of the show about how Ottawa has been unable to close games. Edmonton now has had a couple big fourth quarter rallies and I feel like in this one it really stood out just Edmonton. Now I think I projected them having maybe three wins this season and with this game they were able to surpass that and keep in mind there's still whatever, five, six weeks left in the season so they could very well win. A couple more. I haven't looked at their schedule, haven't looked that far forward yet, but there were a lot of positives in this game from the Edmonton side of things. And the other really big takeaway on that side of the ball for the Elks that I had, Kevin Brown man, he has really become the saving grace for this season. We've talked about Trey Ford at nauseum, we've talked about Gino Lewis and what he was hoping to bring to that team being one of the top receivers in the league. But Kevin Brown has absolutely exploded and if I'm not mistaken, I believe he's second in the CFLin rushing yards right now behind Brady, Oliveira and Winnipeg. So Kevin Brown, man, hats off to you. What a fun player to watch and really someone who has been leading, I'd say the offense, I mean he had more rushing yards than Trey Ford had passing yards in this game and I feel like I've been watching him the past couple of weeks and he's doing all these really good things, but we haven't been giving 'em enough credit. Maybe it's because it's Edmonton, it's not necessarily a winning team. We're still focused on some of the drama and struggles that they've had before. They've been able to win a couple games here in the second half of the season. But a lot of improvement, a lot of improvement across the board and Edmonton continues to impress, which is not something I thought I would be saying, especially after all the mid-season shift between Victor Que. I thought they still might not be at a point where they're winning right now, but fortunately they've been able to turn some things around again under the guidance of Trey Ford and that continued against Saskatchewan in Regina, which was really surprising to me. I thought that Saskatchewan would win that game and they'd do it by a decent margin, but I guess not. And Saskatchewan now, I don't want to say they're on a bit of a slump, but that whole, ever since that banjo bowl loss where they got decimated by Winnipeg, I feel like they're still recovering from that a bit and they didn't play poorly in this game. There was a lot about this game that I thought things still looked all right. Really. One of my main takeaways too, not necessarily about this game but about Saskatchewan is there was something brought up on the T S N broadcast. I forget which game it was, but it was about looking at quarterbacks for next year, what some of the top options might be. And Drew Brown was brought up in Winnipeg. Obviously he's played a bit this season in place of Zach Calleros, but the guy that I can't stop thinking about here is Jake Dole gala and the impression that he's made over the past couple weeks. Obviously Mason Fine gets hurt, you're going to Dole Gala, no one's really sure what's going to happen. He's kind of an unproven guy, but he's come in and he's been really impressive week after week and even in this loss still had three touchdown passes. I really wonder because I think Trevor Harris will come back to Saskatchewan next year and that kind of begs the question is Jake Dagal going to stay and take that reserve role behind the veteran guy or is he ready now to go on to another team, find a new opportunity and start for a quarterback needy team, wherever that may be. Obviously I think there'll be a couple teams that could be in that position if they don't feel confident about who's there now. So I feel like Jake Dal could definitely challenge a couple guys at this point and he'll be an interesting name to watch going forward into 2024. You're talking here Edmonton and you said looking at their schedule ahead and whatever. I'll tell you next week, BC and Edmonton, I would not be surprised at all if Edmonton beats BC at all. At all. I completely think that's possible. Jason, thoughts on that? BC here going into Edmonton, like I said, my faith on BC is about a negative 0.5. Yeah, I think the way with that Edmonton is playing right now. They could beat almost any team in the C F L. I mean they have such a unique formula right now in terms of running the ball. They're averaging almost 200 yard games since straightforward took over as the starting quarterback, which are basically just like video gamer college football like numbers. And that's just really impressive and I mean it's hard to consistently win like that in the CFLright now. It's working and I mean when it comes to the Elks in their hopes of making the playoffs, I mean I just don't see a way that they get in because of that tiebreaker that they lost to Saskatchewan. I think back to that 12 to 11 game earlier this season with the one, if that game goes the way, then Evan's in a high breaker right now and only one game behind Saskatchewan. So I mean if they just had one less loss right now, they'd be right in the thick of things. But I think 10 losses, it's just a little bit too far behind to catch up unless they somehow run the table here. Yeah, playoffs are not, I think they're going to make life really messy here and I'd tell you, tracking the Mariners here and at the time I think we were in second in the division going into Kansas City who bounces between the worst or the second to worst team in the league. I mean they ran us the extra innings every night and hey, we love playing spoiler here and we're still professionals and we got a lot to do if I'm bc, you cannot go into that game sleep blocking here at this point. We need to keep whatever was found in this comeback who would've thought like, hey, the comeback victory against the Ottawa and Dustin Crumb. You need to keep that going. Evan, similar a question to you about Elks here against BC as we're looking forward. Well, you can't rule it out. I would say maybe it's upset, alert, especially after that, again, tremendously close game that BC played against Ottawa. I do feel like BC is a bit overconfident sometimes and I think that's been the reason to blame on a lot of their bosses this season. And I know you've brought up Reed like Rick Campbell, the way that he kind of goes about himself and sort of handling the team in those situations where they lose a lot of it. I know you've said talking about move on to the next game or whatever and you want them to reflect on things and think about it, but I don't know, I feel like we don't need that much negativity, right? BC you need to think about it, you need to take that loss, you need to think about It. Hey man, I get it. Look, I understand there are some frustrations and BC is far from perfect. They definitely have slowed down a bit I think in the second half of the season compared to their hot start. But I will say BC again, despite everything that's gone on with them, I still feel like they're an extremely strong team. And again, it's one of those situations where you look at experience and personnel and the combination of those two. I feel like BC if they do lose this game against Edmonton, which I'm not going to rule it out, I feel like there's a chance for anything to happen if they were to lose that game to Edmonton, I would start to question some of the things I have said, but I think for now, I think for now, yes, even with the Ottawa game, even with the couple games before that that were really close and what you could call inexcusable losses, I still feel like this team is in a prime position to go into Edmonton and hey, maybe go beat 'em by 30. Who knows Edmonton as much credit as we've given them, I don't think it's going to take much to find their weak spot or their soft spot and then they could just go back to the way things have been or the way things were at the beginning of the season. So it goes both ways and I feel like every game there's no guarantees, especially in a league like this where teams are meeting each other so many times during the season and it's so long. I mean you have an opportunity to really beat everybody. It's not like the N F L where you're not playing every team every season. So that's something to keep in mind I think. I understand there is some worry about BC and again, they're another team where if they don't get it done this year, do you think about maybe making some significant adjustments? I mean, me personally, I like what they have. I don't think you change anything, even if they do, if they don't advance to the Great Cup this year, but you certainly have to consider it, right? They've been so close now for what feels like a while and you just watch 'em this season and there's times where you think they can do it and there's other times where you feel like they're still right at the edge and if there's one little thing that goes off, then maybe that could just derail things. I will say one of the things with BC too, my last point about this, which is a bit random, but I'll point it out anyway, I noticed this against Ottawa and it happened in the Toronto game too, that was a long time ago now, but BC at least on offense, especially with Vernon, it seems like sometimes they make a mistake and then they just can't really get over it. Vernon, it's like if he throws an interception, well he's going to throw two more after that because I think he sometimes struggles to get over that hurdle and whether that's just mental or just not recognizing there's certain things not moving off the play quick enough and making decisions because your mind's not in the right place. I don't know. I'm not in his head and again, he's still a very good quarterback. That's nothing against Vernon. I just think that's something that I've noticed in a couple games where Beast's lost where it's like they have one little mistake where it's not going to end the game or anything and you can easily move off that, get the ball back, go score a touchdown, but then suddenly everyone goes into panic mode and it's like, okay, we have to start making all these adjustments and I'm like, you just got to keep it together to stay collected. I think if they just stayed true to that a bit and kind of road things out, I've seen other teams where it's like they make a mistake but then they just keep going. They don't think about that and it takes 'em a bit of time to get back into things, but those teams will find ways to make a game competitive and even if they don't always win, those are still some of the better teams in the league. So I know that's a lot. I know that's a bit of a tangent and definitely some weird niches in there, everything that I've just explained, but I feel like that's all important. BC is one of these teams where people are really eager to see what happens and they're, again, they're one of the best in the C F L, but are they Winnipeg good? Are they Toronto? Good? We don't know, we got to figure that out. So we'll see. Two questions here. I'll ask Jason kind of back to back, and I know we're talking a lot of bc, we're kind of midweek here and we will hit the last game and we'll get out of here. I was talking with, obviously we had some of the BC social team down here last week going to the Mariner game and we're talking and can't wait for grade cup next year and oh my God, it's going to be so exciting and whatever. And I, every team kind of has a window that they're going to win. And I know a Buffalo Bills is your N F L team I think, and their window is very shrinking right now and their window might have already shrunk, but you had the work thing and then you have Vernon. It's not like Vernon's the problem, right? It's not like the receivers of the problem, like the defense some of the time. What do you attribute if they don't make it this year, what do they do going into next year to be in to host the game's going to be there? I dunno how you extend this window more than what they're doing except just Winnipeg is that much better? I think that the running game is a big separating factor from them in Winnipeg. I think the worst team in terms of running the ball this year, I guess that Winnipeg is number one or right up there as the number one team running the ball. That's a massive problem between these two teams, especially if BC has to go on the road in the playoffs to Winnipeg. That's just an element that's completely missing from their game. I think as much of the CFLas a passing league, I think you still do need to have that change up element. And I mean maybe you bring back James Butler, we're pretty happy with him in Hamilton, but I think a guy like him, they really missing from this offense and I think that's something that BC just doesn't have right now. And I mean I feel like sometimes they're just not awake. A lot of these games they kind of play down to their opponents. So I mean it's going to be very interesting to see how their season shakes out because I think, excuse me, I think that they're right in the thick of it. They easily could make the gray cup this season, but I also could see them getting blown out in the West Final. I think the variance with them is very high. I get that they're sleep blocking. I'm like, I don't know what else you're wanting to do at this point. I feel like you're in the CFLand the money's fine and it's not great. And we've had all the discussions that and T football, I would want to kick ass and take names and I just don't understand some of these weeks you said they show up and I feel like I'm sitting there and I'm throwing my remote through the TV and I'm more passionate than it feels like. And I know that that's not the case and I'm given 1% of the effort that they're doing every week. It just doesn't always translate on the field that way. My other question Jason, then we'll get Evan's thoughts. Chris Jones, it was like fire Chris Jones and I have this football database. It was just kind of interesting. If you look Oliveira obviously like 1200 yards. We got Taek Misel, half the rushing yards lead rusher here for BC people calling for Chris Jones's head earlier and I can't remember which guest I was talking about on the podcast last week, but Chris Jones could be like coach of the year now with the turnaround. Jason, what do you make of that? And then we'll get Evan's thoughts like how Jones is doing now that we've finally played Trey forward it. It's so weird. I mean, as you said, if he had this conversation a month ago, I be like, everybody would've expected that Chris Jones would be let go at the end of the season, but oddly in a way mean the decision to not start tre forward for a long time could be a reason to fire him. But also the fact that he drafted Trey Forward, the first case showed that he had faith in him in the first place. And I mean I just don't know what was going on earlier this year. I think they were a little bit committed to Cornelius because of that guaranteed portion of his contract next year. But I think at the end of the day, maybe with this strong second half of the season, Chris Jones is going to be safe in terms of his head coaching job here in Edmonton because I think it's kind of going in the right direction now. They've kind of found a formula on how to win and you're starting to see a lot of these pieces come together and I feel like they're going to be a very exciting team next year if we have the same nucleus together. Evan, same thoughts on that and then we'll get to the last game. I mean Jones is, we're talking, we're gushing over Edmonton here. We're a couple of weeks ago, I guess a month ago now. It certainly wasn't the case. Yeah, it's mixed feelings. I mean I think we've talked at nauseum about Edmonton's turnaround and how staggering that this really is in the second half of the season. I mean it's two different teams, but the one thing that I can't get over, and I'm not saying well, I'll say this much. I think Chris Jones' job is safe now. I feel like at this point it's just a lot easier to go into the off season and build with him knowing that you've now won a couple games and there is actually something there despite everything that happened earlier. But I just can't get over the fact that for so long we said the only thing that team really needed to do was get Cornelius out of the lineup and insert Ford instead. And in the back of my mind, I always thought that there was maybe a bit more than that, but there really wasn't. Once Tre Ford came in, it was a completely different game. Again, it was two different seasons and it's just staggering to see it was such a simple adjustment that wasn't made that early. And to be honest, I mean I think maybe we all agree here, but had Trey Ford started at the beginning of this season, Edmonton might be competing for certain spots in the west. I mean, they might be up there winning big games on a weekly basis and they would've never even got to that home losing streak record or whatever because they probably could have just taken care of that earlier. Again, it's just such a weird kind of dynamic and I think this is one thing, regardless of what happens Edmonton here in the next couple of weeks, this is one of the things that I will remember most about the 2023 CFLseason was not having Trey Ford play earlier, because again, that's all it really took. They have not made any major adjustments. Yes, there was a couple things. The coaching side, I suppose, but again, I just can't believe that we were sitting there literally calling for Trey Ford's name and then he started and then it was like everything was fixed. Everyone was happy again, and I almost feel bad for a guy like Victor Qui where the second he left the organization, everything started being great again. They won a home game, they won other games. Trey Ford was the talk of the town and the CFLand still is to a great extent, one of those players where it's a new highlight every week and just to not do that earlier and to possibly cost your team a spot in the playoffs, I think there's going to be people that go both directions when it comes to Chris Jones and where he stands, whether he should be there next season or not. Again, I think he should be just because if you get rid of him, that removes everything that you've built in the second half of this season, and I understand it's been difficult and you can't forget what happened for all those games that they lost at the beginning of the season where it looked hopeless. You can't forget about that, but at the end of the day, if they get rid of Chris Jones, he wears so many hats. Who else are you going to bring in to replace all that? I don't think they can afford really to go through another rebuild. I mean, hell, it just seems like yesterday when Jaime Elizondo was the head coach and it was a completely different team, but to get rid of all that again, I just don't think that's a good idea now that they've at least won a couple games. I have Steven Dunbar on the podcast and he was talking about I love Chris Jones and I love and the guys because I said, was there ever any doubt of any of that? I will say it's kind of like the Elks winning once Victor Que left, it's kind of like if you're maybe dating someone and it's kind of wrong and then you break up and then maybe you end up getting a new job or you move on with your life and do something good. Was that because of the past relationship or was it in spite of the past relationship? Kind of curious where that goes. Let's get into this last game then We'll flip the channel here. We'll start the new stream. We'll get on to XFL. This probably least surprising game, maybe just because it was close. I mean ettes here really seemed to be on the slide. Jason, thoughts on this one? I mean, Toronto comes in, takes care of business and moves out. Well, I would argue this is the worst game that Toronto's played the entire season to this point, yet they still were able to claw their way back and win it at the end of this game, and I mean both teams had a sloppy first half. It was pretty low scoring, but Montreal in particular really got it going. In the third quarter of this game, they had I think a seven point lead late in the fourth quarter. Toronto was able to tie it up. They had a situation where they were third and three from their own eight yard line and then Toronto went for it. They get a big pass interference call on Diante Coxey, and that springboards the game tying drive and then the next drive when it's tied up at 20 Bajado throws a killer interception and that leads to the game-winning field goal for Toronto. But Montreal was able to get the ball back with a little bit of time left, get into field goal position, and they get their field goal blocked on the last play, so a heartbreaker for the ettes, they let one slip away here, but I think Toronto, it really shows even if they're not playing well, they can still win a lot of games in this league. This, yeah, very reminiscent here. Blocked field goal of a different Toronto blocked field goal player. Maybe a little bit more infamous one from my last year at the Gray Cup. Evan, what's wrong with my friend Cody Fido? I don't know in this game, I'm not even a Montreal fan, but my heart kind of sank when he threw that interception on that second to last drive. I watched that entire game and the entire time I thought Montreal was going to win, I said, this is their chance. Toronto, they've won. Obviously they win all the time, but that game, it just felt like their opportunity. They've played Toronto. This was the third time that they played Toronto this season, and they had an opportunity to take down one of the, probably the best team in the CFLright now, arguably at home in Montreal in front of their great fan base and they couldn't do it and they were so close too. That's the part that just really hurts. Again, I'm not a Montreal fan, I'm not connected to that city in any way, but with the second fdo through that pick, which was a really bad pick by the way, it was kind of like a face palm. I'm like, and that's your game. Yeah, I know Montreal was able to get the ball back and obviously have an opportunity to tie, they weren't able to do that with the field goal block, but it really felt like Fordo was just going to drive down the field right there and put the game away with a touchdown and that was going to be it. Toronto wasn't even going to have a chance to do any of that and there wasn't going to be need for overtime or anything, but it happens. It happens and the reality is it's another week of you question Cody Fido and where he's at and I mean, again, I still think there's a lot of promise there. He hasn't looked terrible this season, but again, Montreal for what feels like the millionth time is unable to beat somebody superior to them, and I understand Toronto's a tough task, but it was right there for the taking. It felt like Toronto played so slowly that they were just giving Montreal these opportunities and while they took advantage of some of them, it wasn't enough, and that's all that really matters. At the end of the day, people are just going to look at the final score and think, oh, well Montreal drops another one to a top opponent, and then we're right back to our discussion last week about where does this team stand going into the playoffs and what is it going to look like? Then obviously going into next season, they've already kind of, their big period of adjustment happened last year. They shifted a lot of things including ownership, so I think they're just going to stick with what they have now, but there's just got to be some sort of mindset change. I feel like this is a team, a team that can't beat people above them, that beats everybody below them. That's the definition of content. It kind of just feels like they've stagnated and it sucks. I thought this was again the game where Montreal was going to get over the hump and they were going to really make a statement, especially again late in the season. You've played Toronto. I guess this was the third time they played each other. You want to close out that strong and they just couldn't do it. They just couldn't do it and yeah, it is what it is. There was a lot, again, they showed plenty of promise in this game. Tyson Philpott, who was one of the greater stories coming into the league, Canadian I believe, had a nice game kind of the first time we've really been able to talk about him this season, and again, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, and I know Montreal's going to go to the playoffs. I get it. They'll be fine. They can ride things out, but it's difficult. It's difficult and I don't know. That's just kind of where I'm at on it now. It sucks. Yeah, like you said, well, I saw Cody, Cody throw that terrible pick and it's like they're always terrible. They're always terrible. It's always in double coverage or this is bad, whatever. Jason, I'll give you the final stand here and then we'll get out of here and we'll reset XFL stream coming on at 4 45 Pacific, 7 45 Eastern. We're going to reset here and hop over to that stream. What do you got, Jason? Yeah, so I think the big takeaway I have from this game and the big takeaway I have in the weekend in general is because they lost this game and Hamilton won on Saturday, they're now tied and now Hamilton's in that conversation for that home playoff game. As we go down the stretch here, Montreal still has that tie breaker, but that didn't look like it was possible for this week, but now it looks like it's definitely a possibility. It should be exciting. I mean, people always poo the ease. I don't know. I like this year, I like Winnipeg dropping some, I like there being just a little bit more Winnipeg's 10 and one and going through Argos here are still the one outlier of that, but I think otherwise than that, I think anybody can at least keep it close. We just talked to Ottawa and BC and all that stuff. Late episode here this week. Jason, are you going to be doing a preview coming up on your channel? Yep. I'll be dropping one probably by tomorrow night. I also have another video tomorrow, so there'll be two videos coming out on my channel most likely tomorrow I'm going to be doing just a full out examination of the playoffs, all the different scenarios as we have like five games left in the season for each team, so check that out on my channel. Well, it should be exciting. Like I said, Evan's going to hop over with me. We'll put the, go to the YouTube, it's up on there, pinging on, I'll pin it on Twitter if you want to do that as well, talking to XFL U S L merger. Evan's going to be there. We're going to have Anthony Miller joining us. Mike Mitchell's going to be coming on live, and then we will take comments and if people want to hop on and talk through that stuff as well, we'll probably go for hour 15 or so and then we got a big trivia party thing tonight I got to go to, so check out Jason's stuff. Thanks, guys. Like I said, making time this week and late and everything else, but we did it. What is it? Week 15 here in the book, so we'll see you guys next time.

CFL 2023 Week 15 Pre-game Show! XFL Asst. Coaches’ Contracts Becoming Seasonal? CFL Week 15 Preview!

Coming up this week on the mark cast big cfl Week 15 pregame show this week. Have you covered both with the East Division and the West two? Great cfl reporters plus two player interviews coming at you. Jeff Hamilton from the Winnipeg pre-press joins us to preview everything on the cfl West division. We're talking BC Lions, blue bombers, Elks, everyone else there Was a burning fire in Zach, Polaris and the team all week. They just didn't share it. They took their opportunity at IG Field Saturday afternoon in the Banjo Bowl and did they ever answer back? And then Dan RA from the Canadian Press joins us. We are talking the Argos, we're talking tie cats, red Blacks, everything going on over there. The ettes. What do we make of them and more, Sometimes the best option is to live, to play another down rather than go for the whole enchilada. But having said that, if I had Austin Mack as a receiver, maybe I would hold onto the ball too. The xfl is reportedly not renewing the contracts for its assistant coaches and Twitter is melting down. I give my 2 cents on the situation that has the internet unraveling this Week. Everybody's dialed in, everybody knew what they had to do. Coach Stor does a great job making sure we understand what we have to do because like I said last week is a bit of a crapshoot really. We kind of embarrassed ourselves out there, not kind of, we did embarrass ourselves so it's exciting to go back and now everybody has a clear vision on what exactly what we need to get done this week. And then two great player interviews. We have Armando Seewell of the Montreal Ette and Matthew Bets of America's cfl team and the BC Lions joining us. Hope you guys enjoy like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the Markas Reed here. Busy week trying to get all of this recorded. I hope you guys enjoy welcome. Thank you for stopping by today. Jeff Hamilton at How the Chaotic Morning car accident. Everything's fine. Made it on the show working around everything a couple different days trying to get him onto the seewell on the program. Really appreciate his time. So just hope you guys enjoy like and subscribe if you enjoy the content we do here. Trying to get up to 3,500 subscribers, big C F O Week 15 here for Great Matchups over the weekend that we have the Montreal hosting Toronto here. They have their big B M X themed that bike night happening there. And then we have Edmonton traveling to Saskatchewan. Very excited for that. Elks kind of rolling right now straight forward. And then obviously Winnipeg rolling into Hamilton. Hope Hamilton puts up a little bit more of a fight than we're expecting. And then Ottawa coming home, in my opinion, the must win for the BC Lions. BC Lions cannot be dropping any games right now, especially to Ottawa at home. I guess have four great interviews today. We have Jeff Hamilton joining us from the Winnipeg Free Press. Really appreciate him making the time, like I said on a chaotic morning on his part. Really appreciate that. And then Dan Ralph, always making time to come on the program. Can't wait to see Dan. Back up. Dan and Jeff probably back up in Hamilton for the breakup this year. And then really appreciate Francis everyone over at the Montreal Ettes getting the Mondo Seewell on the program. And then Matt Baker and I took in a Mariner game here, the one loss we had this week to the Anaheim Angels. It was very, very sad. Extra innings lost but spent lots of time hanging out with Matt and the rest of the BC Lions content team. Really appreciate him setting up Matthew Betts coming on the program. That's going to probably do it for me today. I do have the article up. I know there were reports out this week of xfl assistant coaches, contracts not being renewed. Obviously the online stress and kind of discussion and argument that's going to arise from that similar to the xfl losing 60 million. We kind of lived through all that a few months ago. I will say genuinely so happy to be podcasting cfl right now and be talking to actual football and not expansion or hypothetical expansion or hypothetical rebranding through extension. Like really just enjoying talking football right now. Really enjoying all of our conversations involved with that with the cfl. But I did want to touch on this today. I asked Andy, do you have any hot takes on this? And we've kind of talked about it in the group chat this week, but I figured that would give my 2 cents on here. Article notes, f l assistant coaches facing uncertainty as contracts wind down the September 22nd is going to be I guess the end date for the current contracts of all the assistant coaches and not the head coaches and not the xfl coordinators, but the assistant coaches it sounds like they'll have benefits paid out through September 30th. The assistant coaches contracts are set to expire with no clear date set for renewal of their agreements as the league explores new payment structures. Obviously you can imagine the drama and stress that went online when all of these reports came out this week. To me, I don't know, I don't want to call this a nothing burger because obviously these are people's lives and careers and trying to get work. It looks like they can apply for unemployment here in the off season as early as the new contract could come up as early as November or January so they could do the unemployment in the meantime and then next year maybe they have a different contract in place and you could be under unemployment for longer for maybe potentially May through November. I don't know. To me, Andy and I have talked about this at nauseum on here, the seasonal nature of the xfl and as much as we want them to operate is kind of a 365 business right now. I just don't think that that's prudent. We've seen that with the U SS F L basically go dark following their season except for these N F L, the US, F L, the N F L signings, but pretty much go dark in that regard. It feels like similar here. Do we need to keep the assistant coaches on staff payroll throughout the year even if they're only theoretically format side of the year? Obviously I use kind of the air quotes on that because I believe football staffs work all year. We've had Evan on here, the director, assistant director of player personnel over at the Vegas Nighthawks. I don't think football as scouting, football development, coaching, any of that ever goes into the off season. But if you're quote unquote theoretically only working four months for the xfl, really kind of hard to have them to justify paying those contracts right now for 12 months out of the year. We'll see, like I said, we've seen similar models. It notes here drawing parallels with the US F L'S operational brew plant. The xfl is contemplating the pay model where assistant coaches would become saved during active periods ranging from training camp to the ongoing season that set up the echoes part-time employment more than a full-time commitment. Mark had the extra little quote here and this is kind of where I get we got the do clicks and all of that, but the tumultuous scenario evokes concerns yet also opportunities for restructuring and revitalization as league evolves to establish a sound operational base that augments the sports growth trajectory. If I said that right, like I said, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I think that anything right now that they feel will justify them and continuing to year two, a year three, continuing to give people opportunities, players, staff, coaches, all of that game day staff, ticket sales staff, the announcers, the commentators, the end stadium hosting experiences, any of that stuff, anything they need to do if they feel like Red Bird is saying we need to cut costs right now to maintain. We've seen the usfl go through this as long as it doesn't affect the product on the field, I think we'll be in good hands. Obviously we're going to continue to monitor this, but just wanted to get my 2 cents on that here. Like I said, didn't feel like there was enough or a full segment today, but I obviously wanted to share my thoughts on that. So like I said, please like and subscribe lots of cfl content this week. We'll get continuing on the X M L bandwagon right now when news dictates and kind of justifies that, but like and subscribe. We'll see you at the end next. Well this man's had an interesting morning here. Appreciate Jeff Hamilton coming on. I will say I felt like Leonardo DiCaprio, the meme where he's sitting on the couch pointing at the tv. I was watching Zach Ros's post press conference, was it two weeks ago with the headbutt heard around the world. I go, Jeff, Jeff, what are they going to do? I don't know what they're going to do. How are you doing, sir? Yeah, really good man. Like you said, a little bit of an adventure this morning with a car collision, but all in all safe, happy to be on here and looking forward to talking three down football man. It's been a while. I've obviously been listening and whatnot, but it feels great to be on and talking about the league we love covering. Yeah, it's good here. So life is good in Winnipeg. I wanted to get your thoughts first on this because the Labor Day game was great. I was able to listen to that. I was filming, I had it up on my headphones, Winnipeg losing that right? And then coming back and really just kind of kicking the snot out of the Saskatchewan last week. What did you make of that? You know what? It was personal. I don't know how else to explain it. I mean that was an extremely disappointing loss as you alluded to just seconds ago about the Labor Day classic and of course the Pete Robertson headbutt heard round the cfl and of course the post-game chatter. I mean Zach Claris is a fiery guy, but I've never seen him that livid, that angry. And of course he was not happy with the Pete Robertson headbutt and he's been a guy who's been very vocal about protecting quarterbacks in the league, not doing enough to protect their best players. And it was one of those where it was like he was really mad about the headbutt that was personal to him. He is been very vocal about the cfl and not protecting his best players. So he took that opportunity, but make no mistake, man, he was incredibly upset about the offensive effort, the inconsistency. I mean they still came within a two point convert of tying that game and pushing it to another overtime and certainly could have won that game even not playing it their best. But Zach Ez took the uncharacteristic step after the game and addressed the team. Look, this guy's an absolute leader. He's the unquestionable leader on the team, but he's a lead by example guy, so very rarely does he address the team. He addressed the team after the Labor Day Classic just said to them, I'll sum it up, pretty much was, hey, what an awful game we played. We did not live up to our standards. We have an opportunity in a week's time to make things right. We better be taking full advantage. And the bombers are so good at the whole one and oh process at the whole boring, we're focused on us and not getting too high with the wins and not getting too low with the losses. But there was a burning fire in Zach Claris and the team all week. They just didn't share it. They took their opportunity at IG Field Saturday afternoon in the Banjo Bowl and did they ever answer back? I mean, this is a team that had slow starts to last four games and all of a sudden we look okay, first drive one touchdown, second drive two touchdowns. Okay, I guess they got the memo about the slow starts by halftime. They've gone six for six and it was nearly a perfect half and I mean there was only nine points scored all by the bombers in the final two quarters. But what an answer for them. And I mean, not that it was surprising. I thought that the riders would have a bit more confidence. Maybe they had too much confidence. I thought they'd be better off in that game. But certainly the crowd played a role and the bombers just did an old fashioned shit kicking as we saw. It's weird to me because, and I want to talk about BC here in a little bit, but I don't think that BC has carried losses well into the next week. Rick's said, oh, we got to kind of forget about that. I think you need to carry over some of that sometimes. And I like hearing that Winnipeg, we play light duty here, we want to come back in. What was weird was at least during the Labor Day game, Saskatchewan felt like an semblance of an actual football team and like, oh, Al is going to be good and the defense and all this stuff and then to completely be locked down here. What do you make of Saskatchewan as a football team? You know what? They're so confusing to me. You look at what they've gone through this year, there's no doubt about it. They've been hit by the injury bug. I mean they lost obviously Trevor Harris to what looks like it's probably going to be a season ending injury. He addressed the media I believe yesterday or a couple of days ago and said he hopes to return but doesn't look good. Then Mason Fine has a hamstringing injury and then they get forced on by Jake Doga who if you talk to a lot of people in Saskatchewan, they've been calling for this guy to be the quarterback from maybe not from the beginning. Trevor Harris was certainly the guy they needed to get. They needed some after last season's debacle. They needed that position to be consistent. I mean Cody Fido, he is doing well in Montreal right now, but he just was a different cat last season and by the end of the year it was just you need to shore up that position. So getting Trevor Harris was certainly the answer. I think Jake Doga is the future. I like what we saw from him. I mean he did not look good against Winnipeg and they did everything in their power to stop 'em as a defense. That happens when your offense puts up that many touchdowns and you're forced to throw the ball. I mean they would've thrown their game plan I imagine out the window by the third drive because they were playing catch up that forces them to throw. And like I said, IG Field was absolutely booming. It was sold out. Very difficult to deal with the sound, much like the bombers were dealing in Mosaic Stadium the week before. That's just very challenging. But I just don't know what to read on the rough riders. I came into the season extremely low on them. I didn't think Craig Dickinson would have a job by Labor Day weekend. I thought this was a show me kind of, well absolutely was a show me season for Jeremy O'Day and Craig Dickinson. They both don't have contracts for next season and coming off an absolutely disappointing season where they didn't even make the playoffs in a year, they were hosting the Great Cup. I thought that was going to be the end of them. Now looking at them at six and six, they were six and five hanging into this past weekend. That's about as good as I thought they would be. Are they a good team? No, but guess what? The rest of the west sucks. So they just sit there comfortably in third place in the west at six and six and Calgary did themselves no favors Edmonton as well splitting that home and home series over the last two weekends. That's exactly what the rough riders were hoping for. So it just looks less like this team is all that threatening. I mean they did have an impressive showing against Winnipeg and we know how good the bombers have been for years, so you got to give 'em credit for that and you got to give 'em credit for going into BC and beating them as well. So I think that we've certainly seen or no, that was actually at home. It was Hamilton that went into BC and took their lunch money, but still regardless, BC's a really good talented team. So for them to go back to back, I think a lot of people were high on them, thought that perhaps even if they could somehow win last weekend, which they didn't even come close, that they were in conversations for maybe capturing the West. Well slam back to reality. I do not look at this team as a juggernaut. I don't look at them as a threat. I look at the bombers and the BC Lions and a class of their own and then the rough riders in the mushy middle and then the basement being Calgary and Edmonton. So I think we're going to get a lot of answers of who this Rough Riders team is here down the stretch. But my opinion over the last five or six games, we're going to see a lot of what we predicted kind of a 500 team. They'll get into the playoffs and I think there'll be an early exit against the Lions in that West Semi. Well, because my question and we had some of the BC Lions staff down here for a Mariners game this week and we were talking kind of West finals and I have been a frustrated fan all year with BC and some of these very winnable games. Okay, Winnipeg, that's one thing, but you need to be Hamilton, you need to beat Saskatchewan here. And I don't know if Saskatchewan comes into bc, I don't think BC place is this. Lions have this incredible home field advantage there. If it would be different if it was in Saskatchewan. I don't know, last year I saw Calgary fall to bc. I don't know if Saskatchewan kind gets their head out of their, but here it could be kind different. Yeah, I mean that's the beauty of the cfl. You can change the narrative with one win each week. The Edmonton Elks lost their first nine games and of what won the last three of their last four games or whatever it is and they're in conversation for the East Swing over. So it really is a week to week thing and we're getting to that time though where the picture's kind of showing itself. I think the BC Lions are a fascinating team. You made a point earlier, Rita, and I agree with it wholeheartedly and I've been saying it on every interview I have. The BC Lions are incredibly talented. They have continuity which has been the bomber's bread and butter for the last few years, so they have guys who have been in that locker room for years. The problem is they still are learning how to win and lose. You need to learn how to lose, but you also need to learn how to win games and we saw that when the Lions put a beat down on the bombers in week three this season you had Alexander Hollins who's been an absolute stud this year. He is probably far and away the best first year receiver of surprising receiver this year, but he's posting on social media four days later we're going to come into your house and do whatever we want. And that to me, I could never imagine. I mean I got to compare 'em to the bombers, the team that I cover, and that's the team that's been the class of the cfl. That would never happen. There was not a single guy in that locker room who four days later after a win would be celebrating and then what happens? They go into Toronto and they get their asses kicked and then they come back to Winnipeg for the second round and Winnipeg puts up a 50 burger on them. So to me it's less about the talent for them. There's no doubt they have talent. I mean they got great guys on the six game IR right now and they're still a dangerous lethal team and I'm a fan of Vernon Adams. I think he's a good quarterback. I was wish washy about him earlier in the season just because of his inconsistencies, but I think he's got that team, he's got the respect of that team. He's certainly their leader. This is a club that I think is going to need to just be a little more mature. I know that's not a great thing to say about a team, but just from what I've seen this season, there's been some inconsistencies that when your head gets a little too big and that's the BC Lions for right now, very talented team. I would be worried about them playing them in the playoffs because it is any given Sunday, but at the same time they're a team that gets a little bit too emotional at the wrong times and that's really been the bomber's bread and butter and why they've been so successful the last few years. Well I agree with that a lot. I had said this is if you can't beat Ottawa at home this weekend, I mean I would pack up the season and go home if I was Ottawa might be the new CFL's worst team. Are we there yet? I Think we're There. It feels that way. We could talk Ottawa too, like you said. I don't know if there's something in that locker room. I don't know if it's Rick or I know Ryan Phillips and if he's not getting them up, it just feels, I don't know, immature or whatever that they can't the game. Toronto Vernon's throwing all the picks and they're freaking out. I'm like, we got to make a play, we got to make a play. Winnipeg, like you said, they'll start slow or they'll start down or they'll start, we're just going to march down the field and score. We're just going to march down the field. I don't know, BC like you said, continuity, but they do feel very young and kind of frantic in that way too. It feels like when the good times are rolling, everything's good, right? Everyone's eating right. As long as everybody's eating, everyone's happy, everyone's happy with what's going on. And when you see certain games a couple of weeks ago that in that I think it was that rider's game or one after that, whatever you had Alexander Hollins, again, I don't mean to pick on him, but he's slamming his helmet down on the sidelines because they didn't convert or they fumbled that ball. I think Butler might've fumbled the ball. And so he's sitting there getting angry. You have Lucky Whitehead who had an incredibly slow start to the season tweeting out peace time out and they had to explain what that was and it's a frustrated guy who's not getting his catches. Lucky has certainly improved over the last month. He's been getting more of those deep threat passes. He isn't quite the deep threat that he was even last season, but it's just, again, it kind of points back to the immaturity and you look at a lot of their social media and stuff and they got great social media. Nick Kalsi does a great job out there, obviously Matt Baker and what they do and bringing their team to their community. But it's all like, look at me, look at me. I'm incredible. It might as well be like a hip hop music video every time they get on it's, you don't really see a lot of that in other markets. While they are definitely a flashy team and a top end talented team, I question just some of that composure and some of that maturity when the game really matters, right? It's great if you can get up on teams and continue to roll and when you face that adversity in game that I start questioning maybe some of their antics and some of their maturity and why they haven't been able to be maybe as dominant as many people expected 'em to be this season. I love Vernon. We've had him on, he lives not far from me here in the off season, but in my head I can just picture we're in IG field here in a couple months and we're screaming and it's freezing cold and he's just like, I can picture that in my head right of him. Just like I said, when it's rolling, Vernon's great and Vernon's cool and everyone loves Vernon, but it is, you're riding that roller coaster and it just kind of depends what day you find him at, if that makes sense. And that's the thing, how many games has he thrown for 400 and something yards and lost? You know what I mean? They have an ability. That's the thing. They have the talent that if they get down in games that they can claw their way back. They've proven a few times this year they haven't been able to get quite over the edge of big deficits, but just the fact that they put themselves in games where they look nowhere near competing through the first two quarters is a testament to their talent. It is interesting. I think it's one of those things too with the lions is that they have a lot of people that want the ball and Winnipeg has the same problem they have when you have guys like Dalton, Sean, Kenny Lawler, Nick Demsky, Brady Oliveira, even guys like Rasheed Bailey and Drew. I mean there's a lot of targets to go around, a lot of places to go around, but each and every game, regardless of how many catches a guy got or if a touchdown, it's always been about the team. It's not even one of those things where you go into the locker room, you can kind of see someone quietly seething or upset and stuff like that. It just doesn't exist because at the end of the day, what matters is winning. And I mean as obvious and as cliche as that sounds, it's those teams that are able to kind of put that in the top of their priority and not talk about individual stats. Individual stats will come with winning. And I think that's the thing the bombers have been able to do is and latch onto and be successful by is that understanding that, well, it might be Kenny Lawler's week one week, it might be Nick Demsky week the next week. It might be Nick Demsky was the one, he got one target for eight yards last game, but he led the team with 120 yards in the Labor Day classic loss. It's just going to be different week to week. And I think that maturity and that continuity and that leadership group that you mentioned, Ryan Phillips and some of those guys and then some of the players out there, they have a lot of leaders, they have guys that are leaders. It's just about getting everybody on board. And I'm not trying to make this a BC Lions have a broken locker room. That's not the case at all. I just think they have a bit of a different philosophy that one that allows maybe a few more cracks to come in when it comes to those times of adversity in every single game that you play. Yeah, I mean what happened to the Donut boys that was, well Someone I got to screw it up, but it went from the donut boys. Oh, the Donut Boys to the 50 burger and I played that up too. I love that. I love that part of the cfl. I'm not trying to dull the league. I'm not trying to have every team be a one and oh whatever you want to see personality and certainly there's a lot of personality on bc, but maybe some of the times that personality gets in the way a little bit In terms of Winnipeg here, your team going into Hamilton, having a rough season is probably being an understatement. And I had said in the pregame our cfl pregame here many, many weeks ago, I said it feels very similar to Aaron Rogers going into the Jets here. We got Bo Levi going in and both here, injuries for older quarterbacks. What do you make Winnipeg coming? I don't know if there's a World War Winnipeg loses this game, but what do you do you making of the matchup? You Know what, I'm with you. I think it's a beat down. I think there was a bit of a lesson learned from the Labor Day classic, and I don't think it was a one week lesson. I think this is them priming down the stretch here and they want to be playing their best football and they want to be locking up the west. I mean, that's their ticket. You talk about BC plays the comfortable confines of BC plays and although I'm sure there's some teams that would like to play there versus Calgary or Winnipeg Outdoors in November, that's the ultimate advantage. Winnipeg is their crowd and the fact that they have players have been around for years and have played in that cold. So anyways, I think they're going to be motivated for sure this week. It's not forgotten on them. Last season they were riding high and high and went into Hamilton last year and Dane Evans had the game of his life. I think he threw five touchdowns and I'd never seen Mike Oche that angry after a game. And so I don't think it's lost on them what they did. I think Hamilton is really, Hamilton should be a much better team than they are based on their roster. They remind me of the 2017 Toronto Argonauts who as you know, went on to win the Great Cup that year. They bought a team in the off season, they brought all these big names, brought all these big names, managed to keep a lot of their stars brought on Lee by Mitchell. I always thought that was a mistake, no offense to Bo, but I just felt I was expecting to see him in a TV booth. Not behind center this season. But certainly I think the bombers are going to be motivated. They gave up a game against the riders that put them in a position where they can't really have many more mistakes as if they want to clinch the West as early as they have the last couple of seasons. So I see a massively motivated team and while Powell has done some cool things with Levi out, and to be honest with you man, I think that the quarterbacking with all the injuries has been a blessing this season seeing a lot of young guys. I just don't think that it's going to be the Taylor Powell led Hamilton Tiger Cats that teach the bombers another lesson this season. Yeah, what do you make of that? We've had Crumb and he's, it was kind of high in a little bit of a crash in Taylor Powell and then obviously Reforward to seeing that and we've talked Al, it feels like it's kind of a new ushering here. I absolutely love it and that's exactly what it is in my opinion. I think it's a new ushering of the new age quarterbacks, and I was writing about this during the off season and certainly leading up to week one was the cfl has a quarterback problem. You know what I mean? You had guys like Boli by Mitchell signing for three years after horrendous two seasons. The fact that they thought, and that's kind of the media and hyping up guys and putting them at the top of their free agent lists and whatnot. I mean, I know Bo wasn't a free agent. Hamilton went after him and got his rights at the end of last season, but it looked like they were just recycling. And then Trevor Harris goes over to Saskatchewan to save them and then Cody Fudo heads over to Montreal and then Vernon Adams is back in BC and while Vernon Adams, I don't necessarily put with the rest of that group, I think he still has a lot, I still think he's got a lot in the engine is certainly a prolific and entertaining quarterback. I just felt like it was just a bit dull. And the reality is that without those injuries, the coaches don't make those decisions. I talked to Craig Dickinson in Labor Day, I've talked to other coaches, Jason Moss, other guys about how conservative head coaches are in giving guys backups opportunities because at the end of the day, you ride or die with your quarterback and if you're a coach and you're trying to make the playoffs and keep your job and if you're in the last year of your contract or in one more year remaining and you're looking for an extension, you need results. So it's a gutsy move to go to an inexperienced guy. But here we are in Ottawa, it took injury to Jeremiah Molia, it took Nick Ruckle to continue to suck. It took Tyree Adams to tear his a c l. And now we got Dustin Crumb who well has certainly showed some mistakes and inconsistencies in his first year. It's his first season in the cfl. This guy hasn't had a ton of time. But you look at the comfort and I say that about Taylor Powell, I say that about Caleb Evans who played well with Cody Fido out of the lineup. I say that with Jake Doga, I say that with Drew Brown and Winnipeg. We now have, it's going to be a fascinating off season as teams retool and figure out their futures because I don't think Jeremiah Olli comes back just because of the back to back injuries and just how difficult it was for him to get back from his knee injury. I don't know if he's got the ability to come back from Achilles. I wish him the best and I hope he proves me wrong, but I just don't see it. Trevor Harris is getting upwards of 40 years old. You know what I mean? Is he going to be the right answer? Do you want to go back to a guy? I know they're really high on him. I've seen him around Mosaic. I mean he's hugging team personnel and whatever they like what he brings, but is he the right football move to make? And that's to assume that Craig Dickinson and Jeremy Day are even going to be in the building next year to even make that decision. So I mean they obviously have a commitment to 'em in football you can bail anytime, but that's an interesting one. And so I think there's going to be, whereas at the beginning of the season it looked like there were too many old retreads from team to team. They now looks like it's an exciting off season of quarterbacks. And I'll be very curious of the nine teams and who their starters are because I like Jake Mayer too. He hasn't had a great game in Calgary. I wouldn't be giving up on him just yet. But at the same time, I also wouldn't look at his job and say it's all that secure either Trevor Harris is older than me, which is insane to think that I, and I very nearly tore something in, honestly, I very nearly tore something in the back of my leg filming the wedding this year, walking on gravel. So God forbid, I mean it happens to us. Last thing before we get out of here, Edmonton here coming in Saskatchewan, bouncing back maybe, but Trey Ford's got a lot of momentum there. What are you making of that one Man? I really like Trey Ford. I think it looked like he learned how to throw last week and add that to his arsenal. So I think, I mean it's crazy. I mean I'm not the first person to say this and I won't be the last, I can't believe the Alex talk about being conservative. You went with Taylor Cornelius. Yes, you committed money to him, but you stay with him that long because you felt like he was your best option. And Chris Jones obviously did not want to hand the ball to a Canadian quarterback who hasn't had a lot of experience. He didn't want to go down with that ship after already losing, right? And now here we are, he's giving this team a fighting chance to maybe even make the playoffs. So I think they're going to make the playoffs. Absolutely not. But I do think they're headed in the right direction. I think it's one of those games where both teams are going to be up. Both teams feel pretty desperate. The riders are not, while they're comfortably in third place, they lose to Edmonton and all of a sudden it's a little bit more reachable. At the same time, rider, if the riders can beat the lowly Elks as we've called them all season, they put themselves in a great spot. They just continue to separate themselves. And so there's a lot to play for from both sides. But if you're asking me in Yaar, I'm going with the Elks this week, I think the Elks come in, they ride their momentum, they ride their confidence, it's nothing to lose. They're playing playoff football two weeks ago. So they might hit fatigue by the end of the regular season if they could do it. But at this point in time, I think they're super desperate. And the way that Trey Ford is playing, I just like him a bit more than the Jake Doga led riders. Yeah, I mean it went from Chris Jones needs to be fired and is how quick can we get the salary cap and all of this. And now it's like, man, Elks actually look pretty good. Chris Jones just got to stop being gm. You know what I mean? I think he's a great talented evaluator. I think he's proven to be a bad gm. He is a good head coach and he could probably do a little less than the turnover, but players respect him. All players for the most part. I haven't heard a single guy say they don't like 'em, even if they've been cut. But it's the too many roles, man. That's the problem in Edmonton. Well Jeff, I appreciate it, you making the time today with everything going on, we will see you, I assume here in Hamilton and we will see Winnipeg and bc, which could be exciting, but we'll see you in November at the minimum. I really appreciate your time today, Irene. Thanks so much, man. It's always a blast hanging out and talking three down football with you. Well, here we are back. We had this gentleman on during our kickoff, I believe for the cfl. We have Dan Ralph here. Hopefully we'll be seeing you back up here in Hamilton in a very short time. How are you doing, sir? Everything's great. Fun time of year. Yeah, well you said that you like this time of year because everything, it seems to matter more. I mean they've told us games don't matter until after Labor Day. What are your thoughts right now? We're walking into week 15 of the cfl? Yeah, I mean we're starting to see some really interesting trends now with two teams having clinched and then this weekend the Toronto astronauts have an opportunity to clinch first in the east. Then you're going to have playoff runs for second, third in the respective divisions and also the potential crossover, which is something we always go through. And then we also see on an individual basis, some of the players separate themselves in the respective individual honors races. So yeah, it's a fun time. I mean, I'm still figuring out where the heck the summer went, but then in November I'm going be sitting there wondering where the heck the season went. Everything just goes by so fast. Well, and it seems like to me it seems to be clicking a little bit more. We entered all of this through the covid year and then it kind of slow starts mean it feels like back on track. There hasn't been a lot of weird, controversial or weird, I dunno, it seems like it's been a pretty copacetic safe season here rolling through. Yeah, so far been a very, we've been able to, and I say that because there's talk of a new variant coming into Canada and who knows, let's hope. But yeah, it's been nice to just concentrate on football and not have to worry about all the other stuff. And crowds in Hamilton are solid it seems. And crowds in Toronto seem to be on the upswing, which is a nice thing to see as well. So yeah, let's hope it stays that way. I mean, for the sake of the Hamilton Gray Cup Festival, two years ago they had the gray cup and couldn't have a normal gray cup with all the fan activities because of the pandemic. And so now they're hosting the game again for the second time and they have lavish plans for a terrific festival and here's hoping that they're allowed to go ahead with it. Yeah, we're I guess supposed to have someone on from the festival here soon. They had said to me to kind of promote that. Anything interesting you're hearing from that? I'll be honest, I haven't really concentrated on it. I'll concentrate more on it as we get closer to Greg Cup. That's kind of where I'm at. Yeah, I mean it's funny, social media is the bane of my existence, but everybody and their brothers been all summer touting player A, B, C, and D as the front runners for the respective individual awards. And I don't even begin thinking about it until now. And I'll be honest, I haven't really seriously thought about it and I will as we get closer. But yeah, I mean as we get closer to Gray Cup, same sort of deal. I'll start looking at some of the other things and fingers crossed that they're able to have a normal gray cup In terms of Toronto here, obviously I think this one of the more marque games this weekend, the Friday game going into Montreal. I'll get your thoughts on Montreal separately, but obviously Toronto kind of historic run right now. We had Mike Kogan on last week kind of categorizing that. What do you make of them and what they've been able to put together? They've been very, very impressive and they're 10 and one right now, and I could make the argument they could ideally be 11 and oh, if Chad Kelly doesn't get hurt in that game against Calgary, it was only a seven point game or sorry, a three point game at that point when he left. So yeah, I mean the thing that impresses me the most about them is they're strong on offense, they're strong on defense, and then they've got really good special teams. So if one game, the defense has allowed 30 plus points, they have an offense that can put up 35 and sort of hide that. And if the offense is struggling, they can win ugly with the defense and a timely return from Jevon Leak who has a club record for current return touchdowns this year. So I just think they can beat you so many ways and if all three phases haven't clicked at the same time, to me that proposition's a little scary about what damage they can do if all three phases of their game are clicking simultaneously, but they've got three elements to their attack that are very, very potent. And now in any given time, one of those three can take over a game. Not looking too far ahead like we said, but Gray Cup here, presumed favorite in the east, and I want to get your thoughts on Montreal, but last year we were there and it felt to me like an upset that Toronto comes in and all this stuff with McLeod and Jack Kelly and everything, a very different just opinion of this team going into the end game of this season, if that makes sense. Yeah, well it's funny, Winnipeg in Toronto meet later on down the stretch and that's the game that I'm really looking forward to because it could be another Gray Cup preview. And at the beginning of the year I really said I wouldn't be surprised if those two teams made it again. And I fully expect, and I'll reiterate, I fully expect a Winnipeg Toronto Gray Cup again in 2023. I mean, I'm sure the BC lines and Montreal Ettes will have something to say about that and we'll see where they are, where both teams are in terms of injuries. But right now, I don't think there's a doubt in my mind that they're the top two teams and I fully expect to see them in November. That's the thing. We talk, we do our Monday recaps right now and we can't figure out are Montreal outlets second in the east? Are they a good team? What do you think? Well, I will say this, I think mean they've lost three straight, and so three weeks ago I was marveling at the job that Jason Moss had done with that team, and I still think, to me they're the second best team in the east. I don't think there's a doubt, and I like the way they match up against Toronto. It's just that they've never been able to put it together. I mean last week they got beat 39, 10, they had four turnovers, some really costly penalties, not the least of which was Austin Mack being ejected for his involvement in the Mele in the first quarter, which took away their biggest playmaker. So I still am waiting for the ettes like Toronto to put it all together. They hold the promise to me of being a very, very good football team. I mean, they've taken care of business in the East division. The only team that they've lost to so far is Toronto. So I mean, to me they're the number two team, but until they start beating a Winnipeg or a Toronto or maybe even a BC then I think they're in that second tier. But to me they're a bonafide playoff team and they're a team that if Toronto plays in the East Final, they'll be prepared because that team is made to be successful in cold weather with its ability to run the football. It's just funny, we talk Montreal's really good unless they have to play BC Winnipeg of Toronto. Yeah, That's what I mean. There's that second tier, right? We're the best of the tier two. We've seen Cody obviously from Saskatchewan go over, we had him back on the show a couple weeks ago and he was heard and then came back and Caleb Evans and there was the short week and he came back and then he had a full week and they still lost. In terms of Cody with this team, is he still a bonafide kind of superstar here? What do you make of his presence in the cfl? Well, I still think he's a good starter. I, and I think maybe it could make the argument that sometimes he holds onto the ball way too long. He had a problem with Sacks last year with Saskatchewan and Montreal has a problem giving up sacks again this year. And what's the common denominator there? And in both instances it's Cody and sometimes he's either got to get rid of the ball and settle for what he can get or take what a defense is giving or throw it away. The more hits he takes, the more APTT he is to get hurt. And if he gets hurt, then I think they're not as good a team without him as they are with him. So I still think he's a decent cfl starter. I think he's a bonafide cfl starter, but sometimes the best option is to live, to play another down rather than go for the whole enchilada. But having said that, if I had Austin Mack as a receiver, maybe I would hold onto the ball too. It's just hard. I think obviously we were expecting a lot this year with him moving in and there was all the drama with Saskatchewan. I dunno. I mean I like the outlets, like I said, second in the East, there's nothing wrong there, but it feels like we're walking into this east final buzz stop regardless. Yeah, agreed. I mean, I think they're among the better teams in the east we'll see this weekend. I mean even if they beat Toronto, Toronto's won the season series, so I would still expect Toronto to be the favorite at home in November, especially given that the Argos can run the ball too. The Argos have a running quarterback, Ettes have a semi-mobile quarterback. So yeah, I would like that matchup, but I would still take Toronto nine times out of 10. In terms of ease teams here, Hamilton kind of on life support and I want to talk Ottawa as well, but coming in and they eke out the win in Ottawa last week. Talk about expectations for the season, kind of just falling apart here and we still, I guess be Levi is waiting in the wings or whatever, but what have you made of this whole experiment this year, very reminiscent of the New York Jets here with Aaron Rogers and injuries in terms of Bo Levi? Well, in a perfect world, I would've said, and I wrote it yesterday, in a perfect world, Taylor Powell would've been given the opportunity to watch from the sidelines and see how Bo Levi and Matt Schultz played the game and adjust slowly to the nuances of Canadian football instead, injuries have sort of thrust him into the limelight. And I mean the kid has done well considering he's a bonafide rookie considering he's never played Canadian before coming up here. And he showed me some moxie last week where in fact that whole team did, where they coming off, they're playing their second game in four days and they beat an Ottawa team that was coming off a buy. So I mean, I think the one thing Hamilton has shown this year is resiliency. And they go into BC and get a big win against the Lions when me and others did not see it coming. And they go in on four days notice, play a team that's more Ed and they eke out a win. So they've been resilient, I think. I don't see them finishing second. I see them at best finishing third and having to go on the road in the playoffs. So I do see them as the number three team in the east. There's no doubt there. You talk resilient because there's been calls for even more staffing changes than they've had in Hamilton. And it's really, last year was kind of a failure and coming off of the Gray Cup and appearance and everything, I just don't know really what to make there. I mean obviously they made the big swing this year. I don't know, it's kind of like with Ottawa, what is Bob Die supposed to do? Ole and everything and we'll get to them, but Hamilton's been dealt a really difficult hand here. I mean they put all the regs and to me they put their eggs in the bowl Levi basket, and unfortunately he's been hurt twice. And that's really a big blow when your number one quarterback plays, let's say three games of your 12 so far. And your number two has been hurt most of the year and you're starting a bonafide cfl rookie at quarterback. And so yeah, I think, like I said, they've been resilient and I like Tommy Condell as a person, I like him as an offensive coordinator, but obviously they had to make a change there. And I like the promotion of Scott Milanovich to play collar. He's got a good cfl coaching pedigree, he's handled offenses, he's won Gray cups to me, I think he's certainly going to step in and give them experience and a good base from which to call plays. You just hope that he can turn that offense around. And the problem I see with the tie Kats is their offensive line. I mean, ed Figueroa, who was a big addition, Firo was a big addition to them in the off season and unfortunately he's been hurt most of the year and they've had some issues establishing the run now of late James Butler has really done well, but they lost some key components in the off season and we'll see. We'll see. I mean, they've got a rookie quarterback and we'll see. Let's just leave it at that. I mean Butler's kind of been a revelation there and I mean it really is sometimes the only thing that seems like they can do on offense sometimes. But yeah, and you hear the commentators and well, they're trying to get away from trying to reestablish the run game and get away from maybe, I guess the old June Jones stuff up there and be a little bit more offensive that way. Just doesn't feel like they have much of an identity. And I think they had obviously, like you said, a lot wrapped into we're going to bring in Levi and have this superstar quarterback and it all kind of falls apart. Yeah, I liked the addition of Butler in the off season. I thought he was a really, really solid player with BC last year and he showed against his former team that he can be a dominant running back. And it's funny, Hamilton hasn't had a 1000 yard receiver or a thousand yard rusher since something like 2 0 9, 2 10, and I think this guy gave them a bonafide thousand yard rusher and I think he will hit 1000 yards on the ground, which is something they haven't had in a long, long time. In terms of the Ottawa team, this was a must win really with Hamilton coming in. What do you attribute that to? I mean, we had this little sugar rush of the dust in Crumb and then it's all kind of falling apart now. I mean, I like the Dustin Crumb story and I think what he's done is he has at least kept that team in games. I mean, they've lost I think five or six in a row, but take a look, they haven't been blown out at all. If they have been, it hasn't been often he keeps them in the game. But I think the thing that I keep coming back to is that I really don't see, I haven't seen a really consistent passing game from him. He runs well, he's as good a running quarterback as you're going to find it. I think he anchors a pretty good ground game. But the thing is they get behind and I think they show their warts when they can't throw the ball consistently to come back. And last week, this is the one thing that I drew from it, Nate Bahar, their Canadian receiver early last week, went on record and called the TCATs dirty on defense. They said that they played dirty and made that insinuation. And I really, you know what? I really questioned the timing and B, the logic of that because he was playing a team that was coming off such a very short turnaround. Why would you give them incentive to win and more incentive to win, especially after a very physical loss against Toronto. And to me, I thought that that could come back and bite him and them, and it did because Hamilton to me, played inspired football, kept it close, and then found a way at the end to go ahead and to take the win. And to me, you don't give your opponent more incentive to come into your stadium and deal your playoff aspirations a severe blow. It's interesting, I missed that story this week. I must not have seen that with the, yeah, It was Tuesday. Tim Bains, the Ottawa Sun did a nice job of writing it and I questioned the logic of Bahar, if you believe that and if you think that that's one thing, but to me you keep it quiet because you that goes out there and that to me is prime bulletin board material. And you don't want to give an opponent that's hurting and is tired, the extra incentive to rise above that adversity. I like that. I like the little bit of locker room, Travis to me. I like that. I like the Drama as a reporter. I looked and I went, oh Tim, you dude, go with it. Go with it. In terms of Ottawa, back-to-back years now, and we had the Mola stuff last year, and obviously again this year, and I don't know, obviously we got rid of Laa last year and Bob Deis comes in and now he's got all this and deal that. I don't know who would maybe write the ship better in this situation. What does Ottawa do next year? Obviously this season is kind of a wash. How do they rebound? Well, that's a really good question. I think a healthy Jeremiah Mazzoli might help. I mean, in close games you got a guy who's been there, done that. Now having said that, he's missed two straight years with season ending injuries and he's getting older, but I mean, I don't bet against that guy. He has shown time and time again in my humble opinion, that he can overcome and he'll be back on the field in 2024. I think that's a starting point. If he's healthy, he is a very, very good quarterback. I think Dustin Crumb becomes your number two and he's benefited from all this being thrown into the limelight and I like their defense. I just wonder sometimes if that defense is just getting beat into submission and is on the field way too much and Ottawa seems to, they don't lose games as much as they run out of time and they're in it. I've sat there and I've seen multiple games now where Crumb has put the team on his back in the fourth quarter and either forced overtime and won there or come close to forcing overtime or securing the win. And I think the more experience he gets that helps him. But let's not forget, he is arguably their third or their fourth quarterback on the depth chart when they started the season. So the fact that he's starting suggests that there's been problems at that position. I think it was earlier this season we had nailer on and talking about how the secondary, the backup quarterback situation in most teams in the cfl now has kind of evolved to just being the short yardage person. There's not a lot of learning there. We've seen so much this season, all these quarterbacks, like you said, Taylor Powell kind of being thrown in and Dustin Crot. Obviously injuries have occurred to make that happen, but you just wish there was a way for some of these guys I've just heard for years. Oh, it takes three years to really learn the cfl game and you can't just come in and if there was some way we, we've talked in the past, you want to have a quarterback academy like the xfl does where we kind of work with some of these guys, something to get these guys more up to speed than just baptizing with fire here in the middle of a game, right? Yeah, it makes you wonder, right? And I'll be honest, I don't know what the answer is. I do know, excuse me. A lot of guys this year, if you've given them the opportunity that they've shone with it, and I look at Trey Ford and Edmonton, here's a guy who was firmly tied to the bench until basically the Elks had no choice but to start 'em and they've won all three games with him at quarterback and then I look at Saskatchewan, I mean they're on their number three guy too, and Dagal seems to be playing very, very well. So the only team I thought that was really good at the backup position to start the year, the only teams were BC with D Evans and Hamilton with Shilts, and I hold my breath with Toronto because behind Chad Kelly, there's no dearth of cfl experience and I mean that kid to me has been a godsend for the Argos and if heaven forbid something happens to him, they become a vastly different football team. But yeah, you're right. I don't know what the answer is. I really don't and I wish I knew because it seems to be if you get past the team starting quarterback, there's a noticeable drop off with the backup guy. Even with obviously Tre Forwards has had the experience of playing youth sports and where maybe that made the transition a little bit better gall, I don't even know where he was born, somewhere in America, but in New York, whatever. Anyway, yeah, I mean there's something to be said for that where, and maybe now after this year, maybe next year, there'll be a dearth of great quarterback played from some of these guys. I remember we had Steve Simmons on and he said it was right after the Cru Sanity kind of thing and he goes, yeah, it was the most exciting weekend to the C ffo all year. But I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing here. Steve just had a lot of erratic where sometimes the results are there, it's kind of you're getting your sugar rush and you're not worried about the long term. What does that mean? I don't know. No, and Steve was right. It's always neat when a young kid comes off the bench and sparks a team to a thrilling victory and then the next week the team that they're playing has film on the kid and all of a sudden he looks rather ordinary. And that's the thing I have found with Taylor Powell for example, that, I mean he came on, he did well in his first appearance, then he had as teams getting more familiar with them, then it's harder for him to do the things that did. He did well in the first game, but I mean last week he showed me something with his ability to keep Hamilton close and then lead them over the top and 300 yard performance for a rookie's. Always impressive. Well, Dan, I appreciate it making the time today. Should be good games this weekend. We'll be up in Hamilton. I'm sure we'll see you there. We'll try to get you on. We'll do our show again, we have our whole crew coming up this year. We have a team. Anything else from you? Anything you're looking forward to this weekend? Yeah, I think I said Ed Figueroa when I was meant to talk about Joel Figueroa, I think I got Ed mixed up with a baseball pitcher. That's Okay. A baseball player. Yeah, so it was Joel Figueroa, but no, you know what I'm looking forward to seeing Toronto is going to be minus some Robertson, Daniel and their secondary and Curly Gittens Jr in the offense when they play Montreal. So those are two starters and two big players, so they got a little bit of adversity going into Montreal and so we'll see. I wonder if clinching this early is a boon or a bad thing for them because now all of a sudden you've got what, six weeks of not meaningless games, but they mean more to your opponents and now you're playing guys hoping not to get them hurt and so I don't know about being able to turn it on with a light switch, so I'd like to see them clinch, but then that creates a whole new bunch of problems for Head Coach Ryan. That is interesting. Kind of like when the chiefs do that, when they always lock up a f c one seat or whatever and they go, we're going to sit. You always rest versus is Russ and one week is fine, like you said, six weeks or whatever is vastly different there and I don't know. Yeah, I mean does Chad Kelly touched the field for the next month And I think he does, but how much and when and so do you give the backups the start and the bulk of play and right now this offense seems to be running like a Wello machine. What happens when you take some of the key parts out and I mean, like I said, I've never been a proponent of offenses being able to flick a switch, so it's a problem, but I think Coach Denwoody will tell you it's not a bad problem to have. It's not a problem. All right, Dan, I appreciate it. Stay safe. We'll see you soon. Be well, thank you. Well, here we are. I think I've actually been trying to get you on the show since last year with Francis and over everyone over at the Montreal. We have a Monte here. How are you doing sir? I'm doing good. How's everybody doing? We're good. Excited Montreal fan. That's our east team here in the cfl. You guys have a big game Friday, Francis wanted to make sure I mentioned B M X night. There's going to be special discounts and things like that. Big game for you guys. How's the team looking forward to it? Team's looking really. I mean we're looking forward to it to see what's going to happen next. It was pretty embarrassing last game. We are aware of that. So it is excited to go back out there and get a second chance. You don't get those two things a lot. Playing back to back In terms of your life right now with the season, how's everything going for you? It's okay, I can't ask more. We're in a very good position right now as far as football wise go. You just have to take a one game at a time. We controlling our destiny right now. In terms of, you said coming off some rough games, how do you guys and how does the team cope or move through that? How do you process that? Man, you just got to put on, got to go back to work, figure out what went wrong, the only thing you could do, right? It was embarrassing. Everybody just got to take that one on chin and just figure out what went wrong, but just your game plan and get ready for this week. Embarrassing. In what way? How do you view it as embarrassing? We got blown up. Couldn't stop a nosebleed if he tried to. So it was just one of those things right there and I had plenty of those in my playing career and the best way to come back from those is to go back out there, hit 'em back with that same thing that they hit us with last week, try to get 'em back. In terms of kind of the scouting report on the Argos tough team, what do you guys view it that and how do you kind of take it upon yourself here to kind of be a part of strong defense? Man, they're well put together team. They use everybody and it's not just one guy, it's always a key guy on their roster. They use everybody in the receiving core. All those guys are all asked to block at some period of time. Usually you know where your breakers are coming from and that's the receivers coming out of the air blocking the dn, blocking D tackle. They use all their receivers to do that stuff. So it's one of those things right there you could almost anticipate with a lot of teams with this team right here, they very som make mistakes, so you have to be on your P's and Q's and make sure you know where your plays are. Denwoody has those guys over there all tuned in, so it's one of these things right here. You have to do your job. If you do your job, you'll be all right. And this weather's on. How impressed has the Argos been this year? I mean certainly one of them or Winnipeg, one of the top teams. How do you view them just overall in the cfl? They won a great couple last year and they retained a lot of their players. So there was always the big if with them are they going to be as good as lasted because with Bethel being gone, we wouldn't think that Chad Kelly would be playing this good, but here we are right now and he rarely makes mistakes. I mean a guy and their offensive line is pretty good too as well. What they lead the league in least amount of sax by quite a big margin. So it's one of those things right there where you keep looking, you looking like man, you have your chance to get back there, actually call something. But I always send somebody to get rid of the ball so fast. Yeah. Scouting report on Chad, like you said, coming off of last year, I didn't really know what to expect. How do you kind of process that and kind of internalize what you need to do? He processes, you see what you see every week, right? You to go off what you see at the moment. But now he's put together enough games right now where he can actually looking, have a decent report on him. Just savvy guy he can actually play. It's not a lot of young guys you could actually say that could play though. You've been a part of the cfl for a really long time. What is it about the league about everything that kind of keeps you motivated, keeps you coming back? I mean you've been years now. Yeah, That's a competition man. Every year it changes. I'm a competitor so I want to go out there, I want to smash some heads. This is one of those things and especially at the position I play, I can't necessarily avoid contact so's of those things. Yeah, I knew you were getting worked done here when we were calling trying to set up how's the body feeling, how's everything going? Body's good. Just routine maintenance. That's all I take care of myself. So that's actually the key writer to keep playing for so long. You got to take care of yourself. What do you do to take care of yourself? What's your routine? Routine? Get up. If I need a dry needle and I feel like I need dry needle and just keep my muscles loose, if I had to go get a massage, I get one at least one a week. So you got to keep the body nice and loose, make sure you're not all stiff and that's how's how you get 'em getting hurt. In terms of the home and home here, they're playing at B M O last week. What's it like going in there? I mean obviously it's kind of been for a couple of years here, Argos and attendance, but the team's doing good, the loyal fan base. What's it like going in there? It's a little different, but you got to create that own atmosphere for your own self, right? I mean if team, if they don't have anybody at the stadium, that's okay owns you got to make it home. You got to make your own atmosphere, you got to come bring out your own excitement, your own energy on the sidelines. They had a fairly decent crowd out there. Last one. We were there just now, so that's good. Here in Montreal, we always have a sold out crowd in this place. That's always better. Well yeah. So I was going to ask, so obviously this week and they had sent over, it's going to be the B M X student tickets at $20 Bureau will be sold at $5. Talk about just because you guys do have a very loyal fan base, very loud, we've got the horns and everything else there. What do you make of the Montreal home crowd? It's very loud, man. It's one of those rare sight in the cfl where you don't see a lot of packed out stadium. They love their football over here in Quebec, so it's always nice when you're playing at home. Do you enjoy that, the camaraderie of the cfl with the fan base and them? It is a smaller league, it's more intimate, right? It feels like the fans have greater connection to the players and access, if that makes sense. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean I was exposed to that the whole time I was out west, right? I mean the only league, professional league in the world really where everybody's just saying fans are so close and all interconnected, you get as close as you want. You could get to know people outside of the organization. I could just be around the same players over and over and over. Some of my better friends in Alberta, I met them through fans regularly, just aren't fans and to this day they're still my friends. In terms of Montreal this year, a lot of excitement, right? Cody coming in and ownership and just seems to revitalization here on the east. Have you felt that and how's the team kind of internalize that? We're still going. It is just one of those things that where Cody came in, Cody's a good leader. He came in, he told us we're going to go through some ups and downs, but at the end of the day, as long as we all got each other back, we'll be all right. Do you feel like he's kind of the locker room leader right now? Oh yeah, absolutely. Quarterback one, he's a quarterback. You are naturally supposed to be the leader, right? He is embraced that role with us and yeah. What be on defense? Who kind of leads it? Is it you kind of as with more experience who leads to the defensive side? Everybody has their own say in it. We have a whole entire team. If it was a whole entire team has their own opinion on if you have something to share it because everybody at the end of the day is the leader on the team. If you have your own meal, some guys might say more than most, but at the same point too, everybody has their opinion. We got to be in this all together. Some of the better teams that I've played on, everybody has their own opinions. It's never just one guy. So it's all a bunch of leaders on the team. When you see Chad Kelly getting one of these highest contracts, highest paid quarterbacks, does that give you extra incentive to kind of make his life more challenging? Shoot, man, you're a quarterback. You already get paid more than the rest of the cfl, but I guess so I know there was kind of a controversial roughing, the passer call at the end of the game last week, thoughts on that and kind of coming back this week and getting revenge for everything They told me. Stay away from those questions with that one. That's okay. That's okay. Last thing for me, what you hoping besides the win, what do you want to see out of the team, out of the guys this weekend? I want to see the guys come out and get the same energy that we had in practice all weekend. Everybody pretty much was dial, everybody's dialed in, everybody knew what they had. I do, coach Thorpe does a great job of making sure we understand what we have to do because like I said last week, it's a bit of a crapshoot really. We kind embarrassed ourselves out there, not we did embarrass ourselves. So it is excited to go back and now everybody has a clear vision on exactly what we need to get done this week. So it's exciting. Well, it should be good, like I said, B M X night there and cheaper student tickets and beer sales and stuff like that. So I hope it's a packed crowd. I hope you guys get one up on the Argonauts. I really appreciate your time today. No problem, dude. Thank you. Well, I am excited. I spent some time with the America cfl team, the BC Lions, their social team down here in Seattle on Monday for the Mariners game. We lost, but I think it was a victory. Here we have Matthew Betts here. We've been trying to get you on all season. You're a busy guy having a great season. How are you doing, sir? I am fantastic. How are you, Reed? I'm good reading through everything. You're really, you've always performed well right in last year with BC and even before with Edmonton kind of at a different level this year. What do you attribute that to? Yeah, I would attribute it honestly to the whole group on the D line, to be honest. What I tell people every time is when we arrived earlier this year, it really felt like it was the continuity of what we did last year. So we basically have the same group from last year. So we're just used to work together with Bowman, the D-line coach, the same system. So I mean it's little things, but not having to learn a new system. And we really felt it earlier on during training camp where I mean, if I was taking an inside rush, I mean automatically either woody or cherry or the guy playing with me just wrapping me already. So it really was just like a good flow go win and we know how we work together. I think we we're a good group with talented players and we pride ourselves on just working hard and we use the word keep chopping wood all the time, and I think that we want to work hard, we want to win, we want to do good individually, but ultimately I, I think the way we work together is really the key to our success and ultimately my individual success. So far this year. People are talking about BC and they have for years and building the defense up, but in the same regards as Winnipeg and Toronto kind of elite defenses, do you take pride in that? What do you think about that? Just being it's no small feat to kind of do what you guys are doing this season? Yeah, absolutely. I mean defensively obviously I personally, I don't look at stats on how many yards a game we're giving or rushing yard passing yards or all that stuff, but obviously we want to be out there and we want to perform well, that's for sure. The way the season's been going so far, we got six games left, but the way we've been playing with the way VA's been playing on offense, I mean, we know that if we play a good game on defense, the chances are that we'll come up with a win with the way VA has been playing. So it's hard, it's a cliche, but an 18 game season is long, so it's hard, but you have to take it one day at a time, one week at a time. We got out of one Saturday. So it's just to be focused on the task ahead, not to see too far ahead and to really be locked in. Sometimes it's hard with the routine and just that they seem to be the same over and over again. But I have the privilege to be there with a great group on defense on the D line and we have fun together doing it, so it makes it easier for sure. Yeah, playing Ottawa big game, you got Dustin Crumb coming in, he's kind of Wiley, right? I mean he's known to run and scramble and make movement. What are you looking at and what are you expecting to be able to do on Saturday? Yeah, it's our first time playing Ottawa. I mean Dustin Crum ever since he came in as the starting quarterback, I thought, I mean coming in already, he was really, really good. Obviously he's athletic, but I think he's a smart quarterback, can make all the throws, so he's definitely a legit quarterback. But I mean playing the quarterback position, I mean no disrespect to anybody, but it's hard without the experience. So obviously I think that if we put him into some more pressure situation, it's harder for a younger quarterback, but he's definitely somebody really, really talented. I think they might have somebody for the years to come. I was really impressed personally with the way he led that offense, big wins earlier on. I mean they didn't show up in the past couple of weeks, but they've been holding onto to some close games and it's the cfl. So everybody is talented. So in order to win that game, we really need to show up with passion, energy and play a good football game or else we won't have the result we want. You're on the field, kind of a scary person just in terms of what you're able to do and running it after people here. You seem very polite. How do you kind of balance the two? It's interesting when you see people on the field and then you talk to him here. Yeah, I don't know. Honestly, I think I've always been a high competitor growing up, played a lot of sports, was a very, very sore loser. So I think that's just what it is. I don't know. I kind of feel the same way where I like to joke around. I like to have fun, but I feel like I'm more poised off the field for sure. So yeah, I don't know why, but it's just the way I am. Where do you find that intensity when it comes to being on the field and because even if you're not getting at the quarterback, you're affecting the play, you're making the tackle. How do you keep up that high level of intensity I guess? Yeah, honestly, I don't know. I think it's habits. I've always been the running heart of the ball. I think that's one of the keys to my success and it's always been like that. I mean, growing up in high school while playing in high school, our defensive coordinator during our teams period or our defense period, he would always have us running around. He called it pursuit drill. So we would just get off to our assignment, do a dropdown and run 30 yards down the field. And I don't know, I think I just liked it that way and I feel that if I don't give it my all, I'm cheating myself. I'm cheating my teammates. And I mean, I know the work that I put in to be in that situation to be able to play with the pro level and the cfl. So I mean, if I get up early at five in the morning during the winter to shovel my car and go do all these squats, all these split squats and everything, and when you go to practice and you go to game time, you don't give it your all. I mean it's kind of counterproductive. So I think it's just I take pride in what I do and I genuinely feel that if I give it my all, I give my team the best shot to win the game. Do you get good, what does it feel when you make a big play and the other guys, are they congratulating you? What's kind of that vibe like with the defense they call you guys the donut boys and a lot that hoop law around the defense this year for bc? Yeah, honestly, I've been celebrating more in the past. I think I'm locked in, man. Sometimes I'm not that good with celebrating big plays either with my teammates or myself. I mean, I remember a couple of times, I mean our first game this year, Bola Kambo had a sack against Calgary. And I mean honestly, I was just too tired to go high F him or whatever. That's something I need to work on a little bit more even for myself. And I do a big play. Sometimes I just go back to the huddle or you'll see guys do some crazy stuff. I would like to do it, but honestly I think sometimes I just black out and I forget to do stuff. But yeah, we're having fun for sure. I mean, our DB crew take care of the celebration more than anything else, but we have cool stuff. Obviously Menard does the super saying Kaha when he does a sack, so I wish I had a cool cell like that. Unfortunately I don't. Maybe one day it'll come, but I'm obviously happy whenever I do a big tour of help to help the team out. You need, what was it, JJ Watt or TJ Watt is the roundhouse kick or something, or he does the high kick. You got to figure out something when you get a big sack and you got to do a cartwheel. Yeah, but the worst thing is I've got some planned out with a couple of my teammates this year, but it never happened where we actually pulled it off. So I mean it would be nice from here towards the end of the year if we could pull at least one out, that would be pretty cool. Before I let you go, it is been a rocky season. I mean really good, but I'm a fan, so it's been rocky for me have some big wins, a couple losses. What's kind of the mindset with the team in the locker room right now? Yeah, well obviously the mindset, I mean, we're in a good situation to go in the playoffs. Obviously we want to be in the best place possible in the rankings towards the end of the year, but for me it's really to focus on Ottawa. I mean, we want to win as most as possible those last six games. But for me, if you see too far ahead, that's where you're wrong. So right now for me it's to be able to do our best on Saturday to be able to have the best game as possible. And I truly believe that if we do that and week in and week out, that's where we'll have success. Curious, I have on the same show he plays for Montreal now, Armando Seewell on the show, another kind of all-star defensive person. Just curious your thoughts on him and just ended up happening this week where we kind of have two defensive superstars on the show. Yeah, well Mano was, I played with Mano my first year in Edmonton actually. He was actually either the first person or one of the very first person to talk to me whenever I got there in Edmonton. So obviously it is cool to see him still doing what he does after, I don't know, 10 to 12 years in the cfl. And I mean Mando, he's a, I don't want to say a cfl staple, but I mean sometimes we'll compare other players to him just, I mean he has some signature moves like his hump, the way he does it, I mean it's really impressive. So he's a guy that obviously is still really good, but I mean the way he plays and the way he makes plays, it's sometimes it's signature mano moves, so obviously cheering for him whenever he's playing against other teams. Actually, Montreal had a bunch of other players that used to play for Edmonton. They had Mike Moore a couple of years ago. Usher was there earlier this year. Now he's with us. Yeah, but obviously Mondo is a guy that I was close to in Edmonton. We still talk every now and then when we play against each other, so I'm always happy when he does well. So yeah, I went to talk to him after last game in Montreal, so yeah, really happy for him for sure. Well, I'm excited here finally getting you on. Like I said, I called the BC Lion America cfl team and you're representing French Canada, and so we've kind of got all of North America covered here, so I wish you luck, hope it's a good game and that you guys can really kind entertain the BC Home fans. Are you excited to be back home here and get BC place rocking? Yeah, honestly, it's always a really, really fun time. Whenever we played BC place plays, I think it's because of the dome, but it'll always get super loud and the marketing team here does an incredible job with everything around BC plays with the Lions. So I mean, I've always liked it to play here, but I mean even fans that have been following the team for the past 10 or so years, I mean they really see an improvement in the game they experience. Either it's on during TV, timeout or whatever. I mean, the marketing team just does a tremendous job with the show. So I mean the fans are taking, I mean are making the most of it, but the players obviously we enjoy it a lot. So it's really looking forward for Saturday. Well, thanks for making time. I appreciate it. Go enjoy some Thursday night football here and I'll be cheering for you this weekend. Good luck. Awesome. I will. Thank you, Reed. Have a great day. Really appreciate all of our guests for coming on today. Like I said, Jeff Hamilton, chaotic morning means a lot, him making the time to come on. I really appreciate Dan Ralph as always hopping on at a moment's notice whenever I need him. And then certainly the teams over at the Montreal Ettes and the BC Lions, Francis and Matt, super appreciate that should be it for me today. Like I said, exciting weekend. Maybe we'll get some Vegas updates here coming in the next few weeks. I don't know, I've heard kind of mixed reports about that as well. So be curious to see where all of that winds out. Like I said, thanks for checking out today. Please like and subscribe if you enjoy any of this content, trying to get up to 3,500 subscribers. Take care, have a good weekend and see you soon.

CFL 2023 Week 14 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 14, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Tuesday here. A special time today, Tuesday afternoon, a happy Apple iPhone Event Day. Very excited to spent the morning watching that. Very excited. USB-C coming to the iPhone. Crazy world of sports right now. Probably not the most at top of mind, the cfl right now with everything going on with Monday Night Football, but we have made a commitment every week. We're going to do this. We have Jason Hussey here and Evan, how are we doing guys? Doing great. Reid. Exciting weekend of football with the cfl triple header on Saturday and of course the N F L starting up this weekend. So I think we have a lot to talk about cfl wise this week. Yeah. Evan, how are you doing to been the rollercoaster of emotions for sports and football fans here at loud 24 hours? Yeah, absolutely. I mean we're recording late this week and obviously the cfl slate ended early with the N F L coming in, so we're going to have to refresh our memory I think on a couple things. But just looking at cfl specifically, I mean it was a pretty good slate. There were some blowouts, some revenge games. There was a mix like the Hamilton Ottawa game. We'll get into thought. That one was definitely interesting. And yeah, I mean overall, another good week of football, especially when you incorporate the N F L into it. Yeah, it's crazy now. A lot of football. Yeah, it definitely feels like a distant memory. We've had a lot of the jets need to sign Nathan Rourke right now the Jets need to call Nathan Rourke. I guarantee you Jess and Dunk and Ryan Valentine, friends of the podcast, he is probably the furthest thing from the Jets mind right now. I think Colin Kaepernick has a better chance of getting back on the Jets roster here that Nathan Rourke does, but we'll, we'll see. Stranger Things have happened, Jason. The Labor Day weekend was pretty good. We were hoping for some good rematches this weekend. Maybe not as exciting as we, maybe it hopes some blowouts here. What did you make of the weekend slate? Overall, I thought it was very dichotomous because I think that we had two really good games. I mean one game didn't start off very good, but it ended up very good on Friday night with Hamilton in Ottawa. But Calgary and Edmonton was a pretty good game throughout with the crazy comeback that the Elks were able to come up with in this one. And then obviously those first two games of the Saturday triple header were kind of disappointing butt. I don't think that was unexpected, Really kind of disappointing. In Saskatchewan they had their big stand and we are coming in, we're doing the ban bowl and we don't want to call it the ban bowl, but everyone knows what it is and they're really kind of stunk up the place there. We'll kind of dissect that, but I mean 50 Burger by Winnipeg here going on Saskatchewan. Evan, what did you make overall of the weekend? Yeah, definitely a mixed bag. Like I pointed out, there was some revenge games. You look at obviously Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, which maybe wasn't entertaining, especially if you were a rough Riders fan, but I think the people there in Winnipeg enjoyed that. Obviously the best one. Calgary had a big fourth quarter comeback last week against Edmonton and pulled that one out at home and the Labor Day classic. And then this week it flipped. Edmonton I think had 18 points in the fourth quarter and rallied all the way to beat Calgary at the end. So both of those games back to back weekends coming down at the end of the fourth quarter. I thought that was very entertaining. And then as I pointed out too, before Hamilton Ottawa, as Jason said, slow start, definitely it didn't look to be an entertaining game and I almost switched the channel off at halftime, but then things started heating up and it ended up being a kind of back and forth shootout match at the end and eventually Hamilton pulled away, which was the expected result, at least in my opinion. So I think that's that. Yeah, Luton here is ready. Check it in. I'm ready to hear how good the bombers are. Thanks. The Rum Hutt was slowing by halftime. Yeah, I have to imagine that. Did you guys see the story? I think we shared in the group chat the bartender that was going to buy drinks for the bar if the Jets lost last night and then the Jets came back and won and everyone realized they had to pay their tabs. And then we have, and James, I wish I cared about the N F L. I've been watching the cfl football for three, five years. xfl dealt with it. This is the time of year. Oh well real football's been back. I tweet all that stuff too, but exciting to hear talking cfl today. Let's get into this. So mayor here, 2129, kind of similar stat line for him. I know we've talked a lot about this throughout the last however many weeks. Jason, what did you make of our boy Jake Mayer here on the loss? I didn't think he played that poorly. I thought you saw a lot of good from him. And I thought at times during this game I was like, this was the St. Peters team. We saw for large portions of last year where they were a 12 and 16, maybe they couldn't compete with the big dogs, but I mean they were a very good team, at least record wise last season. And I thought that in this game they had some really good stretches. They had a really good drive in the second quarter they capped that off with a touchdown to, I think it was William Longley, the fullback of all people. And then they got another touchdown before the half the Reggie. So Jake Mayer was very good in the first half of this game, but I think the Elks made some adjustments defensively in the second half. And really this stamp, Peter's offense really stalled out the rest of the game. Yeah, looking at hear Tre four that not maybe his weakest game thus far in terms of stats and everything. Evan, what did you make of this? Well, I think from the Calgary perspective, I mean you look at Jake Mayer, he had a very, I guess admirable performance. Nothing too over the top, but I was really more impressed with I think the balance on the Calgary offense between their run game in the pass game. Unfortunately they didn't come out victorious, but I really liked what they were able to do with Kadeem Carey. And then they had enough receivers step up to where I feel like again, it was a very balanced out and we haven't seen a lot of that from them this year. I think we've described their offense many times as being one dimensional in a way where they're only doing certain things and a lot of those things don't involve big plays or chunk yardage or anything like that. But then if you want to talk about Edmonton and Trey Ford, it was very interesting because I didn't watch a lot of this game and initially when I saw the final score, I thought Trey Ford would've had a better outing. But then I looked at the stat line and I was a bit confused. I mean, again, great day rushing, which is normal from him, eight carriers for 82 yards, which somehow gets lost because Kevin Brown had such a good game and what we'll get into that a bit later, but just specifically about Trey Ford, I expected him to do maybe a bit more in this game from the passing department. And I've said that about him many times and maybe, I don't know if this would be bringing up a weird analogy, but I am at L S U and we have a quarterback, Jayden Daniels, who I've said the same thing about on some occasions where he might, we always praise him for his rushing ability and his ability to get through defenders. He's very shifty. But sometimes when it comes to passing, there's a bit that needs to improve. And again, both of these guys are still very good quarterbacks most important. We've made jokes about the Lamar running back joke was a thing for years and we've moved on from that. But my point here being ultimately the quarterback's job more than anything is to throw the ball effectively. Even though there are a lot of great two-way players like I've just mentioned Trey Ford here and then who I compared him to, Jayna Daniels here at L S U, a lot of good two-way players, but ultimately from him I think Trey Ford this game, it almost brought me back down to earth a bit where I'm like, okay, he still has a bit of work to do in that department. Now again, doesn't mean he's a bad quarterback, but that might get overshadowed just because the Elks won. But again, I don't want to take way anything away from their win and their ultimate performance. Yeah, Kevin Brown here having a day and I think it seems to me at least it took him a little bit here to kind of pick up. And I know we had the wilder and all of that last season and then he got injured and he's done a friend of the podcast. He's a funny guy, but it's good to see. What do you make in that Jason here, Kevin Brown really coming. I mean this was a crazy game. I think probably his most impressive game to date. Yeah, I think the best thing to happen to Kevin Brown was Trey Ford being inserted into this lineup because now the defense has to account for Trey Ford and that's opened up running lanes, especially inside for Kevin Brown, that first touchdown of the game, he went right up the middle for I think a 45 yard touchdown. So I mean, I think Kevin Brown, I think has arguably the best home run hitting ability of any running back in the cfl. And we've seen that especially the last couple of weeks or even dating back a couple of weeks more to that game against Winnipeg where he had that big run to open that game. So I mean he's been incredibly impressive and the Elks just incredibly impressive how far they've came from just a few short weeks. I mean, they've gone from a team that lost 22 consecutive games at home with several blown leads in those losses, mind you to a team that just overcame a 16 point fourth quarter deficit to win consecutive home games. So there has to be some positive momentum even though the Elks are probably pretty far out of the playoff race at this point. Yeah, it's interesting that, I don't know here we were calling for Chris Jones' head for weeks here and now it kind of looks like they've turned it around. And I don't know if that was obviously putting Tre forward in, and I'll still never understand that entire scenario where Chris Jones was the one that scouted and signed Trey Forward. He was the one that moved to draft him and then didn't want to play him. And I've heard like, oh, Victor que and there was different sides or whatever. Evan, what are you grading Coach Jones's performance on now if they come around here and at least are respectable? I don't hear people calling for Chris Jones's death right now. Yeah, well, I mean Chris Jones obviously since Trey Ford has been inserted into the lineup, this team looks a lot more prepared and obviously a lot more competitive. I think that goes without saying, but for me personally, even during the period where the Elks were losing games and it looked like there was no hope, I mean from the player personnel standpoint, I always thought they had a lot of talent and we just talked about a guy, Kevin Brown, we've mentioned him a couple of times on the show, but I feel like he is continuously one of the most underrated running backs in the cfl. And again, part of that might just be because the team wasn't winning, there weren't a lot of people watching, but it's clear that this guy has some serious maybe all star level capability. Nearly definitely was showing it in this game. And then obviously Gina Lewis, that was one of the big storylines, like him coming over to Edmonton. We all thought that was kind of the big deal, especially because they didn't have Kenny Lawler anymore. They had moved on from that. And Gina Lewis was kind of a big acquisition again coming over from Montreal and in this game he showed why he's still important and why he's still one of the best receivers in the league. Obviously he's dealt with some injuries this year. It's ultimately been a bit slower with the quarterback change and just an overall, I think slower offense at times. But I mean they're turning it around and again, I think Chris Jones and the rest of that Elks team are extremely respectable right now. And it's been good. They really did. Again, they have saved their season I would say, because right now I look at the Elks as a team that can win games and that can compete with, I wouldn't say the top teams in the league, but they can certainly compete against teams I guess somewhat at their level and maybe a bit above that. I'm really glad to see that because again, a couple weeks ago it was almost like an apocalyptic scenario where the whole thing was going to blow up. Everyone was going to get fired, no one was going to have a job. But now that's changed a bit and I think that's really important, especially for this team moving forward. A lot of what I look at is 2024, where's this team going to go after this season? Because as much as there's been improvement, I mean you can't forget about what's happened before that. And the Victor Que departure, you cannot overlook that. So I look at 2024 and I see there will still be some change I think, but ultimately they have some pieces there that I think they really need to keep and they can build something off of. So ultimately very happy with the direction things are heading compared to again what it was. I think we're all a bit happy that it's just that ship has sailed and there's at least decent football that we can watch from Edmonton. Now To me, and I agree with you to me, I can see Edmonton, I can see them progressing here and growing. I don't know what to make of Calgary and I haven't this entire season and in one week they're good and one week they're bad. I mean we were hoping for a little bit more separation here in the standings, obviously with them splitting the home at home, Jason, you know what I'm saying? I still dunno who Calgary is here and we're week 14. Yeah, I think they're the most baffling team in the cfl so far this season. And I think that the best way that I could put it is that they lack composure out there, especially latent games. They've been in a lot of close games this year where they've just kind of lost their composure and they haven't been able to close games out, whether that be offensively and many times as defensively as well. So I think back, if they just win one or two of those games, I think back to that game, they played Dustin Crumb against Ottawa earlier this year. They win one of those games or one or two of those games this season. They're in a completely different situation right now and I feel like their season could be in a different place. So I think it's quite baffling how they've been so far this season. Yeah, we had a comment here and Edmonton showing up and I had a tweet to pull up here too. Edmonton crowded oppressive through 2000 shows that they were a good team. They would leave the league in attendance. And I had a tweet from Dan Barnes talking about that you can just feel momentum going right now in their direction. So I guess that's good. I mean they're probably going to miss the playoffs and end up whatever, but at least like Evan says, looking forward to 2024, maybe we have some hope. Any other players you want to highlight here, Evan, and then we can give Jason his thoughts as well. I don't think so. Maybe if I go back to Calgary, I mean Mark and Michelle and Reggie, I mean those are definitely two players I think in Calgary that have stood out all year, especially Beton because I mean, well he's been there for a long time, Michelle obviously coming back later from the N F L. But those two guys I think are really holding a lot together right now. And if you want to talk about Calgary in the big picture, I can give my 2 cents on that very similar thing to Edmonton. I think there's change coming in 2024 and this team for me in 2023 has been an extremely mixed bag. Some weeks I think there's still a playoff caliber team other weeks I think they need to blow it all up and restart and I guess their reign is kind of over given how many years they've been in the playoffs. It's a challenging time and I think there's probably a lot of mixed emotions and a lot of different ways that this could go. Specifically with Jake Mayer, I feel the same way. I was really excited when he came into this season having full reign because Bo Levi, I was gone. I had been waiting on that for a long time. I've always talked about Jake Mayer was one of the first guys I really dove deeply into with the cfl and he had an opportunity this year to take over the team and be the quarterback. And so far, yeah, mixed bag. Some weeks I saw him live this year in BC and that game, it looked like he could have been benched. And then there's other weeks where he's dialing it up for 300, 350 yards, whatever, three touchdowns, and you think, geez, there's a lot to work with there. So again, depending on what happens when it comes to personnel and coaching that might decide where Jake Mayer is moving forward or what happens to him, what his position becomes. But Calgary, there's a lot of question marks there too. They're definitely not safe just because they've been well off in the past. I mean, football is a business, it only really matters what you do now. Yeah, great. Calgary was in the playoffs for X many years before this, but one bad season can really change the tide of things, especially when, as Jason mentioned, had you won one or two more games and they've been in so many close games this year. Again, the other part of me feels like this team could almost have a winning record. They could be a seven win team as opposed to a four win team, and that would really, I think, change the outlook of things. So I don't know. Again, it's a complex issue for the Calgary. Edmonton matchup intrigues me. Both of those have intrigued me the past two weekends just because I feel like there's so many different directions in where those teams could go. I mean, you look at, it's such a different scenario compared to obviously a Toronto or Winnipeg where you're not going to change anything and everything just kind of works out as usual, but anything can happen. That's the bottom line. Yeah, I mean the cfl season's long. I think the Elks have just dug themselves too big of a hole here at this point. Jason, any other players you want to highlight on this before we move on? I think I'm good for players I want to highlight, but I think that it's interesting because Edmonton travels to Saskatchewan next week. Obviously two really close games between those two teams earlier this season, I am going to be taking Edmonton to win that game. Spoiler alert. And I think for Calgary, their season's basically on life support after this loss, mainly because Hamilton's picked up a couple of, I wouldn't say an unexpected victory this week against Ottawa, but a couple of weeks ago against bc. Hamilton has one or two more victories than you would've expected at this point. I think Calgary was really banking on that, and I think that the path forward for them to get into the playoffs is almost impossible at this point, although I think a lot of things have to happen for them to get back into it. Well, and it's certainly going here on the bi-week doesn't help next week as well in terms of getting momentum, I guess rework kind of whatever. But yeah, it does feel like they're going to be the last thing kind of looking out. I have the standing here, but I don't know. We'll see. Like I said, we were hoping for a little bit more separation there and kind of getting an identity of one of these teams moving on. This was, what was it? Was it last week or the week before where Calleros threw six interceptions and then two of 'em were pick sixes and they still won the game mean here to throw five touchdowns. Very impressive day, very impressive. A working day for Blue Bombers, probably the best game statistically Claros has had in a long time. We'll go first. Evan here, 50 Burger against Saskatchewan at home. I mean the riders just didn't show up. Yeah, Saskatchewan looked shell-shocked early, I think is the term I'll use. And Winnipeg, they're one of those teams where, again, I always talk about even if this team has a fluke or a bad day as they did against Saskatchewan in the Labor Day classic, they had a tight loss and it was just, I think that gave them motivation obviously to go back and play Saskatchewan in Winnipeg the week after in the Banjo Bowl. Yeah, I was really impressed with Winnipeg when that team comes out firing. I mean, they mean business. It was an absolute clinic. And I mean if you look at Zach Calleros, 18 of 21 passing 319 yards, five touchdowns, I mean, the game was over in the first half. That's all you really need to know. And I watched the first half of this game and then I didn't watch any more of that. Obviously you knew it was going to happen, but yeah, again, extremely impressed with Winnipeg. But outside of Zach Calleros and their receivers putting in a lot of the work, the one guy that I really want to give credit to more than anybody is Brady Olive Oliveira. We've obviously discussed him on the show at some point this season, but I feel like I haven't given him enough credit. He's really been carrying the rock. And again, I think maybe we're just kind of used to it now, so we're a bit more quiet about it. But I really have to give some credit to Brady Oliveira. I mean, in this game specifically, he looked like the best running back in the cfl, and I would definitely say he's up there when it comes to the AJ Ettes and the James Butlers of the world. I mean, he's really doing a great job. So shout out to Brady Oliveira and he's been there now, I think this is his fourth season if you don't count the Covid year. I think he's been there since 2019, so he was still around when they had Andrew A. Harris, and he's been a really, I guess you'd say developmental piece, but it's certainly paid off. And obviously in this game, I can't imagine how much it hurt for Saskatchewan. But the other guy too, I mean Dalton, who was one of the top receivers in the league last year, I mean not slowing down at all five catches, 104 yards, three touchdowns, and I think all those were in the first half as well. You just couldn't stop him. You just couldn't stop 'em. And Winnipeg, after they scored the first, I'd say maybe two or three touchdowns, I knew that the game was going to end up like this and that there was no looking back. I mean, I'm surprised Saskatchewan, the fact that that game was three nothing with a Saskatchewan lead at one point early in the first was incredible to me. I mean, Winnipeg really just when they get hot, they get really hot, and I think this was the best reminder of it that we've had in quite some time. So I'll leave it at that. Yeah, I had put up here, Eddie Steele, friend of the show, great Elks come back tonight, but the story of the day exists. Winnipeg takes things very personally. They embarrass the rough riders the way that's quite possibly hard to do in pro football flat out. Jason, what did you make of those comments and then the game? Well, I mean, I just think the bombers are just a team that has that championship makeup and that ability to respond to tough games. And I think that, I can't think of the last time that this team's lost consecutive games. I mean, you have to go back, I think they said until 2019, they were saying on the broadcast when Zach Claris wasn't even there the last time they lost consecutive games. So I mean, they just have such a tough mentality as a team. And I mean, this game is just not unexpected for me. I think that going into this one, I thought Winnipeg would probably bounce back in a big way. Didn't think it was going to be 51 to six, but at the same time I thought that Winnipeg would come out and make a statement in this one. And I thought that the rider's defense was just overwhelmed by that matchup against those Winnipeg receivers, Lawler and shown just such a combination. And then Oliveira really doing his thing. We have a really good competition for most outstanding Canadian in the cfl this year with Betts and Oliveira. I think it's going to be really interesting to see what player takes hold of that down the stretch. But Oliveira, if he keeps on putting up performances like this, he could be in the M O P conversation as well. So I think that's basically all I have to say for this game. Rain just rolled in here. I'm sitting outside of this beautiful, I'm under an umbrella, so hopefully it doesn't get too crazy here, but we might have to relocate the bottom Mark House inside here. We'll see what's going on. Our dog just ran in. Yeah, Winnipeg has, like we said, that run it up ability here and certainly coming in and we know the divisional rivalry and kind of all of that stuff, but really remarkable. And I dunno, I can't get a beat on Saskatchewan either. I mean, I know they had the comeback last week and won the Labor Day game, but it doesn't feel like they're built to come back from, what is this 20, I mean, this game was over halftime. I mean, they're down, what is it, 30? I can't even the math here. Craziness Evan, in terms of our boy dag gala, what did you make of him here in the first half, but at least they had a chance? Well, I mean, the commentators were saying it's kind of hard to get a feel of what Jake Dagal, excuse me, did in that game. He just wasn't on the field that much. They had a lot of three and outs and Winnipeg just kept scoring and there just wasn't really a whole lot of opportunities for him. So I mean, he was able to still get the ball out a couple times and finished with the respectable completion percentage. But as you can obviously see barely any yards and didn't find the end zone really just not much there. And I mean, you could say that about the entire Saskatchewan team on both sides of the football when you're only scoring six points and the game is over by halftime, I mean there's really just not a lot to discuss. I mean, just look at that graphic there. I mean everything is Winnipeg pretty much except for I guess what is that? Lost The team. Team. Yeah. So as you can tell, I mean that graphic pretty much defines what domination means in a football game. In terms of the rivalry here, Jason, I mean here we're 50 50 over the weekend between the two weekends, but I would certainly say that Winnipeg came out of the home and home. We'll get a little bit better. What did you make of that, just the divisional rivalry of it? Oh, I think Saskatchewan's probably happy that they were even able to steal one of these games. I mean, I think it's going to be interesting to see how they respond going forward, because I think this kind of reminds me of how Audible was earlier this season. They had the two dramatic victories against Winnipeg in Calgary, and then they've slid ever since then. Will Saskatchewan have a slump after this game? We'll have to see if they kind of got exposed by Winnipeg in this one and if they kind of go on a slide of their own here. Yeah, I was at the Mariner game last night with Met Baker, the BC Lions, and we were talking to Lions here, and I said, if BC does not win at home against Ottawa, I'm calling the season. This is it. I mean, Ottawa has fallen off a cliff and we'll get to all of that. But I mean, yeah, you're certainly looking, you look at these scenes differently. I don't know, Saskatchewan, I can't get a beat for either. It feels like kind of last week crazy and the big dramatic, the one right in overtime and everything. And then here, I don't know. To me it's still kind of the same old rough riders. Evan, any other thoughts on this one? I don't think so. I do agree with the point that Saskatchewan, they definitely fluctuate a bit too, but fortunately for them, they're on the winning side of things. I've brought this up with so many points during the season, but I viewed Saskatchewan and Calgary for a long time in similar ways because they were both in a playoff race and you didn't really know how to feel about 'em on a week-to-week basis. It just changed so much. But ultimately, again, Saskatchewan is now at 500 and they have an opportunity to get back over 500 where they were going into this game. So things are still, I think looking upward for them. Jake Dole gala has really improved in a short amount of time. I know there was some questions around him too, but clearly I think he's the better option than Mason. Fine. And I had a hunch that that was always the case even before he really got onto the field talking about. But yeah, I mean ultimately Saskatchewan just, I don't know. Yeah, I mean when you lose 51 to six, it's kind of hard to take away positives from that. But I do think that this is far from the end of the road for them. Obviously It is really right now, I'm trying to scoot over. I wasn't prepared for this. I know I was looking here at the schedule next week. Obviously Saskatchewan going into Ottawa, that should be a win. We got to see here bc. I mean they've got a couple easy games with Ottawa at home and then here going into Edmonton. I would like to think the BC Alliance would be favored at Edmonton, so we'll kind of see how these standings shake up, but I don't know. To me it's still going to be, I don't know. I see the semi-finals Saskatchewan comes into BC and loses the same way Calgary did last year. I mean, do you see the division shaking out differently here, Jason Think that No, I think the standings as they are, are the standings that we're going to get at the end of the season. I think that Calgary's not going to be able to catch Hamilton. Calgary's not going to be able to catch the Saskatchewan. So I think at the end of the day, unless there's a collapse from both of those teams and Calgary does something super unexpected because I think Ottawa and Edmonton, I think they're a little bit too far out of it to make a run at this point. We will have this conversation later, obviously towards the end of the season. But Calgary, are we expecting wholesale changes after the season? I feel like they got to do something here after coming up short the last few years, Jason? Oh no, I don't think there will be change, at least in terms of the GM and head coach position. I think Dave Dickinson will be given another year to sort things out. Whether that's right or wrong, I think a lot of the blame actually should be assigned to him because of the poor play calling and misusage of some of the weapons that they've had on that offense this year. But I think one move we could see is that he takes a hold of the offensive coordinator job again, so maybe he becomes just like Chris Jones holding three jobs there in Calgary. But he was an offensive coordinator with this team before when he was the head coach at the start, and that's actually how we got the head coaching job in Calgary. He was the offensive coordinator and got promoted to head coach, so I could see him taking hold of the offensive coordinator job again and trying to get the things back on the rails here. But I think at the end of the day, maybe Jake Merri gets ousted as the starter here, but I don't know. I'm really not sure what the make of Calgary in terms of what they're going to be doing going into the off season because they'd never quite been into this position before since I've started watching the cfl. That's my thing is you say, yeah, do you move on for mayor? And I would ask the same thing, but you're like, well, who else do you go with? I don't even know if Mayer's not the guy. Evan, any thoughts on that? Is there anything else on this game before we move on? Well, I mean I think if we want to talk about Calgary and Jake Mayer again briefly. Yeah, I mean the big question is in my opinion, you don't move on from Jake Mayer because Mayer's been in that system now for is going on. Well, this is year three, and yeah, you could replace him if you really felt like that, but that obviously involves trading for somebody and you might be giving up a lot of additional assets that you're not ready to move on from. You don't want to take that jump. And if your plan is to just sign a new quarterback, well, I mean we look at the quarterback pool right now. I mean even at the N F L level when it comes to free agency, just not a whole lot of guys available that necessarily look better than what Jake Mayer offers right now up there in Calgary. So yeah, I don't know. Again, this is a complex issue. I think it all comes down to the people who are making those decisions and they'll obviously make the decisions that they feel are right and they have a lot more knowledge of those situations than we do just sitting here talking about it. But we'll be an interesting storyline to follow with Calgary more than anybody because as Jason has pointed out, they don't lose, they're not a losing team. They don't have a losing culture. Yes, they're not necessarily Winnipeg or Toronto becoming a perennial championship caliber team, but they're always in the playoffs and they're always competing. And this year, I mean it just really hasn't felt like that for a majority of it. Let's move on here. We have Montreal and Toronto. I don't know, I am really curious here with Montreal back to 500, they had stacked some winds earlier in the season, felt like they were getting momentum, obviously coming into Toronto as a difficult task and they're kind of on a different level this year. We had Mike Hogan on the podcast talking about that and just kind of historically how they are right now. Jason, what do you make of Montreal? And it seems like their season, I mean, okay, we're still second in the east, but it doesn't feel like they have a lot of juice right now. Yeah, I think I sound like a broken record here every time I talk about the ettes, but I mean they're just kind of stuck in the middle. They can beat every other team in the cfl other than Toronto, BC, and Winnipeg. So after next week they play Toronto again. So they're going to probably be six and seven after next week, but then the schedule lightens up after that and they don't play any of those big three teams again. I don't believe so. I mean, do they run the table and go to 11 and seven this year? That's quite possible given what we've seen from them so far this season. But I also think their offense has really regressed. I think one quote from the broadcast that really stood to me was Paul Appis saying that he was looking at Montreal during the week. He was saying that the explosive plays for Montreal the first five weeks of the season, they were one of the best teams in the cfl at creating explosive plays, but that's dropped off dramatically since the first five weeks of the season. So I mean, I think that kind of tells a lot of the story with the ettes offense. It's really been poor the last month or so. Yeah, what kills, I mean, this is, I know sports in general, and we're living through this right now with the Mariners and we're in the a l West and trying to kind compete for one of those playoffs spots and we went into Tampa over the weekend and just got completely hosed. And you're like, well, yeah, but if we win, I'm like, yeah, but even then if you get to the playoffs, you're not going to win any of these games. You're not going to win. You're saying, okay, Montreal can win except any good teams. Okay, well, so then, okay, we make it to the first round of playoffs and they kind of at what point, right, with some of these players, I remember on Good Morning football, they were saying some of these players, I don't want to make the playoffs if we're not going to. I'd rather take vacation early. What's the point of making it to the first round of playoffs just to get blown out? I mean, the Seahawks did that last year against the 49 ERs. I don't know. Evan, what do you make Montreal here? It really seems like they're kind of faltering. Well, as Jason pointed out, the biggest problem all season has been their failure to separate themselves. You don't know what exactly they are and you don't know what they aren't because they are smack dab in the middle. It is the hardest definition of being in the middle that I've seen in a long time. You cannot beat the teams above you, but you'll beat everybody below you. And until that changes, I really can't define an identity for that team right now. I will say I do agree. I think the offense is, there's definitely some questions there. Started off the season started off and it looked like they were looking pretty good on offense. They were rolling again. They still have a lot of pieces. I feel like their offense has one of the higher ceilings in the league, but don't, I wouldn't say they haven't tapped into that exactly. So yeah, down the stretch, I mean they play Toronto next week as Jason pointed out, you go to six and seven and then maybe you're at 11 and seven at the end of the season. If everything goes right, I'd say realistically more like 10 and eight, but then yeah, they're going to get into the playoffs and it's just going to be, I mean, I don't want to say pointless because those players are still playing for something and they're still motivated and they're still very talented, but it's going to be really difficult and everyone already knows what's likely to happen. So I don't know, 10 and eight, did you accomplish something in this season? Yes, but you didn't win in the playoffs, so it just kind of feels like the year isn't wasted. But it's also like you left a lot on the table. Again, just a very interesting position, but I feel like the ettes in the playoffs will certainly look better than say Hamilton. The whole Hamilton situation might take away from some of what Montreal has going on in terms of their struggles, just because people are going to look at the tie cats and think, geez, I mean that's going to be one of the worst playoff teams maybe ever, or certainly in the last couple years. They're just not a very good looking team in multiple facets of the game. So again, that all has to do with just how the season has played out and the standings, some very unique things going on. And it looks like we're going to have a, well, just given how I've just described Montreal, it looks like we're going to have two teams in the playoffs that wouldn't be considered competitive and ultimately swayed in many different directions during the regular season, but anything could happen. I'm still confident that a team like Montreal, even with their struggles and even with their inability to separate, could still go out and stun somebody and surprise somebody just because again, they have enough talent and the personnel to get it done. And Hamilton, I mean, dare I say it, I don't know. I really don't know. I don't have a good feeling, but it could certainly happen. We will get into the Hamilton AWA game, but there was a lot of things that I liked in that game from Hamilton, even though it was really slow and there was still a lot of sloppy play and a lot of people weren't gravitating towards that. I try and I always try and look at the positives. I think people know that for me best, I really don't try and be negative. So the best way I can look at this is Montreal, they might not necessarily have a clear path or direction, but they have enough to where you could never rule them out. And even with Hamilton, it's not a good look for the league when you have a team that hasn't performed very well in the regular season and had to make a significant coaching change, at least with one of their coordinators. Maybe that's not the best look either, but playoffs in my opinion, is a separate, yeah, we just had this discussion of is making it to the playoffs and knowing you're most likely to lose in the first round even worth it. Well, I view the playoffs as a completely different season. I mean, your playoff wins are not counted towards your win-loss total for the regular season. Same goes for preseason in the N F L and cfl has that as well. So I don't know, I just view it as a fresh start. You kind of have to look at it as every team in the playoffs who makes it is o and o, and we'll just go from there. Obviously we know we have an idea in our heads about how things will pan out, but I remember last year everyone thought Winnipeg was going to smoke Toronto in the Great Cup, and Toronto ended up putting up a very good fight even after losing their quarterback and ended up surprising Winnipeg in one of the better games that I think we've seen in a while in that regard. So yeah, I don't know. I know that goes a bit beyond just Montreal, but you definitely, you can't talk about that team without, where are they going? Even if they get into the playoffs, what does the future look like? There's still a lot of questions there, but again, the number one thing is they're still winning to some degree. Yes, they're not beating the good teams, but you are still winning. And it looks like they're going to finish their season with a positive record. And I'd say that's a win just because again, there were so many people before the season saying Montreal was going to suck, and they were going to be at the bottom of the east and Miss playoffs entirely. So when you look at it like that, it's like, okay, well, they managed to defy expectations in some regards. So yeah, I think that's where I'm at on that. I was looking here at the schedule, as Jason was saying, yeah, Montreal could very much run the table here after their game next week against Toronto. We have the Edmonton Elks hanging out in the chat. Shout out Kevin Brown here. We already gave him his roses, analyze all of that. So shout out, I dunno if that's Richard or whoever over there, but shout out Edmonton, Alex hanging out in the chat. I had a couple of things here. So Toronto clinch their first team to clinch for the playoffs this year. We had a tweet from John Hot, Toronto's might as well start selling their tickets to the East Final. Right now the gap between them and the rest of division is the chasm. What do you make? We've talked to Montreal and Jason, what do you make Toronto here? Historic run they're having this season? Yeah, I mean they just slowly built a juggernaut over the last three seasons. I mean, it started back in 2021 because back in 2019 they had a godawful season. They finished, I believe it was four and 14, and then made wholesale changes. But then the first move was really bringing in Ryan Dinwitty and just developing slowly, having good seasons. I think they went, what, 11 and seven the previous two seasons. They're far going to surpass that this year with already a 10 in one record. And I think that introducing Chad Kelly to this lineup has turned this team into a juggernaut. And I mean, it's not just that they do everything in all phases of the game. Well, I mean even down to their special teams, they have excellent special teams, they have excellent receivers. I love the way the receiving core works together, even though they may not have that true number one star guy that you look for like Kenny Lawler or Dalton. But I mean, they work so well together with their different skill sets, Tovar, Daniels, cam Phillips, all those guys in there. So I think they just have a very well-rounded team, and it feels like as it pertains to these two teams that met in the East final last year, the gap is widening between these two teams not getting closer. So I think that's the most concerning thing if you're Montreal, and it's a great sign if you're the Argos. The only reason I co-signed this, the Argonauts being good this year, is Mike Mitchell just watched his starting quarterback of the Jets go down two minutes into their drive last night. So that's okay. The Argonauts can be good this year. I think Mike Mitchell needs that for his target. Yeah, a really crazy, I thought if you guys good viewership on the episode, I thought over the weekend, the Ban Bull show with Mike Hogan and everyone else, Mike obviously with the organization, but really just put into context statistically and historically how impressive that Toronto been this season, especially Evan, what do you make of Chad Kelly? Anything else with the Argos? Because we got your thoughts on the outlets, Right? I mean, well, again, not much to be said with Toronto. Just we're getting used to this now, and it's similar to Winnipeg. When this team gets hot, they can get really hot and just roll over somebody and they don't look back. They do have that championship pedigree now, fortunately for them. And Chad Kelly, I think continues to exceed everybody's expectations. It cannot be understated how quickly of a rise that he's had. I mean, this time a year ago, Chad Kelly was almost an afterthought. We were all looking at McLeod Bethel Thompson and what his future was going to look like. But now obviously Chad Kelly has come in and he's, I guess, passed the torch on successfully or Well, McLeod has passed the torch on successfully to Chad Kelly, and he's carrying that with pride. And yeah, I mean, again, I've said it so many times, but you just can't understate what a great story Chad Kelly is. And there's so much football lineage obviously in his family, but on the personal level, everything that he went through, and he obviously had some legal issues, and I think ultimately his character kind of kept him away from the N F L, not the first time we've seen, I guess an alt league player have that scenario where the N F L kind of kicked them out. They had an attitude or whatever. I mean, you can make that argument for, I don't know, Marquette King and the xfl or obviously Josh Gordon involves some politics, things like that. But Chad Kelly really exceeding, defying all expectations. And we discussed this on the show last week too, I think, but just signed a big extension and he's their quarterback of the future, and you can tell he really enjoys playing up there, and I believe one of the clauses in that contract is he might get more money or there's some added incentive if he doesn't leave and go to an N F L team to where they have to let him go into a camp and then bring him back. So there's definitely a high level of commitment there, and I think Toronto really wants him to stay, and despite what a lot of people also thought, I think Chad Kelly looks like he wants to stay. He's enjoying slinging the football up north of the border and just again, good for him, good for the team. We will probably, I have a feeling we'll be seeing them in November there in Hamilton, Even as this Aaron Rogers situation, and we have been talking all day about who can they go after, and people have been tweeting, obviously we made the joke about the Nathan Rourke, but Nathan Rourke's not on that conversation. Chad Kelly's not. We're still talking Carson Wentz, he's out there hunting deer in the woods, and we're still giving Carson Lentz, who I had to survive a year with him last year with the Washington commanders we're at. I think Chad Kelly's in a phenomenal situation. Like I said on the show last week, I think he looks like he's having an absolute blast. He got paid. The guys love him. It's a great coaching staff. I mean, Toronto, like you said, Evan, whoever has just quietly been putting together a juggernaut here. Jason, anything else on the Argos or Ettes here? It is really raining. I keep sliding over the dog's gone inside. Water's falling off the umbrella here. Jason, anything else from this? Yeah, I just want to shout out the Argos offensive line because I think it's an under talked part of their team. One specific example I want to bring up because this guy has become a star for this team, Ryan Hunter. He was a guy that the Argos selected in the first round back in 2018, so they had to wait four years for this guy to go through his N F L opportunities. He was with Kansas City for a while, and then he was with someone else, but then he signed midway through last year, got into the starting lineup by the end of last year, and then this year has been excellent for them, and it looks like to be a cfl star for years to come. So I think they've done a really good job building up that offensive line, and I think that's a big part of what they do offensively. Let's go here. Last game, I'm trying to shake water off of the umbrella here. We have Ty Katz going in to Ottawa. I had Tim Bains on talking about this game ahead of time. We'll go first to Jason on this one. Hamilton takes the, you got another victory here. How did you make of Hamilton? Well, like I was saying on last week's show, last week's recap, show that I was expecting Hamilton to bounce back despite being on three days rest despite Ottawa coming off a bi-week, I still thought Hamilton would bounce back and beat Ottawa and this one, despite all of that, and I think that it was a lot closer than I was expecting a very ugly first half of this 1, 6 3 in the first half, but a great second half from both offenses really came alive. I had to watch this game on demand after the fact because I was on a camping trip this weekend, but I thought it was a pretty good game when I went back and watched it. But like I said, Ottawa just cannot beat Hamilton for the life of them. This is their 10th straight lost to Hamilton. Hamilton has now swept the season series four years in a row against Ottawa, and I think that you're not going to get very far in the cfl if you're not going to win your divisional games. And I don't think Ottawa has won a divisional game yet this year. Yeah, a lot was made about the Hamilton's plan. They're on rest, and they got to travel and they played on Monday. It didn't matter at all. I mean, this was a must win for both teams, especially Ottawa like you said. I will say with now that the F, the triple headers with the cfl makes it really difficult if you're on the CFL plus train. I know we've had many discussions about how great that is for everyone. If you're out on a Saturday, which maybe I was, you're kind of out of luck to do a lot of these games, and so I know that this season and we're working through that, and we had Randy on the podcast talking about it, but it's tough. Evan, I don't know if you lived through that as well. We had a birthday party, we had to go to Saturday. It just takes a chunk out of your ability to watch these games live. Yeah, I mean, I personally have a good chunk of time on weekends usually, so I don't mind, I mean, I'll watch games in chunks. If it's a triple header, you watch one half, go do something else, come back, the next game will be on or whatever. I don't know. You can schedule it to where things where you can cover all the games or at least look at them. But I understand, I mean, people have other things to do and especially on a Saturday. I mean, I know the cfl wants to avoid N F L with that scheduling conflict, but you're also dealing with college football, which is equally as big here in the United States. So if you're looking at it from an international viewership perspective, you're still competing with that. And ultimately, yeah, I mean, it is easier to have a game one day of the week starting on Thursday or Friday, whatever, or maybe two games max on a certain day. But yeah, triple headers could get difficult. I personally, I don't know, I kind of enjoy 'em because when I have time to kill, it's like you can just kind of sit there all day and figure out the flow of things. And unfortunately, every game probably isn't going to be close. But staying on this game, I mean, yeah, I was really impressed in the second half of how both of these teams kind of got going. Especially Hamilton, my main takeaway from this game above everything else, and besides what Jason's already pointed out, how Ottawa just can't get past Hamilton, that really is the unfortunate story of their season. Besides injuries at this point and other things that maybe weren't expected, the thing that I was really impressed about was just Taylor Powell. He has come such a long way since his first starter when he first appeared in a game, has really carried this team through the season, and now they're obviously in a point where they can make playoffs even when a lot of people said they wouldn't. I said several weeks ago that Hamilton again had the personnel to get it done, that they had things in their favor even if they weren't the prettiest team. And Taylor Powell has definitely been leader and has gotten him to that point that I projected they would be. Again, it's really cool to see a rookie quarterback come in and again, we can kind of just watch him develop game by game. I mean if you go back to whenever he first started, I think he's improved in so many areas since then, perhaps more than any other guy in the league. I mean, I don't know, like Trey Ford I guess, but I don't know if that really counts because he played last year and it was more of a dramatic scenario, whereas no one really even knew who Taylor Powell was going into this season. I think he was an afterthought even to the fans in Hamilton just because there was so much attention around Levi. And then if that doesn't work out well, you have Matt Shilts who's a proven veteran, but obviously both of those options went quickly off the board and now you have Taylor Powell leading the way. Dustin Crum I guess would be another one too. In Ottawa obviously a guy that we've been able to see develop a bit, but I feel like Powell will get more credit because he has ultimately been able to put this team in a playoff position when, to be honest, I mean again, a couple weeks ago looked pretty grim for Hamilton too. Like you talking about this team and the playoffs together really didn't seem like it was going to happen. It didn't really seem possible, but just with the way, again, things have panned out. Hamilton has been able to scrape by enough, even if it's not pretty. Same thing in this game. They kind of got into a late shootout, but they got the job done, they got enough and now it looks like they can make the final push and get in. So yeah, I was very impressed with that. Hamilton continuing again, Orlando Steinhower, I would never count that guy out. I really do think he has a certain pedigree and he can really take a team that on paper really was one of the bottom teams in the cfl and propel them to this position where they can still, again, like I've said, win games, be in a playoff position, have a decent program going on both sides of the ball. Really impressive on that front and I think that was my main takeaway from this game overall. Remember in the preseason, our pregame, whatever it was, the pre-show for the kickoff and I said, I bet you Bo Levi's going to come in. Old guy not work out in Hamilton. Aaron Rogers old guy going to not work out in Jets. I mean just saying. Anyway. Jason, how are you feeling here? I feel like this is a very similar, I'm looking at the games coming up and Hamilton does not have an easy stretch. They're playing Toronto here and what is it? Winnipeg at Hamilton next week, then they're at Toronto and then they're scheduled items up a little bit. We got Calgary coming in and then they're going to Saskatchewan. But same issue here, so probably going to be tie cats and then them going into the buzz saw that is the Argonauts. What do you make of this playoff picture here? Well, it's nice to get a win, but when you look at it, three of their five wins this year have been against Ottawa, so I don't know how you can be happy with that as a Tyca fan. I mean I think that there's other things that have gone on this year unfortunate with the quarterback injuries, but Taylor Powell's playing pretty well right now and it's good to see him get a lot of reps because he might actually be this team starting quarterback. Looking forward to next year, as you were talking about earlier, not too many great options out there if you're looking for a starting quarterback. So maybe just develop your own and go the cheap quarterback route and build a good roster around him. So at the end of the day, I don't know, I think Hamilton is going to make the playoffs just based on the poor teams around them. I think that Calgary's not going to be able to catch them. I think if Calgary had won this week, they would've been in a much better position to potentially catch Hamilton, but now they're a full game behind. There's no tiebreaker with the crossover. They have to have a better record than Hamilton in order to get into the playoffs. Ottawa is too far behind now. I think Ottawa is completely out of it, so I think Hamilton's going to make the playoffs, but they're going to be an easy first round exit again against Montreal. And Montreal has really taken them to school the first couple matches they've seen between those two teams this season as well. So I mean really don't know how to feel as a TCATs fan. I think they're going to make the playoffs, but I think it's really disappointing season regardless. Yeah, I don't want to say it's boring or predictable, but it does feel I'm having fun doing all these games, but it does feel like it is going to be kind of a repeat of last year here, Montreal, Toronto, bc, Winnipeg with Saskatchewan being flipped out there for Calgary, kind of losing that home game on that. One more question to Jason and then we'll go to Evan Powell and Crumb are both of these teams riding with their quarterbacks next year? I know we touched Powell, but Crumb, if Mzoli's done, I dunno how this auto address this. Yeah, it's tough. I think that Drew Brown could be an option for one of these teams because obviously I think both of those guys, as we talked about with Nailer a couple of weeks ago, I think both of those guys with Claris now under a contract, I think Drew Brown's going to be a guy that prices himself out of Winnipeg with what he's shown. So maybe he gets a deal somewhere, but I mean I think that more likely, I think we see both of these teams stick with their guy going into next year, unless Oli comes back, looks great at the end of this season or Matthew Schultz comes back and shows somewhat of a consistent streak of health. I mean I just think that Taylor Powell's probably your starting quarterback for the Hamilton Tigercat next season, but obviously a long way to go until then. Are we still waiting but Levi coming back, is that still a pipe dream here? Well, I mean they seemed like they were more optimistic about that than the rough riders were about Trevor Harris coming back. I think they talked about that they were very affirmative saying, oh, he will make a full recovery and is expected to be back this season. That's what they said in the press release. But yeah, who knows? And I think Matthew Schultz is very close to returning. He actually dressed for this game as the third quarterback, so maybe he's starting in a couple of weeks, but I think at this point you should just ride with Powell and get the young guy some reps. Evan, we saw your boy Kai Loxley get a Snap. Powell got really hit pretty hard during the first quarter. What did you make of the Thai Kat here coming in? Yeah, like I said, ultimately this season there's a lot of questions and you don't know what the future's going to look like, but I agree, I mean I've said before, just seeing Taylor Powell's development, he can start for this team and I agree with Jason regardless of whatever else is on the table, a lot of times you just want to roll with what works. I mean bringing Matt Shilts back into the game, I wouldn't be against that, but he hasn't played in so long and that's a good friend of mine, but just from the football perspective, he hasn't played in a while. And I'm sure the team is looking at it like Wolf Taylor Powell just went out there threw for over 300 yards, three touchdowns. Why would you want to get rid of him? Why would you want to pull him? They could really have something here and looking forward. Yeah, I don't know what Bo's future looks like and even Matt Shilts, both of those guys could be gone next year and you just have Taylor Powell, sort of the in-house developmental guy and someone else behind him, whether they keep Kai Loxley there as kind of a hybrid or bring in someone else, I think they have. Who else do they have right now at quarterback? Do they have Antonio Pipkin or is that Saskatchewan? He's in Saskatchewan Now, yeah. Okay. Well I don't know mean they could certainly bring in somebody else behind Taylor Powell I think next year, assuming that Shilts and Oli I are gone. But the team as a whole, I mean the guy that really impressed I think more than anybody outside of Taylor Powell in the Hamilton side was Tim White. They were talking about him at the start of the game and I mean he really turned up there when it mattered most. And then Tyreek McAllister had a touchdown in this game to a name that people should not quickly forget, even if he isn't always the most productive. He flashes a lot and he's one of those pieces where he hasn't done a ton this year. Again, he's flashed a couple things, but that to me is one of those key pieces that Hamilton should stick with moving forward regardless of how they move on in the off season and handle some of their situations. I think Tyre McAllister is definitely a building block for that offense and what they want to do. Just a really cool player all around and we will see what happens there. But definitely rooting for him and again, someone that you just shouldn't forget about quickly. I feel like next year could be a very big year for him, assuming he's a bit more consistent and he can get some more reps. But ultimately Hamilton's got things to work with even though again as we've already discussed, maybe not their best season given what's happened. Well compared to previous years, I'd say Well this is good, we'll start to wind it up here. I got to escape. I was like, did I hear all a thunderstorm out there? I don't dunno what's happening in Seattle. Maybe the roof will be closed for the Mariner game tonight. We'll started to put this to bed. I appreciate everyone today and Jason had to work and I had to work and Evan that class, so kind of doing that. We're all kind moving around but I appreciate everyone kind of doing that. It should be a good show this Friday. I think we got Jeff Hamilton coming on and Dan Ralph and then I believe I will be talking to Azo Sewell over with the Ettes and then I think we have Matthew Betts coming on, so I've been going back and forth. Baker and I were at the game last night so I think that Matthew bets will be coming on. I was trying to work on, they've got the cfl Hall of Fame inductions and trying to do some virtual stuff, but I don't know if Lucas will be able to accommodate that or not. Evan, anything else from you and then we'll let Jason say goodbye. No, I don't think so. I think I'm just looking forward to week 15 and well, I think the craziest part that we can end on is week 15 starts here on Friday in three days from when we're recording this and I mean week 21 is the last week of the season, so it really feels like the home stretch. We've been talking now a couple past couple weeks, teams are really starting to separate themselves but now it almost feels like crunch time, kind of like on red zone, they call it the witching hour where teams really start separating themselves. That's what it kind of feels like right now. I mean we just went over so many scenarios, it's like we have a good idea but there's still a lot of teams that could surprise and pull through at the end. So definitely getting into again, sort of the red zone here With that. My blasphemous, I've never watched Red Zone and we have the one now we have the YouTube TV plan where we get the games, but I think you had to even pay more to get the red zone and so I had my quad box up on Sunday but I did not have the red zone. Jason, anything else from you? Any other content you have coming out this week before the weekend? Well tonight I actually am going to be part of another stream for my N F L show recapping week one in the N F L. So tune over to Coast to coast Gridiron. That's the guy I collaborate with for that. So much similar to this show we just talked about that week that was and everything like that. Much like Evan, I'm just super excited for this time of year. I mean the CFL's in its stretch run the N F L's back. It's really a glorious time of year if you're a football fan. So really excited for the coming weeks, but pretty soon, like Evan said also that football's going to be over pretty soon In terms of the cfl, Well make sure you give the Washington Commanders win enough credit here on the week one. That was a tough game we played and I appreciate that and Sam Howell and everything else like and subscribe. Thumbs up the video go if you're not, obviously I think everyone here's probably subscribe to Jason but make sure you do that. I appreciate it. Like I said, everyone working schedule this week rain's picking up again, so I'm going to get the heck out of here. We'll see you guys. Thanks.

CFL 2023 Banjo Bowl Pre-game Show! CFL Week 14 Preview!!

Coming up this week on the markCast. Well, here we are, cfl, week 14, banjo Bowl preview, everything else, lots of cfl content coming to you this week. First we talk with Darryl Davis of the Regina Leader Post, getting his thoughts, everything contentious. Banjo Bowl coming up here. The headshot heard around the world last week from the Ruff Riders. What do we have to say? You've seen what the bombers do after somebody wrongs 'em or somebody beats 'em, they bounce back as well as any team in the cfl. So I should say I'm scared for the Saskatchewan Ruff riders, but it's part of football to go into somebody's backyard after beating them and saying, oh, here we go. Winnipeg is going to be pumped up, ready to play. It's going to be loud, it's going to be hot. Then they might be one of the hottest teams in the cfl right now, even coming off of Velocity. Trey Ford led Edmonton Elk's sweeping the cfl by storm. We have Morley Scott coming on sharing his thoughts on Trey Ford and the rest of the team. He Likes Trey Ford. There's a misconception out there that Chris Jones doesn't like Tre Ford or Chris Jones doesn't like Canadian quarterbacks, which is just ridiculous. Coaches like quarterbacks that win it doesn't matter what their birth certificate is, right? Then A Big East Division matchup here. Friday night in Ottawa. We have Hamilton taking on the Red Blacks, getting Tim Bain's thoughts on the East Division. What do we think of it this year in the cfl Coaches? Hate to put the must win tagline on any game that's truly not Miami. Truly is. It must win. Well, no, they could lose, still make the playoffs, but it sure isn't likely. So this is about as close to a must win game as you can get. And then without a doubt, the hottest team in the cfl did Toronto, Argonauts Guinea, Mike Hogan, voice of the Argos thoughts on the team to beat here in the cfl, Chad Kelly, everything else, what do we got? The Argos have an opportunity to win to start 10 and one that's only been done once in Argo history. Doug flu's first year here, so if you compare the teams 10 games in nine in one versus nine in one, this edition of the Argos has scored four more points than the Doug Footie Argos of 1996. That's the kind of team that this group is right now. It's doing some very strange things in terms of Argo history, which I guess in the hundred 50th anniversary season should be expected. Should be good like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the mark cast. Read here, big cfl week this week. Looks like a banjo bowl. Exciting matchups this weekend. They say the season doesn't start until after Labor Day, so getting all of that today and safe for any future read updates. I think mostly cfl content this week, working on some xfl interviews, short week with Labor Day and the holiday and all that stuff. My work schedule Thursday night football happening here after, hopefully that was an exciting one. Let's that they did the Detroit Lions have the upset against the chiefs at home. We'll see. But busy week this week, like I said, short week with all of that stuff. So doing our best. Got four great cfl interviews for you. Really appreciate Darrell Davis coming on hot, hot banal right now with Saskatchewan going into Winnipeg, taking them on at home. It should be a great one this weekend. And then like I said, morally Scott coming on, we had him on last season. Appreciate that. I know we lean on Dave Campbell a lot too. Really appreciate the guys over there that cover the Edmonton Elks. And then I really appreciate Tim Bains coming on. I've been trying to get Tim on for a couple weeks. I think Tim was on a holiday. He said he was up at this cottage playing golf, so good to get Tim back on. And then Mike Hogan, we had him on preseason preview of the Argos. We'll have to see. How did his preseason predictions go? Argos looking hot as always. Like I said, I hope you guys enjoyed N F L football last night and this weekend should be exciting. Triple header on Saturday and then the Friday night game. The Friday night game, if I could speak here, the Hamilton TCATs going into Ottawa. Hopefully that lives up to at least a little bit of excitement. The east is kind of a hot dumpster fire right now, so as we talk about with Darryl coming up, so hope that's a good one. Like I said, we'll work on some more xfl content here coming up. I know they had a new hire this week over in the sponsorships department with niche Metta coming on the team. He previously worked at Twitter, A K A X, so that's exciting to have some new blood going in there over the xfl. I always like to get new executives added. There're on the roster, but yeah, we'll work on it should be good. Like I said, give us up to 3,500 subscribers if you can. Looking to give away an xfl or usfl kickoff game ticket here once we hit that mark. Like I said, getting ramped up for the Great Cup in Hamilton should be exciting. So if you are into the cfl content here while we're waiting in the xfl and the usfl off season, make sure you are subscribed. Take part in that. We'll see you guys at the end. Thanks again. Well here we are back, a man who was retired. I'm retired all during the podcast here we have Darryl Davis, Darrow Wheat, we already have our ticket spot for Hamilton. Evan Willmore is joining us and then we have Jason Hussey who's there. We have a whole troop coming this year to Hamilton doing the live show, so I hope you'll be a part of that. Welcome back here. How are you doing? Absolutely, I'll be a part of that. Re I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on again and I look forward to seeing you in Hamilton. I'll send out the reservation stuff for the hotel rooms in the next day or so. How's that? Wow, we're getting on it. Well, it'll be good. So this was kind of the headshot heard around the world here coming off of very exciting. I listened and then I was filming over the weekend. I was listening on my f l plus and whatever was it on the Sports network and then ended up watching the game and the overtime. What did you make? Incredible kind of Labor Day classic. It was quite a finish. It's never gone. The Labor Day classic. I don't know. I started going to them in the seventies or eighties I think Reed and I've never seen overtime before in the Labor Day Classic. So that made it pretty exciting. But the rough riders were poised to lose it. As you said, that penalty by Pete Robertson, the head butt on Zach Carros gave Winnipeg first in goal on the two yard line. They ran it in for a touchdown to go ahead, 24 20. And we thought again, they're just imploding. They're in big trouble now and somehow they managed to pull it out. They got a single point in the field goal before the regulation time ended and put together a tremendous drive and overtime to go ahead and Jake dagal the quarterback through a great two point conversion attempt that some people are disputing. Say it might've dropped, but that was the difference, the point difference in the game. Anyway, it was exciting to watch sold out like the Labor Day classic usually is. So it's always fun being there In terms of the reaction to the headbutt. And I saw our friend Jeff Hamilton talking, doing the media scrum with Claros and he seemed very upset about it. And from what I was reading online, like I said, working this week, Craig Dickinson didn't think it was a big deal and then, oh, well if I had seen it, it would've been a big deal or what did you make? It just seems kind of messy here. Well, it was the heat of the moment for sure, and Pete Robertson, to his credit has, we always judge a guy quite often by how they react afterwards. Pete Robertson was at his locker, met with the media afterwards, he met the media again at practice the first day back and said, this is stupid. I shouldn't have done that. I apologized to my team. He did stand up and apologize to his team. He said, I'm glad that Zach Alaris is okay. I just did a stupid thing and the thing I'm mad about is potentially hurting my team. Craig Dickinson in his first availability after the game, after he saw the film said, now I realize it was a serious hit. We'd apologize. We're glad that Zach Aros is okay too. We're going to send an apology. Zach Aros even mellowed his case a little bit in his first availability after the game when he said, I realized Pete Robertson isn't a dirty player and he isn't. He's not known for that. He did something stupid at a very tense moment of the football game and he's admitted that to his credit. It's so different from how the Rough Riders imploded last year with that Garrett Marino incident this year. They've matured. It's really been quite impressive, Reid to think what a stupid play it's been, but how they've dealt with it and they're able to, in their minds hopefully move forward. I know it'll be an issue going into Winnipeg. Of course it will be. There's always a great rivalry there, but they've handled it as well as you could expect themselves to handle it. Pete Robinson isn't appealing the suspension. He said, that's what I deserve. I'll live with that. I'm a man. I can handle it. I'm sorry. I hurt my team and I'm glad that Zach Claris is okay, so what else can you do? But away you go. Is it a harsh enough penalty? Yeah, that's a good debate. Two might've been closer, but remember Marino got four games, basically two for wrenching the ankle of Jeremiah Mazzoli, maybe even having a lot to do with ending his career. There was pure malice in Garrett Merino's Maneuver last year. This was something that a guy just was standing there thinking, oh right, I'm invincible. And he had just made a really big play. He turned around, watched the incompletion, then kind of flexed. I did it and then turned around and went, whoa. And thought as soon as he did it, you could see he was thinking what a stupid thing in his teammate Micah Johnson standing there giving it to old LeBron James Shrug. What are you doing there, man? Let's not be stupid. So one game, two games, he had to be suspended for sure. Is that the standard they've set now? Well, maybe it'll escalate, but as we said, Pete Robinson hasn't done dirty things during his career. I think that weighed into it, the expediency of everything. He admitted to it. He said I did something wrong. I think a lot of that went into the Justice Reid. So I think one game is probably in the big scheme of things, probably. Okay. Yeah, I was trying to explain to Dorothy and then I showed it because Dorothy pretends to, I'm a Winnipeg Blue Baller fan, that's her team. I said, you got to go see what this guy did to your boy Zach Callis. And she was like, oh my gosh. I saw, I think it was Michael Balls going off like, oh, this is the standard now. And he's been kind of running around. I don't know if you have Thought nobody ever listens to Michael Ball. That's fine. You can ignore him completely. He's gone right off the deep end the last couple of weeks. Okay, so I'm reading the room correctly here from the States. Yes. Yeah, In terms of the Labor Day classic, because I know Winnipeg had come in and clean the clock out of Saskatchewan here. I think it was 14 and two or I can't remember what the stats were. Good to see a little bit more balance in the forest here with the Saskatchewan winning at home, not getting embarrassed. That helps. And when you say embarrassed, they were certainly embarrassed in Montreal against Ettes. They were so flat Reed, we were starting to wonder if Craig Dickinson had any say over that team, if he could inspire them as the head coach. And we were starting to wonder about the future of everybody. What are they doing wrong? They were totally flat. And I know that everybody says you can't use travel as an excuse in pro sports, but remember they had gone from Regina to the east coast all for a touchdown Atlantic. Their next game was in Vancouver for a road game. Then they came home and played Ottawa. They beat Ottawa and five days later we're playing in Montreal, which are basically three of the toughest road trips in the Canadian football league, the three that you can imagine. Nobody's ever gone through that. And the fact that they lost those three road games is kind of easily explained. Plus they weren't getting very good quarterbacking. I've never been, not that I hate Mason, fine, but he's just not a good enough quarterback to be a starter in the Canadian Football. He's fine, he's made fine. That's what we say. But right from training camp, I've been touting and taking heat for touting Jake Dola just right at training camp. He looked great. He could throw the football, he could run the football, he makes good decisions. The zippy on the football and he can see he's six foot seven, which is unusual for a pro quarterback, but he can see over defenders. So that opens up their offense and they've done so much better with him and the controls, you can see the entire team has been inspired. Offense, defense, special teams just because now they have a quarterback who can win football games for them. Yes, they've still got a good defense. Yes, they're playing pretty well on special teams, but now they can do things on offense and it's just spread throughout the entire team. Yeah, I guess that's the thing is it felt like Trevor Harris goes down and the world's ending and Mason, so you're saying you maybe expected this with Jake Dugout. Is this coming as a surprise in the Saskatchewan market or are we kind of rallying here? What's the thought Process? There are some people who say they knew it all along. I'm going to say I knew it all along, right? Of course I'm going to. I've been taking heat for it. We do a radio show here on C G M E and C K O M that I've been touting him and when he played badly as a relief quarterback after Mason Vine got hurt in Montreal, oh my goodness, the phone calls were coming in. Davis, you're an idiot. How dare you think you know more than the coaches. I go, okay, well let's see how he does with a week of practice under his belt. And then when he prepared and beat your BC lions, which was a pretty impressive showing after a week of practice, basically his first start of the season, his second cfl start, he's just taken over. He's got this sex confidence. Craig Dickinson says he's charismatic and we look in our notebooks afterwards and say, he didn't say anything charismatic, but he says the players all like him and you can see they're responding to 'em. So from training camp, a lot of us, a few of us maybe that group is growing saying We thought Dalala could do it. I'm on the record of saying it all the way through the season. Mason fine. Can't do it. They say he's five 10, I'm five eight. I look him eye to eye. So he's not big enough to play in this game. He got better and better as he went along, but he's still not going to win you very many games as a quarterback. He's a placeholder. And it did look like disaster when Trevor Harris went down. Now I don't know what's the future for Trevor Harris, right? Can he come back from this injury? He had a bone broken in five places in his knee. So that's a pretty serious injury that he had surgery on. And will he come back? Can he come back? They're paying him 500,000 a year. Maybe you just say, listen, it's time to move on and we'll get Jake Dag Gala who's playing very well, he'll be our quarterback of right now and of the future. It really did feel like Saskatchewan was kind of a dumpster fire here. I mean even what, three weeks ago? I mean it's really remarkable. I mean I know we in week to week on here and everyone freaks out. The season's a marathon and game some matter until Labor Day and everything else. But it is remarkable turn around they've had in the last few weeks because I think even comments I was seeing on Twitter calling for Dickinson's job and we're like, we got to have wholesale changes following the season. There was a lot of talk about that and we looked things up. The riders have never hired anybody mid-season unless they've only had zero or one wins. So at that time they were like four and five, right? They started the season three and one ended up four and five and playing Mason fine. We were wondering why are you making a decision like that? And you were starting to wonder about Craig Dickinson's football acumen. How can he not see that this team isn't performing under Mason? Fine. So Mason finds injury. I never want anybody to be hurt. Of course not. That's their career, but it's been become a blessing for them because they were forced to use Dawa and it's changed things around. Now all of a sudden, I just wrote a column last week in the general leader post saying suddenly this team is following his direction, following Craig Dickinson's direction, that they're inspired by what's going on. That short kickoff recovery on the game, opening play against Winnipeg, the Labor Day classic things that are now working for them, their defense is playing as well as it's played all season. The offense now has a spark. So Craig Dickinson now is firmly in control of this football team. There's no way in the world he's getting fired this season. At the end of the year, they'll look at it. If he makes his team, gets his team into the playoffs and has a little bit of success, then he's probably back. And along with Jeremy O'Day, the general manager, there's no reason to get rid of guys who are putting a team into the playoffs and look inspired. They look pretty good these days. Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting, the gala thing of it, I don't know, with Trevor Harris going down, how bad were you feeling about the rider's season when all that happen? Well, right away we knew that Trevor Harris hadn't been great, but you could tell that the team was taking on his characteristics. He was becoming the leader. He had led a comeback, I can't even remember who they played, but earlier in the season, he led a fourth quarter comeback. He took the team by the boot by its bootstraps and hauled it along with him and you could see that the team was rallying around him. They believed in him. It's the first time I've really dealt with Trevor Harrison watching him from afar. I always thought he seems like he's one of these paper warriors or something who stands up and seems tough, but he is tough. And I was watching that firsthand and I realized why his teammates liked him and why the media liked him because he stands up to people, he's mature and he was a leader on this football team. When he went down it looked like disaster. And that was, but the disaster was the coaching decision to go with Mason. Fine. We said they can't go with Mason. Fine. They really can't. They did and they stuck with him. They lost four of his five starts and you're thinking, why are they doing this? What is possessing them to start Mason? Fine. So disaster was awaiting them and that's where they were headed. Reed, you're absolutely right. They're headed down the drain until Mason flying got hurt and now the team that everybody's talking about seems to be rising with a bullet, right? Well, yeah, I mean was I think for the last couple seasons and discipline issues and like you were talking with the Garrett Marinos of it all, and there's kind of been, I don't know them and the Elks a little bit of there's this funk going on in the locker room. I don't know if that's correct or not. So you're saying here with Della Galles leadership, and maybe they're getting this turned around. Yeah, you can tell that they respect the guy. They have faith in him. Players handicap a team better than anybody does. You and I can look at a roster and say, oh, it looks okay. It looks all right. These are good players. A player can look at it and say, oh, look at the leaders we've got on this team. Look at the people we have. Look at the talent they know best and they know best. They could tell they just weren't playing for Mason. Fine. They know that they have a chance now with Jake Dagal and he hasn't let them down. He's made some amazing passes. Yes, sometimes he's way off target, but the ability to throw deep spreads out the defenses, right? Because they now have to worry about it. That gives him another threat. Now they see that he can run a little bit too. So now you have to watch for that. And the way he can zip pass is Reid, when you watch the defensive back, will kind of turn in coverage and say the ball should be coming and it's already zipped by him. So rather than a knockdown or an interception, it's already a completion in the receiver's hands. That's how much zip he has on the football. And players love that, right? Samuel and some of these guys, Kevin Jones, who we didn't think were going to have great seasons, are suddenly among the top receivers. Sean Bain Jr. Look at the receptions these guys have made and look at the catches they've made for Dag gala. It's like watching the bombers receivers. Remember when Drew Brown went in and the way they always play for Zach Karos as well, the catches they make, they don't drop the catches that have to be made in the moment. They're really inspired by what's going on. And you can see that now with the rough riders throughout the entire roster. So the ban bowl here coming up this weekend going to be hot. What are you expecting here? Obviously Mosaic loud and everything I saw, and I want to get your thoughts on Cody as well, but Cody kind of trying to play an ig, was it last weekend? And it's loud there, but what are you looking forward to this weekend? Oh boy, this could be a vicious game. Even though everybody seems to have made peace a little bit. We were talking about how everybody's backtracked a little bit and calmer minds have prevailed, but I still think that this could be a vicious football game. And you've seen what the bombers do after somebody wrongs 'em or somebody beats 'em, they bounce back as well as any team in the cfl. So I should say I'm scared for the Saskatchewan Ruff riders, but it's part of football to go into somebody's backyard after beating them and saying, oh, here we go. Winnipeg is going to be pumped up, ready to play, it's going to be loud, it's going to be hot. It's a midday game, which they haven't really played many of those this year. So it's going to be a little different for the rough riders too. And I don't know, I didn't think they were going to win last week to be honest, but I can't see how the riders can win in Winnipeg this week. I know that there's going to be one angry football team there, angry fans. Some of the media are helping pump that up. It's part of the rivalry, but it's going to be a very tough game for the rough riders to win. And I don't know if they can, Obviously our time in covering this league is incredibly short. Is this normal heat going into this? Because like I said, it feels obviously the Headbut and all that stuff, but I mean that game was contentious even before that. Oh yeah. Yeah, it always is. It's a great middle of the season rivalry. In 2004, they started it as the banjo ball because former kicker, you've heard that story. Troy Westwood called Saskatchewan fans, banjo picking Inbreds and all of us laughed and Westwood says, I've got family from Saskatchewan who loves that. But the riders hated it, right? They won't let anybody a associated with the riders call it the Banjo Bowl. They call it the Labor Day rematch, which is also a misnomer because the game really isn't on Labor Day, it's the day before. So it's become, but because of that, ever since 2004, it's become this home and home rivalry right in the middle of the season. They're geographical rivals anyway because they're close. They're six hours apart by highway and that's close in Canada. They've always despised each other. Winnipeg has had Saskatchewan's number for the last little while in all games, especially in playoff games. So there is that rivalry for a few years. It goes one way, then it goes back the other way. So it's a tough spot for anybody to win and it's a tough spot for anybody to sweep this series, although Winnipeg's done it because Winnipeg's been so strong the last couple of years. So you do look forward to this one. When we say that the cfl season starts at Labor Day, well those other games are important, but boy, they just become magnified now. And that heated rivalry you talk about, this is where you really see it. Well I just like it because if Winnipeg had come in and just beat the doors off Saskatchewan last week, it's really hard to get up for that, right? And last year the rider were not a good team and I still dunno if they're a good team or not this year, but they're certainly playing better like you said. Before we get out of here, thoughts on your boy Cody Fudo in Montreal? I just want to get your thought. He was on last week. I felt bad. I've decided We have Alexander Hollins comes on the show and then goes out and has two touchdowns. Steven Dunbar had a great week last week. He was on the show recently. I think quarterbacks though Macka Bethel Thompson lost in the USS F l after coming on our show. They were undefeated. Ben Holmes won a great cup after not coming on our show. And now Cody Fido played a really poor game. What did you make of him? It's good to know that Cody, you and Cody have made peace. We have twice. Yeah, he's been That he doesn't block you. I think he's blocked everybody in Saskatchewan because he doesn't take criticism very well, isn't one of his weaknesses. He doesn't like being picked on it anyway, and he started the season so well. He and Jason Moss looked like it was a real good dynamic, but teams figure out how to stop. It seems like Chris Jones was one of the best at that, how to take away his first read. Just make sure you take away his first read and that's what teams are doing now. So he's not real good at finding the second and third guys. He starts running too quickly and that's what seems to be happening again. And he's desperate. He wants to make a play so badly that play at the end of the game. We saw that for a long time in Saskatchewan that he tries to make a play that you just have to eat it sometimes or wait and see if you get one more opportunity. So it seems to be going the way we thought it would good for him for the way the season started and it looked like they were going to be a strong team, but it's kind of, I don't know, what do we know? Maybe we did know that this thing was going to happen in Montreal and it seems to be the way it's headed. If they can turn around good for them because they have a new owner, they have fans who like to watch that team. It'd be great if everybody's competitive, but sometimes teams slip and I think Montreal, we picked them to be near the bottom of the pack early on this season and they defied that logic early on, but it looks like they're falling into line the way we expected them to play. Last thing for me here. So then who do you see in the east? Obviously Toronto with a bullet, but then the tie cats are kind of hot garbage and so are the Red Blacks. Yeah, there's not much out there, right? Ottawa's, badly coached. Montreal should be the second place team, but I'm kind of a Taylor Powell fan. I like the way the kids react in it. He's one of those guys. We talked a lot this year about quarterbacks who have it. You can see a guy step onto the field. Arbuckle never had it. Nick Arbuckle never did McLeod, Bethel Thompson, they never really sold on. But you watch Chad Kelly step in, he's got it and we're watching Jake Dalala step in. He's got it. These are the guys who look like cfl quarterbacks. They don't look lost. They're confident they can run throw on the run. And I think Powell is like that. I know he's taken some missteps and probably will as a rookie, but I think he's got that future ahead of him and that's why I think that Hamilton, especially with Scott Milanovich calling plays now, he seems to have changed their offense a little bit. He's a very good quarterback's coach too, is going to help that team. They got rid of a bad apple and Duke Williams, it looks like they've cut him. He was a pretender when he was here. He's a pretender everywhere he's been. So getting rid of those guys, those are good moves and I think it can help the tiger Cats. If I were to bet right now, I would say the Tiger Cats who look like they were going to be horrible and maybe Fire Orlando Steiner, their head coach now to me are the second best team in the east. Well, Jason Hussey will be happy to hear about that. He is. Had to live through a couple of sad games here, Daryl. I appreciate it. Like I said, if we don't see you before November, we'll certainly see you then. But appreciate you hopping on Anytime, Reid. Good to see you. Well, I think I was actually on your show when Dave Campbell filled in, I think many moons ago. I think it was in the winter here, but you were on last year. We have Morley Scott back on now, kind of one of the hottest teams in the cfl, the Elks. How are you doing, sir? I'm very good, thank you. It's good to be back. It's good. It's been a weird season. Like I said, we've had Dave on I think twice welfare check, kind of everything going on. How are you doing? I mean I know it was a loss. Crazy come from behind, but it's certainly different season than it was about a month ago. Oh man. Things changed a month ago. The Elks had the buy week and they made the changes to their offense. They switched out the offense coordinators and they made the change to quarterback and Jerry Jackson calling the plays and Trey Ford executing the plays. It's just been a total turn of events for the Elks. He has lit the spark to the offense and started a bit of a fire and they've been, I think they were averaging about 17 points a game for the first eight games. And then when he came in, they've been averaging close to 30 points a game now. So they're two and two through that stretch, which is about where kind of people thought they would be through the season. Unfortunately they had that O and nine start and the whole might be too big for them to dig out of, but they're going to do their best the rest of the way. What's the fan base they're thinking now? I know it was tough and I know before Victor left he was trying to do a lot and obviously it's an impossible task with the losing team to try to rebuild that fan support, but what's it like now? It's better. People are excited again and people are anxious to watch a player. I mean, Trey Ford has really hit the fan base hard. They're upset that they waited until that deep into the season to start him, but that's another story of why that happened I guess. But it has happened now. The fans are excited again. They know they can go to the ballpark and they might see something special they did last week in Calgary with that run he had, which was just unbelievable. So the fan base is kind of getting back on board a little bit, but this season's going to be tough. The rest, getting out of the hole they're in is going to be tough. They've pretty much got to run the table or go five in one or so in their last six games to get to stay in the playoff conversation and it still won't be easy to get that crossover spot. But it's night and day. I mean doing interviews, talking to fans, doing the show that I do every week on the Elks, doing the pre-game shows, the post-game shows, it's so different when the team's winning a few games and everybody is in a little better position and a little better mood. So it's been good around here for the last month and let's hope they can keep winning some games to keep everybody entertained and interested for the last part of the season. Well yeah, I mean it really felt like this obligation versus this is something that we're enjoying doing. I mean it has to feel like nine and day different than it was. I just can't imagine it is what, three and a half, four years here of going through all of this. Yeah, it's been tough. And you're right, it's not just this season. I mean you add in last season with four wins. The season before that with three wins haven't made the playoffs since, I think it was 2018 last time they made the playoffs throw in a year without football because of Covid. The name change, a few of the changes that they've made in other areas and the fans just weren't happy and nobody was happy around the team. But you can really see that turning a little bit. And Victor started it. Victor did some really good things that brought the fan base kind of back into the picture a little bit and made them feel like they were involved and they mattered. Now the team and Victor have parted ways and they're going to try and continue on that. They still have to work on that and they still have to keep engaging the fans and still keep them part of the program In terms of like you said, fan base upset maybe that they didn't see Trey before week 10 and when cfl had tweeted that out Sunday, oh most rushing yards or whatever since Michael Riley and all that stuff. I said this is a reminder. It took 10 weeks for Chris Jones to play re four, which is so weird to me. We saw him last year and I know the injury and all that. What is your understanding of why it took nearly half the season to see him? Well, Chris Jones kept telling us that he just wasn't playing well enough in practice and that's when it really started. About the month before he got the start, I noticed one thing that Trey was staying out after practice. Trey was working by himself after practice and I tape a podcast once a week and we go up into a booth or into a suite after practice and my guests and we talk up there, but it's got windows and it overlooks the field. And on this day for about three or four straight weeks, Trey was out there for an hour by himself. He had the targets set up, he was taking the imaginary snap running the route and he was rolling out to the left, rolling out to the right and he was trying to make the passes and it just seemed like, not that he wasn't working hard, but he started to do the extra stuff and I think that caught the coach's eye and I think he became a better practice player. And everyone has their ideas about practice players and game players. It matters when the lights come on, how you play, not so much how you play in practice, but practice is important in football and you have to catch the coach's eye and you have to make sure that he's confident in the way you can play in practice and translate that into the game. But Trey really worked hard in that last month and then the change came, he got the start. And so I think it's a combination of maybe they did wait too long, but maybe they waited long enough instead and maybe they waited long enough so he was ready to go and he was in a position to be successful because he was successful right off the hop. I mean his first game against the best team in the league, Winnipeg Blue Bombers got the team out to a 22 nothing league in the first half. They weren't able to hang on it and get the win, but then they reeled off two straight wins after that and should have won in Calgary on Labor Day. So it's been going well for him and I'd like to believe that maybe Chris Jones, he's a little old school and he waited. He wanted to make sure that Trey was in the right position to be successful. It appears at least that part of it is true and that's how it's worked out. Maybe he could have started him a couple of weeks earlier, maybe not. Maybe the former OC Steven McAdoo was not on board with making the change and if he's not on board then the coach really can, shouldn't be overruling his offensive coordinator for certain things. So maybe that was part of it too, but maybe we'll find out in the future why it went this way but it went this way and we can't change it. So I think people are now just looking forward and hoping TRA can keep going the way he's been going. Yeah, it's just crazy to me. Obviously he's still, we've had on lots of you guys from the cfl talking. It's such a challenging game. It is to learn and it takes a couple years and I think that's where they were hoping maybe Cornelius, okay, we're getting into year three and when you get four wins under us belt, like this is crazy and all this stuff, but Trey just has this crazy athleticism that can't be denied I guess. And they were talking with Dunnigan on one of the broadcasts. If you can't figure out the game, keep running until you do. And he certainly can and eventually that might catch up to him if his athleticism can't outrun that. But what do you see when you see him on the field? It does seem like he's at a different level in terms of even as athletic as Cornelius was being able to scramble. Yeah, he's more athletic than Cornelius was. He runs in a different way. He can bob and weave and cut and do different things. Cornelius, he was more, he could take the angles and when he got room he took off and he got a lot of great yardage that way and was very good at it. I think just staying with Cornelius for a second, I think what enticed the coaching staff and a lot of other people about him was just a toolbox. It's pretty tough to find a quarterback who can throw like that who's six foot five and 225 pounds, right? That's an N F L sized quarterback right there. But he wasn't able to get the job done offensively. The team was struggling offensively, so they had to make the changes and Trey comes in and he's learning and you can see him going through the progression sometimes, which is good. A lot of times the running quarterbacks, they'll take the snap, they'll look for their main guy, maybe get to their second target and if they can't find something then they tuck the ball and run. But Trey seems to go through the progressions a little bit more than some of the other running quarterbacks do. So I like that and that shows me that he's only going to get better as he moves forward. And don't forget, he hasn't played a lot of football. I mean this last week on Labor Day was his seventh cfl start in a year and a half as a pro. He played the year before that he played a shortened season in U Sports because of coming back from Covid the year before that he didn't play at all. So in the last four or five years he hasn't played a lot of football, hasn't been in a lot of football games. And I think that kind of tells me that he's going to even continue to get better because he's going to get more experience and he's going to start to learn to make the reads and to play in different situations. So I'm looking forward to seeing him grow. It's like the reverse trail Lance, where Tray four we've all been, if you don't live in the states, been tracking down at nauseum here the last week, the trail lance to Dallas and all that stuff. Because when you talk about that where the skillset I guess because that to me is more of the Dustin Crumb where he, okay, I can't make the pass, I'm running and I'm running and I'm running where like you said, it does feel like Trey, the game is slowly getting to the point where it's slowing down to him a little bit more where he is able to play versus like you said, just, oh, I can't make that immediately running and trying to scramble. Yeah, I don't know if it's only me, but the way I would compare those two, Dustin comes more like a boat in a China shop. He's straight ahead. He'll just make holes, he'll just make holes and run guys over and get the yardage. But Trey's a little different. He's kind of like a running back sometimes. He'll dipsy doodle, he'll cut the play on the Labor Day game. It was a 33 yard gain and I studied it and went back and tried to figure out the distance. The field is 65 feet wide. I was trying to find the distance if there's a standard number between the numbers on the field and the hash marks everything. But I couldn't quite get it. But I estimate between he went back, I think he went back, dropped back about 21 yards from getting the snap, then got back to the line of scrimmage and then ended up getting 33 yards on the gain. But while he was doing that, he also ran to the left side of the field and then ran back across to the right side of the field. So my guess was about 103 to 107 yards somewhere in there that he ran. It is just an incredible, and he got touched once and he slid, he could have gotten more but he slid. So to me that just shows you what it is. And I was talking to him yesterday about it and he said it was a play we botched, we didn't line up properly on the play. And that's kind of why it opened up things for him to run like that because that certainly wasn't the planned play, but things went wrong from the snap and he adjusted and adapted and turned nothing into something. It feels like that improvisation is there. And we've watched Calgary a lot this season and Jake Mayer and I think people were expecting big things from him and last year and taking over and we had him on last year, I said, man, this is going to be the new Bo Levi, I want to hitch my wagon into him and kind of all that stuff. He does not. I know they came back at won and I want to talk about that next. It doesn't seem like Jake Mays had a very fun season watching him on the sidelines, watching his interviews, very frustrated. We're watching Trey. It does seem like there's a joy here of the sport and they're kind of improving and kind of doing what he's doing. Yeah, Well I think Trey's happy because getting a chance to play. Nobody likes being on the sidelines. And as far as Jake Mayer goes, he had the last half of last season to play. He started this season and they haven't started very well. I mean that was their fourth win on Labor Day when they beat the Elk. So they're in a tough position to make the playoffs as well. So Trey's happy playing. I think Jake's unhappy because not winning and he's putting up some good yards. I don't know if he still leads the league. I know going into last week he led the league in passing yards, but man, he had a great fourth quarter against the Elks on money, just razor sharp, just zipping it in and making some great passes. Got some great help from his receivers too. But I think they're in totally different situations. There's really the bar, I mean the expectations on Trey are not really there, but the expectations on Jake were there because I mean they traded a hall of famer or let a hall of famer go via free agency slash trade to make room for him. And I think that puts a little bit more pressure on a guy to come in. I mean Trey's coming in and replacing the guy oh and eight, so it's a little different and he's done whatever he can. He's done pretty much everything everybody's asked him to. We maybe saw hiccups in the Labor Day game and Chris Jones talked about that to us on our post game show. Just the fact that we got to get the ball out of his hands a little better. They don't want to rely on him running 135 yards every game, right? 50 60 s right in the nice good wheelhouse because he can do that. He's got to get more yard. He had a 300 yard game, but other than that, all his games been under 200 yards. So he's got to, they have to get a better passing game with him in the lineup. Yeah, I want the buddy cop isn't the right worthy, but kind of like you have the old sergeant and then the young lieutenant coming in here with Chris Jones and Reforward. I don't know if it's a joyous relationship or contentious, I want to know, I want a E S P N 30 for 30 on that of what's going on. I do think that maybe they're not, and I think maybe Cornelius like, yeah, I'll do, yeah, coach or maybe Trey is a little bit more like, I don't want to play wide receiver, I want to do what I want to do. I don't want to be kind a Kai Loxley in that way. I dunno. I want to know more about the relationship. Yeah, It is. It got to be kind of a strange relationship when you take all three of them in Chris Jones, Taylor Corn and Trey Ford and I mean there's never been any outward signs of displeasure from anybody. Nobody's said anything. Everybody's said the right things. Obviously Trey's upset. He's not playing right as any quarterback should be or any player should be. If you're not in the lineup, you shouldn't be happy. You should be working on your game to get better and get in the lineup. And it's kind of weird though because you always talk to coaches about their guys. They didn't bring him in. That's the case for Taylor Cornelius. He was here when Chris Jones arrived, Jimmy Alessandro and Block Sunderland brought him in, Jones, kept him, liked him enough last year to sign him to a contract extension, but he also drafted Trey Ford. So Trey Ford's kind of Chris's guy. And not only did he draft them, he traded away the first overall pick in a series of trades so that he could maneuver himself to get a couple of picks in the first round, including Trey Ford, which he took eighth overall. He also got Enoch Hanza, I believe it was second or third overall pick. So he likes Trey Ford. There's a misconception out there that Chris Jones doesn't like Trey Ford or Chris Jones doesn't like Canadian quarterbacks, which is just ridiculous. Coaches like quarterbacks that win doesn't matter what their birth certificate is. So he likes straightforward, he drafted Reforward, he made a move to get him and gave up assets to get 'em. So clearly he knows what he can do. And when he drafted him, he called him the best player he's seen in space in his time in the Canadian Football League and that's pretty high praise. And last week he likened him to Doug Flutie even higher praise. And obviously let's not get carried away. Obviously he's got a long way to go to get even close to that. But some of the things he can do when he's got the football are pretty incredible. And again, we saw that in the game on Monday. I like Coach Jones and we had him on, I think it was after the winter meetings last year, I think he was too busy, had too many calls, so he did it with us and he was down in LA scouting at one of the bowls or something. I mean it feels like he's in 24 7. And I obviously never spoken to the man and came across very well to me riding gregarious and happy and hardworking. And so it's been a weird season watching the Elks. It does not seem like he's a very fan favorite right now with everything going on. Yeah, He's not, but perception is not reality though. I believe with Chris Jones, he's got, people think he's that gr, gruff, short-tempered, whatever kind of guy, but he's not that. I mean he's been so patient with us on our post game shows for a year and a half now. And I mean he, he's won a lot of football games in the last year and a half. But he comes on the post-game show and he talks about the game and what went wrong and what he needs to correct. And he's very patient. He does things in the media every day. He's asked to talk and every day he talks, he's done marketing things. I'm sure you saw the mean tweets, right? He's done marketing things for the team whenever they want. He does. He's not the guy that people perceive him to be. And everybody says to me, oh, how's it dealing with Chris Jones again? And I said, it's great. I mean he was good to me in 14 and 15 when he was a coach here and he's been nothing but nothing but spectacular with us now. I mean you'd think the position he's in, you'd get a lot of two and three word answers sometimes, but I can only count one time when I asked him a question and I got a one word answer. And that's probably because I answered the question in the question and he just agreed with me. Right. So yeah, he is a smart football man too. I mean you talked about him when you talked to him and I remember listening to that interview. You talked to him, he was out scouting, that's all he does in the off season. I mean, when he left Edmonton at the end of last season, he was driving home to South Pittsburgh, Tennessee and on the way he stopped at about 50 schools to talk to coaches, to talk to athletes, to watch any kind of scrimmages that were going on. And he was getting his book ready because he was determined because of the issues with the xfl and the U Ss F L bringing athletes to the cfl now and guys are opting in the states to stay home and play. He said, we got to find a different way to scout and we got to find different players and we got to find those guys who have fallen through the cracks. And I think he found a few of those guys over the last year and a half. And that's what he's dedicated to and that's all he does in the off season. He just scouts and watches film. I mean people call themselves a football guy, but I mean he's a football guy, that's all he does. I mean he likes the bi-week because he doesn't have to go to practice. It means he can watch more film. Right. That's pretty much Chris Jones to That's funny. I appreciate the anecdote actually. Very interesting. And I dunno think, like you said, I think he gets a bad rap with that to round out the conversation. Obviously these were big wins or big games. The home at Home Calgary and then back here now. And we had left to go to dinner. I mean, I watched the first half and I thought, man, Trey's, Trey's got this dinner. My wife's going back to starting school again this week. I said, we got to get the last hurrah here last happy hour before the summer ends. We're watching the group chat and we ended up, we're literally at beer tasting and I got the phone up on here, we're watching overtime or coming down the didn't go to overtime, we're coming down the pike. What did you make of that Calgary coming back and then obviously hear the game again this weekend against Calgary? Yeah, heartbreaking. Finished the game. I mean, I drove home from Calgary on Tuesday morning and sat down and watched the game again. And the last five minutes are tough to watch from an Elk's perspective. I mean, even the last three minutes, I mean, they got the lead and they allowed Calgary to have a 70 yard drive to score a touchdown. And then they come out and I think it's with about two and a half minutes to go, and the Elks go two and out and all they needed was a first down. They probably could have ended up either running out the clock on Calgary or at least forcing them to kick a field goal instead of keep going for the touchdown. So they allow the 70 yard touchdown, then they go to and out and then the Calgary's offense comes back out and they get an 83 yard touchdown drive after that. And that's all in the last three minutes. And on that drive there was a third and six and they were able to convert it and keep the offense on the field. So there's a lot that went wrong in the last three minutes of that football game. And it's pretty tough. I mean, it's heartbreaking for the Augs for position they're in. I mean, that game with the home game coming up and the excitement that's been generated again by Trey Ford would've had a pretty good, we're probably still going to have a pretty good attendance for the game coming up on Saturday, but would've been a lot better if they had hung on and won that football game and would've put them in fourth place. Technically with the tiebreaker over Calgary would've put them a game back of a playoff spot to cross over. So it was a pretty important game and a pretty heartbreaking loss. And Chris Jones on our post game show after said maybe the toughest loss he's had in his cfl career because of the situation that team was in. Yeah. I guess last question from me, I mean, Jones is the defensive guy, right? And here. Trey came out and played great, had the historic night, and these highlights were posted and I mean he's had him here for weeks now, but to have him play and have the team be gelling finally on offense, we've been dying for here all season and then have the defense kind of fall apart. They had kept the team in certain games because of defense before last night or this week, whatever it was. Yeah, the defense has played well and the offense hasn't reciprocated in a lot of games this time. It went the other way. Although the offense did kind of struggle in the fourth quarter, they didn't get a lot of first downs. And again, you go back, you get a few, just a couple more first downs, you probably run the clock out and Calgary doesn't get the opportunity for that comeback, or at least they get their first touchdown with maybe a minute and a half to go instead of two and a half minutes to go. Right. But yeah, the defense I think a little bit tired in the fourth quarter because they were on the field a lot in the fourth quarter, but I mean, you got to be ready for those situations. The offense could have been better in the fourth, but I think they did their job scoring 31 points earlier in the game. The defense kind of let them down I think in the last three minutes. Well, I appreciate it. It should be a good game this weekend. Exciting. I know we had that, like I said, circled on, we do our little weekly recaps now in previews and talking and these two big games, so hopefully you can kind of even out the series there, but I appreciate it. Certainly better terms to be able to talk to you right now than it would've been maybe a month ago. Dave had to carry that burden of coming on with what was like oh and seven or whatever it was. Yeah, it's funny and I guess I got a lot of good friends and some colleagues during that stretch. You okay? People kept checking in on me. Are you okay? Are you okay? Because you can hear the disappointment and the disdain in our voices sometimes through that Oh and nine stretch. But I'll tell you what, the first win, the first two wins were pretty fun. It was good to go to work and have fun again and really enjoy it instead of going to work and dreading it. How are they going to lose this game? And they did everything from drop balls to bad passes to bad defense, to giving up a rouge in the final minute to building up a big lead and blowing it. They found every way possible to lose a football game and then before they finally turned it around and got a couple wins. So yeah, it's been a lot more fun around here when you're talking football in the last month. Well, I appreciate it. Go watch practice. Thanks for your time and it means a lot, so thank you. Anytime. Glad to be here. Enjoy watching the show and listening to it when I get a chance. Awesome, thanks. Well we finally got this production done. We got it connected here via Zoom, Tim Bains, how about them since? How's it going? Yeah, hockey soon. It's going to be quite the switch going from football is sitting outside of the stadium I guess just sitting in an arena. Yeah. How about them since? How about them Red Blacks? Hey, red Black. No, I am very excited for cracking preseason here at the end of September. Very, very excited. I think our first game's the 28th, so Red Blacks, I mean I wanted to have you on, I think you came on earlier in the season, the preseason beginning of the season. Red Black's not as hot now as maybe they would've been. We had talked before. What's your take on the team right now? I think probably when we talked earlier in this season, we talked probably about hope and that this was a team that seemed ready and poised to turn it around from winning three games, three games, four games, and certainly it looked that way early in the season. Their one in three potentially could have won any of those losses, but then they battled back down 16 points late in the game. They beat Winnipeg in overtime, they beat Calgary in overtime. All of a sudden they're three in three and you're thinking now this is a Red Blacks team that can contend this is a playoff team, but five losses later they're in, I don't want to say they're in deep trouble yet because it is the cfl East division where you can get into the playoffs with less than a 500 record. But the game Friday night's game against Hamilton means everything because should you lose that game to a team, that's one game ahead of you. Yes, you're two games behind them, but also you're behind the tiebreaker. So essentially you're three games behind with six games left, all six of those games against teams with winning records. It would seem like an almost impossible task and coaches hate to put the must win tagline on any game that's truly not Miami. Truly is. It must win. Well, no, they could lose it and still make the playoffs, but it sure isn't likely. So this is about as close to a must win game as you can get. Plus they're playing a team that played on Monday, so you're going to play a team with three days rest, no excuses. The Ottawa Red Blacks have to win against the Hamilton Tiger Cats season on the line With what's travel like from Hamilton to Ottawa? Oh, it's a relatively easy trip. The TCATs would've flown in. It's a five hour, maybe a little more than five hour drive and a very quick less than an hour plane ride. So that's not going to affect the T cast, the TCA would, the T cast will come in Thursday Because I've seen controversy about the three days here with the three-day rest or whatever. I mean I have seen that come up. So I mean what do you make of that? Is that, I mean, CFL's always going to have weird scheduling quirks like that. I think it would be certainly worse if you were changing time zones, if you were the T cast and let's say you had to go west or you're a western team coming east. Anytime you have to change your habits a bit, it throws you off a bit as well. I think it's just tough at this point in this season. The players are beat up, very few of them are a hundred percent healthy right now. So when you go out and you play at high intensity levels of high intensity and then really with one day of full practice, you're asking about out in the football game or out in the football field, again, it's tough on the body, especially when you get past the halfway point of the season. Yeah, that should be should the Advantage Red Lax. But we've said that before they're coming off, they're coming off a bi-week, 11 days between games. We'll see games that we thought they were going to win, they haven't won and they've got to figure out a way to do it against the Hamilton Tiger Cats. Well, they don't play particularly well at home either. Right, and especially right Hamilton seems is that, I think Hasi was talking on the show about that too, that Hamilton seems to kind of have it their way with Ottawa, but at least Ottawa at home isn't particularly good. Well, they did win that big game against Winnipeg like the stunning victory where again, you're down 16 points, two point converts, two touchdowns just out of nowhere because again, I think the thought was, oh, here we go again. This is the Red Blacks team we've seen. All of a sudden they threw some doubt into that. They did provide that hope, but the key at home is you've got to get momentum early and they've managed to do that but managed to piss away victories in the second half. So how do you get momentum and follow through and finish it in the second half and there are a lot of directions you can point your fingers in toward board. Bottom line, a guy who started the year is a fourth string quarterback is a starting quarterback and I think he does provide promise and hope and I think he shows things where he could be and he can be a long-term starting quarterback in the cfl. He needs to put it all together that they need to get a passing attack going. They need to compliment, they've had a decent running game, but they need to put a passing attack in and finish it off in the red zone. More importantly, they need to figure out a way to stop big plays on defense. They're the worst team in the cfl at giving up pass plays of more than 20 yards. You've got to prevent what they call explosives. You've got to prevent the big plays because if you're going to score, even if the offensive goes out and scores 32 points, if they give up 33, same result. Is Dustin Crom a good quarterback? I believe he is. I believe he's still very much learning. He's thrown into the fire. He certainly couldn't have come into the season expecting what's happened to happen and Jeremiah Masol was clearly going to be the starting quarterback when he recovered from injury. Nick Arbuckle started the year as a starting quarterback because of that injury. Tyree Adams comes in, okay, he's going to be the starting quarterback. Well, he gets a season ending injury. So Dustin Crumb has been elevated from being a guy who was in the background not getting many reps in practice to facing live bullets. He's in game situations and I think especially for an American quarterback coming to the cfl, it's difficult to make that transition when a lot of your learning is happening against real opposition. I think he is learning, I think he's certainly making less mistakes. He's running the ball less, which when you look at him being the leading rushing quarterback in the league, you might think, well, maybe you should run the ball more. But you also don't want your quarterback, especially when he's, you've got two of your other guys out for the season with injuries, you don't want him taking big hits. So you want to have that flexibility where he can take off and run, but you maybe want him going down at the yard marker rather than trying to fight for four or five extra yards. So I think they need him to settle in, be more of a pocket passer and they need to figure out a way to push the ball downfield more, not always settling for those five six yard plays Because I am more Orly. Scott also on this episode and we're talking about Trey Ford, right? And here's someone super athletic and running and we came to the conclusion that maybe Trey Ford is seeing the field maybe a little bit more that Dustin Crumb. Okay. If his first read isn't there. Okay, I'm scrambling now. I'm running and maybe Trey, the game has slowed for Trey. He's had what seven starts on his cfl career plus playing youth sports. How do you view these two different really athletic quarterbacks Right now? I think one of the advantages for Trey Ford, first of all, he did start at least one game last year. He got a full year's look at it, another big advantage. He played Canadian university football. So he's seen it's a big difference and you could talk about the three downs to the four downs. You can talk about the width of the field and the length of the field. You can talk about the waggle, but the big thing, sorry I lost my train of thought there, but the big thing is it basically is the 12th guy in the field. So when a quarterback is looking at that, when you're an American quarterback, you're not used to looking sometimes and seeing extra what seems like extra people on the defense. It's a big difference to be able to read that 12th guy, it's just is for a quarterback and Trey Ford playing Canadian University football would be pretty used to that right now. So it's why he understands the uniqueness and the intricacies that the Canadian game brings. He's got a pretty good handle on that already. So it's just a matter of adapting to professional what might happen different on a professional football field In terms of the Red Blacks management and Sean Burke and everyone there, and I know Bob Dice came in midway through last year. Obviously the MLI stuff last year wasn't expected. Okay, it's kind of a mulligan ride and now this year is this a mulligan to get, you know what I mean? How long is their leash in terms of being on the hot seat? I think they're on the hot seat very much. I mean I don't know how long at least you want to give as far and you could look at the way the season has gone and you could dissect almost every game. I think the last game against Edmonton wasn't very winnable. I never got a feeling they were going to win that game. It just didn't look like one of those games that they could. But you can look at almost every other game and say that was winnable. The problem with that. So the past few years there was never hope. When the Red Black stuck behind by 10 points for two touchdowns, you never believed they could win the game. There just wasn't that feeling. So now they came back against Winnipeg, they won it against Calgary in overtime, so now there's that feeling that they can, but hope only takes you so far as well. So it's good that you want it. You're giving your fans a better show at home. You're showing them you can win football games at least earlier in the season. But again, so now, I mean the honeymoon with that I think has come to an end. Now you've got to start winning football games. It's not coming close, it's coming close. There's no asterisk in the standing says the red flags could have won seven games. It's nothing the facts. They won three games so it doesn't matter if you could lose every game, you could lose 10 games by one point you still lost 10 games. So I think that honeymoon period, that bubble has burst and I think they've got to win football games and I believe they have good people in place. I would hope there's a patience on the ownerships from the ownership perspective, but at some point you're going to get impatient. You want to have that team, you want to have the outlook, you want to have the potential to go to Gray Cups. First of all, you have to make the playoffs. The Red Blacks showed in 2016 and eight, nine and one team. You just got to get into the playoffs and then you got to peak at the right time. Again, you don't have to win more than you'll lose. You just got to get into the playoffs and right now there's a lot on the line I win over Hamilton and maybe there's hope a loss and there's going to be a lot of heads being hung thinking it's over. I just don't know, like I said with everything playing their four string quarterback now, I don't know if anyone else could have done a better job at this point. I mean it really is whether, I can't even say that we're the no one wants to be in that situation. I can't even say the right word. Yeah, I don't mean, would it be different if Jeremiah Maoli was helping? Well yeah, But that's not Bob DE's fault here that this is, I think they went into the same as last year. Okay, we made the move from Mazzoli, we have our chips going in and it all falls apart. It's like what the hell are you going to do? It's a difficult situation. People would say, well why don't you go down and look at the N F L cots? Why can't you bring a better quarterback in or why can't you bring a better receiver? And first of all, guys in the N F L have just been cut, aren't too anxious to leave the states because there's still teams pick up players as the weeks go along, there's still hope they want an N F L opportunity. Second of all, if the guy's never played in the cfl, it's not like they're going to come up here and be inserted into the lineup in week one. Make a difference. There's not many instances of that happening. Again, it's an adjustment to the Canadian game. You've got to adjust to a new system. There's an awful lot goes into that and often when players come up here at this point of the year, it's more towards looking at next year. They get a look at 'em over the course of the last month and a half and they're looking at potential maybe impact players or even roster players for 2024 season. So basically what they've got right now is what you get. They're going to have to try and win football games with the lineup they have now and every team has injuries. Ottawa unfortunately lost two quarterbacks and they've lost some other key players, but every team has problems. Every team's got injuries. You got to fight through that. It's part of the game and it doesn't hold as an excuse. They say next man up In terms of Hamilton coming in here also injury bug and they're not a particularly good team either. What are you looking forward to in this matchup? I mean it is kind of like two desperate teams here coming in trying to, it's like in the Batman when the Joker breaks the pool queue and throws it out like okay, someone's got to come out of this. Yeah, I mean you want to see, obviously you want to see that desperation from both teams. You would hope that one of them is not going to roll over and you'd hope to see an entertaining game. And I know both teams obviously put a high level of importance. One team wants to put another game of a separation and the other team's clinging to is on life support right now and a loss awa again would be disastrous. So you'd hope both teams are on their first drink, quarterback is out, so they found alternatives and we'll see what Hamilton does again with a very, very short turnaround in between games and Ottawa coming off the huge rest. We'll see if that makes a difference. Other storylines you're tracking this season, I mean it's scary here. When you think about the east and whoever, let's say it is Montre and Ottawa going in and then you go and then Toronto just kicks your teeth in anyway. I mean what are you kind of looking forward to here With, sorry, I'm lost Just story. I mean what are you tracking here I guess what's your thoughts on the East division as a whole here? Because like I said, I feel like it is Toronto above all. Even if we get through the semi-finals, it's going to be a tough sled to hoe here. Well we've really seen the emergence of Chad Kelly. It certainly was a question mark at the beginning of the season, really largely unproven, but I guess they're pretty happy with his performance doling out the biggest contract in the cfl. So you look at it doesn't end with the quarterback. Toronto's got talent over the place. I think in particular on defense they've got some of the league's best players, so we'll see Montreal. Yeah, Montreal. We'll see, I haven't been overly impressed with the ettes. I think they played well. They're certainly not in a level with Toronto right now, but again, this is the cfl. All you need is a spot among those final six teams. That's all you need and then you maybe got to go win two games to get to the final and then you never know. So the Argonauts are the defending champions, arguably the best team in the cfl right now, but I'm sure there are a few other cfl teams that think they have a pretty good shot at knocking the Argos off if they get the opportunity. Last thing here in terms of the outlets, I mean it does feel like they're kind of falling off of Cliff Fair a little bit. I mean they're one victory in the last, I'm looking here, three weeks was against the Red Blacks like smidgen And they should have lost that game. So that was what we talked about, games that got away, that was inexplicable how Ottawa, I mean you could look at that final minute and a half of that game and just shake your head and say it just kind of the season ended up under a microscope. That was the kind of game the red flags had been losing. They were the better team. Were they the better team though because they lost the game. Again, you don't get style points, but they blew that game. Ottawa Red Blacks, it wasn't so much Montreal won it. I don't know how a receiver gets 20 yards open down near your end zone. Just with a minute left. I don't understand that. I know what they called. There were at least a couple of missed responsibilities in the play, but I don't know how does that happen? How does that happen at this level? Kind of sums it all up. Yeah, in terms of I know and it is frustrating in terms of the outlets we had Cody on last week did not have a great performance last weekend. I don't want to say that. What does Montreal do? Because I've seen like, oh we need to put Caleb Evans in and they go, no, it's still Cody Chevy. What would you do here? You're in the East. Cody's your guy, you got to ride Cody. I mean with all due respect to Caleb who I got to watch quite a bit over here the past couple of years, Cody's your guy and you're going to ride with him. I mean it wasn't long ago. I thought he was one of the top up and coming quarterbacks in the cfl. I don't know that he's necessarily lived up to that and I don't know the reasons but in my mind after watching Caleb here for a couple of years, Cody Fdo is your best bet You ride with him. Well Tim, I wish you luck tomorrow here today as this is recording here. Hamilton coming in like you said, kind of a last season here if this doesn't work out, Appreciate it. Always Tim. We'll see you soon. Good luck and go sends, what is it? Go sends go. We'll go with that. We'll go with Ghost Sends. Go. Well I'm excited that we had this gentleman on season preview talking the Argos and I think you said at the time I think the Argos are going to be pretty good. I don't know if we knew that they were going to be nine in one here. Must be nice. I had Morley Scott on the same episode. You kind of the tale of two cities here with life. Mike Hogan. How are you doing sir? How's everything? Probably better than morally. That's all I'm doing. Every team has been there right now. Turn the first year I did play by play was 2000 and that was the John Heward year and they were one six and one and he was fired at Labor Day and my first two years working with the Argos four and 14 and four and 14. I'm really appreciating this run. What do you attribute it to? I mean obviously the team looked good coming into last season and we will talk chat and whatever separately, but I mean just overall what do you make of, I mean organizationally, what do you attribute it to? Everything. We had this discussion a couple of days ago about why everything was working so well and when Mike Clemens took over he said, I want this to be the most boring organization on the planet. Well kind of looked at him and said, huh, and he said, I just want us to make the right decisions all the time and to do the right things. And it seems like everybody is, they've signed the right players, drafted the right players, they've got the right coaches. The coaches have added the right players for them. The players are buying in. It's an incredibly workmanlike group. They have their fun, don't get me wrong, but they're all business and it's obvious. I mean they don't make very many mistakes on or off the field. Everything seems to be chugging along. So there are about 42 million different reasons why the dominoes are all lined up right now, but thank God they are. Have you noticed that resonating more in Toronto itself, kind of in the fan base? Yeah, it's great. I don't know what the, it's 20 some percent improvement but like 25% plus improvement at the gate. That's number one. And is that an overwhelming number? It is and it isn't because we were starting so low so we still have a long way to go, but you're starting to see the momentum build. You're starting to see the efforts that we've made as an organization to attract younger fans to cfl games is paying off big time. If you went to a game pre covid and a game last week, you would be able to see a discernible difference in the age of the people coming to our games. We're getting more vibe with radio and local stations and newspapers and everything seems to be going really well and in a market that's really had to fight for cfl attention, having this kind of team with some players who have some star power behind 'em, it's all adding up and again, those dominoes that are lined up continue to start falling down and it's a wonderful thing to see. It's interesting on my feeds and whatever and obviously pretty in the cfl stuff, I don't know the last time I saw any story about making fun of attendance or crowds or the city. Everything Toronto right now is they're kicking ass. Chad Kelly looks great signing big extensions. AJ Ette just being a superstar of the world and I want to get your thoughts on him but I guess it's probably harder to make fun of a team when they're nine and one and just completely dismantling the rest of the league but I can't remember the last time I saw anything real negative or even poking fun at Toronto, if that makes sense. It's great for my end too because I think for the last 25 years, every time I go on an interview like this one, the question is always ask what do you have to do about the attendance in Toronto? And like I said, we still have a hell of a long way to go but we're moving in the right direction in an era where it's getting tougher and tougher to get people to go out to a live sporting event. We're finding a way to do that and yeah, eight and one and scoring 40 points at home basically every home game with the cannon going off nonstop and the wonderful way we're winning. I mean if we were nine on one right now and winning the games 12 eight, I don't think you'd see the same kind of buzz then when in all but well in every game that Chad Kelly has started and finished, the Argos have scored at least 31 points that's going to win you a lot of football games. Yeah, I guess first we'll start there. I wanted to talk to AJ as well, but obviously Chad getting the extension had said at the beginning of the season, I don't know, is Chad going to be in the cfl five six years? Is that what he wants to do? Watching the game over the weekend and the sideline cameras they had of him having fun dancing, playing to the crowd and obviously that's got to feel good that come in and kind kick Hamilton in the face at home, but I don't know of a man who's having more fun than the CFO right now than Jack Hill. It's really cool to see. I think I have the name right, but he said in his media scrum after signing the contract, he said, I haven't had this much fun since I was playing at Grand Island, which was youth football in Buffalo. And think about this as a guy who was a two time all SS e c player won a national championship at the college level, junior college level and now he's having fun. That speaks to what this offense has been about, what his experience in the city has been about. His teammates love him, he loves his teammates. I'm one of the first guys in there in the morning having breakfast and Chad usually beats me in there to the breakfast for him after he is already done his film study. So he's, that guy's a coach's dream and we were asked a lot I think as an organization what we were going to do without McLeod Bethel Thompson, and don't get me wrong, we missed back up here, but we were totally confident that Chad Kelly was going to be a great quarterback. We didn't know if he'd be this good but I think it's 26% of his drives this year resulted in touchdowns. That's nuts. But the air goes offense struggled mightily against Hamilton and scored 41 points and none were on returns of punts or kickoffs or interceptions. It was 41 offensive points when the team didn't put up 350 yards. It was nuts Obviously going with Chad, with McLeod leaving and all of that, obviously they had a lot of faith in him now giving him this contract, you early-ish, whatever, I mean mid-season doing that, what does that speak to the organization's just belief in him and just how confident they are because like you said, they knew he was going to be good but maybe not this good. Yeah, he's having a blast here. We have every confidence in him. He has been better than advertised. Let's face it. When it came to the cfl, there was some baggage from young Chad Kelly, he checked that baggage at the border. He couldn't be any better. He's working with youth groups. He's at Daily Bread Food Bank, he's at Launchpad working with underprivileged kids. He's that guy. He's embraced the role of team leader. It's a cape that he wears very well and on and off the field. I don't think he could expect anything more from Chad this year. He's been everything that was advertised and he's exceeded even those high expectations. I mean to me he's the advertisement now for what if you're the cfl, hey, you could go not wallow around, but you go beyond a practice squad or go do whatever. You can come up here, you can be a superstar, you can make high six figures, you can be a community icon and kind of all that stuff. I'll be curious, parlaying this into the future here, how do we utilize Shaq Kelly in that kind of story to get, because obviously isn't the only one and it's happened in the past, but kind of continuing that narrative now. There's the Bell Rogers thing here obviously and Bell very cfl friendly. We're finding Rogers has been really good this year. Chad was on the Fan five 90 morning show yesterday as we speak and the TV's been a little bit more, it's it's becoming a thing up here and nine in one helps. And you've got a charismatic guy, obviously the Kelly name is known, the football purest knows who Chad is. The casual fan knows who Uncle Jim is from just down the road in Buffalo. And Jim been to at least one home game. His parents and family members come up every week. So it's really become a Kelly family thing and I think Cha just having fun playing football as opposed to coaching which he was doing two years ago thinking his career was over and he's playing football, he's playing exceptionally well. He is close to friends and family, loves the city of Toronto, the city of Toronto showing love to him. It's just, it's win, win, win, win, win, win, win. In terms of AJ Outlet, like I said, we do our weekly recaps here after the games. He's becoming just this mega superstar literally week to week and this Thor is Hammer and he's on the, he's messing with Kate and everyone at the end of the show and you've got met. What is he like? And not only just on the field, but I have to imagine just that personality in the locker room has to kind of be just captivated. He is a fun guy. I don't know if I'd call him a leader other than by example. He is crazy in his commitment to weights. He's got muscles in places. Most people don't have places. He's just that guy and he leads a group every morning they call themselves the Breakfast Club. I forget what time it's, I think it's five 30 or six o'clock waits. And if you're there a certain amount of times per week for a certain amount of weeks you get the Breakfast Club, which is a status symbol, but that's kind of his contribution off the field just to make sure everybody's doing their weight work. And he's, he is a fun guy. That's who he is. He is a guy from small town Ohio who's having a blast playing football and his non-football life is enjoying what he does and that's fitness with his places back in central Ohio. And he's just that guy. Everybody loves him because when you look at him, he's five foot nine, he's not going to run a 4 2 40. He's fast, but he's that guy that gets every ounce out of his ability because he works so damn hard. And I think any fan of any sport always likes that guy. He is a walk on at Ohio and all of a sudden he's starting for a team with a 9 1 1 record and was a hero in the Great Cup with two touchdowns a year ago. He's loving life right now with his childhood sweetheart. That's a great couple. Everybody in the room loves him. He's that guy that you hope he would be when you watch him and become a fan of the player. Never people were actually criticizing him in print that in a game that was fairly one-sided late in the fourth quarter, he was signing an autograph for a fan. Come on, isn't that what you want? He's a popular guy. He is a popular player and he's a dream from our standpoint, No, that's is a cfl problem there. That was like him doing the Thor's hammer and them, Chad Kelly said, well, I'll take care of that fine or whatever, let's let him do that. But it's crazy that you have Andrew Harris who is a first ballot hall of fame and top in every single accolade and he's almost an afterthought right now in terms of a lot of at least just the spotlight that the team's getting. I mean I know he's getting his yards and everything else, but just tremendous. What a problem to have there. You know what I love more and it's not what Andrew does and we saw him, he scored the first touchdown on the game on Labor Day, so we still that guy, but he has become AJ's biggest fan and you think a guy with the resume that Andrew Harris has been able to accumulate some guys late in their career get a little bit jealous of the new kid coming in and Harris is not that guy. I'm sure Andrew would love more touches. There's ego involved in pro sports, but he has been the most supportive guy in the world. And AJ likewise of Andrew when Andrew is in there, AJ's on the sideline cheering when AJ's in there. Andrew Andrew's doing likewise and high fives when they come off. It's a great situation to have and what we love is that Dinwoody has been able to find quite a few sets in the playbook where those two are on the field at the same time, which must screw up defenses quite a bit when you see two guys with that caliber, sometimes both behind Kelly, sometimes split out, sometimes both out in the pattern and moving around late. It's a fun team to watch and those two are fantastic. But again, Andrew Harris has been the consummate pro in a situation where not everybody would be Pretty glowing on here so far. That's good. A little love fest. I like it. I'm good. It's good, It's good. Someone that's not maybe having as good of a time now the outlets really coming off of a couple hard losses and Cody didn't play particularly great. I don't know if I blame his appearance on our show last week for that, but them coming in this weekend, this is a big game for them. And obviously the Argos want to take care of business. What are you looking at for them? Because they're second in the east, but I don't know, it feels like they're kind of getting ready to fall off a cliff here. Maybe They've still got the leading receiver in the league. William Stanback has one touchdown this year that's not normal. You expect that kind of thing to turn around. They've got a lot of really talented players and Ellington's back and just those guys are still those guys. And in the early part of the new millennium, the Argonauts could not beat the Montreal, they couldn't do it. And I don't know where that is right now. The toughest game, aside from the loss without Chad Kelly in Calgary, toughest game was against Montreal and Montreal. They put up, what was it, 35 27 I think was the final score. So they put some touchdowns, they get a kid come in there, he scores three touchdowns through the air, they've got some players there and they're hungry. They know how important this is. They want to catch us and they also want to stay ahead of Hamilton and Ottawa and one of those teams is going to win on Friday night. So there's two points getting closer or a tie in a rarity. There's still two more points getting closer to the owls so they know where they are. And from an Argo perspective, it's not just a motto, it's everybody's focused on this game. As they say, our goal this week is to go one and oh, and if the Argonaut can do that, the playoff spot will be clenched if they go one and oh this week and oh next week, which is also against Montreal. They clinch first place in the middle of September. So there's a lot to play for and Montreal does not want to see their aspirations of first place go down in flames and if they win these next two games, they're only two points behind us. So there's a lot on the line. Yeah, a lot for Toronto to play for. In terms of the other two teams in the east, did you have a way, one way or another? I mean both are kind of wallowing right now, like you said, there's going to be a Victor one way or another after the game on Friday hopefully. What do you make of that between Hamilton and Ottawa? It's two teams that are desperate, right? And I think both teams think they're a lot better than the record indicates Ottawa had higher aspirations this year. Hamilton had aspirations of going to a great cup game that they're hosting. So neither team is obviously in a good place right now, but there's enough talent on both teams that they can turn that around in a hurry and losing this game would not be good for either team. So it'll be tough for Hamilton like it will be for us. It's even tougher for them because they played Monday and then they got strap it up again on Friday, which is not easy and it's very tough on the linemen specifically. So I have no idea what's going to happen in that game. I'm just expecting a really physical battle because it's so important, especially when teams are looking over and seeing that Calgary's starting to heat it up a little bit out west. And I would imagine in Hamilton and Ottawa that there were some people going, oh no, and Calgary came back over Edmonton last week. So yeah, I'm just on Friday night, no idea what's going to happen. I just know I'm going to sit back and be entertained. Last thing from me, obviously we talked the chats and the ajs for the Argos, but what's maybe some underlying storylines that you're keeping an eye on that you're going to be watching? Want a neat stat? Sure. I'll throw a couple at you. Okay, I'm ready. The Argos lead the league with 37 sacks. They also lead the light league with 10 sacks given up the fewest and the most it's plus 27. Basically at the midway point of the season the team record is plus 30, so they're on pace to blow that out of the water. And the other one is the Argos have an opportunity to win to start 10 and one that's only been done once in Argo history. Doug flutes first year here, so if you compare the teams 10 games in nine in one versus nine in one, this edition of the Argos has scored four more points than the Doug flute Argos of 1996. That's the kind of team that this group is right now. It's doing some very strange things in terms of Argo history, which I guess in the hundred 50th anniversary season should be expected. It's good, it's new, the powder blue uniforms or whatever they call like You like it, It's hot. Well Mike, like I said, must be nice right now. I almost threw my laptop off the deck the week that the BC Lion played you guys and Vernon gave up six interceptions, so it's been trying times for everybody that's not in Toronto right now, but I really appreciate it you taking the time and good luck. It should be a good weekend, the games They always are. Thank you my friend and thank you for doing what you're doing. Huge special thanks to all four of the guests coming on today. Really appreciate Morley Scott coming on before practice making time. Darrell Davis here coming back to work at the Regina Leader Post. We have known Darrell long enough that he was retired and now is unretired and writing again. Really appreciate that. He says that the writers are hot right now with the newspaper and ads and clicks and everything is good for that. So that's great to see for the health of the league. Really appreciate Tim Bains coming on and then like I said, Mike Hogan making the time. Mike's always quick to hop on. Really appreciate that. As busy as all these people are making time to come on. So it means a lot. Like I said, I hope you guys enjoy the N F L weekend this weekend. You got cfl games along with college on Saturdays to make time for that. We'll be back on Monday, I think was the plan this week. We are switching around the time a little bit for the recap, but keep an eye on Twitter, we'll get you posted on all that stuff. Evan and Jason and I'll be back on Monday. We're recapping the C F O week 14 craziness year working through the season. So I guess I like and subscribe. Thanks to always see you next time.

CFL 2023 Week 13 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 13, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Markcast Monday here following the Labor Day Classic Labor Day weekend here. When we had the commissioner on the podcast last week, he always talks about fun, fast, exciting. I came the three F's, whatever. Randy, bro, this was a really good weekend. This was a hot weekend here, Jason, and I think his feeling a little bit Evan's here. We're early today. Jason. How are we doing? I felt better, honestly. I did a lot of partying yesterday with the double header, but it was a great weekend and let's talk some football. Yeah, Mariners loss. It's terrible. We're struggling here in the A L Ss, but this was good BC Lions winning on, what was that? It's Friday now this. When the heck was that? Evan, how are you doing? Doing well, yeah, it was a great weekend of football. One of the more important weekends I think for cfl football all year, just given it's Labor Day classic obviously. But yeah, I was really impressed with a lot of those games. Some of them really surprised me and yeah, just excited to dive into it. Yeah, I was trying to explain to Dorothy the whole, well, it's like the divisional stuff. I don't know why BC played this weekend. I know normally that's Ottawa spot, BC getting in Ottawa doing that, but that worked out well for us here. The Saturday meeting in Montreal, I have a lot of funny tweets and stuff to get into today, but I guess we'll start exciting game last night, come from behind. We had headed out to dinner and we were, Trey was putting the game to bed and I tweeted, why does it take 10 weeks to start Trey Ford and everything else? Next thing you know, Calgary comes back. It kind of incredible come from behind victory. We pulled it up, we were having a beer down the street. We're watching the game on our phone. Jason, what did you make of this? I know you were catching up late on data after the fact trying to catch up on this game. I would not expect this from Calgary. Yeah, it was totally unexpected because there was very little time left in the game. I think it was around five minutes to go when they kicked the field goal Edmonton did to go up 11 points and then, yeah, just the surprising rally from Calgary. I was like, wow, they scored a touchdown quickly. I turned off my data for a minute and then a few minutes later I'm like, oh, they're coming back. So it was a pretty crazy game and good to see that from Jake Marin, the Stampeders. They've come out on the wrong end of a lot of these close games this year, so it's good to see that from them. Yeah. Evan, I know we were watching in the chat as well. Andy was going crazy. The professor, I guess Reggie Beton is the professor now. I heard Rod, was it Rod Smith or whatever you call him that, because Calgary has just struggled. Their offense was booed leaving the field. I guess at halftime, people were tweeting out. I know Ryan, one of our listeners was tweeting out to see this turnaround. I don't know if Jake yelled at him at halftime or what was going on. Yeah, I mean I know at the end of the game they interviewed Jake Mayer and he said something along the lines of, we just have to learn to put things in the past. I think a light bulb or something switched off at some point there and they were just like, you know what? We just have to go do this. Don't worry about everything that's happened. We just have to go now. This is our opportunity. And 22 fourth quarter points for Calgary I think tells most of that story. Yeah, it was really, I mean, I had the game on. I was getting some work done, so I was kind of paying attention. I had it on in the background and I didn't really look at the score and I got up from my chair to go get something. I looked and I'm like, oh geez, Calgary's right back in this. That was when they scored the touchdown right before the three minute warning, and then I watched that final drive, which was, I mean, probably one of the better game winning drives. That to me, that was almost the last sign of life, I think from Calgary just because they've had so many offensive issues this year to see them put together that drive. Like Jake Mayer had a big third and sixth conversion. I mean, it was a free play. AC Leonard was off sides anyway, but I think it was to Reggie down the field, seeing him do that, that was great. And again, that was kind of like, I mean if Calgary were to lose that game, I mean it was going to be all over then. It was time to start focusing on next year, and it still might be, I don't know how much this win actually saves them, but the fact that they were able to put that together in front of a strong home crowd again on Labor Day weekend with everything at stake, it was just really good for Calgary. I think they definitely needed that confidence boost. Yeah, I had the tweet here from Hodge talking the Peter Taylor season. I was watching this game. Mayor had the interception and he had a big sack and I think he had the fumble where they were able to recover. I said, this is kind of the season for Jake here at this point. I don't know if you can go into next year here where, and I got to pull up the standings and the records, but if they drop another one, and we had talked about the importance of that last week where they had the home and home and if they go here and they're three and nine going into, I just don't know what that season looks like going into next year. Jason, were you, I mean this was kind of make or break I think for Jake Mayor last night. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that on the other side of the coin, if they can win these two games, they're right back in the thick of things. So I think it's interesting because they also have another game against Saskatchewan later on. If they win that they'll have the tiebreaker over them. So I mean, they're still in the mix here. They just have to take advantage of these opportunities, but they were able to do that in this one. So one check mark off the board there. Yeah, I have this, Ryan was tweeting, just offense guy, blew out the field here at McMahon. Derek does. Wow. I like seeing Derek former Kastan Peter there. Really remarkable. The other thing note too is just how lopsided this game was, and I want to talk Trey Ford of it all Edmonton is zero passing yards thus far in the first half when all this came down, Trey running crazy. I don't want his performance to be overshadowed here with the comeback. Trey was something else. Evan, I know Andy was going crazy in the chat. What did you make of Trey Ford here fourth week in the row now I guess starting, Yeah, I mean another day, another complete performance from Trey Ford. I would've liked to see I think a bit more when it came to throwing the ball. I think they left a couple things on the board there, but ultimately, I mean again, his running ability that even in the N F L or college football or a more broad platform here in the us, I don't know if I'm seeing a lot of quarterbacks do things that Trey Ford is doing when it comes to running the football. I know we have a couple guys in the N F L that Lamar Jackson would probably be the best comparison, and before that, cam Newton and Michael Vick, but I mean this was something else I'll say that much. I have not seen scrambling ability like that in a while. And again, I'm really glad it's all coming together because flashed this before, he's had opportunities to go in there and to run, and there were a lot of things that people liked about that, but now it's just at a whole new level and it's really coming together and I think this was the best example of specifically what he can do with his feet. I mean, he had so many plays in that game where you're just like, that shouldn't be possible. You keep looking at it, you're like, that's not right. That's not possible. And I mean you can't even mean, yeah, you could make the argument, well, Calgary's defense should just be tackling him, but I don't know. I mean he's pretty evasive and I think it would be difficult for even one of the better defenses in the league to go tackle that. And I do think Calgary's defense is pretty good in some aspects. So yeah, I think they were talking on the broadcast. I think Dunnigan had said the week before when you get into the league, until you can kind of figure it out, just keep running. And I thought that that was very indicative of Trey, where you have the athleticism, the great elusive athletic, and Taylor Cornelius is not doing this and not rushing for 135 yards. Dunk had this tweet talking about Canadian football. I posted the funny meme kind of floating around the weekend with one of the refs adjusting his pants at one of the college games. I thought that was getting very off, very excited. You're watching this. Jason, what did you make? I mean, this is kind of historic stuff Trey is doing right now. Yeah, he's played incredible since taking over this starting job in Edmonton. And I think the thing that stands out to me is just the awareness he has when he's running the ball. He doesn't many big hits and I think that's obviously he got injured last year, so I think that's something that he's trying to avoid, but he's doing it in a smart way. And I mean just the speed that he has just puts so much pressure on cfl defenses. It's clear that with this big field, these guys really struggle to chase him down. So I think at the end of the day that's been game changing for the Elk's offense. And I think that at the end of the day, in terms of the rest of the season, it actually gives us a reason to watch Elk's games going forward because he's an exciting player to watch. Well, that's the thing. I mean even they lost here and I really thought, I mean, like I said, Dorothy and I kind of headed out. I'm like, man, Edmonton's really putting it together and they've got three wins in a row here. You still feel like they have a lot of momentum here. I don't know if was the defense that kind of let Edmonton down here, what do you make of that? Did Calgary win the game, Evan or did Edmonton, did their defense kind of give up here near the end? Yeah, I would say, I mean, I don't know, it's a tale of two halves I think, or it even comes down to quarters. But I feel like this was more Calgary winning the game and just taking a stance and saying, you know what? We're not going to let this opportunity slip away from us. I mean, again, that fourth quarter was just, you don't see a fourth quarter like that very often. I mean, we've had a couple games in the cfl, this isn't the first time Edmonton has blown a lead. You go back to that Winnipeg game where that was going to be their first home win and everything looked right and then they just couldn't put it together at the end. And unfortunately that's the same thing here. And again at this point, I think Edmonton either way, whether they win games or not is heading towards some sort of change again at the end of the season and into the off season. But it always looks nice to win. And again, taking down a rival on Labor Day at their stadium, that would've been a really good opportunity I think for them to capitalize. And they didn't again, which is okay, we know this team isn't complete. Yes, it sucks. And yes, this was a winnable game for them. They've been in a lot more winnable games since Trey Ford took over as the starter than they were before a lot more. But yeah, ultimately I feel like Edmonton just kind of, this one slipped out of their hands a bit and they definitely could have done more to prevent that, but it didn't happen. Yeah, you want to see Edmonton maybe get the bounce back. You'd hate to see them lose the momentum here next week with Calgary coming in to play. And obviously we got the monkey off the back with all the home losing streak and all that, but you don't want to see Edmonton totally fall apart. It makes you feel better to be an Edmonton Elk fan right now and kind of feeling excited for the future. Jason, other thoughts on this Ski? Not too much. I mean, I'll just highlight some player performances I thought were impressive. Steven Dunbar has really got it going for the Elks over the past couple of weeks. Good to see that from him because he's one of the highest paid receivers I do believe in the cfl this season. I thought that the Elk's defensive line played well at times during this game. Jake Rena, Coney, Ely, ac Leonard, all getting after Jake Meir at times. And you talked about those two turnovers that Jake Meir had, I think it was in the third quarter, so I think that was pretty big for Edmonton at that point in the game. Fortunately they couldn't unfortunately capitalize on it. And then Marcus Lewis with its third interception of the season for Edmonton as well. So some guys really stepping up. And then on the Calgary side, I thought the receivers played very well down the stretch in this game. Mark Keith Ambles was a former stamp. Peter came back this season, has done a pretty good job since coming back into the lineup. And then Reggie Beton has been just beast mode the last couple of weeks. Yeah, Steven Dunbar friend of the show now was on last week. I love the player interviews are fun to me because kind of what makes him tick. I kind getting into it, but he was the funniest guy. Some of these guys speak up, I enunciate, man, get excited here for doing all this stuff. Evan, any other thoughts? I want to see if I have anything else funny to pull up here. I don't know. I'll check to see. There's probably a couple players I do want to highlight here. Yeah, I'd say Calgary's receiving core as a whole in this game. I know that they were able to throw the ball more and kind of open things up towards the end of the game. I still wouldn't call this flawless, but they probably had, I think between Mark and Michelle, Markie Ambles, Reggie Bagel, and you can even throw Luther Kunu in there. I feel like they really had a bit more chemistry this time around. I don't know, I'm not looking back at every game, so I don't know if this is the most complete game that they've played from that standpoint, but really liked the chemistry that was there. And again, it really reminded me of what BC is doing that they're spreading around the ball a bit. I mean you've got four catches, seven catches, six catches, three catches, different guys going different places on the field. So that's always good to see. And then on the Edmonton side of the ball, yeah, Gino Lewis, he really was good to see him get going. Again, one of my favorite receivers in the league, again, didn't have a huge game, but he did enough, did what he was asked to do. And Manny Arsano again getting in there second on the team and catches and yards, I feel like, I mean he just came back from injury and he's over 9,000 yards now. I think I might've brought that up last week. But anyway, just good to see him still going at that age and definitely one of the more true veteran guys around in the cfl now up there with the Trevor Harris's of the world and things like that. Yeah, we have a couple comments here. Checking in Coach Craig Sports front of the show Dunbar, the mark has scores two DDS the same week, coincidence I think not also Luis is checking in here and we had someone Oh yeah, Al Max k finally able to make it live. Yeah, doing it a little early today. Appreciate Evan getting up and doing that and working here with the Tuesday schedule. James checking in B t s Dance studio. The games are awesome. The other thing I was the attendance, the Danny Austin of the world was going crazy because the game and the Battle of Alberta, it was later than it normally was. It looked like the crowd was fine. I mean I think the weather there was supposed to be kind of hazy. They canceled the flyover. I know they were doing the military appreciation, but it seemed fine. I had the megaton, the professor, I said that comment Tommy Lee Lewis looking huge. Yeah, they had said Calgary hadn't lost four in a row since 2004, so they were kind of getting into that historic period. They have dropped another one, but I really thought that it just looked to me like Trey was having a lot of fun on the sidelines. Mayor was not in the first half and then obviously he was kind of marking out at the end of the game, but it just seemed like it's been kind of a painful process for Jake this season doesn't seem like he's necessarily enjoying his time. Where Trey, he's just kind of a smiley, happy guy. They had him doing one of the like, Hey, I'm Trey Ford, you're watching the Labor Day Classic. You're, I kind of thought all that was good. Let's highlight some of these young guys and Canadian guys. But yeah, I was once told in the cfl that no lead was safe and that's what everyone tells me every time. So there you go. Jason, anything else with this? We'll get to the next game. No, I think that's about it for me with this game. So you were at this game in the Hammer supposedly really hot game there, right? Warm temperature wise. It got to be a little embarrassing here. Toronto coming in and just kind of kicking you guys in the face. I'll give Jason the floor first since he was there. Yeah, honestly I don't have that many notes about this one because the same game it seems like has been played three times between these two teams this season I think where Toronto's really just jumped on them in the first half and Hamilton just hasn't been able to dig themselves out of that hole. And I mean it was brutally hot. Like you said, most people are just hanging out underneath the concourse and the shade, the sun side, you were really just cooking out there in the sun. So that was not very enjoyable from that perspective. But I mean the game was basically over in the first quarter. I mean Toronto just a much, much more explosive offense than Hamilton and I think that Hamilton just didn't do anything well to begin this game. And I think that Toronto on the other hand, everything went well for them. So I mean Toronto is really just clearly the best team in the cfl right now, especially with Winnipeg's loss this weekend, and I think they really proved it this week. Yeah, they posted out Hamilton, they said Today's Labor Day our highest attendance for a Tiger Cat's home game in Tim Horton's history, which is wild to me. I think that's wild that they have it. And I had tweeted somewhere and they all went home fast. I know that Jason, to be honest, did you stay or did you leave early when this game got out of hand? I actually stayed till two minutes left in the fourth quarter actually, so I stayed longer than some of the games I've stayed this season. I know the Edmonton game I left at halftime a couple of weeks ago. So Evan, what did you make of this? I know we were talking in the Chad and of course Mike Mitchell's going crazy. I have comments about AJ and all this, but I'll give you the four first. Yeah, I mean I felt the same way. I think when I turned the game on, it was 17, nothing. Toronto was up, so that was, I don't know, it was obviously surprising. I think I expected Hamilton, maybe it was Labor Day to kind of maybe put a better effort forward, but Toronto really is just that good of a team and you have to keep in mind they were playing in such extreme heat. I didn't even realize that until after the game, what the temperature was. I was like, geez. Oh no wonder. Certain people are struggling out there. No kidding. But yeah, just like Jason said, I mean I feel the same exact way we've seen this before when it comes to the Toronto and Hamilton matchup specifically from this season, I feel like every time they play, Toronto just gets the early jump and yeah, Hamilton will make a late push, they'll make a late effort, they can still score, they can still get something going, but it's always too little, too late and when the opponent is scoring 41 points, it's going to be really hard to match that or let alone top that. So yeah, ultimately this game I expected Toronto to win and they did. So again, pretty routine performance. Chad Kelly, he had two picks. Wouldn't say it was flawless from him, but if you look I at the stat sheet, Toronto's offense looks just about the same as they normally do. I think AJ Ette had his nearly 80 rushing yards, whatever, which seems regular now for him. And again, very healthy average receiving court. Definitely well broken up. I mean they have what, they have three guys catch receiving touchdowns, three different guys. I think my favorite play of this game was the a jette passing touchdown. That was definitely a surprise and it was a pretty, I mean from what I can recall yesterday, it was a pretty decent pass too. It wasn't some thing right at the goal line, the reds on him and he threw that thing right down there. It was a pretty decent gain. So good for aj. Yeah, 26 yards. Wouldn't say that's easy for a running back. But yeah, that was definitely a highlight player from this game. I forgot to mention too, even in that Calgary Edmonton game, there was a bit of trickery. I think teams wanted to open up some interesting plays this weekend in front of a big audience and you definitely saw that here with Toronto, although they were the away team technically. But anyway, going back to Hamilton, I'll touch on them briefly even though, yeah, I don't have many notes on them either. Taylor Powell, I like Taylor Powell's continued progress. It's a shame. I feel like he's had a lot of decent stat lines this season, but again, Hamilton hasn't been winning a bunch. He nearly threw for 300 yards in this game, so I was a bit surprised by that, given again, fellow Hamilton's offense was pretty slow there until the second half. And then just going down the sheet here, Tim White, I'm very impressed with Tim White again, Hamilton has a nice rotation of receivers that I think can come in and do things like I've talked about Terry Godwin in the past and he had two touchdowns in this game, a couple other guys. Again, I'm still waiting for a big Duke Williams game. I know he might've had one a couple of weeks ago, but really I thought he would just be doing a hundred yards every week, but clearly that has been the case and maybe some of that has to do with quarterback play, but ultimately, yeah, I think that's all I have on this game. Pretty straightforward. I mean this game kind of stood out as the one that maybe wasn't as enjoyable as the other three games on the slate this weekend, just it kind of felt over so quickly. Yeah, I had here, and I want to get Jason's thoughts on this, it really felt like Hamilton was turning around and they had the big win last week against BC that just looked absolutely anemic. How are you feeling right now? I know Jason, you said it's kind of the same game I've seen. What is your welfare check right now? Well, they're going to win in Ottawa next week so they'll bounce back from this, but I think that I've seen this before from the TCATs, they looked like great cup contenders one game every year where they just beat a quality opponent. They did that last week against BC last year was when they beat Winnipeg at home. So I mean I've seen this before where they have this big performance and then they have that classic TCATs let down, so I was expecting them to lose this one, but I thought they would be a little bit more competitive because it was on Labor Day, like Evan said, It felt like, it seemed like they were mounting a little bit of comeback and they had the touchdown and then they had that horrendous kind of offsites kick trying to do the short kick and they cut to Jeff Reinbold on the sidelines, their special teams coach, and he's just like, that's the game. I mean you can't spot Toronto. They're starting on the 45 and they immediately go down score. I wanted to say I had a couple clips here, aj, I know we talked about his touchdown. This man is becoming the superstar kind of in front of our eyes. I mean this is incredible stuff he's doing on the field and now he's got the off the field stuff I saw him doing, they had the panel there with Mil and every Kate and everyone doing the halftime and at the end of the game and he's there with Doris Hammer and he's kind of talking with them. They even brought it out when he scored the touchdown. I thought that was really exciting. This is just really fun stuff. Obviously we've talked a lot about Chad Kelly this season, but seeing AJ Ette here I think is really great. The other comment I had was Jack Kelly was having the time of his life here and I know he got the big contract extension that we kind of missed the episode talking. I think it was after the thing last week, but then it was, I had pre whatever taped stuff, but him getting his big extension and it really looks like I did not see this from Chad Kelly wanting to be kind of the perennial lifer here in the cfl, but really looks like I'd be dance on the sidelines too if I was extended to one of the highest quarterback contracts here. Evan, what did you make of this with the Chad Kelly? I know we missed kind of talking about his contract stuff. Yeah, it was definitely, I think a bit of a surprise. I think a lot of us believed that, I don't want to say ego was going to get in the way, but we all believed that he was going to be looking for another N F L shot and he still might get one. I'm personally skeptical that he will just, I feel like there was so much, I mean, dare I get into the Nathan Rourke stuff and how all that's gone over, but I don't know if he's going to get an N F L shot at this point just because again, he has a bit of a different past compared to guys that we've seen go cfl to N F L, especially at the quarterback position. I mean let's be honest, there's not a lot of them, but yeah, I mean I think it was a well-deserved contract and some people also might view this as a bit of a risk just because this is Chad's first year starting, but I have no doubts. I mean they're the best team in the cfl right now. This doesn't look like some sort of fluke. I mean he's been performing well now through 13 weeks and hats off to him. I mean, again, well earned and excited to see him hopefully stay in Toronto and kind of build a culture there because right now they're very well, it looks like they're well on their way back to another great cup and that's where all kind of started for Chad last year when he came in and that's when everyone started talking about him again. I think we've talked about it before, but he had played a game before that, but not exactly a memorable one and I think it was only one game. So for him to come into the Great Cup and make that impression, I honestly think that's probably where they realized we need to extend this guy one way or another. And then the play has definitely spoken for him this season on that front. So yeah, really happy for Chad. It's great. Again, Chad Kelly is one of those guys where you really thought his career was kind of over and he didn't know it was going to happen to him. And I mean he, I felt like a couple steps away from retirement at one point, but what a turnaround. I mean here he is just slinging it in Canada every week and I don't think that's exactly what everyone expected but working out pretty well for him. And he said he's gone on record saying how much he loves being up there in Toronto and it feels like a home and he can really build something there. And again, I feel like he wants to be there. It's not a fluke, it's not just saying that because winning and I can go get another championship ring. I really feel like it's important to him, the city of Toronto and the culture and everything, and again, just couldn't be happier for him. It's been a rough, I think it's been a rough maybe couple years for him in the past. He's dealt with some legal problems and I know he's had, I think his character maybe, I don't want to say torn, but his character's been, I think looked at in a couple of different ways. A lot of people, I don't know had the best image of him, but he's definitely, he's cleared that all up now and that's really good to see guys really making something out of what originally was nothing in a way. To me it speaks to, and it's the same thing with the xfl and the US developer trying to get to this point of be in a spot where people can land and be comfortable there even if it isn't your first choice. And obviously Chad and the Nathan thing, I think really her and you can still see what the CFO media trying to rebound from that. Oh look, he's still doing, you want the cfl to be a place where Chad Kelly can come in and I can make whatever, what's his contract, 600,000 a year, whatever. I can make great money. I'm a superstar. I have a great team. The staff here is awesome. The coaching is great. I'm a superstar in Toronto. I think you got to get to that point and I think it's exciting. You need to have Chad Kelly's like that in the xfl and the usfl. We just saw where the xfl got a puncher to the N F L this year. That's awesome and I'm glad everyone got opportunities, but you need to get to the point where the xfl can be that too of like, hey, you can play in the spring and you can do your other stuff and still get on TV and kind of be whatever of a superstar. I had a question here for Jason before we move off this game. First off, Andy pointed out this, they have their alt thing on today where it was like the alt logo and it kind of looks like the History Channel logo. I thought that was funny. Their uniforms were great though, these alternative ones. Jason, what did you make of that? And then what was this halftime show? I know they had it on, I had it on mute because I was watching the Mariners on split screen, the Proclaimers, were they there? Were they playing or was this a cover band? This was a cover band. They're a cover band that just plays covers, so I believe their name is Dwayne Gretzky. Yeah, and the acoustics, the sound in Tim Owens field is honestly awful. I think it's ous and yeah, I couldn't hear any of the halftime show to be honest from where I was standing, but the guys that were standing down there looked like they were having fun. I can speak from experience they when they were there for the halftime show when I was there or it was him and then or he did the opening and it was the Lumineers and all of that. And yeah, it all sounded like they just put all these speakers and they angled. They brought out all these big speakers and angled them all to the fans. They're just like, boom, you can't hear anything. Jason, last thing on this, did you like the alt whatever they have? Is this a throwback jersey? What is this? The kind of black hammer jersey? I think they introduced it last year. I think it's called the Maid in the Hammer jersey or something like that. I like them as a third jersey. I like the regular home jerseys better, but it's always good to have a little change up in the look. Well, here we go. Moving on here. I have been excited to talk about this game until obviously we had the great game last night. We're straightforward and all that. Listen to this, watch this every snap, the Big Liberty day, or sorry, labor Day classic. I was filming, I do these little Indian festivals and so I had my little c b s sports app and I had my Bluetooth, I was listening and they watched the game on the way home. This was great. Saskatchewan has been lost many a time at home with Winnipeg coming in Saskatchewan here we have the penalties and all of that to talk about everything else. Evan, do you have thoughts on this one before we get into it? Yeah, I mean this game was great. Unfortunately only really got to watch the end of this game and it sucks. I really, this game, I think I would've really enjoyed watching from start to finish live. Yeah, man, what a great, it was just great. That's the best way I can put it. And I think what's really important here, what I'll really get into before we start talking about players and flow of the game and everything like that is Saskatchewan. So a couple of weeks ago I had this debate. It was kind of like, well, Calgary and Saskatchewan, they're the two teams in the west where it's like they're kind of battling for that last spot. And I think with this game, and I mean it was trending a certain way even before this game, but with this game, I think Saskatchewan has officially put themselves in that spot. They've separated Calgary, I get it. They won. They had to come back, whatever. They're maybe not out of it entirely, but I don't know. Saskatchewan, I think with Jake Doga, the helm has been doing some really cool things and they're definitely making a lot of progress. They're above 500 right now, so they're over that hump. I just really like what I've seen from them and I feel like I'm not going to say that they're going to go into the playoffs and make a statement. I still feel like there's a couple things that we have to see before that, but man, I wouldn't just immediately count this team out, the playoffs. I mean, if they can beat bc, if they can beat Winnipeg, there might be something there. And I know that's what a lot of people might not want to hear, but I know Saskatchewan fans, they're probably sitting there, hopefully we're thinking the same way. I do feel like there is something now with that team. I feel like they are better now than they were even with Trevor Harris maybe. I don't know if that's a bold statement or not, but there's just a lot of things that I feel like are coming full circle over there and it's good to see, and given how much change they've had over the past year, they're kind of a rebuilding team in a way, but they've already made a quick impression and clearly they have the right personnel I think to get it done. And right now I see them in the playoffs and I see them still being competitive there. So obviously the big not highlight, but the big talking point of this game is the hit here we had on Calleros after the play, Pete Robertson and I had tweeted out yesterday them sending out, he'll be suspended for the banjo so he won't be in the game here on the ninth. Jason, kind of initial thoughts on this. This was kind of the big thing and we had Claros. I saw Jeff Hamilton interviewing him after the game talking where I have the clip here if I can get too quick enough friend of the show, Jeff Hamilton, and he's like, what do you think they're going to do? And Claros is like, what do you think they're going to do? They're not going to do anything. He was visibly upset about this, that he had the quote with his history of concussions. He was surprised that they didn't immediately do whatever, and I know they pulled him off the sidelines to kind of do some checks. What did you make of this kind of real controversial and almost cost the riders the game, obviously until they came back? Yeah, I think this was one of the stupidest things I've ever seen on a professional football field or even professional sports in general, honestly. And that's saying a lot. I watched the N H L as well, so I mean there's some dumb things that go on there as well, but I mean it didn't make any sense to me why it was so late after the play too. It didn't make any sense to me. I mean, I don't think Pete Robertson is a guy that has a reputation as a dirty player either. So I mean, I don't know what was going through his head there, but he's rightfully suspended for next week. Yeah, they said here, yeah, Claros believe that they failed to even throw the flag and then they needed the command center to get the call. A lot going on there. It was incredible there because you're sitting there, I'm driving home watching the game, and they get the stop and they're going to force Winnipeg to kick the field goal and I think it would've tied the game at that point. And then they go and he does this completely, gives them a whole new side of downs plus everything else. Pipkin came in and what I thought was kind of cool was you saw Calero on the sidelines like mad because they got, okay, you got to sit out at least three plays and we got to go through the protocol here and he wants to get back in and he's fired up and you think, God, I just drove the whole way down the field. We want to score, we want to take the lead really kind of hot there going into overtime. I guess it was the first overtime victory here in Labor Day classic history, which is crazy. Rob Vanstone friend of the show that now is with the riders. Evan, I know we talked Saskatchewan, kind of turning the corner here, Winnipeg a third loss for the season. What do you make of that? I'm still not worried, but I think it's still a reminder that I can't say this team has regressed either. It's just still a reminder that things might be more tight now, not just in the West, but really across the entire cfl than they were before. I mean, for a while it just felt like Winnipeg, they were the standard and I think they still are because every time you think Winnipeg's out of it, they'll turn things around and they'll get you. I mean, if they go out, I don't know who they're playing next week. I haven't looked at the schedule yet, but I mean they could go out and do some Well, It's the manageable back. It's the back and back Saskatchewan. That's right. Okay. Yeah, they're playing Saskatchewan again. That's right. Okay. Banjo Bowl. It's Going to be, that's a hot game right now. Yeah, I mean, look, Winnipeg could easily go out there. I mean, they're back at home. Banjo Bowl. They could go dominate next week against Saskatchewan. I wouldn't be surprised because again, I think they still set a standard, but the reality is they're not. I think they were what, 15 and three at one point last season, or was that I think they were 15 and three. Yeah, I mean, see now they're already nine and three. You've got six games left. I don't know if they're going to go undefeated the rest of the way. So I don't know. Again, record is one thing. I'm not really going to get into record, but I think my overall point here is just, even though Winnipeg may still be the standard, you can't guarantee things with them the same way. I mean, they've had some games this year where you're really just scratching your head and even games that they've won. There's been a couple times where I'm like, what's going on here? This isn't the Winnipeg that we know and love and that we've gotten accustomed to. I still think they have all the right pieces in place. It's not something that needs to be changed. Just, I don't know. I feel like sometimes when you win for so long, we use the term too comfortable, and I'm not going to say Winnipeg's too comfortable either, but I feel like they might be trending in that direction sometimes where they just have the mentality that regardless of what happens, we can get it fixed. But sometimes the opponent might be looking at that differently and they might be coming out too hungry. And so we'll see. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Again, I can't wait for the playoffs. There's a lot of intriguing things here. I just mentioned before. Saskatchewan I think really has some momentum building, and boy, if they go into Winnipeg in the Banjo Bowl next week and they go take that game, I'm really starting to get sold on at that point. They're seven and five and I don't know, that's a team I would not count out. I've always said Ruff riders have a lot of pieces on that team that I like. And again, I like a lot of pieces on other teams, but Saskatchewan in particular has some that I feel like guys that could be true superstars. Maybe not all of them have hit that status yet, but they're certainly working towards that end. This weekend was a great example of that. So yeah, Winnipeg, going back to your point, Reed, I don't know this game for them. I think part of it might've been, I was really impressed with the crowd in Saskatchewan. Part of it might've just been pure intimidation and maybe they haven't experienced that in a long time. I know they have good home crowds themselves, but a bit different when it's the Labor Day classic and it's a great rivalry on the line. And again, banjo Bull next week, so there's another opportunity for them to, they're going to go back to their home and try and avenge this loss, I guess. But yeah, ultimately I think Winnipeg is just, they have these games now where there's a couple more miscues and it ultimately ends up costing them. I think every game that they lose or that isn't good for them, I feel like it's still close. So that's again why we're not writing Winnipeg off at all. There's no way we could do that. They're the most talented team in the league, but sometimes there's moments like this where things just don't work out, and that was a prime example of it. Saskatchewan I think was just too much. And again, it was like Calgary, they just had that, we need to go out and win this game. We're at home. It's a great rivalry. There's so much on the line. If we don't win now, it puts us in a, I guess, worse position now that's, Saskatchewan won this game again over 500, which to me is a pretty big deal with playoffs coming up in only a couple of weeks, really. So yeah, I don't know. That's my bit about that. I feel like there's maybe got carried away a bit, but there's a lot to talk about there. It's interesting. Yeah, No, you need this rivalry to be hot because Saskatchewan had got blanked at home for many, many years. I mean, Jason, that's what I liked about it, was this, you call these rivalries sometimes, but Winnipeg comes in and kicks your teeth in. It's like Toronto here with Hamilton. I mean, this was a great choice. How bullish are you on Jake Dal and everything else here with Saskatchewan, Jason? Well, I mean, I think Dagal has looked really good since taking over the starting role. I think that one thing that stands out to me with him is the arm strength. I mean, there were several tight window throws he made in this one, I think on the two point conversion to win the game. He had a really nice throw on that one as well. So I think that it's good that he's playing well and as long as they can have competent quarterback play, I think the rest of the roster is pretty good. Their defense, I know they gave up 30 points, but ultimately they frustrated Winnipeg for a large portions of this game. Look at Zach Clara's completion percentage. Pretty poor in this game, and I think he had a really rough first half especially. So I think Saskatchewan's team overall is pretty good. And I think that maybe they even get Trevor Harris back down the stretch and they're could make some noise in the playoffs. Yeah, bombers had no passing yards in the first quarter, which is insane. It is insane to think that when you just visualize in your head like, Hey, Winnipeg to be held in no passing yards. I had the other things here, and then we just had a couple where Winnipeg, they had the kickoff and they declined the no yards or they gave up. There was a couple of rouges back and forth that Winnipeg gave up. They kind of exist in a vacuum, but then when it comes down to the end of the game and you go to overtime, which was just cool. I know people poo poo the rouge and all of that, but then when you get down to this tie ball game, it's kind of crazy that way to see kind of how everything comes together. I also thought, oh, the game was delayed on C B S sports here in the States because there was soccer going on at Audi Field, which I just thought was interesting because Audi Field is obviously the home of the DC Defenders for the xfl. So I thought that was interesting. Weird timing there. Super Mario Alford, they call him Mario Alford doing really good. Do we like that? Do we like the Super Mario nickname? Evan, are you high on the Super Mario Alfred nickname for Mario? I don't know about nicknames, man. I mean, last time I think we talked about nicknames. It was the Donut Boys and BC and I dunno, we think it's been a bit far from that in recent weeks, unfortunately. But I mean, sure, I'll tell you like Mario Alfred is a player. He's really, I mean, again, one of the guys that I feel like maybe he doesn't get enough credit still because he is a returner. Just guys like Chandler worthy, I don't think get enough credit either. But yeah, I mean you can have fun with it. A couple comments here as Scott for the show. Big Argos fan Katza, go Argos. Jason, anything else on the Labor Day classic? We'll get into BC here. No, it was just a great game, honestly. It really lived up to the name of being a classic and just a classic great football game. Well, it's cool. I mean, we were at the Gray Cup last year and it was not a very good crowd. I think a lot of those Saskatchewan fans were upset because the team missed the playoffs and either they didn't want to give Winnipeg, there was all this controversy. They didn't want to go and they didn't want to sell the tickets. So it was cool to see Mosaic big kind of full, because when I was there, I was looking around, I was like, man, this is really not a good crowd for the Great Cup. So good to see kind of mosaic showing that naked draw for that last game here. At one point in time, this would've been maybe a little bit more, I wouldn't have worried about this game, but BC has not played great here the last couple of weeks felt really bad. Had Cody on the show. Cody really did not have a good game here. I felt really bad for that. He had a couple that end zone interception at the end. We'll go first. Jason, what did you make of this BC winning? But I thought the storyline here was Cody, maybe faltering a little bit. Yeah, it was a must needed win for bc. But yeah, I think the bigger takeaway is Montreal, and I think that they still had a chance to come back in this game late, but there was a key roughing, the passer call that was challenged, and I think it was Armando that had a big sack that would've knocked BC at a field goal range when BC was only up two at that point of the game. And upon review, they gave them that roughing, the passer call, and BC was able to get the insurance touchdown. So this game was a little bit closer than the score would indicate, but I think at the end of the day, the ettes have proven once again that they cannot beat any of the big three teams in the cfl, the bc, Toronto or Winnipeg. And they're oh and five against them, and I think they're six no against everybody else. Yeah, I was watching, I had my cfl plus on my laptop. I had the Mariners on because this was the online game and Mariners came down. They had the nail by there where we beat the Mets. JP had a home run at the top of the ninth, and then I'm watching the BC and Montreal was making, I'm like sweating through my socks. I really couldn't handle it. It was too much stress here. Evan, what did you make of this? Vernon finally coming back BC really needed this. I mean, this kind of would've been a disaster for BBC season to drop another one. Another one, right? I mean, BC definitely needed it, but I feel like the storyline, I mean you, I just look at Montreal and I feel like that was such a winnable game for 'em. I really thought they were going to win. Not to discredit BC or anything like that. We all know they have the potential and they ended up putting the game away and that was all fine. Well, but I don't know. I just looked at Montreal and I'm like, it must just suck flat out. I look at that game and I'm like, they had a chance to win despite Cody Fajardo playing one of his worst games of the season. And I don't know when BC kind of overpowered them there at the end. But yeah, definitely a much needed win for bc. I guess I'll start on that side since it's a bit more positive. Vernon Adams, once again, 300 yards, three touchdowns, what's new, just continues to do that every week. And we shouldn't be surprised at all. Taquan, mazel, mazel, whatever it is he had, I'd say somewhat quiet game, especially because Montreal will stand back ripped off a big run. And I'd say he was probably the more impressive running back between the two. But I'd give some credit to TA mean he score a touchdown nearly five yards of carry. I'd say pretty underrated performance from him and not a player that we've talked about a nauseum this season, just because I feel like BC hasn't been running the ball a lot. They like this wide open offense where Vernon can throw 300 yards no problem. And they've got six different receivers working with whatever. There's just not really a need for a guy like Maisel to do much, but he did in this game. He stepped up and made something happen. So that was good to see. And even Vernon, you look there, the statute eight carries 54 yards, 6.8 average. I mean, he was working there too. He was moving around. And I know the announcers were talking a bit about Vernon, just to see him confident in his running abilities again, we're good. He, I think, continues to build on that. Ever since his injury, I think there's been an increased level from him when it comes to running the football and then again receiving go down there like Alex Hollands, what's new? He's almost taken over that number one role in recent weeks. I know he was just on your show. The show. Yep. He was just doing that. I mean, he was a really big player when I went to that game against Calgary and Keon Hatcher. That's been the one two punch really lately, is Alex Hollands and Keon Hatcher. Those guys I think have really stepped up more than anybody else. And that's good to see more than anything. And then, yeah, going back to Montreal now, Cody fta, well, I think we've already talked about that. It was just not his best day. He's had, as much as I've seen some surprising things from him this season and overall a bit of improvement. And again, he's playing better than I thought he would coming over from Saskatchewan. But as much as there's been those games, there's also been these games where it's like, it just feels like there's nothing going. And yeah, he throws for 300 yards, whatever, but sure didn't feel like that watching the game. I was like, it just felt like there was a lot of struggles there, which is unfortunate. Again, I do root for Cody at the end of the day, and I feel like he does have, I don't want to say he has an underdog mentality, but I feel like in some ways he is the underdog in a lot of situations. Montreal is in this weird spot now where they can beat the bad teams, but they can't win against the good teams. So they're kind of in this weird middle spot and kind of waiting for them to really separate themselves here in the last couple weeks. So I'm sure they understand that. And I do believe that Cody can lead that charge here down the stretch again in his final couple of weeks. But I think that the main storyline of the game for me here, well outside of Austin Mack, who had a great game on the receiving end, but we already talk about him so much. I don't want to recycle that too much. But Stanback had that slow start to the season and he is been improving slowly since then. But man, I mean, he ripped off that run, went over a hundred yards on the day. That was great to me for the first time in a long time that felt like old will stand back. He used to do that all the time. I feel like people who maybe are new to the game don't realize, but this used to be a normal thing. This used to be something that happened every week. You didn't think much it, but now it's more of a rarity. So to see him do that felt extremely special. Again, we talked about everything that's happened with him. Everything that's gone on, it hasn't exactly been, I think the best season for him, although he has started to improve again in the past couple of weeks. I think he will finish at a very respectable spot here. But again, just one hell of a play and seeing that live, it just made me feel good. I was like at that point in the game to take the lead just felt like again that was exactly what Montreal needed and I really hope we can see more of that again from Will down the stretch here in these next last couple of games. Just because I really feel like he could honestly be the key piece of this team. If for whatever reason Cody keeps struggling, they only have maybe one or two guys on the receiving front that can get it done. Although I did have some receivers come back too and I know they've been depleted there, but I don't know, I look at will stand back and I'm like, this could be the guy that again really allows Montreal to separate a bit and get that big win that I think they've been lacking for a while now. So I don't know, that's my take on that. That was probably one of the most impressive parts for me. Yeah. Oh totally. No, Luis has a question here about the ban bowl. We'll talk about that at the end here. We'll finish this game. The question I have for Jason is when we saw Cody go out, Caleb Evans performed really well, right? I dunno. Did they win both the games or they won at least one of 'em with him? There was calls we maybe don't want Cody to be the starting quarterback. Cody came back, they were on the short week coming back from injury last week. They lost here losing to BC with a full week and that was kind of what Cody had talked about in our interview and if you guys missed that, the episode we had Randy and Cody and who, we had Steven Nbar on really good show last week. But here now there's not a lot of excuses. I guess I'm concerned for that. Tim and Cliffy here tweeting out with the outlets fight deck, Cody's looking overwhelmed and it shows very boring football. How long do we stay with Cody here? Jason, I guess is my question. Well, I think he still has a relatively long leash, but it could get interesting because their next two games back to back against Toronto. So those could be two losses. They could be sitting at six and seven after being six and three. So that could be a very realistic scenario and I think at that point maybe you consider if Fido was really the reason for them losing those games. I think maybe you consider a switch there, but I don't have much belief in Caleb Evans as a starting quarterback in the cfl. I mean yeah, he won those two games, but I don't think he can show that with any consistency and I think we saw that over his time in Ottawa the past couple of seasons. So I think the better off just riding it out with Cody unless it completely goes off the rails here. Jason, what did you make here of the Montreal loss? Because they've looked hot, right? I mean I'm cheering for BC but obviously I care about Montreal and their wellbeing as well. But what is the storyline now for Montreal season? Because like you said, these two games they could, Toronto could come in and just completely knock the wheels off this season. What do you make of their welfare going forward? Well, I mean it's hard to say because going into the season I thought this was arguably going to be the worst team in the cfl and they're certainly not that, but I think they're somewhere in that mushy middle of the cfl where they're nowhere close to those top teams and they're just nowhere close to being one of the worst teams. So they're just kind of in the middle there. They'll probably still finish second in the east just because of the status of the rest of the teams. Hamilton doesn't look like they have their stuff together. Ottawa is very far from that as well. So I think Montreal still finished the second, but I mean I don't have any faith in them, even if they win the East Division semifinal to go into Toronto and put up a fight. So I think at the end of the day, yeah, they're just kind of caught in the middle and I don't think that they have a way out of it at this point. Yeah, just looking at my notes here. Yeah, the run we showed from stand back, that was his first TD of the season rushing td, which is just crazy. Anything where he was such a part of that. Yeah, like I said, Cody just really that terrible pick at the end was trying to kind of play hero ball there throwing, I think there was three BC guys there with the receiver Austin Mack looking good. Oh yeah. And then we had that Tyler Snead trick play for Montreal. I think I had that pulled up at one point to show Montreal trying, I mean they're pulling out some stuff. Evan, any other final thoughts? I dunno, final thoughts on this one before we put this to bed? Yeah, I don't know. I guess still just looking down the stretch, I mean Jason brought up Montreal's next two games, we will see what happens. Even if they do lose both of those though there's still going to be in a pretty decent position. It doesn't really affect them that much. I feel like Montreal as a whole, yeah, we talked about Cody, but you look at the alleys as a whole, I mean they have a pretty long leash when it comes to playoffs and things like that just with the way the east has panned out. So I don't know. I think ultimately there's still time to improve for Montreal, but right now do they have the personnel to get that done? I don't know. I'm on the fence about it. I feel like they could come out and have some, I feel like they could go out and beat Toronto in one of these two have a surprising outing. You just never know. But even then, is that going to be an accurate representation of what they are going into the playoffs? I don't know. It gets interesting here. We really are at kind of a turning point in the season. Again, I talked about Saskatchewan where they're at now, really getting over the hump, getting over 500, big statement win on Labor Day. It feels like they're making progress. You've got some teams, Winnipeg, even BC slowing down a bit in recent weeks. Winnipeg having their game this weekend. I don't know if you can say that's slowing down, but now they have three losses and I mean yeah there's still at the top of the west but still some questions there. So I don't know. It's a turning point in the season and next couple weeks are definitely going to, I think, define, we've had a lot of questions about certain teams this season and we've always asked, oh are they this or are they that? I feel like a lot of that will get answered within the next, I don't know, next three or four weeks, maybe next month of the season through September I'd say is when we really start figuring out, okay, well were we right about these guys? Were we wrong? And all the things that we've said in the past. So for me it's kind of like an evaluation period as a whole. You get to this and I remember when we started covering the cfl and they're like games don't matter until after Labor Day and I hate that because we're trying to sell attendance and TV ratings during the summer, but it is what they say. This is kind of the second half of the season and that's why we had Randy Ambrosio on this week to kind of do the midseason checkup. We had a funny comment here at Louis says, was Cody the ow Losser curse of coming on the mark cast? Well, so Steven Dunbar had a good week. Alex Hollins is having good, I think it's just quarterbacks, I think it's quarterbacks because McLeod Bethel Thompson came on when they were undefeated with the Breakers and then the Breakers lost. I don't even know if the episode had aired yet. I think I taped it for a week ahead and I think they lost after he came on and then famously, what was his name with Ben Holmes did not come on the podcast and then won a gray cup. So I think that the curse only works for quarterbacks. I think otherwise if you're any other skilled position player you can come on and you're fine. The last thing here, Luis had a question about the Banjo bowl talking about that and I think they answered it in the chat, but it was coined after the Blue Monish Prince Troy Westwood a number of years ago called He said everyone in Saskatchewan is like banjo picking Inbreds or something. Jason, do I have that quote right? Yeah, I think so. Jason, looking ahead at the schedule here, like we said BC much needed and then they'll come in, they'll host Ottawa at home. Really has to be a must win I think for BC there on week 15. Any other thoughts looking at the schedule next week? I know we talked about Montreal going into, was it the six one nine or whatever they call it there? Yeah, I think it's an interesting slate next week with all the rematches and of course Hamilton and Ottawa as well. So I think Hamilton just seems to have Ottawa's number. I'm interested to see if that continues. The Red Blacks, this is really their season. If they lose this game, they're pretty much out of it completely, but if they can win, maybe they can crawl their way back into it. They would actually be even with the Tie Kats and wins. So I think they'd be one behind in the lost column, but I think at the end of the day that's a huge game for both of those teams and I think for the other games, I think Calgary and Edmonton, again, if Calgary can win that game as well, they'll have five wins. Saskatchewan, if they pick up a loss here, I think Winnipeg probably bounces back and beat Saskatchewan this week. I think that's just the nature of them. I think they rarely lose two games in a row. I can't really think of the last time they've lost two games in a row. So I think that's what I'm looking forward to next week. Yeah, this is what is this a triple header on Saturday that's remarkable here except for say for this Hamilton game the Friday, I don't know about that. This is a tremendous slate of games here, especially coming off of, I think this ban bowl is going to be very hot like we talked about with obviously the penalties and all that stuff seeing here with Edmonton and Trey Ford and then I'm really curious like we've said with Montreal and all of that. Very excited. Evan, any other thoughts on week 14 looking ahead? Yeah, I mean definitely some interesting games on the slate here. I know we talked about Saskatchewan and Winnipeg, kind of the revenge game and same with Calgary and Edmonton, both those teams. Well Calgary already won, so really it's Edmonton Revenging, their sort of slip up in the fourth quarter and giving up 22 points. But the Saskatchewan Winnipeg game I think really could be if Saskatchewan wins again like I said, and they're seven and five, they go back to back beating Winnipeg first at home and then away. I mean that would be great for them then I would really feel confident about them heading into this last couple game. Stretch of the season. Yeah, I guess right, we got N F L so now we go, we're going to have that. I prefer the double header Friday and then the double header Saturday three. That's a tough sell to the wife to have the three games starting on that. But yeah, I guess goofy scheduling now with the N F L and all of that. We'll do our best. I need to figure out Friday's schedule. I'm not quite sure what we're going to do. I've been going back and forth with Jeff Hamilton but I got to work, we have this Indian festival that goes through the night Wednesday into Thursday and it's like their New Year's and it counts out at midnight and then they all go crazy. So we'll see. I'm not quite sure how motivated I'm going to be to record five guest interviews on Thursday coming off of that, but we'll see. Check out Jason, your channel obviously like and subscribe here as well. Thumbs up the video if we can. We got, we're peaking here, viewership here at the end of the show, which is good. Jason, anything else from you? Anything you have coming down the pike? Not too much. I actually recently just started an N F L show over on my channel as well, so go check that out. In addition to all the cfl stuff I have over there. Yeah, I was saying last night, I can't wait for commanders football. The Mariners had just kind of broken my heart the last couple of days, so with no BC this week, so little cheering on the commanders. We are playing the Cardinals I believe at home. If we don't win against the Cardinals who have yet to name their starting quarterback, I think it's going to be a long season. So God bless there. Evans Cooper cups out and hamstringing injuries and Evan's got his or rash of problems over there, so I appreciate everyone. Like I said, you'd like to subscribe, check it out. We'll be back here next week and next everyone.

Episode 160 - The XFL is PIVOTing!!!

Coming up this week on the markcast. Well, is it true? Is it actually true? Is the xfl actually thinking about moving on and pivoting paper? Shut up. Shut up, shut off From Vegas. Reports coming out. Say the xfl is thinking about moving the Vegas vipers to Arizona or Nashville. What is going on? We break it all down. Crazy Newsweek. Then big time interview guest already scheduled before all the craziness. This week Randy, a now friend of the podcast cfl Commissioner coming back on the show break. Third time we talk CFL plus in America we talk about Randy Ambros legacy, the Edmonton Elks, Victor, qui and Moore. I try to get up. I try to serve our governors in the most honorable way I can. I try to be someone who the fans would have respect for in that I clearly working hard to make our league as big and powerful as it can be and do all of that in a way that brings credibility to who I am as a person. Then Patino joins us not only talking about the xfl Vegas Viper News, but we have xfl and usfl to the N F L watch list, which players stuck on rosters and practice squads after the final cuts this week we have you covered. It was Good to see that there wasn't a lot as much cannibalization on that front that a lot of these coaches and player personnel people valued the experience of these guys not only playing in a game but also being in football shape. So if they are air quote coming in to be a camp body, they can provide that good look and there's more value to give your time and effort versus this guy versus a college kid who might've been a seventh round, sixth round pick, got his head all big because he got a $70,000 signing bonus and then didn't put in the rest of the work for two and a half months And then two outstanding cfl player interviews this week. Cody Fido now friend of the show, Montreal Ettes quarterback joining us for a fun chat and then Steven Dunbar Jr of your now no longer winless at home and then eternity the Edmonton Elk. Stephen Debar joining us wide receiver. There should be a good show. I hope you guys enjoy it, like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the Markas Read here at Crazy Newsweek, A busy week both with work and the xfl stuff, watching the waiver wires, players getting signed, all that stuff. Thanks for joining us. Hey guys, future read here with a little breaking news update. Just have this video put to bed edited, ready to upload. Got done running on the treadmill. Found out the Exel had sent out a letter today. Photoed here just because you don't want to see me right now on camera from Jason Ella, the senior Vice president of ticket sales for the xfl. The letter states following feedback from you, our fans, players and local partners. The xfl has determined that the team will not return to play at Cashman Field for the 2024 season. We appreciate your support and patience As the league reviews all of our options, we'll provide information on a new home for the Vipers as soon as possible. If you have any questions, please call. Obviously Pat and I recorded our conversation earlier today. All of that still stands talking about the potential Nashville relocation or the Arizona relocation, but certainly more smoke now with this fire about Vegas, whether they play somewhere else in Las Vegas, the Vipers do, which obviously we went through all of that last year with why they can't play at U N L V and why Allegiant Stadium and all of that. This really speaks to me that the vipers are done in Vegas. I thought it was odd that they optioned to start selling season ticket presales back in April I believe like they did Seemed weird timing. Mike has also Mike Mitchell who obviously has been reporting all this all along. He put out on his Twitter feed a very similar message that was sent to the actual xfl team members themselves that the rest of the staff there basically letting people know we have informed the public today that we are not returning. Let me see if I can pull that up. It says, team today we informed Cashman Field that we will not return to the building for the 2024 season. Following feedback from fans, players, and local partners, we have determined that it is in the league's best interest to find a new home for the Vipers. My other takeaway with this, and I'll put the screenshots of all of this, but obviously give Mike Mitchell lots of credit for his fantastic reporting. They're keeping the Viper's name in here, so obviously that speaks to Pat and I talk in our conversation. You'll hear it coming up. Do we have the National Vipers? We have anything else like that but interesting, like I said, a lot more smoke here. It certainly seems like the Viper's time is done. Check out Pat and I's conversation. I've posted this short as well on the YouTube channel, but just obviously wanted to update this here late in the day on Thursday, about six o'clock Pacific getting this all to bed here for you guys. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. Hope you enjoy Randy Ambrose and I's chat and then Pat and I deep dive on the Vegas situation and then talking to all of the xfl and usfl signings to N F L rosters. Thanks guys. Have our big time interview. Randy Ambros, commissioner of the cfl recorded that late last week. We had pushed out the episode early before the cfl games last weekend, so it should be good fresh. I know Randy's been making the rounds this week. Curious to see which publications write up certain podcast episodes and which ones don't. We'll see. I think Randy was really good. I hope you guys enjoy, I think Gideon a little familiarity with Randy at this point, third time on the show. I think it's fun. I think Randy had some good answers talking about his legacy, what he hopes to be remembered as the cfl Commissioner. All of that should be good. I really appreciate Pat joining. We were already kind of tracking the whole xfl and usfl player signings to the N F L and then all the Vegas Viper stuff came down, which like I talked about with Pat in the episode or in our interview, just weird timing with the report coming out from the C B S reporter and it was like Mark had the article ready to go but Mike's been talking about it forever so I don't know. I've had messages set my way too. Something is certainly awry with the Vegas vipers. We'll see what comes out of that and they really appreciate the Montreal outlets and the Edmonton Elks making players available this week. Super appreciate Cody Peja coming back on. Like I said, it's good. Cody and I got through all of that stuff last time with the blocking and everything on Twitter, so it's great just to be able to sit, chat, football, chat Cody's life and kind of all that stuff. Really appreciate that. And then Steven Dunbar joining from the Edmonton Elks big time, a couple of weeks for them and he's doing good and Trey's looking good, so lots of excitement there. Hope you guys like and subscribe. Still trying to get to 3,500 subscribers I think as the rain begins to fall behind me here. I think we're slowly quickly transitioning out of the summer season for the Mark House. I think we'll be moving inside and some of the interviews inside this week and some out. But as the rain is falling, I think as needless to say the summer season has ended here for the mark has. We'll get back inside the home studio. Hope you guys enjoy the episode. Lots of work this week. No N F L this weekend, last kind of weekend, so maybe we'll get a good little viewership bump here before I kick off next week. Still trying to figure out what we're going to do next week with the big N F L kickoff on Thursday, so I get subscribed. We'll see you next time. Well, here we are back for the third time now on the podcast we have the commissioner of the C F O, Mr Randy Abro. Is it fair to call you friend of the show now? Three times. Oh, friend of the show, yeah, sure. I thought we already decided that. Well that's good. I'm excited to have you here. Midseason Checkpoint, we had you on after the post talks with the other leagues and then the C B A stuff last year. A little more smooth sailing right now. How are you feeling here halfway through the season? Well, candidly, really excited. It's been a great year so far. Look, if we go back to before the season started, new ownership in Montreal, Pierre Carl Palau and the excitement that he's brought to that market. We've got the season up and running. The football's been incredible. One of the things that we often forget that it isn't just three down, but it's all three phases of the game and one of those phases that's been firing on all cylinders for us is our kicking game and we've, we've had a lot of scoring on the special teams element of our game and that's one of the things that makes us fun, fast and exciting is something we're very, very proud of. Something we've talked about quarterback concerns, right? And obviously we have leagues here in the States now that we're talking about a lot of injuries, everything going down. We've had a lot of kind of crazy scenarios. We had sanity and everything else. Are you surprised with how much these guys have been able to step up now? I mean it could have been a far worse situation. Well, it is part of the reality of sports that injuries happen and injuries. The negative side is you take a young athlete and somebody that's performing at a high level and they get knocked out and of course you'd never want to see that and we want to get them back as quickly as we can and get them back healthy, but the flip side of that has always been that it gives somebody an opportunity and your next stars begin to emerge. And really that's what we've been seeing is these young players who have been given a chance now and they start to perform and this has gone this cycle. I'm not going to sing you the theme song from the Lion King, but the cycle of life here, I feel like there's maybe we should have Timon and PBA on and have them sing along with us, but this is how it works and you don't know where your next superstar comes from, but it often always, it almost always, it may be all too often comes when somebody gets hurt and somebody gets a chance and look, a famous example of that that we all talk about is what happened with Tom Brady, right? It was an injury that resulted in him getting his shot and he went on to having I understand a pretty good career. Pretty good. You talk kicking and all that exciting play. What are you most proud of this season? I got the email and all the demographics were up and digital impressions and all that. What are you, it was a rocky couple years here just getting through everything that had to happen. Well, I think what I'm most proud of is our board of governors and our presidents and how we've all rallied together around really making investments in the league and building a foundation for the league's future. I think when you come through a difficult time, you can argue you can go one of two different ways. You can pull back or you can move forward. I'm most proud of the fact that our governors and our presidents have really chosen to move this league forward and you only have to look at the investments we're making in this social digital platform, the work that's going on and having that kind of set us on a path to creating a new generation of fans and then the results of that, our 25 to 54 demographic up 29% year over year. Well that doesn't just happen. That happens when you do all the heavy lifting in the background. I am really excited to be part of the league and a part of a group of governors who are committed to the future. To me that's the thing that makes me most excited. Reading through the comments of the cfl article that had all this kind of the press release stuff, I understand T S N necessary partner right, covers a lot of the expenses for the league. People still upset about the broadcaster dated or we want to see, we were tired of the panel, we just had mil stegel on this week, so I'm not tired of the panel, but what do you in terms of changes of that to kind of revamp that? Because I do agree with the waggle and all of that. You guys are making strides, so how can the TV broadcast kind of mirror that? Well look, there's always a conversation going on with our partner at T S N about how do we take that next step together and we do. I think, look, I have to say they have been a great partner for the league and there's not even a part of me that isn't proud of our relationship with them. I think this is what we do. We work at getting better. This is what the whole world of sports is. You work at your craft and you look for opportunities to get better. One of the things that I think we can be proud of is that we are doing, it's one thing to thing to kind of poke somebody and say do more, but it's better to do more yourself and then create an environment where everyone wants to raise their game because what they're seeing is so positive and so encouraging. Look, this is what's happening around our ownership table up. We have Ammar Doman join and Ammar kind of just creates such a level of energy and we all feel it when Ammar enters the room, but it's not just Ammar. So what's going on in Toronto and what Bill Manning and Chris Feld and Michael Clements and the whole organization are doing, there's a lot of momentum in Toronto. It's what Pierre Carl Palau, but then you have to say it's John Ruddy and Roger Greenberg in Ottawa and what they're doing. And then you think of Bob Young and Stelco and Scott Mitchell and Matt Anick and what they're doing. It's contagious. What Winnipeg is doing, what Wade Miller and Mike Pyle, their board chair are doing what's always been going on in Saskatchewan with Greg Ell and Craig Reynolds and their board and their team looking at John Bean in Calgary and Calgary Sports and Entertainment, we are pulling each other forward. So what that does is it creates an environment of excellence and nobody's going to say that we got it all figured out. I'm not making a case for perfection, I'm making a case for a group of people that have committed to the future. And I think when you do that everybody around us will seek ways to improve their craft. So I've got nothing but compliments. I think we're all in this together and that's what I love about a partnership and what I love about the partnership with T S N, we are with them and they're with us. Obviously the elephant in the room here listing off and people working on all the different teams, obviously Victor Que and kind of that departure and he'd been on the show a bunch friend of the show. How big of a Edmonton's struggling with momentum this year? Obviously they got their first win and we look here for the home win against Ottawa, but what kind of gap are the departure of his, because it seemed like there was at least some momentum going energy in Edmonton. Yeah, look, you can't get me to say anything but great things about Victor. My experience with him was just so positive. But look, I think they're bored led by Tom Richards. They felt like they needed to make a change and I respect that. Look, there's work to be done there. There's work to be done everywhere but in Edmonton, the one thing I'm not going to bet against is I'm not going to bet against that organization. I'm not going to get a bet against that city. It is the city of champions and it had that title, it has that title, it has that reputation for many good reasons and I know what that city is capable of. So they'll do the work and as you said, there's some momentum there. They got a win under their belt now. They brought Rick Lesher in and Rick is, I think it's an understatement to say that Rick is a highly, highly regarded, seasoned veteran and Rick will do a lot there and then they'll set themselves on a path for long-term success. So Edmonton is having a bit of a down moment, but that down moment is on the heels of a generations of remarkable success. What would be your message to the Edmonton fan base? I'd say they have been a family that city has supported the Edmonton Football Club for generations and I'd say stick with them, support them because that city's brought a lot of, it's brought a lot of great, it's brought a lot of joy, a lot of joy to that city over the years and you can just go back and chronicle all the amazing players that have added value, how much that team has added to the community. I just say stand by that team because they're not very far away from coming back and they'll continue to make that city proud. In terms of Trey Ford, his performance not only just as a Canadian but as someone that's worked well last year coming into this year seeing his success in Edmonton, really curious your thoughts on that. Yeah, it's exciting. Look, I was asked earlier about the Canadian talent in our league and I don't think that Canadians have ever been better. In fact, I know they've never been better as much as every generation thinks they're the best generation to play the game, but this generation of Canadians are truly remarkable and he's an example of the development of the Canadian talent in the game of football is quite fantastic. And look, we got a lot of Canadians playing in the N F L, A young man named Nathan Rourke who put on quite a show for all of us last year is putting on quite a show in the N F L and what it is, it's just evidence of a football, it's a football country, okay? We're known for hockey, but it's a football country that a lot of great athletes that are playing the game and these great athletes are now on the cfl stage, not just as great Canadian players but as great football players. And that's the thing that really excites me and we continue to see developments in our junior football, in our college football and certainly in our amateur football ranks around the country. That's really exciting In terms of growing the game in America. I live in Seattle here, been utilizing the CFL Plus this year. I want to know feedback. Have you gotten positive feedback? I know the numbers, we don't do all that with c B s sports and all of that, but I'm curious. I speak with a lot of Canadians and they go, well on paper this is a really great deal. You get all this. They go, I live through this every day. It's challenging, right? You can't stop the games. It's not on demand. Not all the games are available on there. What has been your thought of the CFL plus in America? Yeah, you know what? I think it was the right first step. That's what I like most about it. It was the right first step. It was created, the opportunity to do it was created because we have a great partner in C B S sports who showed us a pathway to working with them and doing something new and innovative with cfl plus. As we negotiated the terms of that deal with the C B S sports, we didn't have a lot of time to implement the full strategy, so we took a really smart first step and we are many steps to take. In fact, you know what? In some ways that's our story, that iterative take a step, improve it, take another step, improve it. I think that's going to be how this is going to work. But look, we're glad we've done it. It's not the destination. It's a step in a long-term process that we ultimately believe will pay very handsome dividends for us. Look, in the end, why watch us because our game is fun, fast and entertaining and I don't think we should be shy to say that when you look at all three phases of the game that we have perhaps the funnest, fastest, most entertaining brand of football in the world, we should be proud of that. I'm not arguing best, I'm talking about entertainment, I'm talking about athletes that perform. I'm talking about a game that is fun to watch. That's what the cfl is all about and we are just so excited about what we've done and the future we have ahead of us In terms of utilizing more advertising on there. I'm sitting watching generic hip hop rap video songs over black. I think there's work to be done. A couple here, I'll get you out of here, I promise. We've had obviously the expansion talks the last two years and both times you've been on the show. Is there any reason to feel here middle end of August that we're any closer than we were two years ago when you were on here? Yeah, look, it's a great question and I'll answer it this way. I think for during my time I think we've been advancing towards this. We've certainly, the board has made a commitment to expansion as a priority. That's a formal commitment. I think for a long time we were moving the ball in the right direction. I feel like we're in the red zone. I think there's an opportunity to do this now and there's a lot of things that are positive, but here's the thing about the red zone, and you know this from your very seasoned perspective. Just because you're in the red zone doesn't mean you score. You tend to score more often when you're in the red zone, but you don't always score, and this is the challenge we have in front of us is to take all the good work that's been done, all the momentum. Touchdown Atlantic this year was a blockbuster success. It wasn't a little success, it was a blockbuster success and to take that now and find a way to cross the goal line and score, that's what we have in mind. That's the mandate I have for my governors and that's what I'm working towards. Last question from me here. I promise. In terms of expansion, this would aid to that. We were talking on one of our pregame shows a couple of weeks ago, the long history, all the commissioners, everyone that's been involved in this league and God willing, the cfl exists for another 110 years. What would you want your legacy to be as a commissioner here for a long period of time? What would you be proud of to be known as for being your whatever you've done for the cfl? Yeah, you know what I mean? Honestly, I think it's a very interesting question. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about that. What I want to do is I want to go to work for the governors. I want to go to work for the fans. I want to be somebody who just works hard day in and day out and do everything humanly possible to take this league to where it, I've always believed it can be and it's a great game. It's a great league. I still feel like we got another gear or two that we shift. We step on the clutch and we shift that we can slingshot forward legacies and talk about legacies. That's for other people. That's for other, maybe the pundits can spend some time on that. For me, what I'm going to do is do what I do every day. I try to get up, I try to serve our governors in the most honorable way I can. I try to be someone who the fans would have respect for in that I am clearly working hard to make our league as big and powerful as it can be and do all of that in a way that brings credibility to who I am as a person. I think if you do those things someday somebody's going to talk about your legacy. I don't expect it'll be me because by that point what I'd like to do is I'd like to just play a lot of golf at that stage and have fun with my family and friends. Well Mr. Ambrose, I really appreciate it. We'll see you up in Hamilton. We have all of our things booked, so we'll see you up there. Gray cup should be fun. Yeah, we'll come again and watch our games. Have fun again, love the fact that you're following us and shout from the ru offs funnest, fastest, most entertaining brand of football in the world. Awesome. Thank you so much sir. Take care. Bye now. Thank you. Great to talk to you. Thanks, I appreciate it. Okay, bye now. Well Pat, it's been a hot minute here since the U Ss F L days and we had you on talking, what was that preseason stuff? We have Pat back here with Sarge. His dog might type in a little bit. That's okay, we're keeping an eye on it. Pat Rapino, how are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm going to try to mute my mic as much as you can. I got a 17 year old dog here and I mean he's kicking, he still thinks he's 14, he still thinks he's four, but if you hear him in the background everyone, I apologize for that. That's okay. Living lives here. Welcome back everyone. xfl news to talk about. Obviously we were going to have Pat on to do the N F L cuts for the usfl and the xfl. We have the xfl Vegas Vipers potentially relocating kind of weird situation this week. I have thoughts about that, so we'll get that off the top and then welcome back all the other xfl podcasts that are now talking xfl news here when we've been here every week. But this was a bizarre story and this came out the August, what was that Tuesday? We're sitting there and it was this guy Dennis Dodd, who for some reason has blocked me on Twitter. I've never interacted with the man at all. He works for C B Ss tweeting out hearing more buzz about the X ls Vegas Vipers relocating and we all have known, and Mike's talked about it in the group chat that we've talked about it for even since the beginning of the season, Hey, this isn't a good situation whether they doing, they're doing season ticket presales now that's kind of weird and it was weird to me that then 18 seconds later, mark had this article out exclusive whatever talking and that they're looking at Nashville, they're looking at Arizona State other consideration and basically accrediting Mike because I don't think Mark has any firsthand knowledge of the situation at all. What did you make of this? It really seems like it came out of the blue here and then it was like here's info dump. The only parallel I can think about it is kind of the leak we had with the Houston stadium where it's like this, something comes out and then we are all just kind of talking in our circles about it and then it becomes true. I don't like Cashman Field. I don't think many people did. I know there was the thing with the U N L V stadium and then Allegiance Stadium about how that would've been the more appropriate venue, but I mean hindsight's 2020 and maybe things were said behind closed doors that don't come to fruition if you work in business, how many deals start to happen and then don't because reason's untold, but I mean going to Nashville to me is just kind of a, I don't know man. Nashville's getting pretty congested and someone who was recently in Nashville a couple months ago, I mean to me a four hour drive from me, so I'd probably go down there, but I just feel like the Vegas and we hear all the sports betting that comes up every five minutes with the xfl, it just kind of seemed like a match made in heaven. And Reid, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was the Vegas franchise was they all had a franchise, right? The Rock had San Antonio, Denny had Oro. Wasn't this Jerry Cardenas franchise from what we talked about? Yeah, Mike Mitchell had said back that Jerry was the one that really petitioned for that, that he was the one. And to me it's odd you really lose your West Coast flavor then. And we know the usfl is in Memphis, right, so that's odd as well. Like you said, getting congested there. To me, I had been hearing Vegas besides Mike, I had been getting messages back is whenever Andy and I did that, the LS road path to the off season. Whenever we did that show, I woke up getting messages of like, Hey, hearing Vegas, hearing Rod Woodson's going to be out, hearing kind of all of these things. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Okay, let's kind of figure out what's going on here. Obviously the Rob Woodson thing came down, he's no longer there and Blevins is brought in as the coach, so if it's one foot over the other one shoe's fallen and now the other one, what I don't like about this is once someone that's non xfl talks about it, like oh, Dennis Dodd talked about it like now, okay, now we can talk about it. We're like, Mike's been saying this for months, literally for months. So I mean I'm glad that now it's out there and people are talking about it and Arizona State, I don't know if that's any better or worse. I've heard the facilities there maybe aren't as good. I think Max was messaging me that that's what I don't like is that's why I champion our own media. And then Mark you're like, oh, Dennis talked about it. This is the story now. Yeah, I But isn't that the case though? Personal example was I broke the thing about the AJ McCarran thing, his passing yard or passing touchdown and Nuci's passing touchdowns and then Florio retweeted my thing or everyone and then even something more minor is when xfl NEWSHUB did their M V P, which the xfl proper did not do an M V P and everyone's saying it was funny, I met someone new today earlier and they brought up the xfl and I was like, yeah, I do work with them. And he is like, yeah, AJ McCarran won the M V P and I was like, he didn't. He's like, what do you mean? I was like, that was the website I write for. I work with, we named him the M V P and it grew legs and I'm pretty sure a lot of people think Bon Hutchins is white because of the picture that got tweeted around of the AI version of Mike Mitchell, which I've talked to people in the league about which they thought that was kind of funny. All thought we got a lot of traction of that at Newshub, which I'm pretty proud of and whatnot. But yeah, I mean it's kind of just like, hey man, this thing's been going on Mr. Dodd, I appreciate you recognizing this and I'm not saying that the xfl is going to petition the M L Ss as far as becoming that fifth cog in American national sports because I mean the M L S has been around for God knows how long, but if the xfl or the usfl or if any spring football league, we made the joke, right, the Q F L in 2036, the Quality Football league, if any of these spring football leagues get their footing and start making some moves and whatnot, you are going to have your air grassroots movement who's been doing this all the time and I just hope that those people don't get forgotten along the way. If you're going to do it, do it now. The national thing, like I said, feels odd just because of obviously usfl, not only having a team there but hub having a hub there and we don't know what that's going to look like next year. The Tempe thing is interesting. We talked as well Houston, the T D E C U, they're doing renovations so they're probably going to have to move to Rice Stadium, so that's going to change. I think it's fine. To me this isn't the end of the world. I thought it was weird when they announced it was on April Fool's Day, Hey, we're doing preseasons for the biggest fivers for next year. And I'm like, do you guys know what day it is? But I mean if you're going to do it, do it now. I can't imagine, shout out to 6 3, 500 people in Vegas that went to those games, but I don't think you're losing a massive more than just like, Hey, this didn't work and we're adapting now. And I like that the usfl is in a separate market. I like that the xfl is in a separate market because something that we've talked about in nauseum with the people of Birmingham is like, Hey man, you're asking these people you can meet and they did in 2022, they made a lot of those games. Very affordable, very free for all that stuff. You're asking me to give you 10 Saturdays in the heat in Birmingham, Tennessee is a big state. I believe Memphis and Nashville an hour and a half, two hours from each other. They're going to be people in that middle ground or people from Nashville who moved to Memphis and vice versa, who just love football. They like football in the south. You're kind of expecting them to hold that, compete with that bag and I know they don't really care about each other in some senses. Obviously it's a competition, but I just feel like that dilutes your market. You want to be the coolest team in Tennessee. Okay, great. Instead of having 6,300 people go to your game in Vegas, now you have 4,600 people because you got people who are in Memphis that want to go to Memphis games, they live five minutes away, but they're only going to Nashville games because they just happen to be Nashville residents. I don't know. I don't like that Competition's great, but I just feel like it dilutes both markets for them. So I mean I think they both stay away from New York until the New Jersey generals go there, but I mean I'm not against Arizona. I know a lot of people want want to bring back a west more West coast team. I'm not against it. I don't think LA is the right move right now. Maybe San Diego. Yeah, I was just looking on here. I was Googling, just trying to figure out, because obviously they're not playing in Nissan Stadium, so kind of trying to figure out because right, the A s U mentioned in the article that is like you said, that's a weird spring football condescension where you live in the market, you need to go support it because you have it. You were talking, we've had that the Birmingham and Seattle got a lot of that this year where it's like why people, you live in Seattle, you need to, and people were even criticizing me, I'm like, I got to work. I got a wedding. We have cracking tickets that cost three times as much as these tickets cost and they're in the Stanley Cup playoff run. People have obligations. So it's hard and it really is. If Nashville or Arizona, if you're getting this thing, then you do feel like, okay, we are obligated now we got to really support that and we didn't decide that it was Birmingham. We're putting one in Detroit, Detroit, you need to go out to support it. Maybe Detroit was like, Hey, we didn't even want that. That's why I always liked the idea of the US L hubbing everyone and then awarding teams out of maybe markets that felt like they deserved it more. Any thoughts? Are we higher or worse on the potential Nashville locations or Tempe with the A S U facilities Had them to stay in Vegas? Kind of clean it up a little bit. I think brand continuity is very important. I had that they brought back the air quote Vegas franchise from 2001, but I mean it'd it'd be a s u bring back the hotshot. I think the hotshot did pretty well. Salt Lake is another market that I'd love to see one of these leagues go into and then follow that up. Nashville is kind of kicking down to four. I would almost rather see them go back to Tampa than Nashville. I've looked on here. I was just curious about this. We did have a thought when they announced the Vegas Vipers. Arizona does in fact have vipers. This is the homework I'm doing right now and so does Tennessee, so they fine with either Tennessee Vipers or the Arizona Viper. So at least we know that. I don't know. The Arizona thing is cool. Like I said, I think I don't crowding the east coast there. I like having a little bit more West coast presence. The US of all I think already really struggles with that. Yeah, I mean I think, I don't want to say people are afraid of the West coast. I just think Andy said it a couple times. It's like LA the Rams have trouble filling their tickets and they won a Super Bowl and whatnot. I think San Diego would be the next would be up there. San Diego, salt Lake, Tempe. I mean I'm not too giddy about, what's the word I'm looking for about the East coast load up or the West Coast load up. I mean I'm in St. Louis so nothing really changes for me. I might have to go to a Nashville Nashville game, which it's another area to look at and whatnot, but I mean I'm not too giddy about it myself. Yeah, I think though it would actually not really jerk around the conferences though. They would stay in the north Ish. Yeah, if they kept the Arizona, yeah, they got to keep Arizona for that. Otherwise things do get a little more convoluted. I think if you bring Nashville into that, I would get rid of the divisions. We've talked about this, we were flamed and then look how the playoffs worked out. Now it's like, hey, maybe we had the right idea all along. I mean, you're still a flight, right? I so you you're adding that in. It really makes Seattle the outlier on the west coast. If you do pull the Vegas one, if you're just looking at a map of the reach of a league, it does really make Seattle as kind of the outlier, which we are already. I mean I'm kind of used to that when we get to concert tours and bands come to town and we'll go to LA or we'll go to Portland. We don't necessarily always make it up to Seattle, so I get that. But it's interesting. It's just weird that this just became news all of a sudden I guess. Yeah, and I mean it is what it is. Seattle is on the tippy toe of the country. Some people call it Southern Canada. Nobody who calls it Southern Canada, But I just did and it's pretty cool. I lived here my entire life, not one person anyway, but let us know. Like I said, I think news is going to be coming out. Like I said, I had had the whole Woodson thing kind of like, hey, I dunno if this is happening. And then that obviously came down the Vegas thing here. So this is exciting. Good off season xfl news to talk about here. It's a good week too. There's no N F L football on this week. cfl isn't playing until the weekend, so maybe we'll get a couple more hits on that. Do you have anything else on the Vegas Viper situation? Not really. I mean hopefully this all just kind of comes out and just evens itself out and whatnot. I mean brand continuity goes a little bit of away with me. I think I talked about it at one point. It was like I met people who were in the Ozarks who didn't go to Battle Hawks games in 2023 because they were afraid they were going to leave. It's like I think Vegas is obviously more of a transient town, but do I want my heart broken again? Something coming to Nashville? I don't know. I guess my last note on this would be I'm surprised that San Diego wasn't in the mix just because that kind of originally that's been a floated out idea. They have the stadium there. Andy Murray's kind of champion that with the M L Ss and they play rugby and kind of everything else right there, the steelhead or whatever that's called there. To me that seems weird and I saw a lot of comments on there about it, about that not working out. So people questioning why didn't they want to go to that? I'm just trying to look up what the name of that stadium, Snapdragon Stadium. I knew it was something with the Nest, so I don't know if that gives any pause as well. That would keep to me. San Diego makes the most sense of any of 'em. You keep the west coast, you don't have to worry about Arizona. We keep the conferences, kind of all that stuff. Any thoughts on San Diego? I mean it's got a good pedigree with the fleet. You can bring back the fleet. San Diego Vipers has a nice little coast to it. Maybe change up the color scheme. Bring it back to that. Something you could do if you want to get real goofy is because there is marine aviation out there. They do have, I think it's like a Viper, it's like a helicopter nickname or something like that. I'm pretty sure it's like the a h one Zula Viper or something like that. So that'd be pretty cool. You have a helicopter on the side, you keep the vipers and then on the other side it says snake. We used to put Vipers on our helicopters and I was in Afghanistan. I thought that was pretty cool. So you could, yep, there you go. I have one in one of those by the way. Not high. I just did a thing taxiing around, but I have done that. It is terrifying. But yeah, I mean you could do that and then that's something you can do. Miramar, A lot of the, and this is totally unrelated, but a lot of the testing and r and d for these helicopters was done in California, so not a crazy thing at all. So yeah, I mean that's some useless knowledge for you on that front, but I mean we'll see. I'd like to see something come back to San Diego football wise for 'em. I don't think the Aztecs jazz as many people up as we think. No, and I think this would be funny because the Vipers, because the Battle Hawk was originally that was a plane and they put the history is more of the battle hawks into a bird that was originally a, that was supposed to be kind of a military plane. So it would be interesting to have both of these. But no, I mean I think people deserve it. I think San Diego, like you said, I think deserves that. So it would be good for them. And like I said, kind of keeping that East coast, it's just weird to me. That wasn't brought up in the thing that to me, unless stadium negotiations there and Andy has stock it nauseum, they're taking anything, they're trying to book out that stadium. I don't know if it's just full whatever. To me that makes way more sense than Nashville. Nashville feels like the outlier. I like Arizona or San Diego. Keep it West coast, Keep it west, keep it West coast. Alright, so original bringing on here. We're talking that we have the big cutdown days Tuesday and then the waivers and everything. Now we're finally, I mean this is still fluid and people are going to still get cut and brought on and throughout the year, but we at least have a clear picture right now of who is making it. Then xfl and usfl, those keeping track xfl had one player be signed, stick onto the roster. We had a couple on the injury reserve riot and then we had two from the U S L. Do you on the rundown, who made that on For the practice squads and whatnot? We'll do main roster first it was Brandon Aubrey, right? You have Brandon Aubrey, you have Ray, and then you have Kante Turbin from last year. I couldn't find anyone else. I might be missing someone, so if I did, apologies on that. But this is going from the 2023 class. This is who remained. They still have a decent amount. The US votes still have a decent amount of guys continuing from last year. Mike Abernathy who spent time with the Packers and Falcons, he's on the practice squad. You have DeMarcus Gates, he's on the practice squad still with the Bears after getting caught. Alex A. King Blu, he's on the practice squad for the commanders. Dominique Davis, he got to the practice squad for the Bengals and these are guys who outside of baking Blu all showed up in a regular season game. Zuber is kind of a weird one because there's a couple guys who got put to the injured reserve. Last I checked, Isaiah Zuber was still on the injured reserve. So I mean last year, and I'm digging into my memory bank, I believe we had 28 total players who got signed onto an active roster or practice squad that were on an N F L payroll at one point at the season, I believe 24 was the high watermark. Usually we coasted around that 19 to 21 throughout the 18 weeks and whatnot, towards the end of the year you had a lot of elevations, you had long snappers, you had James Morgan did a quick cameo, you had case Cocus, Brock Miller. So there's still plenty of time for more guys to get looks as injuries come up and whatnot as well. And then you add into, obviously you have a new layer of competition, that number, it's going to be cannibalization of both groups, which is pretty expected, right? We saw over a hundred players around 102 maybe because another guy who got Stein was Devin Ross who played with the Michigan Panthers in 2022, transfers over to the xfl, got drafted in the supplemental draft I believe by the bramos, gets cut by the BRAMOS late training camp or right when training camp brought by the Panthers and then got put on injured reserve and week three, I don't think he recorded a statistic and he just got signed by the Raiders to their practice squad after working out with them that Monday or something like that. Well how does that happen? Who's the head coach of the Oakland or la Las Vegas Raiders? Josh McDaniels. Where did Devin Ross spend a lot practice squad and N F L training camp was New England in 2019. Does the S F L or xfl really make or break a guy like that? I don't know. Is it the relationship? Probably. So you're going to have guys like that who might be air lesser known players that you're like, oh, how did this guy get signed over that guy? It's like, well that's his college coach. That's probably why or his college assistant was with that person. So that's something to keep tabs on as time goes on throughout the off season, in my opinion. It's interesting to me. I dunno because this is the point where we get kind of these questions of like, okay, so it's just worth it, right? One guy from the XO wheeling made it on and then obviously the two, the usfl, is it worth it was all of this and the numbers and the player 54 and kind of all that. Where do you stand with that? I mean it's always going to be worth it for a specialists because it's pretty similar, right? So punters and kickers and all that stuff, I think it's always going to be pretty similar as far as is it worth it? I can't answer that question because I'm not Tino Ellis, I'm not Ben Ucci, I'm not any of these players. You have a guy like DeNucci, chip on the shoulder, all that underdog stuff, right? The poor man's Baker Mayfield. I think at this point, especially with the player 54 mantra, or excuse me, well actually yes, the player 54 mantra with the show, I am willing to grasp that Ben DCI's brand is pretty on point right now. I'm willing to bet that financially he is doing pretty well. So when you have the opportunity, in my opinion, and I think the xfl and the S F L are trying to do this a little bit more, and I think the U Ss F L did a really good job in 2022 and then I feel like players took advantage of it in 2023 like Boogie Roberts and Scooby and whatnot when these guys and McGoo and Victor. But when these guys have the ability to be on a platform and essentially become pseudo celebrities in some sort of sense, I always think it's worth it. Anything that derives more traffic to who you are, whether it be brand deals, whether it be playing opportunities, to me it's more than football and I don't mean it like, oh, it's just a game more than football. I mean it puts more eyeballs on you so people know who you are and it allows them to have more opportunity, whether it be on the field or off the field as far as getting more opportunities and jobs and whatnot. We've seen here obviously Ben getting cut and sticking around on the practice squad Magoo as well here, right, with the Packers, do you see immediately it's like, oh, Ben Ucci back to the xfl? I think Ben's going to chill on the practice squad and be happy. I don't see, see Ben, the xfl was the one time I'm doing this once and I don't see Ben returning And I think Ben doesn't, I don't want to say he doesn't get back to the N F L without the xfl, but I think he goes from being that workout guy to, okay, we have two quarterbacks on our roster. We signed Ben, we're good. I think Magoo obviously, I mean the U Ss F L is what brought Magoo back to the N F L. He was just a camp body, all that stuff. Spent some time on and off practice squads, elevate, deactivate guys like that. They're back in this bad boy. They're back in the fold. They are rearing to go and they probably could do what Garrett Gilbert did and extend their career for another four years, which for a guy like Gilbert, he made about 2.5 million doing that. With that being said, I could see, depending on what happens with Alex, that he would come back to the usfl for two reasons. One, if he goes to the N F L plays there for two seasons, but is only on the practice squad, so he's making 400 K over those two years but doesn't get that shot. He's still going to be hungry. And he's also a celebrity in Birmingham at this point. For Ben, someone who's played in regular season games has, and Alex could have off the field income coming in, but for Ben who might be, it's like I'm an N F L starter or bust, if he doesn't get an opportunity, he might see that football is kind of done in that part. So you can either play in the xfl and I think he's got a bit of an ego, so I don't see him doing that. You'll always get your one-offs in my opinion, like AJ McCarran, maybe a Josh Johnson that just kind of want to play football because fiscally they're good and they can air quote, take that pay cut. But yeah, I mean those two guys being the poster children, as far as for the QB class, I think we would more likely see Alex McGoo back in the xfl or the usfl versus Ben Ucci on either one of those leagues. I always pay attention, this is for what it is, this is a large platform for the world that we are in here, peanuts compared to what the N F L and all that stuff. But I always pay, Ben had been on the show, we'd interacted, I had met him and think if I try to follow someone on Twitter and I pay attention to who is following people back or who was engaging with people, Ben was always like, this is me. I'm not, I dunno. Ben to me always felt like a half step above kind of like what was going on here where maybe you're getting a little bit more interaction with a lot of your Birmingham stallions players or breakers or we were talking with the Viper guys or whatever. That was always my view with that. In terms of overall numbers, surprise, better, worse, we've had this, the xfl is earlier and they have the upper hand or the s l. Did you make anything about the timelines and how the numbers panned out? Yeah, I think the timeline definitely bodes well for the F l. Something that, and if anyone listening could kind of educate me on was that I wish I kept more tabs on was were there xfl players released when the U SS F L ended. And I remember when I came on the show before we went through the roster and we were like, okay, and Mike did it as well. It was like 24 available spots, right? And then the usfl guys once that last week in July, first week of August when the O T A injuries started coming or when we saw guys, for example, Seattle had a couple guys come in their UFAS 2023 guys U dfas and then as soon as their OTAs were over, they signed Levi Bell of Michigan Panthers and Jordan Ferguson of the Memphis Showboats. Immediately they cut these young kids and then brought up the granted Bell. Bell is a, excuse me, bell is a true rookie, but now he's got five or six games under his belt. It's a little bit more seasoned than someone else and whatnot. So it was cool, not cool because these are people's jobs. So it was good to see that there wasn't a lot of as much cannibalization on that front that a lot of these coaches and player personnel people valued the experience of these guys not only playing in a game but also being in football shape. So if they are air quote coming in to be a camp body, they can provide that good look and there's more value to give your time and effort versus this guy versus a college kid who might've been a seventh round, sixth round pick, got his head all big, he got a $70,000 signing bonus and then didn't put in the rest of the work for two and a half months going in the training camp which happens In terms of, I was looking, the articles here, and again this is fluid right now when this was posted 17 from the xfl 12, from the usfl to the practice squads, to me, like you said, it's kind of negligible at this point. It could just be who and the time. I think a lot's been made of, and even on this show, these timelines, I dunno, to me that feels like a negligible difference. 17 verse 12. Am I making too little or too much of that? Yes and no. The thing that the xfl has is one, there's the body recovery and two, they can go to a mini camp, they can go to those rookie mini camps. The bulk of these rookie mini camp workouts happen during the usfl season from the xfl PR standpoint, even though it doesn't really mean anything, it's a great tweet, it's a great content engagement. Anytime any player I've ever talked to came to like Lavert Hill goes to these two workouts, well then all of a sudden I did an interview with Lavert Hill, I get a couple more views here and there. My stuff spikes, their stuff spikes. It is good for content engagement, so I'm not against them championing these workouts and whatnot, but at the same time, those workouts do get you in front of these coaches and whatnot and players and all that goofy stuff and it keeps you in the cycle. It keeps you in the circuit as well. To me, and we talked about this, I guess it was last week when we were getting ready for this and Greg Parks was on here and he had it interesting because we've talked the whole time about marketing and the league and what should the league's vision be? And Greg had the good point of, well up until now, the xfl doesn't have a lot of history. The Vipers might not have any history after whatever, but really relying on this player 54 the rock and hoping here in year 2, 3, 4, 5, you start relying more on the history of these franchises versus just that. I think if they did not realize that now I think now they do. Right? I think for literally every interview, the rock's done, yes, opportunities are great and they can say, okay, we gave these players the opportunity, that's all we can do. But 17 on the practice squad, which clearly is not nothing to sneeze at and that's a good income for those guys, but to have one guy make it onto the roster, it just A punter and he's a puncher. You can be retweeting his punts every Sunday. It's hard. It's hard and that's why I don't want to poo P and opportunities, that's all anyone can ask for and that's all these players and obviously they're not playing in the xfl for free, so I mean they're getting paid and they're getting the exposure and tape and there's a million things. That's why 99.99999% of your marketing can't all be about, we get players in the N F L when it was one special team's puncher. That's hard And I believe they know that, but at the same time it's like I don't want to put this in a negative connotation, but when you're starting a business, sometimes you got to work with clients you don't want to and not that working with the NFL is a negative thing, but sometimes I would think in my opinion, that I would be more pumped about Jordan Temu hitting 10,000 career passing yards in the xfl because that shows longevity and that shows, hey, we're here, we're here to get used to it. I think some people could see that mantra I was going off of and I think the usfl started doing that, especially once the lawsuit or the court case or whatever it is, and that's something I really liked was they were posting, granted there's the connotation of the modern record and whatnot and I appreciate the clarification at this time, but in three years the usfl is still kicking those modern records. Jim Kelly, you put a stat board up there and you're going to have case cookies next to Jim Kelly and those are all that's great content. That to me means so much and thank you to Mark Thompson for scoring 14 touchdowns in eight games because now we have a graphic with guys who have career statistics and whatnot. I think a tweet of Jim Kelly passes or Case Cook has passes Jim Kelly on the all time usfl passing thing. You get Jim Kelly the retweet that I'm sure Herschel Walker would retweet something if he gets passed over. He's active on Twitter. If not, I'll go see him when I see him at the gas station. Next time I'm in Atlanta I'll make sure he knows I'll talk to his manager. But that being said, I think obviously the usfl has the extra season, they have three plus years. We didn't see a lot of that with the stuff I was tweeting out and I'm hoping now we get a little bit more our league and for both of them, our league, our players, our history, Papa Johns. Yeah, better football, real football, real fans, real pros, all that stuff. Yeah, I hope because I don't know, and we obviously had our friend with the usfl last year that was people really pumped like, oh man, we got 51 players signed and all this stuff and then the dust settles and it's Kante Turin's left and you're like, as someone that was not familiar with the world before the usfl last year, what were their expectations going into how many players were actually going to make it and when Kante Turpen is left and by God he had a phenomenal season and all that stuff, but it goes away very quick, that excitement And it does and something I wish, and this is me being very, very petty, but something I wish they highlighted was a gentleman named Mitch for Brony. He's a long snapper. He only played four games last year, but he had five tackles as a long snapper, which some long snappers don't get five in two years. He was the top tackling long snapper in his four game stint. Does anyone care about that graphic? Probably not, but I think that's still content. It's still a tweet. It's someone other than Kante Turpen, Maurice Alexander had a reception last year. Maurice former Stars gets his first career reception. Little stuff like that and then something because these backend roster guys, especially the ones I talk to, they follow these leagues. They know that football isn't coming up as much as they might want it to. So for them to get a few extra Twitter followers because you're showing them out or Instagram, they're Gen Z, they care about that stuff. The millennials are on their way out of this game. We're pretty conceited and whatnot in social media, but this new one is a little bit more up there. I think that's shows that this league is championing these leagues or championing their players and whatnot like hey, you didn't forget about me. I was an inaugural guy. I think that's something to be taken into account personally and maybe that's just me being really petty and whatnot, but that's something I would want see and I think it's good off season content because you can only see a graphic of Nick Tiano works out for the bills or like, Hey, we signed this player type thing. One last thing from me here, we'll wrap this up soon. usfl has obviously put out and we show that the Brandon Aubrey graphic, those with their Twitter feed L hasn't tweeted out. Congrats Dan on making to the Packers. So interesting there. They're tweeting that back to school stuff in Labor Day. So that's interesting. Again, when it comes to expectations of what this league, we have a lot of, we're talking about the showcases that's coming up here and we tweeted that out I guess last week, but it's interesting. None of this, none congrats we got a player on. So that to me is interesting as well because they just tweeted Labor Day sale here an hour ago. So interesting that the X L hasn't was that number not as high as they thought? I would imagine so, Yeah. I mean mean they could be making the graphics now. I mean the S F L I love the usfl graphic. Well I mean both of them to me that's pretty on point. The Aubrey one I liked a lot. I mean they did a lot of good stuff with turpen. Their signing ones were pretty cool as well. I wish they had the graphic where it was like we've had 10, 20, 30. I liked that a lot last year as well, especially during the summer. I'm usually pretty busy so it's like okay, I have nine guys. They said they announced 10 what's going on type thing. I did like the X LS graphics when guys were getting workouts as well. I thought that was kind of cool. I'm just really curious to see if they're going to do a graphic. What I would do if I was the xfl is I would make a team photo of them stacked and whatnot like their players and I would put the number 17 or whatever the number is. I'd probably do that next week before the game on Thursday week one kicks off because these rosters are going to change a lot and I would think that would be a pretty cool tweet if they did that. 17 players on practice squad going into week one. Something goofy like that. Yeah, I'm just looking on here. I just don't see just a lot of, we had here that switching back 50 player whatever. Yeah, I don't know. I would've done something there. Like I said, it could be at the point where it's not maybe what they expected. So I'll be curious to see. I wish I could be in those rooms. I really do And liars don't figure or numbers don't lie liars figure or whatever The thing is, you can make statistics say whatever you want. So one thing I championed with the U SS F L last year was the amount of money made, so those 28 players made 8 million, almost $9 million collectively. So I'm like okay, that's $9 million because of the usfl. You put it back in there. That's something that if one of these leagues is lesser as far as players signed, you kick it back. It's like, well our players, you put the graphic out and you say $22 million because Turpen Turin is going to give you a little bit more. I wish you brought, they kind of embraced some of the 2020 stuff players a little bit more. I feel like it's been kind of infrequent. I mean Heineke could have got a couple of retweets. I feel like last year there was really nothing. Yeah, I mean I like to believe moving forward because you got the people, I mean I'm sure there's people in the xfl who didn't know Taylor or Heineke even exists was on the battle hawks. Well and to your point at the beginning of the conversation, does Heineke get that shot with Washington because of the xfl or because he knew Rivera back with the Carolina Rivera and Scott Turner. Yeah, Scott Turner was the oc, which I mean you got to do what you got to do. I don't think it's a bad thing to retweet Taylor Heineke if I'm the bad luck Because Now you got people in Atlanta caring because you work out a little drug deal with that and you say, Hey Atlanta Falcons, can you retweet that? You could do a we have 'em first type thing and him chugging the beers and whatnot. Especially if he does that with the Falcons, they could be like, oh we've seen this before. A marketing major over here. I do. Oh, the last thing I was going to say was when they were showing those you liked when they were showing the numbers of those 10 players signed because you might have nine because otherwise then you're driving to a gig and someone tweets at you a question of how many players got signed and you respond and then you have people Actually, actually it was whenever I do my best to keep track of this stuff. I don't always know. I try, I work Pat works but we got a lot going on but anything else Pat, we'll get out of here. No congrats. I feel like we probably of the a hundred players, we probably have four that probably will watch us, but congrats to everyone who worked out for an N F L team that went to a showcase that went to the grid camps. Congrats to all the players who are trying to make it happen. You guys have had way more N F L workouts than anyone at Newshub combined. That is very true. I like that. I was just watching this morning Charles Barkley hate talking about Skip Baylis, about people like Skip talks, like he knows all this. He's never played anything so there you go. Yeah, congratulations. Shout out you have more than any of the news hub and probably that Discord as well. Probably more tryouts than any of those players, so appreciate it Pat. We'll figure out big episode this week with Randy and bro and everything else. We'll figure out what we're going to do next, but hope you guys are subscribed and we'll see you next time. Well the man of the hour here back on the show, Cody Fido, we talked with you kind of leading into the season now we're midway through. How are you doing sir? I'm doing well. It's team six and four. Can't complain. Yeah, I've been a lot of positives. Obviously a tough game last week but a lot of positives this year for sure. Yeah, it's been weird watching you Montreal outlets and my team of the east. You're watching you new colors, new kind of everything. What's just personally, what's it been like here? Halfway through the season Honestly proved a lot of things to myself that I could still win in this league. Everyone knows how it ended last year in Sask and not winning a game our last seven or eight games or whatever it was. So to be able to go out to lead our team to some victories and to be sitting in second place in the east is a good feeling. Obviously we want to be in that first spot everybody does and everyone wants that bi-week, but we've played some really good teams. Our roster, we haven't forgot that a lot of people picked us to be ninth in the cfl to start the year and so looking at our roster, we are young, pretty inexperienced, but we're finding ways to win games and I believe we haven't played our best football yet and the best is yet to come and you don't want to be on fire early on in the season. You want to be on fire towards the end of the season. So that's what excites me. It seems like it takes time and obviously you have familiarity with Coach and everything, but coming in kind of assembling all the pieces, has it come together better than you had hoped? Absolutely. I think the culture that Danny and Coach Moss are building is the reason why we've won so many games early on in this season because if you looked at us on paper, you would read a lot of names and be like, who is that? Who is that? A lot of first year players, a lot of guys that were kicked off their old team or their old teams just didn't want 'em anymore. So kind of a band of misfit toys that are coming together and playing some collective football and we're playing some good football teams here these next couple of weeks and we'll really have a good measure of what our team is and where we need to go, but it's not going to happen overnight and it takes time to build a tradition to build culture, but the fact that we're here sitting second in the east with the team, just the whole overhaul that we did in the off season with this team makes you feel like we're doing the right things here. Yeah, tough loss here. Last, what was it, Friday crazy there, Winnipeg Loud. What's it like kind of playing at rabid? I saw BC Lions going there a couple of weeks to go and not do well either. It's a difficult place to win. What's it like playing there? Yeah, it's just very difficult and obviously the atmosphere is tough but that's been the best team in the cfl the last three years and dominant in the cfl. If you look at their record, I think they're eight and two or nine and two right now and they're playing at a high level. Their defense is veteran, very experienced, just a tough place to go on there and win and no excuses but obviously we had a short week, didn't have any time to practice and when you have a young roster you need time to work out some of those kinks, work out some of those things throughout practice, especially when you're going against the three time they've gone to three great cups in a row, so the scheduling didn't do us any favors, but we also laid a goose egg. Personally I think I hold myself to a higher standard. I hold our offense to a higher standard than what we've displayed last week and so the good news is I know we're going to be a ton better. We have a full week of prep going into this BC game and we're just excited to kind of watch that bad taste out of our mouth and be back home in front of our great fans. Well it's interesting because BC's had a couple not, I think they're trying to get the taste out of their mouth as well, really curious to see what the magic's going to look like because both of you guys I think have something to prove this weekend. Yeah, that's a great point. I think they've lost their last two and so they're going to be extremely hungry for a win. Everyone knows that Vernon used to be here and so I know that might be a little bit bigger game for him just because he's back in his old town, but to tell you the truth, if you look at the standings, they're second in the west and we're second in the east and this has a lot of implications moving forward and so we know that they're a great football team. We've played 'em already at their place and they have got the best of us and so we want to defend home turf and we know that they're going to come in here and give us everything they got and I hope that they understand that we're going to do everything we can to protect our home turf and get a big win in front of our incredible fans. How are you feeling coming back, right shoulder injury here the last couple of weeks? How are you feeling now? Yeah, I'm feeling great. After the game, there was no setbacks. I think we did the right thing of resting me. Obviously I could have gutted through it, but everything that we talked about last year with my knee injury and talked with Coach Moss, we didn't want to have the same thing, something linger the entire season. So the fact that I was able to go out there and finish the game and not have any setbacks was huge, which make me think we made the right decision, but going off of two weeks, no practice and then a full week of no practice going into a Winnipeg place, it was just a tough thing. But as a veteran quarterback, you have to go out there and you have to get it done and unfortunately I wasn't able to do that. So that's why I know this week I'll be much better, I'll be more settled in. I won't be thinking about the injury whether it's going to hold up or not. All those uncertainties that you go into into the game you kind of have in that first game and then after you play that first game it's like, okay, it's back to football. So I know I'll be much better and that's what I'm excited for. I'm excited to just hit the field again and just feel like myself and go out there and move the offense down the field and finish with seven points in the Red Zone. We've seen this year obviously injuries with you and obviously Moli going down and Trevor Harris, everything else having a backup like Caleb Evans for you, how is important is it to have that cohesive quarterback room that you guys have? Well, I've been on the cfl long enough to understand you have to have two great quarterbacks to win in this league. Just about every year the starter goes down for at least a game and that's every team and I've seen that year after year after year. So you have to have capable backups to come in and play. And the fact that Caleb came in and played well in a short time and won us two football games so that we weren't looking on the bottom of the standings looking up, we maintained our position going into this tough stretch, which was Winnipeg, BC and Toronto back to back. So being able to have to win the games that we believe that we can win and then compete against the top teams in the league, but I'm so proud of him and the work that he put in. It's not easy being a backup quarterback in this league and I've been a backup quarterback in this league. You kind of sit around, sit around and all of a sudden you get called upon, you got to go do everything that the starter does. And so I was very impressed with the way he handled himself and the way he's worked all year and I know he had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder playing his old team in Ottawa and sometimes you need that little extra added motivation to go out there and perform well and that was a hell of a victory and like I said, going two and oh with all the injuries we've had, not only just me at the quarterback but just our entire team. We've had a lot of injuries this year. I think we had somewhere around 16 guys on the six games, so we've had the injury bug a little bit and we've found ways to win games through it. Exciting here With Montreal new ownership coming in, have you been able to kind of experience or take benefit of that just kind of fresh perspective coming in? Absolutely. I think it's hard for me to compare because I obviously have never been a part of this program, but from what I've talked to the veteran guys who've been around this program, the team is really making the players feel like the emphasis in the product and anytime you get that you feel wanted, you feel rewarded and you feel like you want to do everything you can to win as many football games as you can. So they've done a tremendous job from the top all the way down to making us players feel the most important thing in the building and you don't really get that everywhere in professional football and that's what I respect most about this organization is truly making us and even when we have a bad game like we did last week about with Winnipeg, nobody hit the panic button, the coaches didn't yell at us any harder. Management didn't come down and clear the locker room out or try to sign a bunch of guys. They believe in us and they keep telling us that they believe in us and they're really showing that. And so when you have the backing of the management, it really makes you as a player feel good and make you want to put in that extra work to make sure we get it to where we need to go, which is winning a great company In terms of just making the move going into the season, we had talked when you were on here before, not I'm happy, but wanting to get out of Saskatchewan and everything going on. How are you feeling now, Headspace and everything? Has it worked out as you have anticipated? Absolutely. I mean just to be a starting quarterback in this league, I told you guys I think going into this, I didn't even know if I'd have an opportunity to be a starting quarterback again and so I'm just so grateful for that. I don't know how many years I have left. Nobody really does in professional sports, so I'm going to cherish every moment I have and even through the butt whippings like last week just being able to be on the field with my guys, you sit out two weeks with an injury and even the losses they hurt, but the fact that you're on the field again and you're playing a sport that you love is truly incredible. So we're at the point in the season now that there's no bad blood, no negativity towards Sask. Obviously throughout the off season there's a lot of media buildup, there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of articles that come out. We're at the point now where we're so entrenched in the season that it's kind of gone our separate ways. It is unfortunate that I was injured for that game and it was actually my hundredth cfl game as well, so there was a lot of meaning behind that game with SaaS but wasn't able to play it. But happy the team got the win and a lot of guys came up to me after the game and kind of gave me that one was for you and so it just makes you feel respected and appreciated from your brothers in the locker room. A couple more here, I'll let you go. I appreciate your time. Are you enjoying Montreal and everything? I mean new environment, what do you like about where you're staying A night and day difference from where I was in Sask and don't get me wrong, I love Sask and I love the football aspect of it where it's football 24 7, but sometimes being able to just be a normal human and not be that a-list celebrity is nice where you can go out to dinner and just kind of lay low or there's a lot of great food spots here in Montreal and I don't think I've even scraped the surface of how many food places I can go and eat, but it seems like every place I've chosen has been extremely good and a lot of people talked about the facilities or the fans here and I haven't seen that. I feel like this is a professional atmosphere. I've felt the love through our fans even when we've been winning, when we've been losing our game days have been rocking. So a lot of uncertainty that I've kind of had going into the season just because I didn't know were answered fairly quickly. And so I'm extremely happy to be where I'm at and hopefully I can the quarterback for this organization for the long haul and set ourselves up nicely and win some playoff games and hopefully hoist that gray cup over our head. Yeah, that was going to be my last question. Obviously Saskatchewan known Rabbit, this fans and all of that, but Montreal is no slouch as well and they show up and they've got the horns and all that kind of stuff. What have you made of that and are you pro Air horn here in Montreal? I'm extremely pro Air Horn. I was definitely against it playing here. It was just annoying and loud and it made it hard on opposing teams, but that's how we get our fans to get involved and it makes it tough on the opposing teams so any chance we can get and now I love the horns going usually on the sideline when I hear 'em going crazy. Our defense is out there and like I said, the fan base has been truly incredible and they've came out to our games. We've had three games that have been delayed because of Lightning and two of 'em were home games, another two were in the rain in home and our fans stuck around, made it loud for the opposing team in the rain. And that just goes to show that there's a lot of passionate football fans here in Montreal. It just kind of gets overlooked such a big city, but when you see those fans on game day wearing jerseys wearing Montreal gear, it truly makes you feel like, yeah, this is professional football. And so I appreciate them very much. They've been very welcoming to me and nobody's hit the panic button when we've lost games. Sometimes you lose in Sask and it's all about football and you can kind of feel that pressure, you can feel that because people start talking, people stop you and talk about the loss. But here it's been a warm welcoming and they've really opened up to my family and so I'm extremely blessed and happy to be here. Well Cody, I appreciate your time. You busy week here. My heart will be torn this weekend watching the Lions and the Alouettes but means a lot. You got a lot of people cheering for you and I really appreciate your time today. Absolutely. Always great to catch up with you and appreciate you having me on the show. Awesome Bone Chance and we'll have a good game this weekend. Thanks man, Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, Well here we are coming off a hot couple weeks now for the Edmonton football team. Steven Dunbar, how are you doing sir? I'm doing good man. I'm blessed. Can't complain at all. What are you doing today? You done with practice or what's going on? Headed into the weekend? Yeah man. Yeah, we got to finished with practice man. Got back from the facility not too long ago probably just kind hang out right now, look over the game plan and just game continue to prepare for this big game we got coming up this week. Different vibe here the last couple weeks with everything going on we finally got a couple of victories under our belt. How are the guys, Man, the morale is different around the building. Of course you got a couple hands that bow, it's just a good feeling. I think it was big for our team to realize that we can win, you know what I mean? And how that feels and what it looks like to prepare to win win. So yeah, the DeMar morale is great around the facility so far and now challenges to not get complacent and continue to keep working towards getting better. What was kind of the messaging, obviously you guys had the big win against Hamilton a couple weeks back, but then having the win at home here over the weekend, how was that? Man, that was great. Obviously we hadn't had a win there in a while so I think it was big for our organization, big for the city to finally get a win in front of our home crowd and it's kind of the goal I think I know as our team just to kind of get this city behind us and understanding that we can be a really good football team. What's it been like so far this season? Because Rocky is to say the least, what's it been like for you here up in Edmonton? Man, it is been rough man. Honestly, when you lose it it's always kind of tough, but other than that man, we got a good group of guys on our team that we stuck together throughout the whole adversity of just losing and putting in work and not seeing the results. So like I said, it's been tough but I like the guys I play with and so it kind of makes it easy to come to work. Yeah, talk about that good camaraderie in the locker room even with everything going on. Yeah man, I think a lot of the guys, gen D like each other, we hang out even when we're not in a football facility, we go grab food, we hang out, we kick it all the time, so we are actually kind of friends outside of football so it kind of makes it cool to come to work and be able to work with guys that you actually, I think a lot of the guys will say the same thing. Well I mean a few years back Edmonton and this was even probably before your time there but was kind of known, wasn't quite the happiest place to come to work, so it's good to hear morale and locker room and everything's good. Yeah, yeah, definitely the culture is definitely shifting for sure. We had Trey fourth on preseason, was excited to talk with him. Obviously now he's getting tremendous success and start. What's it like having him leading you guys down the field? Man, it is great. It's great. He has a different type of spark to our offense, our team and I'm just happy for him man. He is been through a lot this year, A lot of ups and downs throughout his career, basically just trying to find himself and I mean it's cool to be a part of him, kind of blossoming into the player that he is and who he's becoming and I'm excited for him. I'm excited to see what he takes the rest of the season. And in his career moving forward, What do you view, how do you view what he adds to your guys' offense? He's dynamic in a lot of ways man. I know it gives defenses a lot of headaches of how they defend, how explosive we are on the outside in perimeter and we got a great back. You bring straight forward in there and it's like, okay, what we going to do? I think that's the element that Trey kind of brings to our offense. Like okay, we got to plan to stop all these guys, but then it's like, okay, now we got to figure out a way to have the tray. So I think just by him being able to be in that prison, it opens up the door for everybody to have their opportunity to make plays as well. So yeah, he is dynamic man. So it opens up everything. You've had a good year regardless of the success of the team and now everything's coming together. How have you stayed motivated to keep performing here with everything going on? I just believe in consistency man. I'm not really too attached to the outcome of things. I'm a big process guy. I just believe that if you stick to the things that you set out to do when you started and a lot of ebbs and flows of things happening to go on and you just stay consistent and eventually you end up on the other side of it. I just kept that mindset throughout the year man, just stand consistent in my routine, stand consistent with what I bring to the team and on a day-to-day basis and just being who I am regardless of the environment and what's going on. Yeah, it's helped me out man. In terms of the coaching staff there, you feel like they're taking care of you guys. How do you feel like it works alongside players and coaching? Man, I think it's really good. I think we got a really good players coaching, Chris Jones who likes to make sure that we feel good on game day. We got a bunch of coaches, especially on the offensive side of the ball and defense side of ball that really are players or what former players so they really understand the life, the mentality, the mindset, the things that we dealing with don't the feel and also how we think why we out there and the things that we looking for as individuals and as a audience and we connect in that way even just just man to man, person to person. We actually have conversations all the time between our coaches and players. It's cool. Like I said, a lot of those guys are former players so conversations are easy when you're trying to tell 'em what you're seeing out there on game day or if you're in the meeting room and you're wondering why we're doing a certain thing, why we calling a certain thing, it's easy for them to talk to us. So yeah man, it's a dope environment in there man. In terms of Edmonton as a whole kind of historic cfl franchise, you think about that city of champions and everything they call it or I mean how do you want to carry on I guess that legacy up there? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean obviously you come here and you look all over this facility, you all over the stadium and you hear about all these great cups that they won and all the success they've had in the past and it's kind of like I first got up here and it's almost like the city is almost looking for that team again. You know what I mean? That organization again to get behind, it's the support they did all those years before. So obviously as a player who's coming here and establishing a new home here, you obviously want to do that for the community, for the fans and be the person who gets that train rolling. Do you like Edmonton? Do you like Edmonton? This is a city, what do you like to do there? Yeah, it's cool man. I always tell people ask me all the time, it's not like a big crazy big city from New Orleans. I went to school in Houston so I've done the whole big city thing, but it is, like I said, it's good enough man, you got places to go out to eat. It's a little couple of places to if you want to go out, have a drink a few, definitely good for that. They have parties, festivals and all type of stuff going on so it's kind of that happy medium, you know what I mean? Yeah. I spent a week and a half in New Orleans years ago and that was probably five days too long. Yeah, you probably three days About did me in there, too many trips on Bourbon Street. Yeah, I feel you on that. You looking for, I mean we got Edmonton Winter coming up here, it's one thing to be in August, beautiful summers, what's it like there playing on the cold but it comes around Man I heard the winter here are brutal man. It's going to be my first time experiencing it firsthand, but I mean this is prime football, this kind of where it's like that wall, you know what I mean? Coming into the winter after Labor Day, it's when the season kind of gets down through it, you know what I mean? Far as a competitor you look forward to it, you know what I mean? And see who going to play well when they're not playing healthy, when they're all excited about the season when things aren't really going out, they thought it would go, they kind of will knows kind of people. That cream of crop kind of rise to the top. So just with my few years up here, I've noticed what I'm saying after Labor Day, that's when the real season starts. Well you guys are coming in your own here going into Calgary kind of big divisional game and obviously you guys are not out of it really statistically here with everything and how the West is. How are you getting up for the game this weekend? It really would be important for you guys to kind of ride that momentum. Yeah man. I mean it's obvious that our Destin is in kind in our own hands. We just got to do what we have to do and we can kind of rewrite the story of our season, you know what I mean? Obviously it's plain as day that the opportunity is there, but I think the message is to take it one day at a time, play at a time, one game at a time and just kind of be in the moment because if we get too ahead and it's like it does no good for us, you know what I mean? So I think the message for our team is just to kind of stay focusing on where we are at, know what I mean? And actually definitely riding this momentum. I think Chris Jones told us that after the first game to really take in how this feels, you know what I mean? Far as just winning and this is how this feels, this is what it feels like. Get used to it, know what it is that you did to prepare to do this and allow yourself to continue to keep doing that and that's got to be the focus for our team, you know what I mean? I guess my last question, you talk about Coach Jones and there's been a lot of media stuff lately with God you got to get rid of him or whatever, even through all the adversity you guys have been through, has he been able to keep you guys all locked in? Do you feel that? Are you on board with him and what's going on? Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent on board with him. I think everybody on our team, coaches and players and support staff are standing behind him a hundred percent I think I believe in him, I believe in the staff that he's put around us, I believe in the team that he put together and like I said, it's just a matter of us coming together. We had a really young team, a lot of guys with first year cfl first and second year cfl players and I just think it was a lot of obstacles that we had to go through and we just had to really find a way to figure out how to win, you know what I mean? I think guys are maturing, guys are understanding what it is, what it looks like to win and how you win up here and yeah, I think obviously schematically and coaching and culture, all that stuff got to jail and work in the same direction, you know what I mean? So it takes time sometimes teams get that right out the gate sometimes teams take time to kind of figure that out and I think we just had to take the time to kind of figure it out. It wasn't a Chris Jones obviously he the head guy so he's going to take the brunt of it, but it's an organizational thing as a whole, you know what I'm saying? Everybody got to buy in, everybody got, it's difficult to get a whole organization same direction. So like I said, I'm excited to see what we doing moving forward and like I said, you know how it goes when you're losing, everybody got something bad to say and win. It's like that can never happen. Well good luck. I lived and died through the last couple games you guys have had and the Winnipeg that week and then everything over the weekend. So I wish you guys luck and I got a lot of friends up in Edmonton, so good luck with everything. Yeah sir, I appreciate you having me on the show, man. Thank you. Huge special thanks to all the guests today, everyone over at the cfl offices, Lucas, everyone for making that Randy Ambros available. Really appreciate that. Him taking time on the American podcast. I remember the first time Randy came on, it was one of the three down, it was like the roughneck or the, not the roughnecks, the Red Black podcast was like, how could Randy Ambros go on an American xfl podcast? Well here we are, three guest appearances later. Really appreciate that. Thanks Lucas. Like I said, everyone over the cfl offices, commissioner Ambros, everything with that Pat making time, tracking all the players and it was a busy week. Our group chat, which is crazy, trying to keep up and okay, who signed? Okay, they're back on the practice squad. So hope we did good. I know that's still kind of a fluid situation, but I think Pat and I did as good enough job as we could kind of getting you recapped on all of that. Special thanks to Cody, PIDO, Francis, everyone over there and then Hernan over with the Alex getting Steven Dunbar and all of that. Super appreciate it you guys. Like I said, like and subscribe, enjoy the episode this weekend. Real football coming next weekend, next Thursday. Very excited for that. Mariners are in the playoff hunt. Commanders are going to be playing really a time to be alive here. Cracking preseason starting soon. So hope you guys enjoy like and subscribe. See you next time. Thanks.

CFL 2023 Week 12 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 12, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Monday here. Welcome to the, mark has got the banner going this week when the entire episode last week was so distraught with the lion's loss. Didn't get the banner going. We have it here. Had the Mariners not gone 15 and two against the Kansas City Royals on Saturday. I might have thrown my phone through something injured myself. Someone else. This is a rough weekend guys. How are we doing? I'm doing good, Reid. Really exciting week of games and I'm really excited to get into it this week. Yeah, notice your big, bold, Tigercat uniform. Appreciate that. Appreciate that. I don't have my BC lion hat on right now. Mariners deserve my head space, so not alliance. Evan, how are you doing? Yeah, doing well. I mean, what a week, what a time to be a fan of this league and to be involved. I mean the slate in general was, it was mixed, but I think there's one reason that stands out that we're about to get into. I don't even have to say it. I don't want to be the one to say it, but that makes this week stand out above all the others that we've seen so far. Yeah, Tim's talking here. Tim, we got the outlets flight deck. Yeah, we'll talk to Alex. We're going to talk lines first off, just off the top here before we get into everything. Teased it last week on the show. Recorded an exciting interview this Friday. Proud to announce that our commissioner, Randy Ambrozy, coming back on the podcast. Had a great conversation with Randy late last week. I think this was good. This is the third time he's been on. I think Randy's got some familiarity and okay, what is a Mark cast? What is going on? I asked him if I could call him a friend of the show. We talked about Victor ques departure. We talked about what does Randy want his legacy to be as cfl Commissioner, so this is good. This is good. About 17 minutes with the commissioner, so hope you are subscribed. Are we excited, gentlemen? Is that going to be good? No, that'll be a highlight of the season for sure. Yeah, Randy looked nice. He had a nice jacket on. He complimented my shirt. He said, oh, you look really good too. I think Randy and I are like, we're basically best friends now, so maybe Randy could join us on one of these episodes. All right, so guys, do we want to talk? Do we want to talk Elk's here? I'll get the game up. We finally did it. We finally did it bandaid off everything else. I watched this game start to finish. Dorothy was coming home from a girl's weekend. I guess we'll go first. What did you make of this? Yeah, well, it finally happened for so many weeks. It was, I'll see it when I believe it and now I can finally believe it. Just so strange to me. I mean, before we really get into the game first home game after Victor Que is gone and they do this can't, it's almost like that's the part that I really can't believe the Elks past couple weeks have been trending in this direction. I think we've talked about it. They've made progress. We'll get into Trey Ford and everyone that we've talked about at nauseum this season, but they've been making progress. This was in the works now. We didn't know, I mean, the Victor Que stuff was extremely sudden. We didn't know that that was going to happen, and it kind of happened right in the middle of this sort of like they were starting to get where they needed to go and now they finally got over the biggest hurdle. Of course, still a lot of work to do this season. Still a lot of games to win if you want to call this somewhat of a success, but it's something. It's something and it must feel so good if you're an Elks fan. You're from Edmonton, you live in Edmonton, you went to the game, whatever. It must've been a great feeling just being there and experiencing that for the first time in, I mean, just about four years. It was October, 2019 and we're coming up on September, 2023, so I don't know. It was so nice to see and I mean I think we all figured it was a possibility, but just to actually see the final score with the Alex on top at home, you can't write it any other way. It was great. Yeah, I mean the Elks losing streak has existed before the Mark has was in the creation. I mean, just to kind of welfare check here, what did you make of this as a longtime fan of the league? Yeah, I was going to say the same thing that it is predated the existence of my channel as well. So I mean just so happy for all the fans out there that they no longer have to carry around this burden of this ginormous losing streak. And I think that just to talk about my experience watching this game, I didn't get to catch it live. Of course, I was actually working last night, so I actually stayed up to watch the rerun on t s n 2:00 AM eastern to 5:00 AM eastern. So that's commitment for you. They wasn't posted on demand yet, so that's why I ended up doing that. So had to go witness history and that was my experience watching the game and I'm just so happy that they were finally able to do it. Yeah, a guy here, we'll get the box score and all that. Yeah, Evan was talking, I thought this was not, I mean, funny isn't the right word, but Victor tweeting out last night, incredibly happy for the players, fans, coaches and staff who've been working hard for this win. Congratulations. I mean, I have to imagine. I mean Victor Qui Edmonton hometown man, still incredibly excited for all this. I mean, he's still a part of the community and everything. I mean we make jokes about him and kind of the departure and everything else from that, but he has to be excited about that. I mean, like Evan said, we saw it trending in this direction. They got the win last week, all the pieces together. Trey for here, pretty remarkable stat line, 15 of 18, many, many scrambling, and then one td, zero interceptions, clean game. Evan, what did you make of Mr. Ford's performance? I mean, this was his most complete game of the season. There was a lot of talk about, I don't know who you had on your show, Reed that said it. It might've been Naylor who was talking about, well, Ford, yeah, looks like the guy. He's making progress, but he's got to win and he's got to stay consistent. Now you're finally starting to see a bit of that consistency on both sides where they can win games and he can put together a very solid performance, and this was above average, I mean, 317 yards on 15 completions. You don't see that very often, really just all around. I think this, again, we've talked about Trey Ford so much, I don't want to make the entire show about him, but just while we're on it, Trey Ford, I think we've all been pounding the fist on the table for him, and there were a lot of questions still. I remember when Taylor Cornelius was starting, we would always talk about, well, we'd like to see Trey forward, but that's still not a solidified option or anything. There's still a lot to work around. There are still a lot of things that they have to develop. So the fact that he's doing this, doing these performances so quickly, I think is a sign of just how prepared he really was. And I think we can still all agree that he should have been playing earlier in the season. I really don't think that's up for debate because I mean he's been at this rate mean if they keep this up, I mean they could really finish the season looking respectable. I'm not going to say good because it's already been way too much bad, but they could finish looking respectable. There's still time to save this thing with Trey Ford at the helm, and that doesn't mean we're already out of playoffs. We're already looking at possible coaching changes for next year. Those things might not be saved, but putting together a decent product on T SS N or C B S Sports Network or whatever, that is still a possibility. And I think for the Elks, that's a huge win right now. Yeah, naer talked about it. I think it was in the, I can't remember if it was pre-game or at the halftime, but he was saying he kind of used the CFL seasons if you're playing golf and you got the front nine and the back nine and he said, Hey, Chris Jones is one for one right now on the back nine and kind of had half a season to get this together mean, especially with the lions kind of pooing right now, everything else, Hussie really not that far out if all things are being equal, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think like you said, it just really comes down to the state of the playoff race and all these other struggling teams right now, specifically the Calgary Stampeders, who the Elks could even leapfrog in the standings with a victory in the Labor Day game next week. So really excited for that. That's another point I wanted to bring up is that the Labor Day games now look to have a lot more juice to them that they didn't look like they had prior to this week. So really excited for that weekend. And I think that the thing, just to piggyback off of Evan here, I think that the thing with the quarterback play in Edmonton is that not that it was just slight improvement from Trey Ford. It's really a night and day difference, and I think that it's really opened up that entire offense. Maybe some of it is the offensive coordinator change that they made a couple of weeks ago as well, but I mean, like I said, just night and day and I think that you're seeing lots of bootlegs off play action. It's putting a lot of stress on defense. Obviously cfl defenses are just not accustomed to dealing with a quarterback as fast as Trey Ford, and he's taking advantage by hitting a lot of big plays out there. And you saw that in this one. Ottawa has really struggled with giving up big plays over the past month or so. We've talked about it many weeks now on the show, and Edmonton was able to take advantage of that and get that first win. Yeah, this Monday is September four. They got the schedule pulled up here. Tremendously exciting for that B BC here at Montreal. Tim, Tim Kaper in the chat talking about how the lions having to throwback cap available. Tim, I saved my money for winners. I saved my money for winners. Maybe when we come in again, we did a couple of years ago beat the Montreal Ettes at home. I remember we had that be where you had to change your logo on the podcast to BC Lions logo, so maybe we could go get one of those again, but I have no faith at all right now in that. Yeah, I had the tweet up. Just whatever highlights doing this show and Trey Ford and everything else, Gina looked great. He was back worth every penny. It really felt like there was still some elk stuff in there. We saw some penalties and the too many men, and we are still working through discipline issues like that, but it feels like they're getting here. Evan, how are you feeling here, steamrolling here? Are we building two games in a row now? Building momentum? Yeah, it looks good. Everything looks good right now is the bottom line. I think we can all, I mean, there's no denying this is the best part of the elk season. This is the best that the Elks I think have felt in a long time because even in seasons prior where maybe they won a couple games and did some cool things, nothing feels as emotional as this does. And again, I'm not an Edmonton fan. I really have no connection to the Elks organization, but I can only imagine, again, for the guys like Dave Campbell who I always bring up guys that put so much time and effort into that league. I can't imagine what it feels like right now to just feel like you've done something. You've at least made a dent in the season and made an impact. And there's at least some positivity because for too many weeks, for way too many weeks and also even years, I mean, it's been a couple seasons of lackluster performances for the Elks. It's just been way too much negativity. And I always tried to look at the positives. I think when we've talked about the Elks in weeks past, I've always looked at the team and tried to point out things. Well, they have this IX player who can do X thing, and that's good for the future for when you're trying to build something next season with whoever's there, and it's obviously going to look a lot different still. But yeah, I mean I'm just again really, really happy and how could you not? I think the only people who were frustrated about this were Ottawa fans, but I think the rest of everyone else involved with the cfl was just kind of cheering Edmonton on because again, it needed to happen. It needed to happen. It was dragging on for so long and it was again, becoming a point. We've talked about this before too, where it's not just hurting the city of Edmonton and their football team, but it hurts the entire cfl as a whole. Yeah, I got the highlight up here. It looks like Trade Ford's doing his best Nathan work impression. We matter guys, the c f, because Nathan work is playing in the N F L now, and then we can call, I had tweeted that previously. I didn't have the clip ready. I said, if Nathan work, does this play Twitter breaks? This is the same thing. We see that Padberg Holmes if he does any of this stuff. I did think it, oh, that was what I was going to say with the whole Ottawa thing of it all. And Jason, you might have to probably know more about this than I do, the Ottawa fan base. What is the mindset of the Ottawa fan base? I know we have Jenna, a longtime friend of the show, and she's a red black fan, but I can't imagine the strong lineage that is an Ottawa Red Blacks fan. Can you put me in the mindset here? What does it feel like to be if you're an Ottawa Red Blacks fan in 2023? Yeah, well, it's tough because when the franchise originally came back in 2014, they had some pretty immediate success. They had the very poor first season and then I think it was three Great Cups in four years appearances that is, and then they won it in 2016, but the last four years have really just been dreadful. They've been really just as bad as Edmonton has been the last three years. And I think that it's sad because earlier this season they have the two dramatic victories over Winnipeg and Calgary looks like they're turning the corner. Looks like Dustin Prom may actually be something, but he's clearly regressed as defenses have found a way to take away that running element or at least limit that running element of his game. And I think it could be another lost season here now that they're one game behind Hamilton. I think they're two games behind in the lost column. They played another game then one more game than Hamilton, and they actually play Hamilton after they come back from their bi-week next week. So that is a huge game for them, and I think that as for their fan base is concerned, I think that they have a pretty loyal fan base. I went through a game a couple of weeks ago, really good turnout for that one. They're still drawing around 20,000 people, and that's pretty remarkable considering it's a East market and it's also a team that's struggled for the last three years, like I said. But yeah, it's hard to, there's not that much of a history like you said, because they've only been around for basically 10 years here, and hopefully they get it turned around soon. I speak about this as someone that's like a Seattle Sea Dragons fan with all five home games under our belt. Evan, what do we make of Dustin Hussey saying he's regressed? It certainly feels that way. We kind of have the initial story. What are you making them? Ottawa? Yeah, they're in a tough spot right now. I mean, you could honestly argue, I mean, well, Edmonton's got a long way to go, but so does Ottawa. And the reality is, like Jason said, we talked so much about Edmonton because it looked so much worse for them and the media was on them a lot more, but Ottawa had a pretty long home losing streak too, and their past couple of seasons have netted next to nothing. So really it's almost, I mean, I'm not saying we should lay into Ottawa more. I don't think we should be laying into anybody. We don't really have the right to do that, but come on. I mean those guys have their issues and those issues clearly are continuing. Now, this has been an extremely unexpected season for Ottawa, just like it was for Edmonton, but perhaps even more because I think Ottawa had a much different direction in mind, whereas Edmonton still knew that they were going to be rebuilding. They just thought they'd have a couple more wins under their belt by now, I think. But I mean, you look at Ottawa, they lost a lot early on and the season outlook is already, I think so different than from what anybody there expected on both the staff personnel side or whatever. And the fan side, again, talking about the fan base that you brought up, I just think it's a bit of a different projection and yeah, this point they had a couple games kind of like what Edmonton's doing here. They've had that overtime thriller against Winnipeg. That was probably maybe my favorite game of the season, just going back on things, and I've brought that up a lot on the show. They've had games like that. They've reached their peak as well, but that's dropped off again and now they're sort of experiencing, well, they're really at a point where there are seasons. I mean, it looks like it's almost over, especially with what Hamilton did against bc, which I know you don't want to talk about Reid, but we'll get into that eventually. Just with all that in mind, I think the outlook doesn't really look good here, and as sad as it is, and there was hope, there was a lot of hope, I think for Ottawa, even when things were at their worst when Jeremiah Meli was injured and everything, there was hope, but now I think you're already starting to turn the page and looking at next year, which is a hard pill to swallow, and I don't think, again, there's still a lot of season left. You never know. I mean, you just never know what could happen. I can't rule anything out, but I think we can all say right now things don't look great for that team in terms of their success this season. It's almost like you have to, you're starting to get to that point where you're like, okay, what's 2024 going to look like? Who are we keeping around who might not be here anymore? Things like that. Yeah, I mean that Winnipeg game feels like a lifetime ago at this point. I mean, it really does, and it felt, I remember we had on whoever it was that week, I can't even remember talking, and it was, oh, when I had Steve Simmons on and he's like, this weekend was arguably the most entertaining of the cfl season thus far, but he's like, I don't know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. We have all these unknown quarterbacks and people are getting hurt and kind of all that other stuff. Andy Murray has a comment under Cornelius who was 15 points per game under 4 27 0.6 points per game. Luis is saying, Andy, professor Andy Murray and hit the nail on the head. Jason, any other football stuff? I have some funny comments to bring up about this one before we get out, but do you have more football stuff? Yeah, one point I want to bring up about Trey Ford that I don't think it's talked about enough is that Trey Ford has been playing Canadian football his entire life and compared to these other American quarterbacks that come up here that are learning a brand new game, I think that it's really helped Rey Ford's transition into the cfl and obviously that athleticism as well has helped him have success early on here. So I just wanted to bring that up because I think it's something that's not brought up enough about him. Well, Dunnigan had a really good quote from him on the color commentary where you said his mind is going faster than his legs, where it really does feel like he's able to process a little bit more, I guess probably brings up your point where he's been kind of in this system and he's not coming in fresh like a Dustin Cru here and okay, what's going on? And I have to learn this game. I've talked with Naylor about that, how it really takes a couple years to get people figured out. I had showed this tweet earlier, Steven friend of the show met him back in Regina last year, reforward showing the league how dumb Edmonton coaching staff has been keeping them on the bench as long as they did. I did have, this was a funny thing too, so morally Scott, friend of the show tweeting now the Edmonton concession stands. I'm very impressed with the bacon cheeseburger we had in Dave Campbell saying, this is a winner. I privately messaged Dave. I said, I think we know why Victor Queen was dismissed from the Edmonton Oaks and this was your big, big concession. I go, I just got home from T-Mobile Park. We have $20 slices of pizza and sushi, hotdogs and everything else. We have the Morley Scott Bacon cheeseburger, and then from my poll, this one didn't circulate very well, but it really did seem like people were all in on free trade for it here over Crumb sanity. Evan, anything else on this one? Oh, I had the Jalen Herz too, or he was wearing, they were showing that during the game and we matter as well because Jalen Hertz was wearing a cfl expansion team. I guess his dad played for them back in the day. Evan, anything else on this? Yeah, just touching on Trey Ford again, really quickly. Jason, you said, I mean, he's a Canadian quarterback, so he comes into the league with an advantage. I think that's true, but it's been tough for him because I feel like with that advantage, you have to capitalize it. You have to capitalize on it quickly to kind of set yourself apart from the American quarterbacks, but trade forward just hasn't gotten to playing time. So we haven't seen a lot of him until now. I mean, again, I'm sure things again are trending in the right direction. It certainly looks like he could have a very good season from this point onward, assuming he starts in every game, doesn't get hurt, whatever. But yeah, I mean it's an interesting discussion to be had about Trey Ford. Maybe if we don't look at it from this season, but we look at it from 2024 and beyond what his outlook really looks like. Excuse me, as a quarterback and how he could set himself apart by being the Canadian. I think he already set himself apart when he was drafted that high as a Canadian quarterback, a first round pick. I think he was eighth overall in the cfl draft Edmonton, so he's already set himself apart in that sense, but it will be Trey Ford is one of those guys that could have one of the more interesting and perhaps again, outstanding careers in the cfl as time goes on. I would certainly hope so. Anything else on this one? Jason, you want to move on? Yeah, let's move on to your favorite game to talk about this week. I thought the Winnipeg Blue Bomber, they are doing tremendously well with the social media right now live. Look at the standings. After week 12 here, I was working, I had a wedding, one of our last of the season here watching the score come down and I'm like, what the hell is going on in this game? There should be such a cakewalk. I don't understand that. I was messaging with one of my cfl people Saturday night. I don't know if it's the culture is the right word or a locker room issue. There is something wrong with the BC lions right now, and it was kind of like, okay, we can't get up for the away games and we play worse on the road now. I mean, this is a cakewalk victory. This is okay thrill. The hometown fans come in. Rick had his post game. I think they're a very good football team that we are not a good football team today. I don't know, at what point does Rick start taking accountability here? We can't just whitewash these games every week like, okay, we got to move on. We got to move on. I mean, we had our druthers last week with how bad this was. I mean, I guess we'll go first to Evan. This just feels like the lions are falling apart. We're seven and four now and these are very, very winnable games. Well, I don't know if falling apart is the right term. It certainly looks like that right now. The Saskatchewan game was a surprise, and then this was, I mean, I would even say this was more unpredictable than Edmonton winning at home, which is saying a lot because that was the sort of, I'll see it when I believe it's scenario, but I mean this was a shocker and BC the whole thing was they don't lose at home. Yeah, they struggle on the road a bit here and there, but they don't lose at home now. They've lost at home. So that red flag that we talked about last week, okay, maybe you've got a couple tweaks to make is now elevated because you've lost back-to-back games both home and on the road, and both of those games were extremely winnable. We all know that anyone who watches the cfl on a regular basis is going to know that. Me personally, I don't think they're falling apart. I still think they have the right personnel. I still believe in Rick Campbell as a coach. We love Ryan Phillips, a defensive coordinator, all the pieces are there. I think they're just getting too comfortable. That's the best way I can put it. I think they've been so accustomed to success, and I'm not saying they're accustomed to success, but at the same time, seven Games, you won seven games. This isn't like a dynasty Here. No, I know, but that's what I'm getting at. Because while they are a good team, not just in the West, but across the cfl, they still don't have the championship pedigree that teams like Toronto and Winnipeg do. And that's the difference here. That is sort of the one, I don't know if you've ever seen that meme where there's those, it's the three dragon heads and there's the one dragon that looks really goofy. You know what I mean? With the face? I could try and pull it up later. You can try and pull it up, but that's what I think about of the lines right now. I'm not saying, yeah, that's the one. I'm not saying, I am not saying that's what I necessarily think of them, like the team as a whole, because I love that team. Again, we just praised the personnel. We praised all the things that they have, but the reality is they haven't gotten to the point that these other teams in the cfl Winnipeg I think has a different sort of discipline. And I think Toronto's getting to that point too, but specifically Winnipeg and we'll get into their game against Montreal. But I think that was a great example where every time you think Winnipeg is going to lose or do something stupid, they change your mind. They'll change on you, and they win the game and usually they win it in dominant fashion as they did this weekend. I'm not going to get into a big tangent about Winnipeg here. That has nothing to do with the game that we're talking about. But again, my point being bc, while they are a good team, they are still in some uncharted waters. And I think maybe that sometimes, I'm not going to say that they get carried away. I think it's just these quick little mental errors that add up. Again, you're getting too comfortable. You think that because you haven't lost at home until now and everyone's been saying good things about you. Everyone I think really likes the culture. There's been a lot of praise. I think some of those guys might've just settled down a bit and they weren't on their toes. And then a team like Hamilton comes in and takes advantage of that because we all know how hungry Hamilton is. I went on the show last week saying Hamilton could go to the playoffs, and everyone was like, I think that was the least popular option against Ottawa and Calgary. But I mean, look at Ottawa. They just lost to Edmonton. Things really aren't looking good there. I figured Hamilton could do something like this because while their team has changed a lot and their aggression has changed a lot, I think the overall mentality there is different compared to when they were competing for Gray Cups. The reality is they still have a lot of those guys. Like Orlando Steinhower was the coach that was there for the two great cups. He's still there. They still know how to be in certain positions and take advantage of certain things. That's not even something that Rick Campbell has, you know what I mean? So at least a bc So it's a complex thing, I think. And again, I'm still, again, it's a real shame that BC came out there and performed like that. I think that was again, I mean unacceptable sure for, and I know everyone there knows that, but yeah, it's tough. It's tough. And I think again, now we have to start asking these harder questions that maybe we tried to avoid before. Yeah, I got your meme up here. I've made that. Tweeted that out here. If you see that. Hey, Winnipeg, Toronto. There you go. There You go. James has a good comment. The Lions have been listening to the media too much. The bomber derangement syndrome caused the media to crown BC way too early. I would co-sign that. Jason, thoughts on this? Yeah, I mean I still think BC's going to be a pretty good team going forward. I think they'll shake this off, but these last two games are really going to cost them first place in the West Division. And I think that's the reality of the situation. And I think they needed to host the West Final more than Winnipeg did, and that just looks like it's not going to be a possibility anymore. And I think that it's weird because they didn't really have too much pushback in this game, whereas in that game against Saskatchewan, they came roaring back and almost won it at the end against Hamilton. They couldn't get anything going offensively. And I think some of that has to do with the Tigercat coaching staff and their familiarity with Vernon Adams from his time with Montreal. And I think they put together a really good game plan for him. But some of it was just mistakes that BC was making in this one. Jovanka toy had a big fumble, they had a couple of big drop passes. They just kind of looked out of sync the entire game on offense. And this defense doesn't look scary to play against anymore like it did about a month ago. So I mean, just disappointing last couple of weeks for the Lions. I still think they're going to be a good team going forward. But like I said, first place just seems like a long shot at this point. I saw the tweet as well where it's, remember when they basically made James Butler had him in the leading rusher and they traded them away and really did nothing at all to shore that up? Got Meze here at nine Carries. I mean, Vernon's throwing 40 attempts here at 326 yards. He had like 400 right in the loss against Saskatchewan. Just remarkable. I had a couple tweets from Dave I showed before. A stunning result tonight during my pre-game prep. I concluded this was one of the single biggest and physical mismatches of the season, really puts a jolt and the dynamics of both divisions. And then he had this one, they're just two kinds of upsets in football. One where a bunch of full moon plays happen for the underdog and the favorite team just can't overcome them. And then there's the other where their favorite team just gets flat out beaten tonight in Vancouver, I had then the quote from Renon, I hate losing man. I hate it. I hit it more than I like winning, which I do. I mean, I love Vernon. I dunno, I'm really kind of flabbergasted by this one. And like we said, VC needed to host that West Division final and I just don't see that happening. Evan, thoughts on this? The TCATs Katz with Powell, everything else. So before I get into some of the matchup stuff, which I also do find really interesting about this game, the point that Jason brought up and what you touched on about BC not hosting the West final most likely. Now that really sucks and that I think is going to be, we will look back on these two games if BC loses the West final in Winnipeg and it's going to be the biggest face palm that you could imagine what they needed. That has always been the struggle. And again, we've already talked about their games on the road this year feel so much different compared to their games at home. And that's like BC's a good team. We all know that. Again, great overall roster, great coaching, everything looks great there, but I think there's teams with significantly worse records than BC that probably play better on the road. And that's a big red flag. And I mean, again, maybe I'm being more critical now, maybe we're talking about more of the red flags because they've lost at home things. BC's hitting a rough patch here. They're sort of low patch of the season, just like we talked about Edmonton reaching their high in Ottawa kind of hitting another low. It sort of goes, the cfl season is so long. I'm starting to notice these waves, trends, things like that. But yeah, I just wanted to point that out. I think that whole home and away thing for the playoffs is really, that matters here, I think more than anything else when you look at division wise, standings, all that good stuff. But I'll get into the game here and things that I thought were interesting from the stat sheet, we'll start with Hamilton Taylor Powell, I think this was his most complete game. He's had a couple games where it was some good and some bad, and then there was a couple other games where it was just a lot more of you're telling yourself, okay, he needs to develop more. You can tell he's been quickly thrusted into this role. Again, I'm not going to say he's bad. I don't think any, I'm never going to call player bad. That's just not right. I can't do that. But Taylor Powell, this game really showed, I think his progression. Now, keep in mind he didn't have to do a ton because James Butler in his BC revenge game, this was one of his more complete games of the season. And I think we've talked a lot about James Butler. I don't want to say he looks out of place in Hamilton, but he is been way slower this year than he was last year, and it's just been soaked. I don't know, it feels like it's been really up and down with him too over the course of the season. So really good to see him get involved. It's a shame that he decided to turn things up against, well, it's a shame for BC fans like you, Reid. I think the rest, I enjoyed watching him go out and go out and do that. But yeah, no, I mean it was interesting. And the one thing that really, I'll switch over to b e C here. The one thing that I find just fascinating about this team, the lines win or lose. Vernon Adams still has these incredible passing gate. Their offense, even on a losing day still feels like they can churn out a ton of yardage, especially through the air on the ground has been, yeah, mixed bag. Melle has been, again, they've got some work to do there. I think losing Butler has really hurt them. And ironically, again, Butler tore 'em up this game, or at least the defense. But yeah, you look at Vernon Adams, I mean 326 yards in a loss, they only put up 13 points and he still had 300 plus yards. And once again, look at that. You go down to the receiving column, you've got a hundred yard receiver and Keyon Hatchers seven catches, 107 yards, one touchdown. It is amazing to me how I feel like every time this team loses, which they've got four losses now, so it's starting to become, I mean, they were what, seven and two, seven and something, so now it's seven and four because they've lost the past two. Now it's starting to become a more common theme, yet they still have such a potent passing attack. I mean, I see things like that in college football where teams will lose and put up a ton of yards, but I don't know, seeing it at this level is extremely interesting. And I think that, again, it speaks to just how well-rounded this team is. I will still give the lions praise, even though they're going through a tough time here, because even when they lose, I still feel like they have a somewhat entertaining product. A lot of it just comes from mistakes. And to be entirely honest, I think a lot of the blame can be put on the defense in the past couple of weeks really for most of their losses. I just don't feel like the offense has been as much of a, I don't want to say problem, because I still feel like DC's defense is a complete unit as well, but there's no denying. I mean, the Winnipeg game, Saskatchewan was just a close one. I don't know if that was really on either side, but this one definitely felt like a bit of a weird mismatch for BC's defense. And again, it's out of character. It definitely makes you question things. I still think BC will be good, but let's put it this way, this is the last thing I'll say before I give it back to somebody. I've been talking for too long, but if BC goes to Winnipeg again and loses in the West final again, is that really a successful season? Is that really what you went out and wanted to do? No, this team, we know this team can go out and win a great cup under the right circumstances. I believe that. Okay, I'm a firm believer that they can go out and win a championship. I look at their roster, again, coaching that we've already talked about. I combine all that and I'm like, this is a championship caliber team, but you have to get over the hump. You don't want to be one of those teams. I think of, I mean, I don't know. There's a couple of examples in the N F L in recent years, maybe the Saints where it's the classic regular season team you can win, and then it comes time for the playoffs where it's instant elimination and you don't know what to do, and it sucks. That's I think, almost worse. Like Vernon had his quote, he said, I hate losing more than I like winning almost, in my opinion. Worse if you're a good team in the regular season, that constantly loses in the playoffs than just being one of those teams that has a losing record and doesn't go at all because you feel like all of your accomplishments have gone out the door. And again, that's a conversation that's up for debate, how you feel about that and how you feel about certain teams records, but I just can't imagine how crushing it would be for this BC team to go to Winnipeg again and lose. I'm not saying it's going to happen. They could surely pull it out and surprise everybody, but it just doesn't look that way right now. And I just feel like if they lose that game, because I think they can get through the rest of the regular season, fine, but if they lose that game against Winnipeg that we've talked about so much that we think is going to happen, we're like 99% sure it's going to happen. If they lose that, first of all, it's a disappointment, but then you start thinking about next year, will they have the same personnel to get to be in that same position or are guys going to leave, explore new opportunities. Opportunities. Where's the confidence level? That's my big question there in the locker room. No, that's where I'm at and I want to get Jason's thoughts on the tie cats as well. I have a tweet last year when we were getting ready for the Gray Cup show, I remember talking with a lot of the B C P people, and this was kind of like post Nathan and Vernon was there, and they're like, well, no, we really we're hoping to be there. We're hoping to be in the Gray Cup. We're in the, I'm like, okay. I mean, there was a little bit of delusion last year. I think Vernon held that ship as long as he did. We're basically, we didn't just throw away the season, but it really never felt like they were competitive at all. After work went down, it felt like, in my mind, I'm like, this could happen this year. They're that dominant, and that's just all totally gone out the window. Jason, I had a tweet here from the Black and Gold. Let this be a turning point for the tie cat season talking hell deep hell BC at home and all this stuff. Do you view that as that or do you view it as BC given another way? I think it was the most complete effort. The tie Kats have shown this season by far, and I think that even in the games that they had won previously, there are three other wins. I don't think they looked very convincing, and I think in this game, they just came out with the complete game plan. Probably the most shocking thing to me was just the fact that Hamilton was just gashing BC's defense with the run, every single play. It seemed like BC never really had the, in this one, even though Vernon threw the ball 40 times, it felt like Hamilton had the ball for the vast majority of this game. And James Butler just simply was the man in this one, the offensive line, making holes for him upfront. But I think Butler against his former team was just a different kind of motivation for him. And I think for the defense, I think that it was easily their best game of the season. And I think that, like I mentioned before, I think that Tyca coaching staff is very familiar with Vernon Adams from his time with Montreal. So I think they were able to game plan and know his tendencies a little bit. So I think that played into it, and I think that they tackled very well. They generated a few takeaways, and they also had a huge third downs stop on the first possession for BC that really set the tone for the game. So I thought I was very impressed, and it was totally unexpected from me as a TCATs fan. I mean, almost all TCATs fans were expecting a loss in this one, but the cfl is a weird league sometimes and you can't really explain it. Yeah, that's what I learned. And I remember a couple years ago and I did fantasy, we all did it with the hub people kind of the first season of that, and I just don't have time. But yeah, you'd set up this and okay, I got whoever, and it was so unpredictable, and that's why I've always said, I'll never bet on sports. God forbid I'm upset enough about this stuff. Can't imagine that. The other question I have for Jason was the oc we're switching the coach. Do you attribute a lot to that as well here where it's been a couple weeks with the new offensive coordinator? Well, I think it certainly hasn't hurt. I think that just having a fresh face in there, I think Tommy Condell, he had some great years with Hamilton, but I think switching it up, and I think they're probably still running a lot of his schemes, but sprinkling in a little bit of what Scott Milanovich is bringing to the table week by week here. And I think that the commitment to the running game, like I was saying before, is a big difference, I think from where they were under Tommy Condell, TCAs, just known notoriously as a past heavy team, but that's changed this year in the last few weeks, specifically with James Butler in the fold. So I think, yeah, the offensive coordinator changed, probably has factored in a little bit, but I wouldn't attribute it all to that. I think it was just a really good game plan in this one. We'll move on here. We'll kind of double time. The other two games, I had this off the top. I forgot to pull it up. We had the Richler passing away at 74, I believe yesterday, or at least over the weekend. Wanted to make sure we commented on that. I probably have the least amount of notes for the Stampeders Argos game. We were at the Mariners Kansas City game on Friday. I guess we'll go first. Evan on this Calgary made an effort here. Mayor, kind of waking up a little bit. I saw some memes earlier in the week, Ryan, one of the friends of the show, like, mayor. Mayor on the wall, will I throw a touchdown at all or whatever. But what did we make of this at Toronto? Still taking care of business like championship caliber teams do. Yeah, I mean, oh no, I'm glad that was good, Reid. That was good. No, but I think Toronto every, well, we'll start with Calgary. I think regardless of how maybe disappointing Calgary has been this season, they'll always give Toronto a run for their money. I don't know what it is, but those guys just know how to play against Toronto, figuring things out. Unfortunately, they still couldn't get the job done, but this game was way more entertaining than I thought it was going to be. I thought Toronto was going to beat the brakes off him. I know Calgary won last time, but again, a bit of different circumstances there. I expected this to be sort of more like the Winnipeg Montreal game was, but it wasn't. I mean, Jake Mayer, we had said last week, we really kind of did a deep dive on Jake Mayer and just how bad his struggles have really been. Pointing out some of the stats that have really, again, all looked in the wrong direction this season. Everything has not looked great on his end, but every time you say that he has these games, he kind of comes out of nowhere and decides to dominate again. And I can't really put my finger on why that is. Maybe it just has to do with opponent and when the game is or whatever. I don't know. Sometimes there's weird criteria like that, but regardless, Jake Mayer, again, this is the Jake Mayer, I thought we were going to get really this entire season. Now, I don't know, this was still a pretty exceptional performance by that standard, but you're talking about Jake Mayer, it was so difficult for him to get to 200 yards per game, and here he is getting close to 400, no interceptions. I mean, he's had a couple games this year where he really did ball out, but this one I think felt the most complete. I mean, yeah, there was high yardage, high touchdowns, but it still felt the most complete. And yes, Calgary lost. So maybe it take some points off for that, but I don't know. I still enjoyed it. I think that it was a relief on my end because I don't know if Jake Mayer, I feel like, I mean, we were at a point last week where it was like, if Jake Mayer even has a couple more of these sub 200 yard games where they can't score in the red zone, they might just, once you realize your season's over, you might just be putting somebody else in and seeing how that works out. Did I think that was going to actually happen? I don't know, but it certainly seemed like a possibility in my head. Now, obviously Jake Mayer, it looks like he's proved himself again, but the guide really here that I want to talk about for Calgary before we get into Toronto's side of the ball is Reggie. So I've mentioned Reggie Beton a couple times on the show this season, but he missed a couple games due to injury. And again, the passing offense just hasn't really been anything to write home about. So he hasn't done a lot, but Reggie Beton for a while has been one of the more, I think, intriguing cfl receiver prospects. And boy did he show it in this game. I mean, this was one of the best receiving performances you could ask from any receiver. He looked like one of the best receivers in the league in this game. And yeah, I mean, I don't know the stat line, he was targeted a bunch. I mean, he was getting fed, but even Mark and Michelle had four for 82 and a touchdown even that once the passing offense opens up, I know that these receivers can do great things. I do think Reggie Beton is one of the better receivers in the cfl, which is the point I'm getting at. But no one would really know that this season, because Calgary hasn't done much throwing the ball now, we finally had an opportunity where he could get worked into the offense, and it's been shown definitely. I mean, going over 200 yards in a game at receiver and scoring twice is ridiculous. I mean, that's, think about how many fantasy points that is if you want to get back on that fantasy discussion. But no, I mean, it was good to see at least a bit of a spark from Calgary. They still didn't win, so it doesn't feel as exciting. It definitely doesn't help things out. I saw that time. I remember when you said that in the chat time. Took me time to find here. Yeah, no, but Calgary didn't win, so I don't know. It definitely makes things feel less exciting, and to be honest, that it almost feels like a nail in the coffin of their season. I'm not going to say that now because they played really well in this game, but just looking at the record and everything, I mean, hell, they're getting close to them now, which is staggering. I mean, for somehow, I'm not saying it's going to happen, but if Edmonton finishes over Calgary in the standings, they swap spots there for fourth and fifth. That's, I don't know if you're a St. Peters fan. Dunno, I just, I'm kind of at a loss at that point, but I won't get into that. I mean, now we're just kind of cracking meaningless jokes. So I'll get into Toronto here briefly. Do I really need to say anything about them? No, they do the same thing every week. Now. They're starting to get, I mean, we've talked about how they kind of resemble Winnipeg in the sense that they're extremely consistent, and even when they make mistakes, they can come back from them again. That's why they won the Great Cup last year and probably have a good chance of doing it again this year. But I look at Chad Kelly, this wasn't a flawless game by him by any means. It was definitely a bit slower by his standards, throwing two picks and yeah, he had a ton of yards, but he could have completed a couple more too. It wasn't flawless, but four total touchdowns, so that helps. I don't think anyone's going to argue against him all around. Yeah, I mean, AJ Ette, I feel like he has the same stat line every week, just extremely efficient, close to a hundred yards, 70, 80 range. Demonte Kie we've seen, I feel like, I don't know, I don't want to say he's one of the top receivers in the cfl yet, but he's had so many good plays this season where I think the potential is, I mean, he could be maybe top five at some point. I don't know. I've really liked watching his game over the course of the season. Devar Daniels, someone I'm extremely familiar with, again, another good game. Andrew Harris had a touchdown in this game, which I thought was really cool. We don't talk about Andrew Harris a lot anymore because he's in an extremely reserved role in Toronto behind AJ Ette, and he's really old. He doesn't need to get that much work in. He is, I don't even know how old he is, what, 30 30 something, mid thirties. He's old. He's old. He's really old. I don't know. To me, I always call him the Frank Gore, the cfl. Whenever I'm talking to my friends about Canadian football, I'm like, well, there's a guy playing up there right now who's essentially the equivalent of Frank Gore. He just won't stop. He's still playing. Yeah, 36, that's ridiculous. But yeah, overall this game, I expected Toronto to win. They did. Flow went a bit differently than I expected, but ultimately it is what it is. Now it's time to move on. I don't know. I didn't watch much of this game either, so I don't know. I'm not going to ramble about it for too long. I think there's more to talk about there with Calgary though ultimately than the Argonauts, because we just know what to expect from them at this point. Yeah. Jason, is there enough spark of life here with Calgary? Yeah, I think that if the games with Edmonton and Calgary, if either of those teams sweep those back-to-back games, I think it could change the season for either of those teams. Definitely think there's good things to take away from this game if you're Calgary offensively, but I mean, at the end of the day, they just didn't make the plays necessary at the end of the game to win, and that's just been the case far too often this season with them. I think that, just to touch on Reggie Beton again, I had a video that I did before the 2022 season where I ranked my top 15 cfl wide receivers, and I actually had Reggie Beton ranked that number one in the cfl, and I thought when I saw him in this game, I said, there's that guy. There's that guy that can be an elite receiver in this league, and he absolutely was in this one fortunate that he wasn't able to come away with a victory. But at the end of the day, again, I think there's still some positivity to take away from this game if you're Calgary for Toronto. I think that Kelly faced some adversity through the two picks, like Evan said, but he also made several big time throws down the field. He has great with Devar Daniels Devar. Daniels really making good on his potential that he's shown his entire cfl career. This is a guy that doesn't have thousand yard receiving season. I do believe in his career, but I think that he's definitely going to reach that this year. He's always had the potential in my mind, to be one of those top 10 receivers in the league, and he's shown that this season. Another guy in Toronto I want to give a shout out to is Dwayne Hendricks. Defensive tackle had a couple of massive run stops in this one. That's another thing. Calgary really couldn't get the running game going in this one, so that was a good thing from Jake Mayer's perspective that he was able to move the ball efficiently even without the running game. So I think that Toronto, same old, same old, like Evan said, I think they're arguably the best team in the cfl still and for Calgary, I think their season's not completely lost yet, but the losses are piling up. Yeah, I'm looking here as you were talking, looking forward, we have the Edmonton at Calgary and then the Calgary Edmonton. Sometimes people poo poh these home at home or oh, we're playing whatever. I mean this is division solidifying stuff here. If Edmonton could sweep, like you said, that series on that could be interesting. Let's get to the last game here. I did watch a lot of this one. One felt like Calleros was a little rusty coming back doing his best Taylor Cornelius impression and then obviously holding the alouettes to no points in the second half at all. Interesting here. I wanted to see Cody kind of wake back up again as well after we kind of had the Caleb Evans experience. Let's go to Jason first on this one. This is what championship teams do. Like, okay, we face adversity. Our quarterback threw two pick sixes. I think Zach made the joke like, oh, I actually threw six touchdowns in this game. Whatever. They come back, they shut it down. If this was bc, I would have no faith. They would be flustered and then oh my God, we got to go. They didn't worry about it. They had it, it was tied or they were whatever at half. What do you make of this? Yeah, this is a fun first half in this one, but ultimately Winnipeg just showed that they are the far superior team and Montreal is really just showing this season that they can't hang with the big dogs. I mean all of their losses, all their four losses came against the big three teams, if you will, and the cfl. So that trend is continuing. But like you said, Calis, he really looked rusty in the first half. I think he also threw another interception in addition to those two pick sixes, but ultimately I think he shook it off and you saw those playmakers really shine for Winnipeg. You just see how much of a complete offense they really are, where they have all those playmakers on the field. Brady Oliveira is having one of the best seasons by a Canadian running back in a long time. I think that Andrew Harris hasn't ever even led the league in rushing before, but I think that Oliveira is by far the leading rusher so far in the cfl this season. So I think he'd be the first Canadian running back to do that in quite some time. And I think that, like you said, it's what championship teams do. They bounce back and they were able to really put the clamps down in the second half. Montreal really didn't get anything going on offense in this entire game. I mean, you take away those two pick sixes, they scored three points in this entire game and Winnipeg's defense has really just returned to their elite form after having a shaky start to the season. That I was pretty critical of. Yeah, this reminded me of it was the it the West semis two years ago, it was Winnipeg versus Saskatchewan, and Winnipeg I think turned the ball over six times and Saskatchewan still lost the game and you're like, you have to have a day here when your quarterback, like you said, can throw three interceptions and you still put up almost a 50 burger here on the Montreal. Different stat line, Evan, and we've seen for Zach here, but obviously still coming out with the win. What did you make of this? Still throwing four touchdowns? Incredible. Yeah, it was an interesting game. First half. I watched this game in its entirety, by the way, first half. Yeah, it felt very competitive in the first half. Really felt like Montreal had a shot. They were playing extremely well. I'll give a shout out to, I'll talk about Winnipeg first, but I can't talk about this game without mentioning Mark Antwan de Quais first from Montreal. Love that guy. I love the way that guy plays and I think I maybe mentioned him when Montreal had that game against Toronto back last month in July, the back and forth game, the one that we all really liked too during that crazy week, I really liked Mark Antwana, Quass safety, I don't know, just really, really, he had a really good performance in this one. Obviously it wasn't enough like Winnipeg pulled away, but that guy has some serious potential and I'm glad to see that Montreal has found, I mean, shout out to their personnel department. They have found a lot of guys. Austin Mack has been an immediate impact player in his first year in the league and just guys that really stand out and it takes from someone who now does personnel work. It's a long process to find guys that can do stuff like that and they can really get involved. But anyway, I won't get too sidetracked for Winnipeg. Yeah, it was really, I don't know. It was a very strange day for Zach. Now obviously they pulled away. Zach didn't even have to play the whole game, but he had some just miscues and I think that's part of you're coming off a game, you've been injured, you're warming up again, it happens. Montreal's defense has some good pieces too. I think two of those picks went to Qua, so there's that. So if you take away those, there's only one interception. But yeah, again, like I said before about Winnipeg, the same thing applies here. It's every time you think this team is going to lose or do something stupid or act up, they pull their things together and they just go get the job done. And you would've never even thought about it twice. I mean, it's honestly incredible during the second quarter that game, it didn't look like it was even possible for Winnipeg to maybe get to 30 points that night and they got damn near 50. So I think that really speaks again to that. It's just a mentality. It's like we can only do whatever happened in the past. We can't change that now. We have to go out there and just get the job done and just take it play by play. Don't focus on what happened before, only focus on what you can do in the future. I'm starting to sound like a coach now, but you get the point. I really think that's what the mentality is there and that's why they can just keep doing this week after week, month after month, year after year. Now it's honestly just, it's one of the greatest no one, I mean people really cared. I mean, well, let me put it this way. This is a bit off topic, but I want to bring it up anyway while we're talking about sort of Winnipeg and the whole dynasty. A lot of people look the Edmonton and their 22 game home losing streak or whatever, and people who weren't fans of the cfl knew about that. But there's not enough people who don't fall the cfl who are aware of how good the blue bombers are as a football team because I don't think people understand. It's very rare to see this kind of success at any pro football level. I mean the blue bombers are almost, I mean they're getting to a point where, I mean if they go out and win the Great Cup this year, you're looking at Patriots kind of thing, dynasty level. You could honestly argue that they're again, different leagues. I get it. I'm not trying to draw any direct comparisons, but in terms of just winning cultures and things like that, that they're so consistent. It's hard to find that you think about college football, what would the equivalent be for Winnipeg? Probably Alabama pains me to admit that, but it probably is. They set a standard and things just like that, they just win. It's nothing. It comes naturally to them. They still have their mishaps here and there. Even the greatest winners in the world don't win all the time. Greatest teams, greatest people, whatever. Everyone has their moments. But Winnipeg, it's just, so I wish more people in sports media. I'm not saying these people have to become cfl Homers or whatever we call 'em, right? But I think it would be nice if a team like Winnipeg could get some more coverage for what they've been doing. Because the reality is, I mean, yeah, there was the Covid season and yeah, they lost the Great Cup last year, but they've been in three straight championship games and if they win the Great Cup this year, I absolutely think there needs to be more coverage here in the US about that team. Specifically if there's one cfl team. I nominate to be sort of the team that people know here. I mean now we're getting into America's cfl team territory, which Rita has already claimed to be the Lion, but maybe I take the Bombers just because again, they're so successful. I feel like people would, I don't know if they gravitate towards that. I'm not necessarily saying this is a pull for more American fans, but I just feel like this team is so damn good in all of sports in general. But no one talks about it. So I don't know. A couple things here. I want to get Jason. I had, oh this where the Montreal, the famous air Horn guy, and I thought this was funny pumping out the ELs. I did comment on this. I said, seriously F this guy. That is my one problem with the cfo. I was like, oh, let's let this one guy who's having fun take over this entire experience. I had a tweet here, friend of me of the show ballsy talking like Caleb Evans should be the starting quarterback. Jason, what did you make of this Montreal Cody looks shaky. Like you said, the offense not really doing a lot. Yeah, I mean I think you could argue both quarterbacks look rusty at points in this game, but I think Polaris's struggles I think manifested itself as in turnovers, whereas it really was just an off game from him. And I think, like I said, I attribute it a lot to Winnipeg's defense really rounding into form. And I think that it'll take a couple more weeks like this to really be concerned about fdo because I think Fdo Hass largely been pretty good this season. I don't think that Caleb Evans is a full-time starter in this league. Played a couple of really good games, but I think that fdo really is the starter for this team. I don't think going to Evans full-time is an option. So I mean I wouldn't be too concerned just yet for Pajaro in Montreal. The last note I had on this game, I did watch this one as well once it was, I kind of turned it off here at the end of the fourth when it was up a lot. I will just say Marshall Ferguson is becoming, is moving to a different level here in terms of we're tweeting shirtless videos, we're blaming rain delays. I used to work in TV and I always used to say, I cover the news, I don't make the news. I think Marshall needs to cover the CFL and not be the C Ffl. Now I don't think Marshall is playing in the cfl game. I don't like this. This bothers me and it kind of upsets man. I don't dunno it if anyone else feels that way, but I just wanted to get that off my chest. Otherwise business as usual. Winnipeg, Evan, anything else here? We'll start putting the show to bed here pretty soon. Luis says, questions about the Times? You have a live show that covers the League weekly. I agree. I think the cfl kind of lives and dies in Sunday and then it goes away. I like doing the Monday show and now when they're going to go to Doubleheaders or whatever. You really kind do lose that weekday kind of stuff. I know Twitter exists and all that stuff. Evan, anything else from you? No, I don't think so. Interesting point about Marshall Ferguson. Personally, I like Marshall. I think he's a cool dude, but I get it. I get it. And then we had here, oh, we're talking. I'll get up here. The Trade four bandwagon. Jason, anything else from you on here? No, I think that covers just about everything for this game. Where is this again? Here? Oh yeah, coach Phillips talking now you all don't jump on the Trade four bandwagon now you're all the ones praying for this Farhan. We're jumping a board, getting on board the Trade four bandwagon. Excited to hear about that. I guess let's look ahead really quick Games next week. Let me get that up here. Week 13 BC at Montreal. Jason, are we expecting anything different? I mean BC has had a couple of bounce back games here, but now Montreal is probably the stiffest competition they face in the last couple of weeks. Yeah, it's worth noting that BC has traditionally struggled when they've traveled to Montreal to play. I believe they lost their last year. So I think that's worth pointing out. I mean I think that all four of these games, when you look at it, have some juice to them when you look ahead to next weekend. So I'm really excited for the week ahead. Yeah, I do thank God for the Mariners leading the a l s right now. I couldn't handle Commanders undefeated in preseason. That's going strong Mariners here. We've had two A game win streaks in the last month. But yeah, BC is really struggling here. Evan, anything standing out for you for games ahead here? Yeah, overall it's a good slate. BC, Montreal, I mean first game of the week. That one could definitely be interesting just with the way BC's playing now. I mean it's pretty much a must win game for them I think. Not that it's, there's seasons on the line, but just to kind of salvage, well, I don't even know if salvage is the right term, but just to get back to the way things were a couple weeks ago, that's the bottom line. But yeah, honestly, all these games, like Jason said, have some potential. Even Winnipeg at Saskatchewan, Toronto and Hamilton. I don't know. I feel like Toronto will take that one still. Edmonton and Calgary, that's like 50 50 split for me. I have no idea. And that one's going to matter a lot too. If Edmonton wins that Calgary and Edmonton will have the same number of wins, which is just unbelievable. They're the same record. They'll both be three and nine, which is, I don't know the fact that that's even, maybe we haven't talked enough about Calgary this season, but I'm going to save that for another day. Yeah, well I appreciate it. Like I said, it should be good. Make sure you're subscribed. I know Jason will do his stuff, his previews and everything else on his channel. Remember we got Randy and Broy coming up on Friday. I got to figure out, send a couple more emails. I think Pat's coming on to do the xfl. I would cut down day with the N F L here coming up and then she'll try to work on some interviews. But should be a good show, like I said, as 17 minutes or so with the commissioner. I thought it was I good. Like I said, I asked him, what do you want your legacy to be? And he kind of BSed at first and I thought he kind had a good answer where you got to get, I think it was the same thing when I had Amar Doman on before. I think you got to get past about the first 10, 15 minutes of like, okay, here's all my soundbites that I say. I think once you get past that, I think you get a little bit of gold. But I thought Randy was good. I like him a lot. I know he gets a lot of slack, but I thought that it was a good interview, Evan, appreciate it. Good luck at college this week, Jason. Everything else and staying up till, what was it, 5:00 AM watching the game. Like I said, thanks everyone. And yes, Luis, I did ask him about expansion. So we get all of that stuff. Should be good. Thanks everyone. We'll see you next time.

Episode 159 - "0 To 100, Real Quick"

Coming up this week on the markcast. Well here we are officially over a hundred xfl and usfl players have signed nfl contracts leading into the season. And in the words of an infamous Toronto RAP hip hop superstar, they went zero to a hundred Real quick. I don't dare try to sample that song and infuriate the YouTube copyright strike Gods here this week. But you know what I'm talking about here. Drake zero to a hundred xfl and usfl signings. We have Greg Parks of xfl board joining the show. We have preseason grades for the players who's most likely to wind up on nfl rosters and more. It's impressive and it's a number that if you're xfl leadership you can sort of hang your hat on. You can use to recruit the next batch of players who don't make nfl rosters this training camp or who were tryout players at rookie mini camp in May and never signed and they're looking for getting their foot back in the door and the xfl can say, Hey look, we've got all of these players from 2023 that were signed. We've got all of these players who've received nfl tryouts and if you want to get your name back in circulation, this is an avenue you might want to take And an early episode this week to make way for all four cfl game previews. We have Milt Stegel joining the show, longtime friend cfl Hall of Famer, gray Cub Champion, and now a part of the cfl podcasting circuit as well. What is going on here? Milt Siegel gives this thoughts on everything cfl week 12. Definitely good for them to get that first victory but they had to make a major move within that organization and unfortunately it had to be Victor and I wouldn't be surprised if something else happens later on the year in off season because changes have to be made when your team is playing like that. And then Alexander Hollins from your America cfl team, the BC Alliance joining the show coming off a tough loss last week. How are they going to bounce back at home against Hamilton? Should be a good show like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the mark as Reed here back on a little bit of a regular schedule are prerecorded but Thursday throwing everyone off. But these Thursday cfl games really throw a wrench in. My plans should be back on a normal podcast scheduled next week. I think we will have a really, really big guest, even bigger than Mil Stegel longtime friend of the show, cfl Hall of Fame Blue cfl Hall of Famer, a great cup champion, all of that stuff with the blue bombers, but should be a good show next week, this week as well. Greg Parks joining us. We are running down everything from the xfl and usfl signings to the nfl officially a hundred plus players this week. Very to see that we've had even like Brian Hill friends of the show all the way back in the nfl Alumni Academy making way onto rosters. Really excited to talk with Greg about that. Greg's been great grading the players, talking about their performances, who's most likely to stick here once roster cuts happen next week. So we'll be getting Greg's thoughts on everything involved with that. And then like I said, Milt Stegel joining us, lots of talking, lots of fun with Milt. He's always a blast here getting his extended thoughts. Why is Milt joining? This is Milt now is a C F O podcaster who would've thought, but really excited to talk with Milt about all of that. And then like I said, Alexander Hollins joining from America's cfl team of the BC Alliance. Good show this week. Like I said back, getting a little bit more prerecorded, relied heavily on the live shows here during my busy wedding schedule that is winding down so we should be getting back to more of the traditional Friday slate. I don't think the CFL does many Thursday games here in the fall with football and everything, so should be back to normal here pretty soon with the Fridays, if not next week entirely here through the end of the nfl season, but I guess a big show next week. I think I just emailing back and forth corresponding, but should have a great interview in the can for that and then we'll see what other shenanigans we can get into. I know the cutdown for the nfl next week is the 29th, so we will be able to do a full deep dive into who made the rosters here with the xfl and the usfl through waivers and all of that. So hoping Pat if you're listening or maybe Evan or we could take team up, we'll figure it out, whoever wants to do that, but we'll work on that for next week. Hope you guys enjoyed the episode. Get us up to 3,500 subscribers, like and subscribe. Thanks so much. Well we're back here dog days of summer talking X L off season. First off, pour one out for Terry Funk. Sorry to hear that. We have Greg Parks here. I saw you, we were posting about that today as well, so that's no good. Yeah, I mean 79 years old man, that's a long life for a guy who's had as many bumps and has wrestled kind of matches that he's wrestled throughout his career for as long as he did. I mean I think he wrestled into his sixties and so 79, that's a long time for a guy who's put his body through what he's put it through. And I mean you just look at all the different eras that he's wrestled in, all the different places he's wrestled, all the people he's wrestled, all the styles, he's wrestled. He could hang with Rick Flair for 60 minutes and he could wrestle an E C W, your garbage matches and stuff like that. So what a talent. He was just a shame passing away today at 79. Yeah, well I saw that it's one of those like, oh yeah, I guess he's still, because some of these guys get up and Rick Flair and all that stuff, but not enough, too much wrestling. Today we're talking xfl combined now officially this week. I think it's 1 0 1 now by the time I get sent the thing and then I post it from the agent or whatever and then the xfl post it. I'm like, okay, was that okay? Yeah, that's the same, but I think we have 101 now combined between the xfl and the usfl here. So of course Drake zero to 100 thoughts on that? I mean I think that's a pretty testament, testament high number. I mean I'm pretty surprised It's a good number. I can't say that I went into this saying, okay, if they get 50 players signed, that's a good number and if they go above that, that's great. If they get below it, that's failure. Whatever you want to say. I never really had a number in mind. I didn't really know what to expect the last time we had something like this in 2020 with the xfl, it was during the pandemic, so you didn't have a lot of players going in for tryouts the way that you do with players. Now the usfl had a lot of guys signed last year, but now it's the usfl and xfl and we've just not had two leagues of this level basically competing to get their guys signed into the nfl. So I really didn't have any kind of set expectations for how many players would get signed to the nfl. I think the number they're at for the xfl, which is I think 62 or 63 at this point, 63, they started counting differently. If you notice in their press releases they're counting the number of contracts signed now. So the guys who sign and get released and then sign again Jacquez Patrick, they count twice so they're no longer counting the number of players signed. So you got to kind of count that yourself. So that's been a little difficult, but it's over 60 I guess we'll say Whatever that number is. Right? 63 63 was 66 contracts. We've had three double ups. Okay, so I mean that seems like a good number and I've been keeping track of posting every once in a while on social media. The percentage of players who finished the season on active rosters who are being signed, I think we're close to, we're over 20% of that. The number of players who've received tryouts we're well over a hundred of those players and I think we're well over 25%, probably closer to 30% of players in the league who have received tryouts. So it's impressive and it's a number that if you're xfl leadership, you can sort of hang your hat on, you can use to recruit the next batch of players who don't make nfl rosters this training camp or who were tryout players at rookie mini camp in May and never signed and they're looking for getting their foot back in the door and the xfl can say, Hey look, we've got all of these players from 2023 that were signed, we've got all of these players who've received nfl tryouts and if you want to get your name back in circulation, this is an avenue you might want to take. Yeah, because it's getting to the point where, and for each player is different, but where you have at least a quarter more of the players at least getting looks, tryouts and then bending, funneling down I guess into signings I could wall on a practice squad for and yeah, you're making significantly more money than you're going to be making the xfl, but if you want to play with the xfl or the usfl, like hey, let me go do eight, 10 weeks, I'll get a look. I think having the usfl gone through two seasons now, the xfl, it is becoming that we are a viable thing that I think a lot of agents should start kind of veering their players into. Sure. And I think that's really probably what the hesitation was at first agents and players wanted to know, is this viable? Is this going to sustain itself? I don't want to get caught halfway through a season like has happened before and all of a sudden the league shuts down and I'm left holding the bag. So I think agents and players wanted to see that this model is sustainable and they want to see results, they want to see how many players are getting nfl opportunities and once those boxes are checked, I mean those were the two main, I think holdups. So without those there, I do wonder if you're going to see an even higher quality of player enter into the xfl and usfl this year. Yeah. So what did we say? 63 and 38? Yeah, 63 and 38 for the usfl. So I always have when I post, well, how many does the S F L have or how many, because that's another one of these stick measuring contests or whatever. But I think it was 51 pre when the nfl kicked off last year. Obviously they signed more guys into the season, GTE Turpen obviously being the one for the Cowboys and did the all pro, there was a couple of injuries that stopped a couple of the other players from making it on. In terms of, and this is just whatever, what would you consider a successful number retained into the season from the xfl usfl combined here? If we have a hundred plus? Well, I'll count practice squads for that because I think the number of players who are going to make an active roster out of training camp is going to disappoint people. Quite frankly, I've been tracking them on xfl board the first two weeks of the preseason. I've been listing some of the notable performances good and bad of xfl players from 2023 and I've been keeping tabs on the athletic and on local papers of what the beat writers are saying. They're putting out projected 53 man rosters every week. So I'm kind of scouring those and unfortunately it does not look like very many xfl or even U SS F L players are going to make initial 53 man rosters. I think you're going to have quite a few that have the potential to make practice squads. Practice squads are 16 per team now, so they're going to keep a lot of the players they cut at cut down day. And don't forget, a lot of the players who are cut are going to be subject to waivers. So another team could pounce on them if they like what they saw in the preseason. So they may not make the team that they're on right now, but they could be claimed by another team and make their 53 man roster. So there's a lot of roster fluidity still to come. But out of that a hundred I would say, if you're looking at I would say 30 to 40 practice squad players out of that a hundred I think is reasonable. And then of course that number changes throughout the year as injuries hit active rosters and players are called up from practice squads and players practice squads churn every week. So you'll have that number increase throughout the year. And the other thing about being on the practice squad at one time, being on the practice squad meant you were kind of wallowing there until you either got released or you got signed to the active roster and that didn't happen all that much for some players. The rule since 2020 has been that each week a team can call up two players from the practice squad and not have them count against the 53 man roster. So being on the practice squad today is a lot more valuable than it once was. You have a lot higher probability of playing nfl regular season games. So even if someone signs to the practice squad, it's not just stash them there and forget about them. If you're an xfl fan or a usfl fan following them, you got to look every week because your guy could get called up to play in that week's game. I have up here, and this is, I've been very busy with c Ffl and weddings this year. I'm sure this has existed for a while. I saw in one of their press releases, I think it was last week, that they had this xfl.com/xfl-two-nfl, which to me is phenomenal here. It listed in order of all the players, the teams, the announcements, positions, kind of all that stuff. I was looking, US L doesn't have that. I know Stefan over at Newsroom has his little one that's a little more herky jerky but at least is worthwhile if you're wanting to kind of track that. I wish it had it by date, but you can sort by position and all of that. So go Stefan and all that because before I just kind of assumed like, oh, pat Rafino where someone's keeping jobs on all this stuff, all these numbers. So we check that out because anytime I post I get people questioning like, oh, is Jaco Pearson signed yet? And you're like, well, hasn't weird. I think it's weird that he hasn't got signed. He's been very vocal about that online. But when we look at the numbers, this is where I get into the problem of solely building the xfl around. This is our dream is to get players in this is all that matters is you're probably not going to get that many to actually stick. And so when your entire league is built around that, that is where I have a little bit of on bridge with that. Any thoughts on that? I get why they go that direction because they probably think that's not for us necessarily. It is in one way because it's basically telling us, hey, this is the kind of level of player that we have, this is the kind of level of play that we can produce in this league. We're worth watching. Because the one thing that would turn a lot of people off of these secondary leagues is they consider it minor league or football. That's not very good. But if you're the xfl and you can point to say, hey, we're good enough that the nfl signed 60 some of our players, that's a pretty good testament as to what our quality of play was. So that's kind of for the fans I think. And I don't think they spell it out that way, but that's kind of my impression of it. But it's also for as we talk about the players and agents, if you can plaster this all over your social media, a player gets cut from the nfl and he doesn't know what to do and he's scrolling through social media and he's seeing these posts by the xfl that guys are constantly getting signed. I mean that's going to plant a seed in his head that, oh, maybe I should consider this. So I think there's that aspect to it as well. And ownership has been good about saying, look, we want guys to succeed, we want guys to move on to the nfl. I think there's some head coaches, Anthony Beck might've been one who said, my goal is to have my roster turnover completely every year. I want everybody to go to the nfl. But the other thing they've couched that in is, but if you don't make it to the nfl, we provide you a way to make money and make a living playing football even if it is not at the highest level. So there is that aspect of it too. It is crazy to me. It would be nice to see these leagues kind of evolve into, we were having a conversation today even where we have Trey Lance, right, and they were announced he's going to be the third string and he's upset and Sam Darnell will beat him out. What do you do if you're Trey Lance? Because I don't know if there's a lot of teams lining up right now. The guy, I think he had four starts for the 49 ERs last year. I would like to envision a world where like Trey Lance and we were talking about in the chat, like go to the xfl for a year, go play 10 12 games, show what you have. And I bet we had Brock Heward on last year when it was with the usfl. He was saying the same thing where he said if Colin Kaepernick, if he really thought he could play, come do a season of the usfl show everybody and transition that over to not view it as a step down, but to view it as like here's a way where I could actually get reps as opposed to just kind of being that unknown that that makes sense. And Trey Lance is a unique situation where he just does not have a lot of game tape. He did not start much in college. He has not really had a sustained opportunity in the nfl due to injuries and other situations with San Francisco having a bevy of quarterbacks that they've been able to choose from a good problem to have in some ways, but he just hasn't been able to show that he can put that 10 to 12 game stretch together to show teams that he's worth investing in. Now the xfl would be a bit of a gamble. I mean because we've seen that performing well in the xfl doesn't guarantee you an nfl roster spot. I mean you talk about Jaco Pearson leading xfl receiver, Jordan Williams leading TACKLER in the xfl hasn't signed AJ McCarran. That's probably his own choice, but one of the top quarterbacks in the league hasn't signed Jordan TAM with the xfl offensive player of the year just signed two games into the nfl preseason. Peter Ano, the defensive player of the year signed after the first preseason game. So these guys are getting into camp late, which is putting them behind the eight ball to make the team, but they performed out of their minds in the xfl. So I do understand the hesitancy from that point of view that playing in the xfl and playing really well doesn't itself guarantee you a shot in the nfl. Are you surprised, and we were having this conversation as well that with the xfl being so much earlier and there's been so much about the timeline and the U SS F L says it's the best because our players can go right into camp but it's too late because it's already July and we were even seeing people with the defenders saying, God, if they weren't in the championship game, they had already had guys going in. A lot of these signings, even just the last two weeks have still been a lot of xfl guys even with us f L guys available. Are you surprised with the numbers and how they've kind of panned out in that way? Again, I guess I didn't really have expectations. I did think the xfl would be more players just because I think looking at the rosters, and again, I don't watch the usfl so I can only go by the players that I see as being part of the league. It does seem like the xfl has a slightly higher caliber of player in it. So I guess it doesn't surprise me that they have more. But again, like you mentioned that lead up to training camp, that couple months headstart that they got, I mean they were able to put dozens of players in rookie mini camps for these nfl teams and even if they were not signed right after rookie mini camp and many of them were, but many of them, the teams that are looking for replacements now have those guys on file that were in their rookie mini camp, those xfl players and those are the players now getting signed to their roster even in late August. So it's an advantage certainly for the xfl to have those players in those rookie mini camps at a time when the usfl is having their season still going on, not only to get signed after rookie mini camp, but to just be in front of those coaches and those scouts so that later on in the summer or even in the fall, if they're looking for a player at that position, they're going to remember you from rookie mini camp, let's bring him in. He's got some familiarity, we've got some familiarity with him and sometimes that's how guys get signed is just that familiarity. Are you surprised some of the guys that we haven't seen signed, like Pearson I commented earlier mean he's just, anytime anyone gets signed, he's quote tweeting, are you surprised some of these guys that we would expect would be slam dunks? I mean tmu finally did. That was kind of I guess to me one of the overhanging ones. Are you surprised some of the ones that haven't been signed With Temu? I wasn't because I think he's a pretty known quantity at this point. He's a guy who's been for a couple years now, he's one of the last arms signed in camp for the last preseason game and then he gets cut. He's not new to this, right? He's been through this cycle before. So he's done it in the xfl in 2020. He did it in the U SS F L in 2022. He did it in the xfl in 2023. I really don't think there's much he has to, there's not much more he can show and if nfl teams aren't interested in him at this point, they just might not be interested in him. That's the sad cold hard truth of the nfl Pearson. His biggest drawback is his size and no matter what numbers you put up in the xfl, it's not going to grow you four or five inches. And so measurables are still a big part of the nfl. You hear about this with Bryce Young when he went number one overall, oh he doesn't meet the height requirement and so much of the pre-draft discussion was about his size and so the nfl is still skittish about taking a chance on guys even bottom of the roster guys who don't meet those size requirements. I don't think anyone has had more workouts than Jaakko Pearson. I think he's up to seven workouts that he's had with nfl teams. So he's getting these opportunities. His size or something he's not doing in these workouts is not translating for these teams. So I did think that he was going to finally get signed at some point and I think he is to me the biggest surprise of who hasn't been signed yet. Yeah, I mean like you said, that to me is one of the, I hope and pray and want all these players, it's just hard and you get caught up in like we said, the marketing of the leagues and this is what we want. It's a league of opportunity but it's not. The window of opportunity is not equal for you or me or anybody else. The xfl could say, look, we're giving you the opportunity. Everything else is up to you. That mini camp tryout, that signing late in camp, that's all on you now we've given you the platform, now you have to take the next step. So that's kind of what they can say to shield themselves from whatever criticism comes their way of not enough players making active rosters or whatever like that. So I have your article here, I pulled it up before when you were mentioning that off the top. I wanted to do this last week preseason one and then these cfl Thursday games have really thrown me for a loop in trying to get these episodes out. Who has stood out to you this week or kind in the nfl preseason in general? We can kind of open it up to that. I think the biggest performance came last week, which was Nico Lelos who had three sacks, four tackles for a loss. I think he had a knockdown that was late in the game fourth quarter. So he's going against guys who aren't going to make the team for the other team. So you kind of have to keep that in mind as well. But as far as statistical performance, I think that was probably the best. You had Josh Johnson who did not have a great first game for Baltimore, he had a really nice game on Monday night against Washington and Baltimore. Sadly their 24 game preseason win streak was Snap. So that's my Commander sat on here. There you go. That was my Super bowl on Monday. So Ben Ucci had a good first game. I don't think he had as good of a second game. The specialists are a little behind Parker Romo seems like he's behind in Detroit. Dan wheen punter for the defenders seems like he's behind Pat O'Donnell in Green Bay. Other than that, there's been some guys who've gotten some sniffs with first and second teams in preseason action. Kobe Smith with the Giants who played for the brass has played a ton of snaps. He's gotten some second team first team work in the preseason. You look at a guy like Willie Taylor, he didn't play the first game for the Jaguars but he played late in the first quarter with some second stringers on Jacksonville's defense. So I don't think that's apropos of anything. I think that's more of mixing things up and mixing packages up to coaches and just giving guys an opportunity and seeing what they look like playing with guys who are going to make the team even if they don't. But there haven't been a ton of standout performances. Abram Smith has looked okay at times in Minnesota. Bruce Hector had a really nice first game, first week of the preseason with the Jets, caused some interior pressure on the defensive line, but no one who I can point to and say this guy has made the team because of his work in the preseason. I just haven't seen that yet. Well even had with all of our cfl staff, we have the Nathan Rourke and they track that like the Messiahs walking down the street. Lemme tell You as a Jaguars fan, that's Jaguars fans' reaction too. If you go to the Jaguars website, there's a mailbag every day that the editor of jaguars.com does and the last week has been three or four questions every day about is Nathan Rourke going to make the team? Why isn't he second string? Because Doug Peterson came out after their game this weekend and said, no, there's no competition for second string. It's going to be CJ Beard. So it's either going to be Nathan Rourke getting cut and probably tried to get signed to the practice squad or he makes the team as the third string. But there's been a lot of Jaguars fans who've just fallen in love with Nathan Rourke. Well I know, but that's the thing is you can have, you're saying there hasn't been a ton of standup performances. You could even have a standup performance like Nathan Rourke and Yeah, I mean he's had two games back to back and Patrick Mahomes is tweeting and look at this and because people have said if Mahomes does this, the internet dies because, or Twitter breaks and here, but you do all of that and then he still doesn't have a spot. I mean it's disconcerting for me as someone that spends an inordinate amount of time kind of talking about all this stuff. Yes, as someone who's spent an inordinate amount of my last two weeks watching preseason games from start to finish, me too. But preseason games is just a small slice. We don't see what goes on in the meeting rooms, we don't see what goes on the whiteboard when you have to answer questions from a coach in a meeting. We don't see what goes on in those joint practices that happen, which coaches are now saying are more important for evaluation purposes than the preseason games themselves. We don't see what goes on day to day at practice. What are their habits like? What are their study habits? What are their practice habits? How are they performing in practice? So the preseason games are just such a small slice of the overall evaluative picture that coaches take into account when they make these cuts. So it is hard to make any broad-based sweeping generalizations about the chances a player has when you are just sitting down and watching them in a preseason game. But if they are doing well in meeting rooms, if they are doing well in practices, if they are doing well in those joint practices, you hope they pop in the preseason games too that would just kind of really complete things and cement their roster status. Yeah, I think last year was it Reer got crazy during the preseason. I mean he was the cfl guy too, kind of that cfl or the preseason Darlene. I think Nathan work has that, but I don't know that. Are you surprised or hasn't been anything, any standouts this year? I mean I dunno, I wish that there would be something that we'd have a little bit more juice to write about right now. Yeah, I agree. I thought there'd be more players with more buzz in training camp than there is now. You just don't hear. Hakeem Butler had it a little bit in OTAs and then he came into training camp and was dropping passes and was not meeting the expectations and he ended up getting injured and just waived injured. So he got put on IR for Pittsburgh, he'll probably get released with an injury settlement soon and be a free agent. I think that was probably the closest I would say to someone who had some really positive momentum in OTAs in the spring, but he just wasn't able to carry it over into training camp and probably was on the outside looking in for a roster spot had he stayed healthy. Do you blame just nfl politics here? I mean it feels, I don't want this to be like a depressing conversation here about the state of this, you know what I mean? The reality of it, we get on the high when the season happens and when all these players are getting and that is a good thing and we should celebrate that. But we also have to understand that there's a reality component that goes with it that it's very difficult to break into the nfl. They have, I've heard personnel men say, really there's only about three roster spots per team that are really up for grabs in the preseason. And when you think about that and think about the 90 man rosters, it's like man, three spots and all these guys are getting signed. So the reality is there just are not a lot of real spots available when you carry over so much of your roster from the previous season when you sign a bunch of free agents, you have draft picks, you had college free agents and now you have this other avenue, the U Ss F L and xfl that players are coming in. You can't fit them all in. And so cut down day is a sad day across the nfl for players. Coaches don't enjoy that process. Fans don't like seeing players. They saw shine in the preseason get cut and certainly xfl and usfl fans are not going to seeing all these players cut. But I mean that's the reality of the business, Especially now next week everything combined used to be the scale down process, right? A couple of different cutdowns, everything's going on the 20, what is that? The next 29th it's going to be a blood bath. I mean it's going to be not a fun day I don't imagine. No, it's not. But again, you're going to have the next day is always the most fascinating for me because that's when waiver claims get put in and you get to see what teams want players from other teams that were cut. And then the domino effect from that is if you're claiming three players on waivers, you have to cut three players who initially major 53 band roster. So imagine that conversation player thinks he made the roster and is on the team for the first week and all of a sudden the team claims a player two three and they got to cut more. I think the saving grace is going to be the practice squad. I think we're going to see a lot of players get signed to the practice squad and they're really one snap away from making an active roster. So that's the saving grace I think of the cut down day bloodbath as you so eloquently put it. So anyone like you said, I'm glancing through your notes here while we talk special teams. I think that's always kind of the place to look at here with these alt football guys. Any realistic people that you would at least had $20 to bet on that you would think you would be seeing here next week actually make the roster? I think Ben Ucci has a real shot to be Denver's third quarterback. That's the name that really stands out to me right now. I just read an article from someone who covers the Steelers who says that the battle of the long snappers, we've got Christian Kuntz who was with the Renegades in 2020 and Rex Sunahara who was with the Brahmas in 2023 and somebody referred to that as a dead heat. So sounds like Sahara's got a shot at Unseating, Christian Kuntz in Pittsburgh for the long snapper job. Really other than that, it is really hard to see. There are a couple of guys who if injuries happen, because a lot of what happens at cut down day is you get a lot of guys who get placed on IR or who get waived injured, who you would've maybe thought were going to make the team and that could open up a spot or two on the roster, but really DeNucci is the one that stands out to me. I think he's got a shot if Denver keeps three because they've only got three quarterbacks in camp, so if they keep three quarterbacks it's going to be ucci and the new rule this year rewards teams for keeping three quarterbacks by allowing them to keep a third quarterback active on game day in case the first two get hurt. So it doesn't incentivize teams to keep that third quarterback, whereas in the past half the teams in the league have kept two and half the teams in the league have cup three. So Elise Mac with Tennessee, I know he didn't play the first game. I'm not sure if he was nicked up for that one, but he actually started last week and he's a guy who I think has a possibility of making the team as a tight end in Tennessee. So I guess if I was foolish enough to put money on this, those would be two or three names that I could see cracking the roster. Finally here, we'll wind this down. What interesting will be, because obviously the xfl players retaining these rights, they come back, we've done the, what was it called? The college? No, that was usfl was the college draft, the xfl did the rookie draft and then we're going to have the supplemental draft in the fall then I mean going to be a stack stacked load. The guys here trying to get through these xfl rosters. I mean thankfully that's good a lot more spots, but I mean even that, I mean if you're going back to the xfl and they brought in other guys, but they're retaining your rights, I mean there's going to kind be some battles there and maybe it's the same politics as the nfl. Well we had these guys last year and they kind get first come, Yeah, it's going to be a similar situation. There are going to be guys, good players who get cut from the xfl and we've seen that happen this past year and they've gone to the cfl, they've gone to the I F L, they've gone to the usfl. It's a good market to be a football player in because you do have a lot of options even if your first choice or second choice is not there. So yeah, the xfl, what they've done is they've made a lot of opportunities for teams to acquire players. We had the rookie draft, we had the xfl combine and then we had the sort of allocation of players after the combine to teams. We had this bizarre draft slash, don't call it a draft where the xfl teams acquired rights to players. I'm not sure what qualifications went into what players could be claimed since you had players coming out like Anthony Gordon saying wait a minute, I'm claimed I'm retired. So I don't know what basis they went and claimed these players on, but they did it mass and as you said, they'll have a draft this fall. I'm not sure that they've officially announced a date. I know October November is probably what we're looking at for that. And then I would assume nothing has been made official about this, but I would assume January again as training camp starts for anyone whose U SS F L contract expires, anyone who late to the party nfl cuts who want to join the league, so they have made a lot of avenues available for xfl teams to accumulate players onto their 90 man rosters this off season, you have to imagine a lot of those players are going to be in the nfl. I mean there are still players who were claimed in the rookie draft way back in June who are getting workouts in the nfl right now, so there's a chance that some of these guys get signed and are on teams and you're going to have some guys who get claimed who don't report, they choose to go to the usfl or like Anthony Gordon retire or just not play in a spring league in 2024. So not every guy who's been claimed or who's been drafted is going to show up to camp and I think that's why they've kind of expanded their rosters to 90. They know that if they're only taking 60 to 70 to camp again, there's going to be a handful of players on each team who probably choose not to report And they're not paying for that. Yeah, I mean you're on the team On the roster. I mean they have your rights. That's really, I guess what it means. You're not really on a roster in the same way that you're on an nfl off season roster. It's the same verbiage, but it's very different in terms of especially pay. It's so funny in the cfl, they have the necklace and negotiation lists where all the teams and there's numbers, but they can, it's the same thing like claimed and if you ever come up to Canada, they get first rights or whatever, and Edmonton that just they're one to nine just won their first game last week and they had on for years. Chad Kelly was on their negotiations list and then they had traded it to Toronto as part of a trade the year before and then Chad Kelly comes up and he's like a rockstar in Toronto. So I like this. I like the next list and the negotiations and all that, but anything else we get out, I mean this is why I would like more marketing just also about what the league is of itself. Yes, this is wonderful and we champion all of this stuff, but you need to give these players a home because a lot of them aren't going to make it, And I think that hopefully that comes with time. We can rail on the marketing and we did and for good reason, but really there's not a lot of history to draw from if are the ownership and you don't want to acknowledge 2001 and you don't really want to acknowledge 2020 either you're starting from scratch. There's really nothing to hang your hat on other than literally what your league does, which is give opportunities to guys to go to the nfl. There's no history to these franchises that you can market. The players, they don't have a history in the xfl. Many of 'em don't have a real strong nfl history that you can market. So hopefully as time goes on, as the years go by, the xfl continues to sustain itself. It makes its own history and then that becomes your marketing arm and maybe you don't put the kind of marketing that they're doing now, which is almost solely, Hey, we're putting guys in the nfl. Maybe you kind of tamp that down a little bit and you focus more on who you are and what you've done throughout your history and what you're going to continue to do. I think that's a really good point. I think that's really smart. I know that last year with the usfl, a lot of the people behind the scenes, they're like, oh, this is awesome. Look at all the players and then reality hits and it's Kante Turpen, the desk settles and yeah, I'll be curious this year with Danny and everything when we, yeah, it's great right now and rock's tweet player 54 got signed and all this stuff and I was just like, of course he's tweeting that, but then come next week or the week after, oh, okay, so now we kind of actually know the economics of this that week. I don't know if they even know right now, And I hope that they champion these players throughout the nfl season. If they make teams, if they make plays, if they make practice squads, that is something that fans can say, Hey, I saw that guy when I was in St. Louis when he was a linebacker for the battle hawks. Now he's almost like, I know people don't like to consider it minor league. I don't like to call it minor league, but it's a lot of the same mindset as a fan where if I go to a minor league baseball game, a lot of those guys I don't know, but I watch him and then if I see them play a major league baseball game on TV and I hear a name, I'll be like, oh, I saw that guy back when he was with this team. And so nobody wants to call themselves minor league. No one wants to call attention to that. But I think a lot of the mindset that the fans have justifiably so I'm not saying it's wrong. I think it's a great mindset to have is to hopefully track these players as they were a battle hawk one day and now they're a Miami dolphin or something like that. I mean, that's cool and that should be something that is championed by the fans and by the league. Well, I mean that's why I have my Washington commanders hat on is we had to cover it so much with Heineke and everything kind of during that because we didn't have anything to podcast about. I'm watching. Well at that time it was the football team games every week and now, I mean obviously I'll fall behind the key can't now I'm in the land of Falcons. I can only go so far. But it was because of all that was to hear with someone that we followed his story. So yeah, I mean I can't be the only crazy person out there. No, you're not. No, not at all. Greg, I appreciate it. It's late on the east coast. I go hang out with your family. I appreciate it. I'm making the time back at school. Dorothy, we've spent the last couple days setting up her classroom, they're moving schools, so we're starting from the bottom there as well, zero to a hundred. So it's been a lot of work, but you guys do good work and I appreciate all you do at the Youth of America. Thanks. It ain't easy, but it's rewarding. I appreciate that. Thanks. Well, here we are back here, a busy summer here with cfl. Now we have fellow cfl podcaster, we can call him now on top of Hall of Famer and Great Cup winning all that melt Stegel. How are you sir? I'm doing great, man. Loving life. Everything is great, happy, healthy, and that's all that matters, man. Hopefully the same with you. It's good. It's good. Yeah. So what spawned the podcast first off, and we'll get to the thoughts on everything else with the season. Yeah, Davis and I, we've been brainstorming for the last two or three years talking about we wanted to do a podcast and as you know, everyone has a podcast, but we just wanted to do something different when we're on the panel. We only have so much time to talk. So with a podcast you can get out more information, you can say different things, you can almost spread your wings. So that's what we're doing. We're just trying to build it up and see where it can go. So we're excited about it. It's in its infant stage, but we're having some fun with it and hopefully it continues on for many years to come. Well, that's good. Yeah, no cfl and lots of voices and obviously I get that all the time. We will have Farhan and nailer on and stuff and it's the same thing. They get two and a half minutes on A T S N hit and it's like, no, we need to kind of flush this stuff out. What do you make here? What week 11 here? What do you make of the cfl season or week 12? Oh my gosh, I'm behind. Yeah, no, it is been crazy. You got the top dogs with BC, Toronto and of course Winnipeg, but now you see some teams starting to catch up. Saskatchewan, they played some decent ball Montreal, who's been a surprise to many. Of course you're going to get their first challenges upcoming week, but they played some decent ball. And then we have the Elks who finally got their first victory. There is a God, but it's been some disappointments too. Hamilton, who's hosting the Gray Cup this year? I mean, I think it's safe to say they're the worst team in the cfl right now. It's a bad place to be in Ottawa who's almost won so many games but almost means nothing. That's like saying I'm almost pregnant. It doesn't exist. So it's a rollercoaster ride like most cfl seasons and we're excited about it. Labor Day is coming up in a couple of weeks and we've seen some young quarterbacks display some good talent, so I'm always excited about what the rest of the season's going to bring. Yeah, a lot of big movements this week with the Elks, obviously they're hosting this weekend, but with all the Victor Que of it all, and now we have Rick being appointed as kind of the interim president and C E O. What did you make? Because Victor's been on the show a bunch and it kind of seemed like that all came out of the blue here of, hey, there's a big schism there in the organization. You had to pull the plug on someone, you couldn't stand Pat. I'm sure they would love to do it, to have done it to some coaches, but the way things are structured with the Operation Cabs and guaranteed contact couldn't do that, so they had to do something. You're trying to get fans back and if you continue doing the same thing, getting the same results, you're not going to get any fans back. I mean, it was definitely good for them to get that first victory, but they had to make a major move within that organization and unfortunately it had to be Victor and I wouldn't be surprised if something else happens later on the year in off season because changes have to be made when your team is playing like that. Let's hope they continue winning games because that's not only good for them, but that's good for everyone in the cfl. But when you're losing moves unfortunately have to be made. Yeah, I mean it was already talking privatization of the team here in the off season. It could be big kind of landscape shifting movements here, right? Yeah, I'm hearing that still may be in the works. I'm sure the community doesn't want that. It's been a community on team I think since its existence, but when things aren't going well, you have to open up all the doors and listen to everyone who's behind those doors. I'm sure there are some big money guys in Edmonton or in Alberta who would love to own the Elks now, so they have to listen to that. They're losing a lot of money because a lot of money is not been being generated for years. They had money stocked away that they could chip at, but now that chipping has been a lot more than what they've expected, so they have to make sure that they do their due diligence and open up all the doors as I alluded to see who's behind those doors and see what they're saying. Now that we've seen Trey play for Edmonton and obviously played really well in the loss and said they didn't go for it hard enough. And then obviously winning here last week. I mean, I think I know the salary cap and all that, but I made the joke that Chris Jones should be fired just out of spite here at this point, that it's taken them this long to, I mean, what do you make of it took so long and Trey seems like everything everyone thought he was going to be, Well, I mean, I understand what you're saying and I've heard from reliable sources that he just was not getting it done in practice. If they thought he would've gave him a better chance of winning than other two guys, they would've put him in there. And I've heard that from a very reliable source, but he just wasn't getting it done. And right now, he did get it done. He's won one of his two games and hopefully for their sake and everyone else that hopefully he can get it done, but he just wasn't getting it done. If Chris Jones thought putting Trey Ford in would give him a better opportunity to win with the way they've been losing, I'm sure he would've did it. There's no question about it, but he wasn't getting it done. But I'm sure he thought to himself, Chris Jones, Hey, I have nothing to lose now my guys aren't getting it done, so let's see what he can do. And he's fortunate to get that first victory, but Chris Jones is not a position or he wasn't thinking to himself, I'm not going to play this guy for certain reasons. We've heard people say for certain reasons why he wasn't planning him and all that is false. He wasn't planning because he felt he wasn't going to give him that best opportunity to win, but now he knew, Hey, what do I have to lose? Lemme give him an opportunity. And he was able to win him a game and hopefully he can continue playing well and win him some more games. Were you impressed with Trey's two outings so far? I mean, I know we've seen him before, but this season I was impressed with the second outing. I mean the first outing. And I know some people are going to say, well, he played well enough for them to win. No, he didn't. If he'd played well enough, they'd have won the game. What did they do in the second half? He did well in that game against when they won the game, but now he has to continue that. You have to continue that. He's won one game. I need to see consistency. I need you to go out there and play better and better and develop and develop, and then we'll start saying, okay, maybe he could be their starting quarterback, but he's won one game. I hear so many people saying that he needs to be their starter for the rest of the year. Let's see what he can do in this second game. I'm happy for him. He went out there, he's been itching to play. He did well, but let's see what he can do in upcoming games Because that first game where they fell apart against Winnipeg, my conspiracy, and I know that Hamilton is kind of trash right now, but last week with the rain delay, maybe if they played the whole game, maybe Edmonton doesn't win because it really felt like they came back from that rain delay and it was like, let's kind of get done with this. We've been sitting around for an hour and a half. I'd be curious if that game was played kind of over its initial 60 minutes, how that would've panned out. You never know. You never know. You just don't know. It's unfortunate that we've been having a lot of delays this season, and I'm sure Edmonton looked at it like, hold on, what's going on here? We're playing the best we played and this happened. Let's get this game going. Let's finish this game. We need to get a victory under our belt. But you don't control Mother Nature as part of the game. Everyone had to suffer through it, but they were fortunate. They came out and they kept the ball rolling and they got a victory. Now they're going to try to do it again. Now going to try to get their home first home victory as the Elks, which has never happened before, so it's not going to be easy task. They're going to be playing against an Ottawa team who's hungry, who knows they have enough talent. At least they think they do, or they could have won some games. So I'm really looking forward to that game. Yeah, I think Marshall Ferguson needs to be banned here. I think we clearly, Every time he shows up, So we're seeing here Winnipeg, right? The Thursday game. I think we're going to get this out tomorrow. Preview all that. Montreal looking good, right? Certainly contending in the east with Cody and everything else. Are you impressed? I know he's been injured, but with Caleb Evans, everything, what have you made of Montreal here? I'm impressed. I'm impressed. They've won four in a row since the eliminator. Sean Lemon has been there, but got to pump your brakes a little bit because you look at the teams who they've beaten, they've beaten, I think Saskatchewan, Hamilton, Otto and Calgary, and now they're about to play the big dogs. They have four straight games against the big dogs, Winnipeg, bc, Toronto, and Toronto, and now we're going to find out if they're able to stay on the porch. You know what I'm saying? If you can't hang with the big dogs, get off the porch. Now we're going to find out if they're able to stay on the porch because they're going to be tested now they're getting Cody back. That defense has been playing out of their mind since Sean Lemon has been there. He's been telling me he's been a leader, but a leader saying all this stuff can only go so far. They have to continue to produce on the field. They've been doing that in these first four games, but now these next four games, this stretch is going to really test 'em because they're playing their upper echelon cfl teams and we're going to see what they can do with it. I think Cody or not Cody, I think Calleros coming back this week, we had a couple weeks of the Drew Brown experience. One was significantly more impressive than the other, but what have you made of his performance? I mean, it is what it is. He's a young quarterback. Only in his second year he was thrown into that backup role and he lit it up against Edmonton. But then when you're a starter, when teams have time to prepare for you, when there's pressure on you, when you're young, it's different. It's not the same. I think in the future he could be a quarterback that a franchise could possibly depend on. We don't know that yet, but it takes time. It is just not going to happen overnight. A lot of people were expecting him to duplicate what he did in that first game against Edmonton, but that very rarely happens because it's a total situation when you're expected to go out there and do everything. When Edmonton, he wasn't expected. No one was expecting him to go in there and do those things he did against that second game. He was expected to do it and there was a lot of pressure and he didn't perform. So hopefully it gets another opportunity to be a starter in this league. Well, it's the similar, like you said, I mean you seem to be hesitant on all of these. With Trey and even Dustin Crumb, we kind of had the crumb sanity for a couple of weeks. He's fallen back down. You feel that. I think cfl is so quarterback starved and then we see a little bit and it's like, oh my gosh, we start going crazy. You think we need to take our time And on tv, it's my job, our job to pump 'em up. They can go out there and have one great quarter. This is the next flu, the next war moon, the next Damon Allen. But we all understand it takes time. Quarterback is the most difficult position in team sports. It gets no more difficult. You only have to know your job. You have to know what everyone else on offense is doing. You're trying to figure out what people on the defense is doing. You're trying to avoid getting hit by a 285 pound defense end who's faster than you. So there's a lot going on. It doesn't happen overnight. Very rarely do we see a Ricky Ray who steps in right away and has success, not only short term but long term. So we have to pump the brakes on these guys, give 'em time to develop because it's not an easy task. Stepping in and being a professional quarterback, Speaking of not just a quarterback, but he certainly faltered here. Jake Mayer not really having the most wonderful season. A lot of expectations. I think I had him on pre-season last year. I really want to hit your right here because Bo Levi and all of that, what's going on with Calgary? I don't know. And it is been a bad situation and I don't want to say this, but it's almost like they lost faith in Jake Mayer. The only time that offense is productive is when they're running a ball. There's been times a couple of games ago, late in the game, they were down, I think 17, 18 points for about five or six minutes and they're still running a ball. They don't believe any. They got rid of Boli about Mitchell saying this was our guy and he seems to be going backwards. He doesn't seem to be getting any better. We saw that first year he stepped on the scene first three games over 300 yards, never happened for a rookie. Second year he played pretty well. They sat Bo Levi Mitchell down saying, you are our guy. Then he comes into this year and it's not happening. He's not looking good at all, and it's crazy because he's leading the league in passing yards, but it doesn't feel that way. He hasn't been playing well. His team can't depend on him. Hopefully he can get out this slump because we've seen some great things out of him. But as far as this year goes, it's looking real bad and I don't know how it gets any better. Do you attribute, because it seems like the play calling for Calgary is a lot of short passes, a lot of checkout. I mean, is it just all of Jake? I mean you blaming the staff over there? Well, no, it is never always on the quarterback, but as the saying goes, when things are going well, the quarterback gets more credit than he deserves, and when things are going bad, he gets more of the blame. I mean, receivers are dropping balls. I think this is the first year Dave Dickinson hasn't called any offensive plays. I know if I'm correct, it's still his offense, but he's not calling the plays. I could see in the near future him saying, okay, I got to take these ring backs. I have to be in total control if it's not working out. So there's a plethora of things that are not going their way, but the bottom line is it's always almost on the quarterback because you're the one who's touching the ball every single time and when things aren't happening, the pressure's on you to get it done, to go out there and make it happen. Regardless of what your receivers are doing, regardless of what their plays are being called. When you want to be a great or good quarterback, you go out there and make it happen regardless of the circumstances They're facing Toronto and coming off inexplicably their third bye week here and they're having along. It's going to be like you said, I mean Montreal here has got a couple coming up against Toronto, but these are big tests for Toronto as well, and especially without the buys. How impressed are you with them and Chad Kelly and everything else over there? Impressed, very impressed. They've been playing some great football. They have the one loss to Calgary, but besides that, they've been rolling and I'm not looking beyond any of the teams they play, but I'm really looking forward to that Toronto Winnipeg game, the two top M O P candidates, but let me get back to what they're doing right now. Yes, they have a tough task. Anytime you play a professional team, it's a tough task, but what they've been doing over there has been spectacular. And it starts with Chad Kelly. It's hard to believe. This is basically his first year starting in the league, the way he handles offense, the way he handles adversity, the way he command things. And then you have the great running game with all that and Andrew Harrison, that defense, they're flying around. Ryan de Witty a good buddy of mines. I talked to him even when I talked to assistant coaches and everyone there. They just said the atmosphere that Ryan has created is second to none. Yes, he is. Yes, he expects greatness. Yes, yes, he's going to grind them, but he also likes players to be relaxed and enjoy themselves. So they're rolling right now. They are the top team in the league right now and it's going to be tough for anyone to beat him if you're not on your A game. Well, it's crazy too. I mean he's kind of always been under the gun coming in with the covid year and having to kind of figure that out. I think he's had a lot of criticisms and I know Mike Mitchell who writes with us has covered a lot of that where he gets a lot more criticism for whatever reason, and here he seemed to have built this winning culture that even last year, gray Cup, and you had Winnipeg coming in and Toronto kind of bootstraps and fighting on the sidelines we're able to get everything done. Somehow they were kind of able to band it up together. It just seems it's good for him. I mean, it's good. As we talked with him, the media day last year, very impressed with it. Yeah, and you talk about that criticism. The one thing about Ryan Denwitty, and we see coaches, we see players do this all the time. Once they start getting criticized, they're looking for excuses. They shy away from it. That's never him. There were a couple of times early on his career where he made some mismanaged, some time and time management and he said, it was all on me. It was all on me. I made mistakes. He never shys away from it. When it's on him, it's on him. And that's impressive, and you have to respect that. And if you have a coach like that, who's not going to shy away from it, who's going to take the blame when it's on him? Eventually he's going to have success. And now you see it happening. Now you see him orchestrating a great performance week in and week out. Now you see guys who respect and love him and will go out there and do anything for him because they know he has the best, their best interests at heart. So it's exciting. It's good to see him having success. It's good to see success in Toronto because we know it's a tough market to play in, and right now they're doing some great things and I think everyone in the G T A, everyone in Ontario is definitely excited about what's going on in Toronto With Hamilton here, I think people thought it was bad case scenario last year where Saskatchewan hosting the great cop and didn't even make the playoffs. I mean this has to be even worse case scenario this year, Hamilton and just here we're going to bring in Bo Levi and we're going to steam. I mean what have you, and I know he's had injuries but didn't look good when he was in and now Powell's not really doing anything here. What do you making at Hamilton? Ah, man, I don't curse so I can't say those things, but you can see it all over Orlando Stein hours face. You could just see the frustration that he's going through, the pressure that he's under. I mean, they get rid of their offensive coordinator and that wasn't the problem. But as I mentioned with the Elks, you got to put the blame on somebody bringing in Scott. It's not going to make that big of a deal. Yes, he's had some success, but I mean I could call the players in there and it wouldn't make that big of a deal. There's a lot going on within that organization that they have to try to resolve. And the good thing about it, they still have a chance to make the playoffs and once you get in the playoffs, you never know what can happen. But right now it's just not happening. It's not happening on all three facets of the game. Offense, defense or special teams. And you can see the coaches, they're frustrated. Everyone is just frustrated and the fans are frustrated. The most important people in the cfl, when they're frustrated when they're not showing up, that's the big problem. So they still have time. We're at the halfway point. They still have time to try to resolve some issues, but it's going to take a lot. The quarterback situation, they're down to what third, fourth string quarterback. They can't get it done. They're going to try to rely on Butler to run the ball, but they have a lot of problems that they got to try to iron out and hopefully they can do those and make it to the playoffs. If not, it's going to be a tough off season for the Hamilton Tigercat. Yeah, I mean decline they've had in the last three years, even since we've been covering the league and to be almost there and then last year it completely fall off. Do you see wholesale changes coming for the Ty Cats if Steinhower and everyone can't get it together Wholesale, I don't know if that's the right big changes maybe. And I don't know if those two mean the same thing, I don't know, but there'll be some changes. There'll be some changes, yeah, because you could see they're on the decline now. They're getting worse as the year's gone on as the last year they've been in the gray cup. It's on a decline and you can't continue if you're on a decline and trying to get out of that decline with the same individuals, let it be coaches, let it be players, you got to make some changes. What those changes may be. I don't know. I think Alando is safe, but I could see some other coaches, some other major players on that team being let go because as I mentioned, fans are going to keep coming back. If you bring back the same things, then you're going to get different results. I about threw my BC Lions hat in the trash skip Bayla style here after our loss last week against Saskatchewan. I just said, these are the games that you need to win. I mean, I've seen this last year we were in bc, we beat Calgary, we go into Winnipeg Roarke and everything, and you got all however many people that holds 50,000 people screaming whatever the IG field. I feel like I've seen this before. These are the games we need to win. BC's had a couple big bad losses this year along with their dominance. What did you make of that dag gall just running circle. I mean we've made dag gall look like he was Patrick Mahomes out there. I just didn't understand it That defense was not what we expected was not what we've seen. And Ryan Phillips has really had this defense balling out. Of course they had the game against Winnipeg, but I actually think this last game against Saskatchewan was their worst game because they weren't. And there's some times where teams are going to just be able to be better than you, but they weren't aggressive. They seemed that they thought that they could just step on the field and make it happen, and that's not the case regardless of who you're playing. So that was a big disappointment. They could have really put a stamp on where they thought or where they think their season could have been going, but now they took a couple of steps back. So it is professional football. The good thing about it, you get another opportunity, but that right there was not a good performance. Shout out to that quarterback va. He showed me something in that game coming back after being injured. He was basically on two wonky legs and he was still out there making some great throws, some great plays, but it was definitely a letdown by that defense who at one point was the best defense in the cfl. So let's see if they can bounce back in the upcoming weeks. Yeah, I couldn't figure it out. And I know Ryan actually filmed his wedding many years ago, A small Circle that this whole world is, but I just had to figure he had to have been strangling necks on the side. You're like, all we're the donut boys we're coming out and these are the wins you need to stack because at the end of the year it's going to come down to you and Winnipeg and you have to take him where you can get 'em here. I just didn't understand coming out and just, they've had a couple of these games now where Campbell say, rinse it off. And I'm like, no, you need to remember this because these are the ones you need to hold onto when you can Without a doubt, you can't let situations when you're supposed you playing teams, you're supposed to be, everyone's expecting you to. You got to win 'em. You got to win nine out of 10 of 'em. Now every now and then you have a slipper, but you got to win nine out of 10 of 'em and to lose in the fashion in which they lost where their offense was scoring points. The defense couldn't stop him. Emus jumping all over the place like he's LeBron James just dunking on folks. You can't let those things happen against teams you're supposed to win against. So it's a learning lesson. Hopefully they learned their lesson. I'm sure Ryan Phillips is going to drill it in their head. Guys, every time you step on the field, you got to come with your head game. Otherwise these things happen and hopefully they learn their lesson. Are you tired on the panel of talking about the Elk's home losing streak now? Are you really tired of this? I'm tired, but we have to talk about it. I mean we would do everyone a disservice if we didn't. It's part of my job. Definitely. We so redundant. It's like brushing my teeth. You do it two or three times and that's what we're doing every week we're talking about it. Let's hope they can get it resolved and we can move on. But if not, we have to continue talking because it's a big story. The fact that they, like I said, the last time they won a home game, I think I had air, the internet wasn't around. I don't even think you were born. You were so young then. So it's unfortunate that they have, they haven't, but as long as they don't do it, don't accomplish it. We have to continue and when they do it, we're going to hype it up, we're going to talk about it, but if they don't soon we're going to continue talking about the fact that they haven't been able to do it. Yes, I see their tweets go out, they're like tailgating the last time the Elks won, it's like a picture of the last supper or whatever. But I mean just to kind of round out the conversation here, Ottawa coming in really struggling. Trey looking good, getting more familiar. I mean, do you think this is the week and what do you make of this matchup? We've been saying that for a while. This is the week we say that every week. This is the week. I'm going to say it again. This is the week, but it's not going to be easy task. As you talked about Ottawa, they are a hungry team. They're trying to stay in the playoff race. They feel they have a good enough quarterback in Crumb, they can get it done. They feel that they've been oh so close in so many games and now it's time for 'em to get over the hump. So it's not going to be easy task, but it would be good for these Elks to get it. It'll be good for Trey Ford to go out there and play again and get some of those fans coming back into the stands and getting it back to what Edmonton used to be. As I alluded to, it's not going to be easy task, but as we've been saying, every single week, this is the week the Elks will get their first home victory as the Elks and we're all excited about it. Just to finish this up, we talked a lot of the quarterbacks, but obviously that's one of the things, turnover here at the end of the season, depending what happens with Beau and you've seen obviously seen Trevor Harris go down in Moz. What do you make in here of the next swath? We got the Dustin Crumbs of the world and straightforward. Is this the next era? Are we seeing this kind of be ushered in? Yeah, it has to be at the quarterback position. If our quarterbacks aren't playing well, this league is bad. I know some people like to say they like to see defensive shutouts. No, we don't like to see low scoring games. It's meant this game is meant to be a high scoring game. So we got to get some of these younger guys developing. As you mentioned, the older guys, they're getting injured. Boli, Mitchell, Trevor Harris, we've seen Cody take some, even Zach, these guys are getting older. We don't know how long we have left, so we got to get some of these younger guys to continue playing wells. Good to see Chad Kelly playing. Well. We know what his final destination, we know he wants to go to the nfl and hopefully he gets that opportunity, but if he doesn't, hopefully he can stay around here forever. Dustin Crumb, Trey Ford, all guys. We need to continue playing well because our quarterback position is the most important, more important than the gm, the head coach, anyone else? We have to make sure they continue well and hopefully these young guys continue playing well for this year and years to come. Well Mel, I appreciate your time. I mean this feels like it's been a good kind of bounce back season here coming. We had Covid and then it was kind of coming off of that and everything feels like it's back up to speed here. You feel good about the league here moving forward? Yes, I do. I do. Viewership is up. Of course we have some stadiums where the fans aren't showing up, but I think we can get that fixed would resolve in other situations. But I'm excited about it. There's been some crazy games. There's been some boring games. I wouldn't be lying if I say there hasn't been, but there's been some exciting games in the cfl and everyone involved is excited about it. More fans, more younger fans are tuning in and hopefully we can get that young viewership tuning in even more. So we're excited second half of the season, looking forward to it and looking forward to another exciting great cup which will be coming up in November. Well, we'll be up there. We have our flights booked. We'll be in Hamilton, so I appreciate it your time today, it means a lot. So thank you with everything going on. Yeah, and also thank for all thank you for all you do. You support us a lot. You support a lot of leagues, but you give a lot of love to the cfl down in the states and we're all thankful for all the things you do for us. Well, you appreciate it. Was it hashtag paper plates? Do we have the backstory of that? Did I ask you that before? You have and millions of people have, but there's only two people on the earth who knows what that means and that's me and my older son. The person who sleeps next to me every single night even doesn't even know so I can't tell you and she doesn't know. So there's only two human beings. So maybe when I die and someone writes my book, I'll let 'em know what's going on then. So we got a hundred years before I die, so there we go. Alright, well take care. I appreciate it. All right man. You have a good one. Thanks a lot. Well here we are coming off a big game over the weekend we'll talk about you. Not a great win loss but a good game for you regardless. Here we have Alex Hans, how are you doing sir? I'm doing pretty good man. How about you? I'm good. We'll talk about it. I called the BC Lions America cfl team, so I hope you co-sign that you guys are representing all of America. When you go out and play, how do you feel? I feel pretty good about that. It's good. It's a good thing to feel about. So we've had on Vernon preseason, I think you're the first lions player we've had on during the season. What's the vibe? What are you guys like this season? What's the locker room? How are you guys doing? Locker room, doing great man. We have a good record winning record. We seven three right now. I mean those games we lost, we wish we could have done a lot more better, but at the end of the day you going to win something. You going to learn with some. But I feel like this locker room is great. We love each other and we love playing for each other. We trust each other and that's all that really matters. What I've always liked about you guys and the wide receiver core is it feels like it's like a team effort and no one feels the need to have to be the superstar. We've had lucky on before and we've had Keenan on. Talk about just your guys' relationship and how you guys operate. Honestly, what I think about this receiver room, I feel like we all are superstars to this offense. You just never know when a guy can have this breakaway game or have the big play. You never know. And we have a stacked receiver room, which is very good to have. All of us are very talented. We all have our own strengths. We just put 'em all together, just kind of make it one big superpower and that kind of makes it a hard thing to stop. Once we get going and executing very well, then we are a very good group. I can imagine. And I've of course never been a star playing professional sports like you guys, but there could be jealousy and animosity or hey who's getting more touches or whatever. But it does seem like it's this, as long as we win, it doesn't matter who it is. It could be your night one night, it could be Lucky's night one night, it could be kind of across the board. Nah, it's no jealousy at all actually. It's kind of like friendly competition with all of us. We always going to be like, we're going to get a chicken box. So when we say that's going to be like who's going to score a touchdown or who going to outwork me or you ain't Finn outwork me. It's always competition. So we do that in practice then and game first place. Some guys tell each other like, Hey, you ain't Finn to outwork me today. So that's how we do it. We compete but we not at competition with each other know if that makes sense. So we just work hard, we just work hard as individuals and we work hard as a group together and we all just feed off each other energy. Anybody make a big play or a first down or a tough catch or whatever, we feed off that we feed off one another and we just keep it going, keep it going and make big plays Coming in. Obviously stint last year coming in now first full season with the cfl, what is it like playing up in Canada, playing with the different field, the rules? How are you customizing? Oh, I adjusted well to it not, but last year when I first got here, you got to get used to the waggle, you get the headstart run, you can work down the line of scrimmage. I first got here, I'm like man, what is this? This is not how football goes, but this is how it goes in the cfl. And once I got used to it and getting that timer down with the quarterbacks and everything, things got a lot better for me. And as you can see now, I've been making a lot of plays for the offense for the team. Yeah, so mainly clicking now Talk about Vernon. Like I said, we've had him on the show a friend and he's from Tacoma. Here we are like 20 minutes apart as the crow flies locker room leader. What's he like? What do you like about him? Va man, he real chill. He'll joke around every now and then, but I'm always joking with him, having him laughing and stuff. So vi he a real good dude, man. I love that dude. So I love joke with him all the time. I make fun of him every day and that's, that's just what we do. But he is a great dude on and off the field. He's just a great person to be around. Well even when he was going through and obviously the injury and coming back where he was off a couple of weeks here he's getting water for the O line and he's walking around and hyping people up. I mean it seems like he's really kind of invested all in this season to really be a part of it with you guys. Yeah, yeah, he's really invested. What is he playing or not he playing, obviously he's invested, he's the quarterback, but when he wasn't playing he was just keeping guys up, keeping guys motivated and that's him on in off the field and that's a good thing to have from a quarterback. That's a good thing to have from any type of player on your team. You want to have a guy like that that motivates you and no matter what happens, it's just to keep you up and uplift you. So that's great to have. When I look at your guys' receivers, you and everyone, it just seems like there's so much depth. You guys are all so talented in so many different ways. You've said you feel like you have a great receiver room. Do you attribute that to scouting or it just seems like you guys are the wealth of resources right now for being able to kind of put points up on the board and run the score up. What do you attribute that to Man? Not to make it sound easier said than done, but we just put in the work. That's it. We just put in the work man and the results shows on game day. That's it. We should put in the work. You work hard, you're going to get good results. Coming off wasn't the most spectacular game here over the weekend I had my hat and you're kind of throwing it in the garbage. I was very upset. How do you guys internalize a tough game like that? It was a tough game. Yeah, tough loss. We lost about five points. Yeah, we lost about five points. Then you going to have some of those games, old close ones that you should have won those close nail by the games. But despite of us losing, I love the way our team just fought. We fought until the clock says zero. And that's what we love. Those mistakes that we made, they could be fixed. There was a lot of mistakes made in our phase of the game. Obviously offense, defense and special teams and we going to correct those and we will correct whole things. But I just love the way we fought together as a team. No one point the finger at nobody. We all took the L just like, man, like I said, you win so you lose some. But at the end of the day, I just love the way we fought to the clock says zero and all that matter, any day I'll play for anybody, play with anybody who's going to fight. So that's why I love playing for this team. We love playing for everyone on this team, all the players and this culture staff because us as a unit, we going to fight to the end. I'm always curious to check after the games, the post sound and they post Rick a little bit of his talking to you guys. Coach Rick in the locker room and I listened to Vernon's post game and things. Does that resonate with you when coach Rick and you guys had the tough floss before the Argos talking, okay, we need to wash this move on. Do you appreciate the messaging that you guys are getting in the locker room? Win or lose? Yeah. Yeah. And win or lose. Coach Rick will always will have something to positive say. Even with the losses that we had, it is always some good, it's not as bad as it always seem. And the things coach Rick say and what he does and how he coaches us and what he does for us, that's a coach that you want to give y'all all for. He's a player coach and so all the things that he be saying are right things obviously. And yeah, that's it. So once he says something there's nothing else to be said. Vernon, we talked obviously in the game. Gutsy performance put up 450 I think plus yards. You had a score, multiple receptions, just a gutsy performance all around from him. Does that inspire you? What do you look at when you're looking at him on the field? What does that make you think? I'd be like, man, this dude good lucky, I'm glad he's our quarterback, but va, he just make plays. He just make plays from anywhere on the field. He always put the ball in a great spot for the receiver to catch and that's what he does and that's what he did. And like I said, my moment ago, we all wish we could have done something a little bit better to come out with that win. And he feels like that too because I talked with him also, but he going to do what he going to do regardless. VA going to make plays. So that's what he going to do and that's what we expect him to do and he expects himself to do that and that's what he'll be doing for us. Every game he plays. He made big plays. You talked about having competition at work and a lot of the guys who are the other receivers. Who do you have competition with the day of the game? What's kind of relationship with everyone else there in the room? Everybody. Everybody competes with each other. It is not just one or two guys, everybody. So it is me and hats. Hats. During practice day hats was like, Hey, I'm coming for you, I'm coming for you. I'm right there on you. I'm coming for you now. I was like, oh man, okay, let me see. Oh yeah, you trying to come for, I got to make sure you don't get me then you don't catch me first. Play of the game of the SAS game, Justin McKen, he was like, we're going to get a chicken by first. We're going to get the first cash, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. So we always compete with each other. Friendly competi of attention. But it is fun. It makes us compete a lot harder and we just love doing it. That's what makes it fun for us and we just love playing with each other. It'd be so much fun. Undefeated at home right this season. What's it about? The atmosphere there and we've had Amar on in the past and talking, trying to build the culture there. What is it like playing at home? Great atmosphere, great fans. They always come to cheer at home. They loud going crazy. That's what we love and they show a lot of support and like you said, we're undefeated at home and that's what we're going to continue to try to do, protect home. So we're going to try to come out with the win. Hamilton coming in there, they're struggling, they're not having the greatest season. How do you guys, you don't want to sleep on anyone and everyone, you guys are all professional, but how do you approach kind of the game this weekend? Yeah, like you said, you don't want to sleep. You don't want to sleep with nobody or take no team for granted or take 'em lightly and very easy because at the end of the day it's still football. You still got to go out there and play. You still got to go out there and execute because that's who going to win a game. The team that execute the most and when it matters. So that's what we're going to try to go out there and do, execute as many players as possible to come out with the win. We're not going to take them lightly at all because they still do a lot of good things too. Finally, what do you kind of work on? What do you do when you're not playing? When you bi week or when you're not kind of at practice? What are you going to go do tonight? What do you do in your spare time? My spare time, I listen to music every day. Every day I listen to music. I love music. Music is life. Life is music. But besides that, I go for walks so I just be chilling on the roof side, watch sunset. So I like stuff like that. That's about it. I hang out with three of the teammates, go get some et gutter. Other than that, nothing. Nothing too crazy On your way. What's in your disc player anymore, but what's on your phone? What are you listening to? I like a lot of r b old school music. Something slow. Yeah, something slow. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Sitting there sitting on the rooftop, listening to some slow jams. Watching the sunset. That's good. Yeah, that's great. That's perfect. Well Alex, I appreciate it. I hope you guys go off this weekend, get a bounce back. I'll be watching cheering on here by the America cfl team. Appreciate your time today. Thank you. Really appreciate all of our guests today. Greg Parks, making time back in school, taking time out late at night to schedule and record his piece here. Talking to all of the players, signing to the nfl rosters, really excited about that. And then like I said, mil Stegel making time, balancing all his T ss n duties and family commitments and work and everything else. So really appreciate Mil and Alexander Hollins. Really appreciate Matt, everyone over at the BC Alliance for getting that coordinated. Like I said, it should be a good show next week if all goes well. Otherwise we will pivot as always and figure it out like and subscribe. Enjoy the cfl games this weekend. Keep an eye. Lots of news will be coming down next week following the nfl roster cut. So best of luck to all of the players signed, whether you're from the xfl or the usfl, best of luck. It's going to be really tough and it's really hard to make it, especially coming from the spring leagues and all football and kind of all that stuff. So well wishes from the show for all of them and I hope you guys have a great weekend and thanks as always. See you next time.

CFL 2023 Week 11 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 11, What Did We Learn?

Well, here we go. Happy Markcast Monday here following the disappointing, needless to say cfl week 11. I will say had the Mariners not swept the Astros at home. At home, the Mariners swept the Astros. I'm about Skip Bayless here. I was late getting on. I was about Skip Bayless here. I got my trash can. I got my BC Lions hat, so we're getting close here. Not quite because the Mariners, thank God Al Tuby being thrown out. This was how great my weekend was before last night. Jose Altuve biggest heel in baseball right now hits his 2000th career hit goes for two. Cade Marlow, our rookie, throws him out at second. That's where I was at and then this whole weekend fell apart. Jason, how are you doing? I'm doing good, Reid. Obviously I went to two of the games this weekend, so it was a great weekend from that perspective, but just wish one of my teams won. You're getting to the point. Yeah, we're running out of the options here. Evan's back at school at L S U. Evan, how are you doing? Yeah, good. Been a busy weekend for me, but it was an exciting slate of games and I think we have a lot to talk about, not just with the actual games themselves, but I think with some of the circumstances around them. There was a lot of interesting cfl news this week to cover, so excited to get into that. As usual. Yeah, we had, Jason and I were with Naylor. Evan was driving back, cross country, getting back to school, so didn't have Evan on the Thursday show. I would just say in all seriousness, because Farhan was doing his post game and Vernon talking about, because Vernon took full credit for the loss and all of that. But I said these when BC is sitting here in November with a 31 to 13 loss at IG Field and the West finals, this is the game I want you to circle and look back on. These are winnable games that you need to go in. You need to take care of business. Where are the donut boys? We have Jake Della Gallo running around the field. I mean looking like Patrick Mahomes out there. I mean this is crazy. I just didn't understand. I watched the second half. We were going to my mom's for dinner and then finally I'm like, I got to pull this game up. I got to see what the heck's going on. So disappointing. I don't know why our kryptonite playing away from BC place or whatever. Jason, what did you make? I know you were getting on the train back from Ottawa. What did you make of just, to me it felt like a really big collapse last night at the bc. Yeah, I mean we've seen a regression in recent weeks from that BC defense, which is certainly concerning obviously a couple of weeks ago against Winnipeg and then this week against Saskatchewan. Very disappointing to see that, but I think that they had some untimely turnovers that gave Saskatchewan short fields and that was a big factor in how they were able to convert those into touchdowns and ultimately get enough points to beat bc. I think if these teams played 10 times, I think BC wins probably nine times, but I think we saw that one time just the last night And I don't know. I mean, I listened to the post game and I hear Rick and he's in the, Hey, I know you guys wanted to beat yourselves up right now. Don't worry about it. It's like, I would worry about it. This is a pattern now. This is a pattern not being able to perform on the road, Vernon. I don't blame all that and he got beat up. Again, you need to be able to protect them. Yeah. James says here, VA took some hard dirty hits. Evan, what did you make of this? Because we're on the VA train? Absolutely. It was an interesting game and I think this game to me was honestly more surprising than the Edmonton win and we'll obviously get into that later, but there was a lot of people predicting that Edmonton was going to win that game against Hamilton. Didn't see a lot of people that were saying Saskatchewan was going to beat BC and that's kind of what I'm getting at here. Definitely an upset game, but I think BC personally, I mean Saskatchewan played very well and Jake Dala, I was very high on him. I think his performances have definitely swayed a little bit. They haven't exactly been consistent, but this was clearly the best outing that he's had in a long time. And just to see that, I mean, BC played well in this game. I find it interesting how every time BC loses, I go back to that Toronto game. It's not because Vernon Adams doesn't play well. I mean, well in that case he had a lot of turnovers, but in this game or both of those games really the one against Toronto and then the one against Saskatchewan here, because he didn't play in the Winnipeg game, he was injured both times. He's throwing for like 400 yards, three touchdowns. He's still putting the work in. And when I looked at the stats initially, I didn't get a chance to watch much of this game. I did watch most of the others, but this game in particular, just looking at the stats, I thought how did BC lose, I'm looking at this, I'm like, Vernon, 400 plus yards, three touchdowns. He was doing his thing. Now I noticed that they didn't have much of a run game, which again is always a red flag. But yeah, then I looked over at Saskatchewan and I saw Jake Doga was dealing, and Jamal Morrow looked decent on the ground and they finally started spreading things out. And I think what's really important here from the rough rider's perspective, because I think we know about BC already, we know what they're capable of. Yes, they've had some struggles on the road, but we still believe in them. I still believe that they will be in that West Final again against Winnipeg. I'll say that every week until it actually happens or maybe it won't, who knows? But I'm pretty confident that it will. What's most important for Saskatchewan here is now they're back at 500. They're five and five and most importantly because Winnipeg sneaked by Calgary, Calgary is now two games behind. So we've been talking about this kind of race in the west between Calgary and Saskatchewan, those two spots now Saskatchewan is finally pulling away a bit. They're two games ahead or whatever. They have that advantage and I think that's going to go a long way. And personally, I liked what I saw from Dole Gala. I think him, I mean we'll see what happens with Mason. Fine, obviously, but I wouldn't have a problem rolling with Jake Delal at this point. He proved himself, took down the top team really in the West, in my opinion, even though Winnipeg is officially ahead of the standings, and if you're a Saskatchewan fan right now, I think you should just be happy that you're back at 500 with all the turmoil that's happened this season. I think Jason had messaged a group last night after I having my panic attack, Hamilton coming in next week. Is that a make good? Is that a make good for bc? I don't know. I mean, I've lost faith in them in terms of just, I don't know if it's, it's a locker room thing. They talk Ryan Phillips tonight. I shot Ryan's wedding. I know Ryan very well. He's got the guys up. I just don't know what it is if it's a little bit more lax locker room. And we got Rick kind of like, well, whatever guys we got to do, they need to show up. And Winnipeg, I just feel like when they show up, they carried themselves like a championship quality caliber team. And just in terms of these are the games, yeah, you had the flute game and when Edmonton was up 22 0, they didn't worry. They came down the field. Look what happened when BC they started throwing those picks against Toronto. Oh my god, Dana, we're freaking out. We got to do all this, do all that. Dan fell behind, we got to throw all these, we got to make it down the field. Kind of making things worse. I just feel like there's something going on in that mentality right now in terms of that team way. Jason, do you have thoughts on that? It feels like something's not clicking here. Yeah, I think you brought up a good point a few minutes ago about how they're struggling on the road. I think that because that game next week's in bc, I think I am fully expecting a big bounce back because as little faith as you have in BC right now, I can assure you that I have less faith in the Hamilton Tigercat at this point. So I think that BC will get a big win there. But I think like you said, when you go back at the end of the season and Winnipeg's ahead in the standings, this will be the game that, or one of the games that you circle and say that this is why BC is not hosting the West Final. And I think they really do need to host that West Final against Winnipeg. It's going to be very hard for them to go to Winnipeg in November and win as we saw last year. That's what I was going to say. I've seen this movie, I've seen this movie. I went to the semis where we beat the pants off Calgary. It wasn't even a game. And then I've seen this whole movie before. I lived through this and I said, I'm not going to go to Winnipeg because last year I was thinking like, do I go? And I thought to my head I thought, I'm not going to go just to watch BC loose. And they got, I mean they kept it close and Nathan played his heart out, but he was coming back and was never quite right. We had a couple questions here. Luis says, good, see you Evan, and congratulations on your new I F L director role there. I need to start calling you the director more on here. I know that was said I was going to do that. Louis had a question for Jason. We'll get to the tie cats, but in terms of turning Edmonton around, are you feeling better on their stock right now? I definitely do. Obviously it's a lot easier to feel more confident about them coming off their first win of the season, but I think the key will be breaking that home, losing streak next week against T Audible, which is as good of an opportunity as they've had to break that streak. If they can win that game, get their second win of the season, I think they have a back-to-back against Calgary the next couple weeks after that. So I think that those are winnable games as well for them. So they could go on a little bit of a winning streak here. I think they can get right back into it. And then Evan, do you think, does this turn Saskatchewan around? Are you looking differently at them? People are saying in the comments, we're not giving the riders enough credit here. We're kind of blaming bc. We will see right now they're definitely wild card team. They have a lot of questions themselves, even at 500 getting back into the playoff race. I don't know. I need a couple more games of this type of performance from them before I'm really confident. Maybe give it another couple of weeks. I feel like I say that a lot. I'll just give it a couple more weeks. But it's true, this team has had a lot of inconsistency and I've pointed out a lot of flaws about them. I still think they're a good football team. They have a lot of good pieces there and I find it a bit interesting that they have jumped Calgary this much. Again, I was pretty high on Calgary and now that's starting to slip on a bit of a weekly basis. But no, I mean look, I think Saskatchewan right now, they're reaching one of those peaks again and I hope that they can ride on that for a bit just because we're kind of at a pivotal point in the season. They can hold this for now, but there's still enough time left to where other teams can come in and take that at the very end of the season. I thought it was funny here, I had this tweet pulled up Michael Ball, he was under the weather yesterday, so the riders were battling through adversity on all fronts. Even Michael Ball, the voice with the rough riders battling through. But yeah, back to 500, he had tweeted out before the game. I think the Rogers take this and obviously whatever I said I'll take VC by two touchdowns, I didn't even think it was going to be closed. Remarkable. Just kind of like you said, this is why I don't do sports betting is because I would even throw my head through a window even faster than that to Dorothy's credit. I did tell her last night, I said, man, BC just kind of crapped about here against the rider. She goes, oh, are those the green people? So Dorothy knows Dorothy's keeping track, Dorothy knows the riders. I want to get into the game itself. Jason, I know you were seeing the first part coming back on the train. What did you make of just the performance here? And I got a couple notes to pull up. Well, I think one of the biggest surprises for me was how Saskatchewan's defensive line really pushed around BC's offensive line in this one. They really, really struggled in this one. I think that on top of that, they had several penalties. Kent Perkins don't mean to call anybody out, but he had three huge penalties in this one, especially in the second half, the last one. I think when they were driving to complete that comeback, I think they would've completed that comeback and took in the lead on that second to last drive. I think it was if they didn't take a key holding penalty, that would've set them up on a third and one if they didn't take that penalty. So I mean that was very disappointing. I think that's really what stood out for me in this game. And like you said before, I think BC's defense really getting chewed up by an inexperienced quarterback in Jake Dag gala. Yeah, I have here, and I don't want to, I was going to note this off the top of the show and then we just had such a rants here going into it, but we got copyright stricken from the Shield last week from the N F L for talking about one of far Han's quote tweets about Nathan Wars. I hope. I hope the cfl doesn't come after us as well. I thought we had fair use to commentary over a quote tweet of a game clip, so hopefully we're fine with that. Evan, were you surprised de, I mean we've seen him play, people have wanted to see him behind Mason, him finally come out here. Were you impressed with how he was performing? Oh, definitely. I mean, I was surprised how quickly he caught on. I've always been somewhat of a jig Dole gala believer, but he hadn't quite sold me yet. Again, he has shown flashes, but it has been very hard, I think for him to be consistent so far. And part of that is just because he's not getting a lot of playing time. He's even behind, I think Mason fine in that regard. So yeah, I mean Dole Gala, I think he still has some things to improve. I mean he was with the, I think the Bengals, I want to say maybe it's been two years now, 2021. So I think he's going on year two in the cfl. Don't quote me on that, I should have probably looked at that. But no, all I can say about Jake do gala for now is I do believe that he can start for the rest of the season, to be honest if he needs to. I think there's a lot of potential there and the more he plays, I think the more he'll be able to fit into this league. So that's where I'm at with that. And of course Evan's spot on as always I pulled up, but of course Evan knows exactly what's going on with all of these guys. Remarkable. Yeah, I had comment far on talking, fortunate even to be down 11 at half, it just felt like, and we're watching this kind of the game winning drive at the end and Lucky had the big drop and what was it, deep shots to. Lucky he had one drop, but he had the thing too where he kind did the reek kill with the peace sign run. And then I thought that was kind of funny. Oh, the other thing at the end when the final play where they kneeled it and then tried to do kind of a semi Hail Mary, I don't know. Do you let your special teams go there, Jason? I thought that was odd at the end of the game where we're taking the ball all the way, I have no faith in it that Vernon's throwing the ball 80 yards here. Well, unfortunately, I actually missed the last two minutes of the game. That was right when my train was arriving in Hamilton, so I missed just the end of it. But I was watching with my data on the train watching the huge comeback here, but excuse me, unfortunately, missed the final couple minutes there. Andy had a comment in our chat. Evan read my disagree with me, but that was one of the VA's best games ever gritty and took it like a champ until the end. What did you make of va? Yeah, va. I mean, again, even in a loss, VA I think is still impressive and maybe he's asked to do too much. Maybe that's the reason why they're in this position. I mean 455 yards, that's a lot to be thrown even in a cfl game. And you look at, again, you look at the run game, it was non-existent. Vernon was the leading rusher two carries for 24 yards. So that I think plays a role. But I mean continuing still continuing week after week to just find his receivers I think is the most impressive thing. And Alex Hollands has really stood out in the past couple weeks. He was exceeding when I was there. I guess that was last weekend in Calgary. And then Lucky Whitehead finally getting involved a bit lucky I think is a fan favorite there in bc. Every time I've gone to one of those games, people really gravitate towards Lucky Whitehead. So it's nice to see him get worked into that offense because to be honest, we hadn't called his name out that much this year because there's so many other guys that are Playmakers. I mean Keon Hatcher too. He had a career game last week against Calgary there at BC Place. So again, even in a loss, Vernon, he's really exceeding, he's really exceeding. I think he's exceeded everybody's expectations and he continues to do that even when there is doubt casted upon the team. And that's why I am still confident in this team's ability now, given their struggles on the road. And this kind of pertains to this is going away from this specific game for a minute, but I think just in general it might be a bigger deal now if BC hosts the West Final as compared to them going to Winnipeg because I've been saying this, oh, they're going to be in the West Final, they're going to be in the West Final, but now with their struggles on the road that have been pointed out, and it seems to be more of a consistent trend now than I believed before. I'm looking at that now. Okay, well maybe if it's at home, they're going to have a much higher chance of winning than if it's in Winnipeg. And I mean, yeah, home field Advantage, you could say that about every team, but I don't know, maybe this is something we're discovering about BC that we didn't really know before. I'm not going to say that they can only win at home. I don't think they're one of those teams. It's interesting because in the cfl it's almost backwards. There's so many teams that can win away, but then when they go try and win it home, it doesn't work out. I mean, you looked at Ottawa and they finally broke the streak and then Edmonton obviously hasn't broken theirs yet, but they finally did win a game. Thank God for that. We'll get into that later. But no, ultimately I think BC with Vernon at quarterback, there's no doubt to be had there. And there's really, I mean I've only seen him make, there's been very few mistakes I've seen him make this year and I mean it's safe to call him a top quarterback of the league even in a loss. Yeah, it's frustrating when you look at the stat line like you said here, throwing for 455 yards and how is Myel seven carriers for 15 Saskatchewan shutting that down. It just, it's crazy to me here that we couldn't figure this out. I don't know, I'm kind of at a loss. Jason, anything else on this one? I don't want to keep hammering down the lions, but obviously this was kind of the most recent game I wanted to give a little more credit to. The rough riders specifically their wide receivers stepped up and made some huge catches in this one Samuel, his breakout season after being a first round pick last year, Jareth Sterns, I think it is. I always up that first name. But he had a big game in this one as well. Heon Schaefer Baker back in the lineup as well. So I thought the receivers played a huge role in this one for Saskatchewan and a big reason why they were able to come out victorious. Well pick didn't have that big catch there at the end to get the first down as well. And they went that went to review and everything and I sitting, I got my phone out and I'm sitting there trying to kind of look and see the why. I was like, is that a catch? It was good. I give them credit. Like I said, I've seen this movie before. Where's my standings here? Is it Saskatchewan this year versus as opposed to Calgary coming into BC and then, I don't know, it's like rinse and repeat. I would just like to see BC kind of maintained a little bit of this momentum then have such kind of a roller coaster here. Let's get to the next game. I'll get it pulled up here. Jason was at this one. We had the scouting reports from two different games this weekend, the Montreal at Ottawa, red Black, right finish of the season. Jason, what's going on here? Thrilling fashion at the end of the game. So first of all, this was my first time at the Ottawa Red Black Stadium TD Place, and I thought that it was an excellent stadium experience first of all. But I think that the biggest takeaway I have from this game, despite the dramatic comeback, I think the best team won this game because when you look at the first half and how Ottawa was able to build that lead, they came as a result of a couple of big turnovers from Caleb Evans, the Montreal Alouettes quarterback, and it set up Ottawa with a very short fields and they were able to capitalize that and turn them into touchdowns. But overall, Ottawa's offense didn't get much going in this game and Montreal was able to catch up to them in the second half when they stopped making those mistakes. So I thought that was really impressive from Caleb Evans and the fact that he was able to grow up before our eyes in that second half after having a brutal first half, like I said. So I think that it was pretty sweet for him to get the win over his former team that probably could have given him the shot to be their full-time starting quarterback, but ultimately they threw him to the curb and he came back to bite him in this one. Yeah, he was certainly involved earlier. So what's the deal with Cody? Is it still a thumb issue? Is it still kind of week to week? Yeah, I think that he was dressing for this game is the third quarterback. I think that's become a trend in the cfl where if they're somewhat close to returning, they often dress as the third quarterback. I think it has something to do with the one game injured list kind of thing, and maybe from a cap perspective, but I'm not too sure. But yeah, I think he's pretty close to returning because he was dressing in this one, but ultimately didn't see any action Because spoiler alert, I've been trying to get friend of the show back on the show for a while here, Cody Chardo and there's been a lot of like, well, he hasn't played or he was hurt and it's a short week and we're traveling this week we've been working on, I've been trying to get Cody back on, but we going to get the stars aligned there with Montreal. So working on that. Evan, what did you make? Caleb Evans coming out being the hero ball here, 333 yards, two tds with two interceptions. Yes. Very exciting game. And one of my major takeaways from this one was Caleb Evans. He could stick around I think in this league for a long time. Definitely as a backup and perhaps as a fill in starter when need be. I look at a guy, maybe Matt Shilts who's kind of bounced around now between Montreal and then Hamilton. I kind of see Caleb Evans in that role where you might not be a permanent starter, but you can stick around a long time in this league if you just kind of find your role in your niche and you're in the right place at the right time. Caleb Evans is a playmaker, and I've watched this guy before, I think he played in Ottawa at one point, so this will count as a revenge game. So I've watched him a couple of times before, watch tape, things like that. This guy really mean the fact, dare I say that he could start over Cody Fido, and I shouldn't say that if Reid's going to bring him back on the show, but again, he got the job done and maybe it wasn't in beautiful fashion. It took again a rough first half and then he kind of had to make that up in the second half and late game heroics and all that. So maybe it wasn't exactly perfect. It wasn't like a Jake Dagal type performance that we saw in Saskatchewan, but there was a lot, there was a there to work with and there's no doubt that he elevated this offense and gave him a win that I don't know if they needed it. I mean, yeah, look, it's good to always win. Your goal is to win. It's football, it's sports. But if you look at the standings, I mean Montreal is pretty comfortable right now. They kind of have a bit of breathing room. So if they lost this game, I mean considering Ottawa is at the bottom of the division, it wouldn't matter too much, but either way, they still made a statement. And outside of Caleb Evans from Montreal in this game, Austin Mack continues to impress week after week. I'm pretty sure he's locked in his spot as an all-star at this point. Tyler Snead, he kind of came back, he had that huge game against Toronto and then kind of went quiet. It seems like on his best days he's really good at scoring multiple touchdowns in this game on the receiving end. And then the other one I wanted to point out, a player that I haven't really talked about this year was Ji Myla had a big play in this game, Ji, he was in the cfl and then tried his luck with the breakers in the usfl. He went down there with Richie Ani who's now on the Tie Katz and didn't work out for them down there. So they came back up to the cfl and it's been a pretty quiet year for her from my understanding and for Richie too in Hamilton, kind of both quiet years for guys that are coming back from a usfl attempt. But it was nice to see him have his moment in this game. And then we'll just switching over to the Ottawa side here for a minute, I honestly don't have a ton of notes on Ottawa. Like Jason said, at the end of the day, even if it took a big comeback in the second half, the better team still won this. You could consider it a choke job by Ottawa, but given the way that they built the lead, you'll see this a lot where teams, they will build a lead off unconventional ways. So outside of big offensive drives and things like that, things that aren't sustainable, and then people are surprised when a team comes back because it's a lot easier to come back when you've just made a few simple mistakes, in my opinion, than when the opponent is again putting together these long stingy drives and the defense won't let up. So yeah, overall, I mean this was a very, again, thrilling game. Montreal I think had 15 points in the fourth quarter, but at the end of the day, I wasn't surprised that Montreal was able to come back and win this. I mean, it wasn't a guarantee, but when it happened, I was like, well, that's good because Montreal I think deserved to win is what I'm getting at. And the ultimate point here that I'll wrap up with is Ottawa has been losing a lot of momentum. I mean, we talked about them a couple of weeks ago having all this pull and it was like Crumb sanity or whatever you want to call it, but now that's kind of all gone away and they're kind of back to this place again where you lost those games to Hamilton, you're at the bottom of the east, things really don't look that great. And we'll get into Hamilton later. I have my own thoughts about them and their position and personally I think they're worse off, but I'll get to why I think that. But just looking at Ottawa, I don't know. I think, yeah, I believe in them and I like Bob D for the most part. You can question some of the things that he's done in recent weeks from the coaching perspective, but I like Bob DySIS, I like the culture they have there. I just think they still need another year. As sad as that is, I don't know, even with all the stuff that's happened and the big roller coaster, all the ups and downs, they could still win a couple more games, but I definitely don't see 'em as a playoff team and they're getting further away from that each week at this point. Yeah, Ottawa feels very cold right now, and I want to get Jason's thoughts comparing them to the tie cats. I will just say on Caleb Evans to give him a little credit. I remember when I had Tim Capper with the Flight Deck podcast on when I think we were doing the A F L stuff or whatever, and I said, well, how are you feeling about Cody and everything? And he said, I feel great about all of our quarterbacks. He said, I feel good even if Cody's not Caleb's good. And I can't remember their third string guy, but Tim said, no, I think we're in a solid position right now. And I don't know, it just feels like they're really putting together a cohesive team here. I like stand back's, always solid. Didn't have a huge game, but always good. And we've talked before, like I said, about kind of the receiving corn, the Austin Max, if everything of the world, Jason, in terms of it does feel like Ottawa has lost all the momentum it had. Yeah, it does, but I mean it all comes down to the playoff race right now because none of the teams in the playoff race are really pulling ahead. I guess it's with Saskatchewan pulling ahead a two game lead here. It really comes down to the TCAs, red Black and Stampeders for that last playoff spot right now in the cfl as of right now. And I think that the red black, I mean a lot of people will compare them to the TCAs, but I think they're actually more comparable this season to the stamp Peters because they've been in a lot of close games where they've had opportunities to win games, whereas the tie cats have, they've been blown out when they've lost. They haven't been able to be competitive a lot in games. And I think that Calgary and the Red Black have really down the stretch, they haven't been able to close games out. So I think at the end of the day, I think it's going to come down to those three teams and one of those teams is going to grab that last playoff spot somehow. And I think maybe six wins gets it done this year in the cfl, that would be probably one of the worst teams ever to make the playoffs in the cfl. I would say circle here, maybe six to 40 5:00 PM Pacific here on Sunday night next week if Ottawa loses to Edmonton at home. I do think their season is about over except for the fact that you got Hamilton and bc. So assuming, and we don't know, assuming BC does its job here at home and takes care of business, that's going to be rough, going to be rough, but I see that we will get to Edmonton, but Jason, and I'll get Evan as well. Are you pretty high on maybe Ottawa finally giving up the loss here at home? I mean, I think it's as good of a chance, as I said earlier in the show for Edmonton to break that streak. But until I see it, I just won't believe it. I think that I've seen too many close calls with this team with so many to win that game at home and break that streak that I just don't have full confidence in their ability to do that. And Ottawa last year went in there and won with Nick, our buckle at quarterback. So I mean, I thought last year that was the game that Edmonton was going to win and they still didn't do it, so I'll believe it when I see it. See, we'll be talking here in two years. I remember that time when I thought Ottawa was going to come in and loose against. They're going to keep going. Evan, any other thoughts on this? I mean in regards to the Ottawa Edmonton game? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure if Ottawa has descended that deeply yet. Again, just like Jason, I'll believe it when I see it. I think about all the times. Most recently it was the Winnipeg game where Edmonton pulled away like 22, nothing and lost that. And I mean, there was a couple games where they had momentum early in the season when they could have just broken the streak and then gotten more fans in the building as the season continued when there was still hope. Now you're already looking forward to next year, and I know you and Jason already talked about the Victor Que stuff on the show with Naylor on Thursday. Speaking of Naylor, by the way, he put out a tweet that I thought was very interesting, and it goes back to Jason's point about just sort of the Red Blacks, they're three and seven, but they're one of those teams where a handful of plays away from being five and five, and that really goes a long way, I think because Jason's right, I put Ottawa and Hamilton together because they're in the same division, but the way they have won and lost games is extremely different compared to some of the other ways that we've seen, or again, if you want to draw the comparison to Calgary, yes, Calgary and Ottawa are much closer because they've just had so many lost opportunities where with Hamilton, I think it's a pretty clear line. It's either they win or they lose. When they win, it's by a good margin. Most of the time it feels like a confident win, and when they lose, it's not pretty with these teams with Calgary and then Ottawa in particular, and I feel like Ottawa will feel the burn maybe even more just because Hamilton is further behind the Saskatchewan is when we're talking about East West playoffs stuff, I think Ottawa might feel the burn there because if they, I mean, let's say, I don't know, let's say Hamilton gets into the playoffs at six and 12, and maybe Ottawa has the same record of their game behind, but Hamilton holds the tiebreaker because they won those games against Ottawa already. If that happens, I mean, you had an opportunity to go to the playoffs with that record, but you still couldn't get in, and that's when you're sitting there, the all front office coaching staff is sitting there just kicking themselves. We were that close even in a year where it didn't feel close, generally there was still an opportunity that we couldn't grasp. So it's a unique situation across the league for sure. I think the East Division just, I mean, I don't know, the West to me is ironed out than the East. Well, I don't know. Toronto and Montreal are pretty much locked at this point. We're really just looking at Hamilton and Ottawa, which is still a tossup, and Calgary and Saskatchewan is becoming a further battle than it was a couple of weeks ago. So I don't know. It's an interesting time. I think the bottom line here is, yes, we're going to have a team in the playoffs that does not look like a playoff team, and that's happened in the N F L. I mean, we had the eight and nine Buccaneers playing the Cowboys in the playoffs in Tom Brady's last year, just this past season. It doesn't feel like that long ago. So I don't know people, you're going to get those people saying, well, this is why the cfl is bad and this is why we can't bother with alternative football. I'm like, well, it's a problem across the sport, and even in college football there's a lot of mismatches and things like that. So that opens up a broader discussion. I'm not going to get into that, but you see where I'm going with this. Yeah, speaking of the Cowboys at Seahawks, it was preseason, but I was there. Seahawks took care of business against the Cowboys here. I was very excited for that. Jason, do you have any other notes on this one before we get to that? A little bit of a snoozefest here with Winnipeg Cowboy, but anything else on Ottawa and all that? Yeah, I wanted to give a shout out to Montreal's Defense, which is a unit we haven't been talking enough about this season. I think they're just a really, really solid defense in one of the best units in the league, and I think that in the second half they really put the clamps down, didn't allow Ottawa to get anything going and allowed that to be a catalyst for the big comeback. I like Montreal Montreal's, my team of the East certainly can't show for cheer for the Argos. Mike Mitchell's got that on lockdown, so we'll hope in Montreal we'll be good coming up here. This was the Friday night one. Winnipeg at Calgary gave 'em a run for their money. Calgary came back, drew Brown a little bit more down to earth here. I have a quote here from Michael Ball I think coming up, but Evan, initial thoughts on this one? Yeah, so Drew Brown, I didn't predict this, but I certainly said it could happen Last week. Drew Brown kind of came out hot in that comeback against Edmonton after Claros went down, looked great again is in his third year. That big third year in the cfl is getting experience getting these game reps, but he can always come back down to Earth, as you've just said. That was literally what I had in my notes, that exact term come back down to earth. That's what happened here. It was a slower game. It was somewhat expected. I think there's a lot of quarterbacks that we've seen, including Dustin Crumb, where they kind of jump out hot and get the train rolling, and then things kind of start slowly tapering off over one game over the course of many games depending on how many reps they get. So yeah, drew Brown definitely. This was definitely the slowest. I think I've seen Winnipeg's offense all year. I mean, you're used to seeing this unit putting up 30 plus points on a regular basis, and I get that's with a different quarterback, but this was uncharacteristic for Winnipeg, although again, it's understandable. There's certain criteria here that are a bit different. They're in a bit of a different position. But yeah, I mean Calgary, we just talked about it in regards to all this playoff stuff and Ottawa and sort of drawing comparisons. They were so close. I mean, they just keep getting so close. I mean, when I saw 'em against bc, it wasn't close, but they've had a couple times they took that game. They took advantage, I should say, of that game against Toronto, which is great because my God, if they don't win that game, they're what? Two and eight, which is at that point, I mean that's really bad. I don't think people have really realized that yet. As much as I've tried to put a positive spotlight on Calgary and believe in them, I mean two and eight, then you're not even thinking about playoffs at all. I mean, Saskatchewan would've already walked up the spot by that point, I think. But regardless, Calgary in this game, it was just their offense continues to baffle me. I think they have so many good receivers and they just keep adding to that. They've added Mark and Michelle, Tommy Lee Lewis in the middle of the season, and they still haven't been able to generate production. I would say Tommy Lee Lewis was the most impressive player in Calgary's offense in this game. And he had one catch. Keep in mind that one catch went for 46 yards, but if your top player on offense has one catch one play, that's a really bad sign. And I think I had in my notes here too, Rene Perez, he's a hero in Calgary. I mean, he's the one, and he still didn't have a perfect day. He went six of eight, but the fact that he has to attempt eight field goals to even put them in a remote position to win, that's just not good football. That's not sustainable football. You cannot keep that going. And I know everybody in that Calgary building knows that, but it's just really frustrating because I've said so many times on both sides of the ball offense, again, receiving core and then defense specifically with their defensive line. And I think the St. Peters have a ton of talent. That's why I was really excited to go and evaluate that in person last week, but they can't get it together. And I think now we're starting to ask more questions about Jake Mayer. For a couple weeks it was, well, this wasn't great, but it's fine. Still the start of the season now you're in the middle of the season and it's not fine. They are struggling to throw for 200 yards per game with Jake Mayer quarterback. Now keep in mind, I still like Jake Mayer, this isn't a personal hit against anybody or anything like that, but I think from the pure football perspective, you cannot have a quarterback that struggles to hit the 200 yard mark per game. You just can't have it. I mean, this was in the C F L especially. You can't, it's like I'm just Shaking my head. Absolutely. Yeah, no, and it's just such a shame. It makes me sad because I was so excited for Jake, and I'm sure he's probably beating himself up about it and taking a lot of the credit. It's just sad. There's just so much potential there. And I feel like if Calgary doesn't get into the playoffs, which is looking less and less likely every week, especially again with Saskatchewan pulling away, it's a waste of a lot of things. And I mean any team that doesn't make the playoffs, again, you could say this about so many teams that don't make the playoffs. There's wasted talent. There's guys that don't get an opportunity to compete for a championship and that sucks, but that's sports, that's football. Those are all general assumptions. But with this team specifically, I think there's just so, there's so much talent on this team, and I don't want to say they haven't tapped into it because there are Playmakers and we have seen that Calgary has been extremely competitive. They just can never get the job done. And I think when they don't get the job done, we're all quicker to point out the flaws of this team. Again, there's slower offense and the lack of just general abilities and maybe the coaching too. I've said it on the show before, I think life's easier when you win. And you can definitely quote me on that. Life is easier when you win for everybody from football operations to trickles down to the players. Everything is easier when you just win. And Calgary hasn't won and they've been in so many games where they could have won, and now you're starting to see the fallout of that where we're sitting here and we're asking all these questions about what things might look like in the future. And again, ultimately just disappointing. Jason, thoughts on this? I mean, we have just shaking my head when Evan's talking because Jake and I love Jake and like you said, just this stagnant offense. I've been putting up tweets. They've had one offensive touchdown in four games. What do you make of this mess? Well, I blame myself because I had Jake May, my nub, quarter, C Fal and I, one of those people really? You having your internet connection there kind of walked out for a minute. Let's try it one more time. You might have to log back in. Oh, shoot, let check. There you go. Let's get him back In. Evan here, I have a couple quotes. Let's do an exercise here while we wait for Jason. That was kind. Every once in while this step goes Farhan, just put this tweet out, which team takes the CFL's final playoffs by? I haven't voted yet, so we're going to vote. We're going to see where the results are. So what do you think? We have 227 votes for Calgary, Ottawa, Hamilton, we've been talking scraping the bottom of the barrel. What do you make of this? This one's difficult. I think it really is going to come down to the east. I mean, again, I've just said it really comes down to Saskatchewan more than just to Calgary because none of us expected Saskatchewan to pull off the opposite against bc. Now that that's happened, they're getting back to sort of winning ways. And again, that all fall apart. Maybe Calgary does make a change and becomes a bit more drastic with their decisions given the state that they're in and the fact that they are still in the playoff race. But I don't know, just right now the way things are right now, as we're sitting here at the end of this week, I'm going to say it's going to be an east team and I'm going to go with Hamilton and I might be controversial. And again, we've talked about it. I know Hamilton is Jason Would be happy. Yeah, they might not be. I still think Ottawa is better off because I think even if Hamilton does make the playoffs, they're still going to have a lot of changes to make in the off season and especially on the coaching side of things. And they already got Tommy Condell offensive coordinator's already gone, so that's something that they're going to have to address soon. And then probably, I mean, I don't want to talk about head coaching yet, but certainly a possibility I think. But anyway, I think Hamilton will make the playoffs because my belief is that Saskatchewan will pull away, which puts Calgary out. Ottawa has the potential, and again, I think Ottawa and Hamilton could probably finish with the same record, but it all comes down again, those two games that Hamilton played against Ottawa and one that might have in a way, I can't say saved their season because again, if they go to the playoffs, I don't think they're going to be a winner in the playoffs, but it might've just made their season a bit more interesting and a bit more entertaining and it might keep some more people around for longer. And I think that's an important thing to note. So I'm going to go with the Tigercat. That's obviously subject to change. I do see there's a scenario where Ottawa just wins more games outright than Hamilton, and I think that's a real possibility. Again, I still feel like they have the potential to do that because they've been in so many close games and I like the culture and I like what they're building. So maybe that's the case where the tiebreaker doesn't even matter because Ottawa just turns out to be the team with more wins in the win column. But yeah, I'm going to go with Hamilton. That's my final answer. Jason, what do you make of this? And then we'll give you the fo to talk about the game, but we were pulling this up here, which team makes the on playoffs? What I'm going to regretfully say Hamilton, even though at this point, I mean it's sad to say as a TCATs fan, but I kind of hope they kind of miss the playoffs, so they have to make wholesale changes with this team. I feel like if they make the playoffs, they'll talk themselves into another year of the same regime there in Hamilton. And I think that what's really interesting is that Ottawa, like Evan says, has to outright have more wins than Hamilton at the end of the season. Now because of the Tiebreakers that obviously could happen. Calgary also would have to outright more wins because the crossover rule, there's no tiebreaker with the West Division team, has to have more wins than the East division team in order to crossover. So I think mathematically Hamilton has the better shot, but when I look around this league right now, I don't think there's many teams that the TCATs can beat, honestly, I think other than Ottawa, which obviously they just owned Ottawa, but I think other than them, I don't think there's that many winnable games left from the schedule. But they probably get two or three wins here and at the end of the day, I think Hamilton probably has the best shot of all those three teams. Let's get your thoughts here and Internet's a little dicey. It sounds okay. We'll give it a shot here. Let's go through you were going off on your Calgary before we had to have you log back in. Yeah, so I was saying that I blamed myself for Calgary struggles this year because going into the season I had Jake Mayer ranked as my number two quarterback in the cfl. I was a full believer in him, and I think that his struggles for the third year in a row, I picked a quarterback last year was Vernon Adams. I picked him to win m o p. I mean he got benched two games through the season. The year before was Trevor Harris. I picked him to win m o p. Obviously the Elks had a horrible season. So I think that I blame myself for that, but I think that Calgary's just a really tough team to watch right now. Like Evan said, I think that it's just really, really painful to watch this offense. They don't take the training wheels off of this offense at all. I think that there's not taking advantage of the receiving talent like Evan said, and I think that it's very disappointing because they've now lost two games in which their defense hasn't allowed a touchdown. Going back to that game against Montreal where the only touchdown they gave up was a pick six and the same thing in this one. So very disappointed for Calgary. Their record could be much better right now. Yeah, I have a tweet here. Saved, I didn't realize. I think it just in the last couple weeks here, friends of the show, mil Stegel and David Sanchez, and they've started their own cfl podcast here. Why they Open with, so we have new competition here on the black gentlemen, but they posed a question here. Dave Dickinson is a player. Coach, has never missed the playoffs in the cfl. Will it happen this year? Jason, we'll go to Jason just to give him, because he's been logged off here and then we'll go back to Evan. Do you see Dave missing the playoffs this year? I mean, it's hard to say because Calgary has had great second half to seasons in years past. Most notably 2021 where they were two and five to begin the year they were this year. But I just can't see it at this point. I think they're going to miss the playoffs. It just seems like it's their turn to be a bad team and after so many years of having success, I think it's their turn. Evan thoughts on this and then I have one more funny thing on this game before we go to the last one. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, if my prediction stands, I mean, yeah, Calgary's not going to be in it. And I mean it sucks to see a streak like that go, and I think it definitely marks the end of an era and maybe with that brings some change and some new, I think, again, maybe I've said it before, but Calgary's already in a bit of a transitional phase regardless of whether they're a playoff team or not. So I don't know. Yeah, I don't see them as a playoff team right now, especially not after this weekend and not what I saw 'em at all. It's been rough. It's been rough, but again, it's hard to see any of those other teams that we mentioned as playoff teams given their struggles and just, it's a numbers game at this point. Who can finish with the most wins or who has the tiebreaker? And it gets a bit messy in that sense, and it might not mean the best playoff football, but we know who the good teams are and we know who's entertaining and who will bring the best to the table. And I think that's what's most important. Ultimately, we have an expectation, so that's good. It was funny here, I guess it was freezing cold here in Calgary in August, and so we have a new friend he had just posted that he was going to be on Instagram now Pola Police, not the fake Pola police, but the real one. But I guess Farhan had a blanket on the sidelines, I guess Farhan and I don't know, kudos to the T s m production crew for finding that blanket to give to Paul, but I just thought that this was, I don't want to play the audio. God forbid we get another copyright strike from T S M this time. But I think it was funny, Farhan, Paul Felice used to be my friend. I don't know Jason thoughts on this. I just thought this was tremendous. Yeah, that's freaking hilarious. And I think the Instagram thing and how people made fake accounts of him on Instagram, that was hilarious as well. So I think he's a pretty funny guy and he's a good addition to the TSN panel for sure. Yeah, I tweeted on that. Said it was me. I was the one that did, I mean, Paul, I think he's got follows, 32 people or something on Twitter. Let's get the love back a little bit. You want to get people over on this. Anything else, Evan on Winnipeg or Calgary before we get to the Thursday game? I don't know if I have anything else about Winnipeg or Calgary, but I will say it wouldn't be the first time I've seen Farhan wearing some interesting stuff on the sidelines. When I was BC last year, he had the slides on and that was a pretty iconic moment. I took a picture of that and I hope he brings those back out again. It was a nice look. I might adopt that myself. Going back to the xfl this year. I wouldn't mind that. Yeah, you were at the slides game. I forgot about that. That was the slides game. Here we go. I hit the wrong button. Here we go. So Edmonton first win of the season, I will be honest. And Jason, I want to hear firsthand experience here with the weather delay and all of that. I had the game off in the corner. It really seemed like after they came back from the rain delay, there wasn't much of a game. So I have many, many notes for the first half of the game and then it really seemed like they came back out and said, we've been sitting here for an hour and a half, let's kind of get through this. Jason, you lived through the rainstorm. What was this like? Yeah, so Edmonton came out fast. 21 9 a halftime lead. Trey Ford had a couple of nice touchdown passes to former Tigercat, Steven Dunbar in the first half. So that was nice to see from their perspective, happy that Edmonton doesn't have to endure a winless season at this point. I don't think any cfl fan base deserves to go through that, but I just think Hamilton really wasn't prepared at all for this game, especially coming out of a bi-week. That was very disappointing. And like we were talking about winnable games going down the stretch, I think this was very much a winnable game for the TCAs, obviously, given the fact that the Elks hadn't beat anybody this season and they just wasted one of those opportunities. And I think a key play in this one was key second in one play. I think they were at the TCAs 40 yard line and just a prime opportunity to do a trick play. Basically just a free play because you can get that first down on the next play. But Hamilton was not prepared for a fake and Taylor Cornelius threw it deep to defensive AC Leonard, who was a converted wide receiver upon coming to the cfl and he hauled in a nice pass there and set up the second touchdown ton and it was basically home free from there. And I think another big thing in this one was also the fact that Mark Legeo missed so many kicks. I think they totaled 10 points that he left off the board in this one, so that could have made a massive difference. But again, Hamilton just could not get in the end zone. They couldn't finish drives. And that's a theme with Taylor Powell since he's taken over as the starting quarterback here. I don't think he has a single touchdown pass into three games that he's started. So you could complete your passes all you want, complete 75% of your passes all you want, but if you're not getting in the end zone, you're not going to win many games. And that's just the facts. Yeah, that's the Jake Mayer of it. Well, I'm 94% completion rating. Yeah. Yeah. Cliffy here had the tweet got no, I thought that was funny. I had, where was it? Marshall Ferguson I guess wasn't even scheduled to be working that game. It just showed up and he's had four weather delays this year. Yeah, Marshall is definitely the problem I had. The other funny quote, and I'm going to preface if you're sensitive to language. I just thought this was funny speaking about the tie cats and the specialist teams, Jeff Reinfeld said, we quote fuck end the quote. I thought that was a tremendously funny quote talking about the tie cats special teams. We saw a lot of this as well. Victor qui, it's me, it's me, I'm the problem. It's me with Edmonton finally getting their win Ed, what did you make of this? Edmonton finally getting in the W, we saw flashes with Trey Ford. I don't think that this was surprising, but good to see them finally kind of put a complete game together, even if it was still kind of a weather delayed. Hal. Well, before I jump into the game too deeply, shout out to Jeff Reinbold. That guy's one of my favorite coaches, not just in the cfl but maybe ever. He's a great guy. He's worked with Skyport, I think, and he's done a lot of cool stuff, great guy to talk to, interact with, whatever. Unfortunately things maybe haven't gone his way this season, but great coach, nonetheless, great man, getting into the game. Yeah, so Edmonton finally got their win. We maybe had some suspicions that this was going to happen. I was in that same sort of, I'll see it when I believe it category and well now I believe it because it's officially on the board. But yeah, I was really, despite the weather delay and everything, it was good to see Edmonton sort of hold things down. And I think the most important part here, and maybe this goes without saying, but Trey Ford continuing to hold down the starting job, continuing to sort of grow into that role and take that with pride. We all agree that should have happened earlier, but that's in the past now. Nothing we can do about it. The other guy too, we've talked about Trey Ford so much. I really want to talk about Kevin Brown because this guy really deserves more credit I think, not just on the Elks team, but in the cfl as a whole at the running back position. I know we talked a bit about Montreal's underrated running backs like Rin Andwe last week, but yeah, Kevin Brown, that guy can play. And I think it's gone a bit under the radar again because Edmonton struggled. No one's really watching them as much this year, but Kevin Brown will turn up when they need him to, and he is, I think having him as the top running back and then Trey Ford is kind of a compliment as a running quarterback. I think that, I don't know, I shouldn't draw comparisons, but I kind of think about, and I'm not saying this is really a run first team, but if you want to make a bit of a reach comparison, I think of Lamar Jackson and Mark Ingram when they were on the same team in 2019. Now keep in mind that team had 14 wins in the N F L. This is a one win cfl team, so it's a bit of a different ballpark, but what I'm getting at is the fact that they could have a guy like that who is such a consistent runner and then have a quarterback that's also mobile, I think that will benefit them for the rest of the season if they can keep this momentum and keep winning games, whether that's away or at home. I don't know, that's just my take on it. I'm not saying Kevin Brown is the next Mark Ingram, but that's the first thing I thought of just given this sort of situation. And there's other similar, I would say, situations playing out across the football landscape right now where you have that. But anyway, a couple other things for Edmonton. Steven Dunbar revenge game obviously goes without saying. From what I remember, he might've played, I don't know if it was him, but he might've played well when Edmonton played Hamilton last time. I feel like I was hearing the name Steven Dunbar a lot. So maybe he just kind of breaks out against his old team. I dunno. But he was very impressive in this one. Nonetheless, top receiver, two touchdown catches. He pretty much led the offense. I'll give a special shout out to Emmanuel Arseno too. I know a lot of attention was going around AC Leonard coming in on the receiving play, but Manny Arseno became the 30th cfl receiver to surpass 9,000 career receiver yards, which I'd say is a pretty formidable accomplishment considering he was getting old in 2019 and then cfl stopped in 20 20, 20 21. He was in the I F L with the Frisco fighters and then signed last year I think with Edmonton 2022. He had been in BC for many, many years before that. Really good to see him at that age still going, still being productive. And he's been, I want to say he's been banged up this season as an older guy. I don't know. I don't, from what I understand, he hasn't exactly had a huge role. But love Manny. He's a great guy. I remember I was in BC last year and he was coming over and signing things for all the fans and plenty of Arsen O 84 jerseys in there. So good to see that. What else was I going to say? The last thing I'll say about Edmonton before we jump into the Hamilton side is Niles Morgan on defense is someone I've had an eye on all season and he had two sacks led the team in tackles in this game. Again, another player that doesn't really get enough credit, I think just because of the state of the team itself and not winning a lot of games, not a lot of people are watching whatever you want to put it, but Niles Morgan definitely deserves some credit for this one. The other thing I was going to say, I had a question. My little hype conspiracy theory here is I had the tweet, do the weather delays fans love this stadium and can come back in. First off, Jason, did you take advantage of that? No. You said, I'm getting the heck out of here. How bad, first off, how bad was the weather? And then I had my conspiracy. Oh, it was pretty bad. I mean for the first little bit of it because it was convenient because it happened at halftime, so that's when they announced that there was going to be a weather delay and the rain hadn't really started yet. It was mostly just the lightning that caused the weather delay. So we're like, let's just go home and let's see, because we live about a half an hour walk from the stadium so we can make it back in time before the weather delay ends. And I just watched the second half at home and that's what we did. We didn't take advantage of this offer to come back into the stadium, but at the end of the day it was a pretty long weather delay. I think I even had half an hour at home before it even started. So I think that was disappointing as well for the T Cats. They had a lot of time to regroup and potentially come out with a better effort of the second half and they just couldn't do it. Well, here's my conspiracy though. We saw Edmonton against Winnipeg go up 22 0 and then trade forward, say we didn't push the ball down the field getting mad at Chris Jones and all of that. It really felt like I said that people came out and they're like, let's just get this game done. Let's kind of move on from that. Does Edmonton, Jason, does Edmonton win that game if they just go in, if Hamilton just goes in for the half comes out and still it is still fresh, warm isn't cold. We've been sitting in the locker room for an hour and a half. I would just be curious to see what that second effort looked like because we haven't seen still, I don't feel like I've seen Edmonton put together a complete game. This was a very bizarre situation for them to win that second half. Yeah, it's a very interesting because we'll never know how Edmonton would've came out. I think their defense really did step up in the second half when they eventually did get going. I thought that that was been a problem for them this year. They've had opportunities where they've had leads late and they blow it looking back at that game against Saskatchewan earlier this year, look back last week against Winnipeg. So I mean they had opportunities to close games out, but they finally were able to do it. The pass rush really showed up in the key moments. They got some key sacks. So I mean it was good to see for Edmonton, but I think that the weather delay didn't happen. Yeah, we never know what would've happened. I think it's interesting. My last thing from this and then we'll do real quick, we'll talk Hamilton, we'll get out of here. We have a love hate with Marshall. Marshall had his quote with Trey Ford after the game. People like to talk. I don't have to listen. Dr. Trey said, he said it was then Was that a hundred thousand times harder than Gino Smiths? They wrote me off, but I ain't right back yet. Not even in the same ballpark in terms of quota ability. I don't know if you guys know Gino Smith with the Seahawks, our quarterback, and they said, yeah, a lot of people wrote me off and they write back, had a couple quotes, Rosh talking and the absurd fiery Tommy Condell shows how loss of tie cats are. I have another quote here. The decline of tie cats is the 2019 Gray cup is now complete. The team plays undisciplined uninspiring football, it's on coaches management. Hamilton now the worst team. Let's go to Evan and then we'll go to Jason and we'll get out of here. Right hitting the hour mark. Yeah, well on the Hamilton side of things, in my notes, I said the team is starting to lose their identity, not that they really had much of one before, given things have been shaky. You're letting go of a coach. But yeah, I mean like Aash said, you're scoring 10 points against a team that had previously been winless. I mean that is unacceptable. And again, while I picked Hamilton to be in the playoffs, a game like this would not signal that and it would be completely unacceptable for a playoff team to have this type of performance. So maybe that goes against my point from earlier. But anyways, I think that the decision to let go of Tommy Condell, I'm not mean, I don't have a say in that, so I'm not going to argue with it. Do I think it was the best decision? No, I don't think he should have been the one to go or the fall guy, whatever you want to put him as. But it does kind of make you wonder, maybe this will signal changes in the future. Maybe this does mean Orlando Steinhower is done after the season and I think that will be the big question. One of the bigger questions across the entire league. We already know what's going to happen I think with Edmonton, but with Hamilton it's like they could go in a couple of different directions because if they do make the playoffs, well, like I said earlier, that could save some jobs. Maybe they put together an effort at the end of the season and they get some people back and it's kind of rallying the troops. And maybe we just had some missing pieces that we couldn't fill in until now. Or maybe it really is just things are truly falling apart and you can't just whatever it is, like plug square, plug squares into these circular holes or whatever. I dunno. But ultimately just a couple notes from the actual game, Taylor Powell and James Butler both look solid. Powell has struggled to score, but they can at least move the ball. I'd rather watch an offense that could, I mean it's frustrating when they can't finish drives, but I'd rather watch an offense like Hamilton where they can have some big plays and get things going as opposed to Calgary where they just constantly stall, can't move, things like that. So I don't know, either way it's not good. But you get my point. And then the one player that I really wanted to mention was Tim White. And I bring that up because I haven't said a lot about Tim White this year. You have to remember he was a cfl All-star last season and this game, he kind of finally made some progress and looked like an Allstar again. Really noticed him standing out in this one and then, yeah, I think Jason already said it, but bark legio. Man, that was rough. That was really rough mean. I'm not saying that. I mean I think he left 10 points on the board so they still wouldn't have won the game if he just made all those kicks. I don't think that was the difference in this game. But it's one thing when your team is already struggling to score and you come in and as the kicker, you're just trying to get points on the board. And when you can't do that, it's kind of like if you didn't have any hope before then all hope is lost. And with Calgary, with Ronnie Perez, I mean he made six of his kicks, so while it wasn't pretty and while the offense couldn't score touchdowns, they at least had him to keep things going. And again, just get points on the board. It's not pretty, it's not exciting, but it is what it is. You're staying in the game. But with this, yeah, I was even, you're just missing kicks. It is just one of those sloppy nights. And again, weather delay never helps. That weather delay, I can't remember. I mean there hasn't been many weather delays I can remember that have been that long. And the CFL's had a long, I didn't realize that in the summer things get that bad. I've been up to Canada in the summer, certain parts, I haven't been all around obviously, but it just seems like there's been so many. I mean the N F L has their fair share too, especially September as things are still warm and everything like that. And then obviously at the other end and winter when things get cold, maybe snow and rain, things like that wind. But yeah, it just feels like there's been a lot of weather delays in that one for some reason. Just felt extra brutal. Yeah. Marshall Blaine, Marshall, Tim Capper check in the year. Tim, I gave you, we talked Tim's inside sources about the Ettes quarterback room earlier in the episode. You got to go back on it Jason, we'll get out of here soon. Anything else from you? And then we'll try to get out because it's been long. It's been good though. Yeah, just touching on the decision to fire Tommy Condell. I thought that it was the right decision. I think that some of these schemes that the Ty TCATs coaches have been running have just kind of dried up over the last couple of years. You've seen a clear decline and I think that my only complaint with that was that it didn't go far enough. I think that all of the coaching staff basically has to go for the TCATs. I think you've seen a decline every single year. So 2019 first place, 15 and 3, 20, 21, 8 and six. Second place in the east last year, eight and 10, third place in the east and then this year, maybe fourth place. I think that it's pretty safe to say I don't they're going to get to eight wins this year. So I think that it's just been very disappointing when you see that sharp of a decline. And I think that, like I said, I think these schemes that these coaches are running, especially defensively, I think that offensively they just can't score in the red zone, but defensively they're like the worst defensive in the cfl this year, which is just shocking from a Hamilton perspective because I've been so used to over my years as a fan of watching poor offenses with the TCAs, but very rarely seeing this terrible defense with the tca. So I think they're dead last right now in points allowed per game in the cfl even worse than Edmonton. So I mean that's really what stands out for me with this team this year. I think the coaching staff, and it's worth noting that President Orlando Steinhower now makes the decisions for the personnel for this team. So he went out and made the decision to bring in all these new players this off season. So I mean I think at certain point you have to blame the coaches and at this point I think they deserve the brunt of the blame. Well, we're going to get out of here this week on the show. I got to figure out, I got the Thursday game again trying to do a traditional episode this week. It's just hard getting enough pieces together. Do we have enough interviews to do? Otherwise we'll go live again. I'll figure that out. But I got to send some emails out today. But yeah, this Montreal at Winnipeg, I think that's good. I think I would like to see if Montreal can kind of make a run at it here and give Winnipeg, you give a little competition there. And then we've got Calgary and all of that, Hamilton and BC we've already talked about in Ottawa and Edmonton. Appreciate everyone, Evan, appreciate you getting back in, getting everything set up and Jason obviously seeing all the games, everything else, anything else quick from you guys before we get out? All right, we'll see you guys. Check out Jason's stuff this week. I know he'll have some previews and everything coming up and then just stay tuned on social media and we will figure out what's going on. Thanks guys.

LIVE CFL Week 11 Pre-Game Show, Edmonton Elks at Hamilton Ticats + CFL Week 11 Preview!

Well, happy Thursday here. A special episode today coming in kind of enjoying these midweek pre-game shows. xfl is a little sketchy right now with the regular news. Have another good one today. Crazy week. I have my Edmonton Elks hat on here. I think it was the football team when I bought this hat, but we have Jason Sandy by and I assume Dave will be joining here at momentarily. David Naer our special guest today. Jason, how are you doing? I'm doing good, Reid. I'm going to be attending two of these games this weekend, so I'm excited for this week. Well good, I'm glad. Yeah, I'll do my best. I'm off this weekend, so do my best. Catching up on that Mariners around the road, so should have a fair time with that. This is a crazy week and I want to get Dave's thoughts on all of this with the Edmonton and the Victor quiz of it all really, since we've covered this, I think this is one of the strangest stories I've ever seen. What's your initial thoughts, Victor Party ways Farhan had the report come out early this week? Yeah, so my initial thoughts were, I mean, shock like everybody else. I thought that on the surface qui was great for the league. I think that some of the ideas that he brought to the table were very fresh, but at the end of the day you never know what's going on behind the scenes and at the end of the day, and it's unfortunate that it came to this. Yeah, I have obviously been kind of on the Edmonton bandwagon here the last couple of years initially going with them and then they besmirched the xfl and so we decided to go with America's team, the BC Lions, but to me, Victor came in with a shot out of a cannon, came in, I have all these ideas, we're doing this stuff, we're tweeting, we're engaging with the fans, we're hopping on podcasts, did my podcast, did Elks Herd or whatever, the Turf district, all these different ones. And then really in the last year, it feels like there's been this major falloff, at least in my opinion, when I had Victor on this year, seemed like, I don't know if it was more reserved, more quiet, if that was the case. I don't know. Seemed to be a fall off this year compared to last year and I see Dave getting logging in here, so we'll get him on. But have you noticed that kind of a fall off here, Jason? Yeah, I mean it doesn't help that the team hasn't won a game this year, obviously. I mean you have to have both things working in synergy there, but I think one thing that probably played a role, and I don't hear enough people talking about it from a business perspective, is those guaranteed win tickets. I mean, just imagine how much money they're losing just based on that and the fact that they haven't won a home game still to this point in the season. Well, let's bring on Dave here. I think Dave looks like hopefully he's passenger and they're not driving here. Dave, how are you doing here, Dave? My vehicle is moving. I can hear you. Yeah, can you guys hear me? Yeah, We can. Dave, how are you doing today? We may have some funny reception here. Dave, are we all right here on? Yeah, how are you doing today, sir? We got some funny reception going on. Lemme see. Let's see if maybe Dave can log back off and log in here, try to plan this together and figure it out. I don't know. To me it was just kind of came out of the blue not expecting it. What do you mean with the guaranteed win tickets that wasn't on the board with everyone else? Well, I mean I think they expected by this point of the season that they had already broken that losing streak, and I think that at this rate they're going to give out a whole season's worth of season tickets for just paying for one game for the people that bought those guaranteed wins tickets. So I think at the end of the day, that probably played a bit of a factor from a business perspective and I mean there's been reports about maybe some kind of toxic culture within the organization as well under. So I mean probably a lot of things went into this. All right, let's try Dave one more time here. Dave, can you hear us? Yeah, I can hear it pretty well. Yeah, hopefully the line will stay clear. So Dave, I got my Edmonton hat on here. What the heck is going on? Well, I mean, yeah, in Edmonton overall, I mean this all started when they walked themselves into salary cap coaches. Hell by firing both Brock Sunderland and Jamie Elizondo with two full years left on their contracts and they had just extended Brock nine months earlier or so. At least the announcement was made, but it had happened earlier. So he began the 21 season with three years left on his deal, and Jamie Elizondo had a three year deal and look, that was a weird season, right? No training camp, all kinds of guys that weren't in football shape the product side long-term decisions for your franchise off the 2021 season, but the Edmonton Elks board did and they decided it was better to box themselves in financially for multiple seasons and get rid of Jamie Elizondo and Brock Sunderland and as badly as they were boxed in, that was if they made the correct hire on when they went out to get Chris Jones. Let's be honest, look, I'm a Chris Jones as a coach fan, no question. I'm really disappointed in what's happened in Edmonton, but I think you've got a guy who's the head coach, you've got a guy who's the gm, you've got a guy who's the DC and who really doesn't have a football boss, and why was that situation allowed to develop? Because they needed somebody who could do three jobs because they were so limited on what they had because of the operations cap, because they got rid of Elizondo and Sunderland. So look, I understand when people get mad at the cap, and I understand when people say they need to look at it, and I believe they will this off season because it's not good for the league to bury a team the way it has really helped hinder the development of the Edmonton Elks and them getting out of this current situation, but there's got to be some responsibility for the Elk's board that made a choice, and I don't think it was the right one. What I don't get is with this Victor, it seems like he was the hero of the world here for two years and now it's like, oh, he was Heisenberg all along. I'm getting people messaging me. Oh, he bought followers or there was work, people were feuding within the offices. I mean, did this come out of the blue or was this just kind of hidden in plain sight? Well, I think to be honest, and this happens all the time as a reporter, you hear things that you can't verify if you don't know are true, and I mean look, I'll speak for, This is lovely. Let's get Dave back in here. Dave driving here covering, I think Nathan Works practice here. Let's see, hopefully the reception here, I'll pick back up. Was hoping for more of a hotel here room with Dave, but we'll see. In terms of the week here tonight, you're going to the game Jason with Edmonton. What are you looking forward to tonight? Edmonton coming into Hamilton? Well, I think it's interesting how the situation not really mirrors the season that was last year, but I think that it's kind of similar situations. Edmonton's looking for their first win. They got their first win last year at Hamilton, so I'm excited to see what happens in this one. Of course, Trey Ford started that game last year in Hamilton before the next week he gets injured, so I'm interested to see if Hamilton's better prepared this year. I think they will be because they're coming off of bi-week. Teams on bi-week have looked very good this year. Even Edmonton last week came out firing with that 22 nothing lead. So I mean it should be interesting to see how it plays out. I like Hamilton to win tonight, but I think that it should be interesting to see how those dynamics come into play with Trey Ford like you was a year ago. Yeah, I'm interested to see here, Trey coming in obviously had a spark last week in Edmonton. We chronicled all of that on the Monday show with the Winnipeg blue bombers and the 22 0 kind of collapsed, but him coming in. The question is now if Hamilton like, okay, now we got more tape and man, I know we had seen Trey but before obviously last year, but do you think Hamilton will be better prepared here than Winnipeg was defensively? I think so. I think just based on the fact that they didn't see them him this year and the player that he's improved to be this year, I think that that really caught the Winnipeg blue ballers off guard. I think that again, the bi-week they were able to make that coaching change to Jerry S. Jackson at offensive coordinator and implement a few new things that Winnipeg probably hadn't seen. So I think Hamilton should be better prepared in this one, but at the end of the day you don't know and Hamilton hasn't looked very good themselves this year, so we'll have to see how it plays out. I think we got Dave back here. Dave, you were talking about you hearing things as a reporter and not being able to verify all of that with Edmonton. No, I think I could. We're trying, can you hear me now? Yep. Got me now. Yeah. Okay. The kind of things that you would hear, and I'm going to put this in a most general way I can is that some people in the Elks organization did not enjoy working for Victor Que. That's a dumb down version of what I was hearing. Look, but I also asked somebody in the organization, what's the second line of this story? Victor que fired, what's the second line? What he said was, and he did not have the ability to get people to follow him. He was not a natural leader that people wanted to line up and believe in him and that ultimately that was the weakness they felt. So that's a reasonable reason to get rid of somebody if they're the c e o of your organization and it will always go with the asterisk that yeah, but his team didn't win a home game the entire time he was president. I only had one extended conversation with Victor qui. It was right when he got hired. We talked about his time in Asia and how we both been at the Commonwealth Games in 1998 and call it Lumpur Malaysia, and I thought he was a really bright guy and I thought it was a really neat kind of local hire, but outside of the box, he's an Edmonton guy, but he'd been doing sport entertainment in other parts of the world. I'm very disappointed it didn't work out, but the circumstances in which he was working were not easy and you guys have been around football before. You both know the stress level around everybody in a football organization when you don't win and these guys have not won nobody else. It's really hard for everybody to kind of be happy and smiley and treat everybody well when just every week after week you're losing football games. And I'm not talking about Victor right now, I'm just talking about football people in general when you're on one of these roles, But it is so weird. This all came out now, like you said, oh, people didn't like working for me. Where was all this last year when it was like, oh, Victor on top of the world and he's turning all this around. I mean there were stories endless. Yeah, I don't remember hearing any of those things about the work environment a year ago. They were all this year things and I was looking at him and hey, he's got a first year coach who's trying to identify some pieces and is going to use the rope that he's got to sacrifice wins for finding players for next year. That's what coaches do a lot of times in year number one, they use it as kind of one long training camp and play the long game. The problem is if you do that, it better come together in year number two. But I thought, yeah, there were initiatives that he took, things that were creative and even I'm sure you guys talking about the guaranteed win thing. Yeah, I mean in terms of finding a way to get people in the park, again, I didn't think it was the craziest idea. Didn't think they were going to lose eight straight and not win a home game either. He certainly tried some things, but I can say that overall, talking to some people in that market and some people out of that market, there didn't seem to be a great degree of confidence in his ability to lead the Elks out of this current situation. And here's the other thing about it, the Edmonton Elks, everyone in Edmonton screaming for change, the Edmonton Elks board as it's structured, there's only one guy they were allowed to fire. They couldn't fire Chris Jones. Well, they couldn't for probably because of the economics anyway, but even if they couldn't, that's not a board decision that would've to come from the c E O. There's only one employee, the Edmonton Elks had, the board had the ability to dismiss and that's the guy they dismissed. And also there's no economic cap implications for them because presidents aren't part of the football operations cap. So both from a bookkeeping point of view and an actual administrative point of view, that was the only move they could make. It said mutually agreed, right? Mutually agreed. Was Victor pushed out, Try me again on that one, Reed. Was this truly mutually negotiated or was Victor pushed out? I believe that this was the board pushing out Victor qui. I can't tell you, I haven't spoken to him and I can't tell you whether he might be just as happy to have moved on or such. But in terms of where this initiated from, and I'll defer to my colleague Farran Ji who did some of the closer to the ground kind of reporting on this story. He's had as much on SportsCenter the other night that this was, although it was announced as a party of the ways, this was the board making the decision to move on from Victor Queen and they've got now that the chair is the interim c e o, and then they're looking for somebody in the next three or four months, and that's going to be an important hire because that person could be in the thick of an ownership transformation, right? They're not going to get a big season ticket bump this off season, right? And that's the lifeblood, that's the gas station for a cfl franchise. You go to the off season, your bank accounts are low bang, season ticket money comes in, fills it up for you. That's not going to be flowing very well in Edmondson this year. And then it has been pointed out to me, this isn't a one year fix. If you look at where this franchise is, the Elks organization is probably going to be spending more money than they're taking in for multiple years. That means an investment. And when you look at where they are on the rainy day fund and their economics and look at the rate that they're burning through money, you can see this team's going to need to be recapitalized. And the question is, is it the board that's going to go out and issue a new class of shares and try to do it on the backs of the community ownership model? I mean, I can think of one problem with that off the top is are people right now going to run out and buy those given the state of that franchise? I don't know. I can certainly see that that might not be, and you can't threaten them. You can't say, oh, if you don't come and buy, that's not a tactic. So if you had, I'll just say an Edmonton Amar who's saying, well, I'll do this, I'll stroke the check, I'll invest this team or possibly five or six business business people from the community who are each going to pony up two or $3 million and say, we'll take this thing on. I'll guarantee you those alternatives that I'm talking about will be on the table for consideration this off season. I can't tell you where the team's going to go public or private, but I know there's been some public messaging that we're fully committed to the private. That's stuff We lost Dave again? Oh Yeah, A little tricky today here. Tricky today with Dave. Let's see if he pops back in here frozen again, I dunno. Jason, what do you make of all this here? We're here in strife and Victor getting pushed out and all of this to me, we talked here a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, really rock bottom for Edmonton here, coming back now. I truly don't know where they can go from here. Yeah, I mean I've said multiple times on the recap shows I'm at a loss of words to this point, that it's gotten this far and I thought that they'd be out of this mess by now given that it's been three years since the canceled 2020 season and their struggles since 2021 began. And I think that at the end of the day, it's just really hard to see as a cfl fan, you never want to see one of the cfl teams, even if it's the Argos, from my perspective as a TCAs fan, go through this for an extended period of time and I think it's not good for the league overall. I was talking with Jim Mullen last night about this and he was mentioning, obviously this isn't the first time with financial issues and we've seen bankruptcy, right? With rough riders having telethons and the red black, what was it? The Renegades and everything like here, having a struggling Edmonton team just in terms of the historical context that they have in the league. What do you make of this? Yeah, it's tough to see because this is the team or franchise that has been the historical attendance leader in the cfl and just to see it consistently go down year after year, even before the pandemic, those five or so seasons before the pandemic, it's been on a downturn and I think it's really just been accelerated over the past couple of years. And I think that what's disappointing from the Elks perspective is that in 2019 they weren't all that bad of a team. They actually got to the East Division final, they won a playoff game that year and so I actually was pretty confident in them going into the 2021 season. So that's really a shocking part about it for me and how they haven't turned it around still. Alright, let's give Dave one more shot here. Dave, you're talking about bringing in financial, maybe they go privately owned the end of the season. I mean this is crazy talk. Well, and listen, one of the questions that I had when I started getting the sense that this could happen or that this was moving in that direction was what would the league have to say about that, right? Because the league is very traditional and you could certainly imagine a position where they would want to defend the heritage and the tradition of community ownership in Edmonton. That goes back so long and I would just say my preliminary conversations at the league level on that, I do not believe the league would have any inclination to stand in the way of that team going private. That's interesting. Jason, I know you have some questions for Dave while we have 'em on here. Yeah, so thanks for doing this, Dave. First of all, my question is what is your sense of the health of the cfl right now? We have some negative stories like the one in Edmonton, which we've gone and length about, but we also have some positive developments like increased TV ratings this year, slight uptick in attendance. What are your thoughts on the overall health of the league? Yeah, I think especially, I'm going to put it in the context of what we came through with the pandemic and transfers of ownership in both Montreal and bc. And it's not just changing owners. They changed owners of guys that had owned those teams for like 25 years, like Bob Weal in Montreal and David Braley in bc. You can argue what he thought of them as owners, and I think they both did things that were good and not so good as in terms of the league, but they were bedrocks, right? And it's hard to change bedrocks now when you look at having Amar Dolman N B C and Pierre Carl Pedo in Montreal. I think those are really good bridges to the future. And this is one of the things about in terms of the security, the cfl, if you go around the board of governor's table, the CFL right now, these are not people of marginal wealth that may have to take out a second mortgage on the home if the team doesn't win more than six games or something. I mean, these people are phenomenally wealthy. I mean from Fier, Carl Pedo you're talking about in Billions, I don't know Omar do's wealth, but again, I don't think he's having any concerns about absorbing losses with the BC line. Now this is not a great business model to have a bunch of wealthy guys who just become philanthropists. Your teams only get value if you can make them profitable. But I think the fact is you've got people that have both the wherewithal and the ability to invest in their teams and not have to sort of have a short-term view of it. So again, when I look at how around the Board of Governor's table, that makes me feel very good about the league. When I look at it on television, it's always been a strong television property. You guys mentioned the ratings this year, they've been very good. The games have been sort of better than we might've expected given some of the injuries to quarterbacks. And look, it is always been a league where I had a player ask me one time last year, a player who was in college who was possibly coming to the cfl, he's in the N F L right now, and he asked me how the league was doing and I said, it's really hard to answer that If you asked me how Winnipeg's doing, you'd think you went to a game there. You'd think the league's thriving and never been better. And if you went into a game in Toronto, you'd wonder how a market of 6 billion people can't draw 15,000 to a game. So you've got some extremes, but look in my time covering the league, and that's three decades plus. There have been times I have worried about the viability of this league that I have worried about the extinction of this league. I don't really feel like that's anything that anybody's concerned about right now or should be. And even as the Elks, right, I've been very clear the Elks are hitting a financial crisis, the first one I've ever seen in my career, and I've covered financial crises, at least one for every single other franchise in this league. But they're not in danger of folding. They just got to be recapitalized and that's going to happen and it's going to take a while until they turn it around. It's so weird. You talk about the Board of Governors and it always seemed to me that oh, Victor had all these ideas that they weren't ready for and he was coming in and now it seems like that wasn't really maybe the case with Alder. It just, it's so weird to revamp my mind now around this whole situation. Well, I agree and I think one of the things is sometimes as a journalist, you got to be really careful to know what you know and know what you don't know. And I am not boots on the ground in Edmonton. I don't have administrative sources inside that organization. So the reporting on that stuff is very, very tricky. And there's been some mentions that there were some employees that went on stress leave and were not high up administrative employees. And when I poked around on that, the reaction I got was those were very personal situations and I'm not probing on those. I'm less about what happened and more. No, we get a Franchise. He had been a scholarship. He'd been awarded a scholarship in the University of Alberta. He was from Edmondson, he had international sport experience. It all just seemed to line up and until it didn't. I guess. Jason, you got another one for Dave while we have 'em on here. Yeah, for sure. I'm going to ask about the Genius sports partnership and I mean Randy and Brosy really talked about it when they first came into the fold. And my question is how would you grade the CFL's partnership with Genius Sports to this point? Impossible. Impossible. And look, because the only thing that's really come to the service is the stat service being a mess, which feels indefensible given the priority and the importance of that aspect of the business, especially in the environment where we're in with sports betting and frankly, just as a journalist covering the league, it makes things really, really challenging. So that's the only thing that I and others really have to judge them by. I will say this, when this genius sports deal came in, and I think Genius Sports does have a pretty good reputation elsewhere, the structure of it made some sense because it was like, Hey, we couldn't afford these guys. We can't afford to be their clients. We couldn't pay with the N B A or the NCAA or the N F L pays and they're all clients with Genius Sports. So we created this creative structure where their equity partners in our league, we win, they win and we don't have to outlay cash and we're going to get the benefit of their expertise. I was also told this is going to take a while before it comes to fruition, until the positive effects of this arm happened and it was also journalistically. It's been hard to explain what the hack Genius sports is because I don't really fundamentally understand it either, right? It's data mined from the cfl that can be used in the sports betting space, can be used in other ways to cultivate fans based on what they're interested in. It can help highlight the players and the things that fans want more from the game. But I can't really break down for you how that works. So I use the word off the top impossible to evaluate. I would go and say that because I don't like, I don't want to come in and just be negative on it. And then in two years from now, once it's matured and the stat service works and oh actually worked out pretty well, I don't want to judge the game at halftime and I feel that's where they are, but I'm probably being a little charitable on that given all the frustration we all have at the needs of genius sports on the stats stuff, No, I think you can always be your critical as we go along. I mean that's the xfl usfl every day. You got to hold him accountable. You want it to get better. In terms of our commissioner here, I'm hearing media tour next week and kind of talking midway through the season. What do you make of a commissioner Abro here? Jason said, demos are up, ratings are up a lot of other stuff. Well, and again, good or bad, everything falls. And then the commissioners scorecard, right? And I'll go back to what I said about the owners. One really important job for commissioners is making sure that when there is a financial issue with a franchise, that the transition happens without it taken down the league in any way, shape or form. And also you're measured by the quality of the owners you can bring into the league. I used to say, look, Tom Wright when he was the commissioner of the league 20 years ago, very nice guy. I liked him very much, but he inherited a 19 league, gave back an 18 league and had three teams go bankrupt and had teams go bankrupt without other owners lined up ready to take them on the league, took over the Hamilton Tiger Cats. The league took over the Toronto Argonauts, the Ottawa Red Blacks folded. And I'll say that in Randy's case, the league did have to take over the Montreal, but it wasn't really disruptive right there. Every team had to write a big check. I'm sure they weren't very happy about it, but it was a pretty seamless process. And then you've got Gary Stern. Let's be honest, he was a placeholder, right? We know that the league knew it the day they introduced him, but he held the place that they needed him to. He spent a ton of money and he became the bridge to Pierre Carl Pedo. And again, you've got to give Amar Doman, you got to give that to Randy. That's on his watch. I think the fact they got a seven year C B A is a win. I don't think it's good for business stability. If you're going into C B A negotiations, you've got doubts about when your season's going to start and the two sides bickering every two to three years we've saw for a while. Those are all things that I would kind of give him check marks for the expansion thing, he talks a lot about expansion a lot, and I think even he knows, well, he does know that the time has come where nobody wants to hear about expansion talk anymore. They want to see action, they want to see things happening. They want real stake in the ground dates on the calendar. This is when this is happening. So again, I think that if he can't, because he's talked about expansion so much and the need for it, and I think they've got business consultants that are telling them they need to get to 10 teams because what it'll do to the schedule, they want to move the Greg Cup up a couple of weeks without having to move the season up. You can do that. You can get rid of three from three by weeks to one. Just everything gets better balanced, right? With this ridiculous schedule where the Argonauts have been three bi weeks and they aren't going to have any of the rest. All kinds of things get ironed out if you get a 10th team, but if he can't produce a 10th team, that's going to kind of be on him because he's the one who set the agenda to make it happen and say they need it and they want to have it. So look, I think it's been an extremely challenging time. I've sat with Randy annually at the Great Cup every year and talked about where he is on his to-do list things and Covid was a interruption of proportion no one could have imagined. Again, I know he took a lot of criticism, especially on the front end of that overall, somehow the league got through it and got through it in pretty good shape. And I'll acknowledge that in my evaluation of him as well. When you talk about legacies of commissioners, I mean that would be Randy's legacy. I mean right now, demos being slightly up is not a Hey, in 20 years you're going to look back and go, Randy got us through Covid. Maybe this genius. I mean, I think Randy, if he really chaired mean there's a million reasons to want to have a 10th team. But I mean that would cement you in that legacy as well, right? Absolutely, absolutely. I always joke about this, Reid. No, we lost you, Dave. You're on mute or something now. He was joking. I was ready for his joke. Jason, we're fighting through today, thank god Julia Rodriguez has in a three run homeroom, five four. I was very stressed. We've been hot today, we've been struggling with connection issues. The Mariners are losing to the royals, so we're getting through it. Let's see if Dave can get back on again here. We're going to let you have the next question on here, but in terms of, we've talked about this, the temp team, do you like that move the gray cup up, get rid of the bi weeks without changing the schedule? Oh, a hundred percent. This is something that I've wanted for a while. Ever since the Red Blacks came back into the league, we've had to deal with this nine team league and the reality of having one team off every week. I also hate the first and last week buys. Those are really the ones that drive me the most nuts because you're getting ready for a season to start, but one of your fan bases in the league doesn't have a game to look forward to that week. So I think that has always driven me insane. And then I think the schedule this year is they're doing three games each of the last two weeks, so they're going to be three teams on by the last two weeks of the season. So that's a little bit different and I think that may be a better solution to it than what we've currently seen or what we've seen the past couple of years. But I think ultimately a tent team would solve a lot Better or less worse. And what I was going to say there just about, it's always the perspective on expansion, right? 1967, the year that I'm born, the Canadian Football League has nine teams. The National Hockey League has six. The cfl was 50% bigger than the N H L the year I was born. I have no other comment than that. Why? I like the what we call the C F xfl or whatever. I like the North American Football League, all those talks we had two years ago now I like that. I like the cfl xfl talks. Well look again, and I get a lot of heat from people now is the guy who wanted to see the merger again. I'll just restate my position of that. I thought the league needed to explore that fully given the circumstance of covid, the uncertainty of ownership around at least two teams at that time, if not more, and just the uncertainty of where the league was general. I thought that the league needed to explore the xfl option fully and ultimately they decided it didn't work. And whether that was the time of year, whether that was the rules of the game, whether that was who was really going to control this entity, and I think it was more that than anything else. I think it was all the control was going to rest in the hands of Redbird capital and Dwayne Johnson and maybe leave sports and entertainment or something. But there was going to be a massive shift in power in decision-making under structure with the xfl merger. And I think there were a lot of people in the cfl were uncomfortable with that and maybe rightly so. Ultimately I think the league did the right thing, but I also think they did the right thing by exploring that rather than just sort of instantly turning their nose up by it. Dave, I believe you are in Texas rather. You in Dallas right now or are you in Jacksonville? No, I am in halfway between Detroit and Athens, Ohio. I'm going from one rourke to another. I was at the Jags Lyons practice today where Nathan Rourke was practicing and going to see his brother, Curtis Rourke, who was on the Dave O'Brien watch list for outstanding quarterback in college football this season. And they open on July 26th. That's next Saturday against San Diego State, and we're going to their practice tomorrow morning at Athens. Well, I take credit for America's wonderful nationwide infrastructure here of mobile data that this connection has been so tremendous today. What have you made of Nathan here and Jack, obviously we had the big but Patrick Mahomes and all this stuff. What have you made of Mr. Rourke? Well, I mean the play he made was spectacular. I mean, he broke four tackles. It was funny. I was talking to Mike McCoy, former cfl quarterback with Calgary. Of course it was the Jags quarterback coach this morning at practice, and he told me something I hadn't heard about this. The game official told him that he twice nearly blew that play dead. He thought Nathan was going down and it's preseason, right? So the officials are going to error on the side of blowing a play dead if they think it's going to get a quarterback snapped in half. And I thought that was really interesting. And I said this on SportsCenter down on the field after the game. I said, I think I glanced away. I thought the play was over on one of those tackles and I glanced away and all of a sudden, boom, he pops up. And I mean I had a bird's eye view on that play where my seat in the press box was right at the corner of the end zone when he threw it towards Cadre Ellison, who I spoke to yesterday at practice. He had a funny description of the play, just slow motion realizing that he'd throwing a dart to him on the fly after that kind of escape. And all he could think of is don't drop this. He had the easy part and he said his family was Saturday night. His family was calling him saying, you're famous man. And this guy's been in the N F L for five years. But anyway, it was no look, and the only thing about the play, no negative on it, but it obscured. I think the fact that Nathan Rourke in his very first live N F L action played a heck of a half. I mean he had 153 yards passing a half a football that's a 3 0 6 game full after the first drive. He was five for five on third down conversions. And a lot of those third down conversions started at first and 20 or first and 15 because of the penalties that were taken on the play that he threw the touchdown on was a third and 16 play. So I thought it was very impressive and just watching him, his sense of time and space when to head up the field with his legs, where to go with the ball, there was just no sense at all that you were watching a guy who'd never played in the N F L before. And that's Dave mailer's eyes. And you guys know that's not my area of expertise in the business. I never played, I never coached, I'm a news guy, but I've watched lots of football, but I spent some time on the phone the other night with David Sanchez who has played a lot of football and he studied every play from that half and he came away with the same conclusion I did. So I think he's going to play a lot on Saturday. The Jacksonville beat guys tell me that they're not convinced that Trevor Lawrence is going to play at all. There's only two other quarterbacks on the roster that's CJ Bether to Nathan Rourke. So as much as he didn't get a whole lot of opportunity in the two days of joint practices, I mean quarterbacks don't get hit and joint practices. That's why Trevor Lawrence is out there taking most of the snaps, but I think Nathan R's going to get a real good chance to play on Saturday. Again, This something, yeah. Does he have a chance to actually move up in the depth chart? I know there was a lot of criticism here when he chose Jacksonville over maybe other places. Well, here's how it can happen. I and I was told this six months ago that there's basically no chance that Nathan Ro comes out of camp with the number two job. He's going to be number three. So how does he move up? Well, it's going to take a Trevor Lawrence injury, okay? Because if the Jags have their way, Trevor Lawrence will take every single snap for the Jacksonville Jaguars for the next 15 years unless it's a game that they've clinched the playoff spot and they're holding them out. So he's not going to move up that way or any other way I don't think. And you've got to understand when you've got a Trevor Lawrence teams aren't looking for him to be pushed or challenged. The number two quarterback's role as much as anything is to help Trevor prepare and be good. That's part of the role. And you need somebody who kind of embraces that role as I think CJ Behar has with Jacksonville. This is when Bo Levi Mitchell did his N F L tour four or five years ago when he was at his peak in his prime and team said, yeah, we'd like you to come in and help our starter prepare to be great. And Bo was like, what? That's not I'm here for. I'm not wired that way. And so that's why he ended up back in Calgary and turned down opportunities from Denver, Indianapolis, and the Vikings. So what could happen? This is how it could happen. Trevor Lawrence gets hurt, right? Month and a half injury, CJ Behar gets two or three starts, looks kind of ordinary, not very dynamic, doesn't make a whole lot of wild plays, okay? They lose two of those games. Okay, let's put Nathan Rourke in and if he goes in and plays well and does some magic, that's how he becomes number two. And the more he can lay down on tape in these preseason games and demonstrate to his coaches and his general manager that he's capable of doing some special things on the field, the more likely he is to get the opportunity that I just described. I don't think Justin Duck's head survives that weekend if the work comes in. I know Jason's got another question for you. I'm keeping you on here. If you're driving connection's been so terrible, we'll keep you on while we can. Yes. So Dave, I'll ask you the same question I asked Farhan last week. What do you think if you had to point to one thing is the story of the cfl season to this point, It's Chad Kelly, and I think that first of all, what Chad Kelly's doing on the field is great on its own. If you're just watching him week to week, he is one of those guys that you turn on the tv, you want to see what he's going to do, but les's put some context around this, okay, Chad Kelly had played one football game in like six and a half years before this season, and it was week 21 against the Montreal Ettes last year with a bunch of backups on both sides of the ball he hadn't played since his final game in 2016 in Ole Miss. So that in itself, I think puts some context around this. And then he's playing for a team that has huge expectations. It's not like he can get his feet wet and get acclimated to the cfl game. No, no. The expectations around him are this team is a great cup, Pete ready team, and the roster around him says it is. It's a real weird situation to have a team like this and a quarterback room with one guy who had one start and say, we can roll with this. And I'll throw one more thing in, and I was reminded of this when all the publicity around Johnny Manzel recently, and I was thinking about his time in the cfl and this, and most times when a guy has trouble keeping it on the rails off the field in the N F L, and that's the reason he comes to Canada, it doesn't work because if you can't keep it on the rails with millions of dollars at stake, it's unlikely you're going to be able to keep it on the rails with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake. Thus far, Chad Kelly has been the ultimate outlier on that. He did not keep it on the rails in college. He did not keep it on the rails in the N F L. That's why he's available to come to this league. And if you look at the tape of when he's drafted in the seventh round by Denver in the last pick of the draft, Mike Mayock, who's on the draft says this is a first or second round talent who is being taken here because of questions about his character and his ability to stay healthy with servicing his final year of college. So that's why he's in this league. So I think when you look at the history of guys who've had off-field trouble being able to keep it together in Canada, the lack of football that he's played, the environment that he's walked into and had to succeed with a lot of pressured wind right now, hands down Chad Kelly is the story of the cfl thus far. Well, and he had the tweet this week where it was like everything happens for a reason and I know I'm in my place. I mean it seems like, because that was my concern going into the season was I don't know if Chad Kelly wants to be a 3, 4, 5 year guy here, and you had your article out at the beginning of the season, Chad Kelly is the most important player in the cfl right now, Chad and Kelly and the Argonauts. Are they meeting or exceeding your expectations? Well, I think they're absolutely exceeding them. This is a team that other than one weirdo game in Calgary and when teams have great seasons, there's always one of those games you just can't make any sense of. And losing Chad in that game on a night, they weren't perfect to say the least. They picked the wrong night. Maybe if Chad plays that whole game, he could help bail them out of it and instead they lose him and they're doing a whole bunch of things wrong all over the field. But Chad, sometimes to his own detriment, when he talks to the media, he tends to tell you the truth, but what he thinks about things, you remember the interviews he gave when he first signed he was going to break all of Doug Flu's records and stuff like that, but he did an interview with football focus for an article about three weeks ago. And again, I'm going to assume Chad Kelly's telling the truth because kind of what he does, at least when he is talking to the media and he was saying his attitude was essentially, I'm having the most fun of my life. I haven't enjoyed football like this for a long, long time. I love Toronto. I'd love to get back to the National Football League, but if that doesn't happen, I could see myself playing here for the next 10 years and sometimes playing in the cfl, I'm going to use a line that a writer used when he was writing. It was an American writer who wrote a piece about Anthony Calvio when he said the all-time pro football passing yards mark. And it was that at some point in your career you have to embrace compromise and that means embrace being in the cfl. And I thought it's a great line. There's not a guy in the cfl that wouldn't rather be playing in the National Football League if he could, but at some point you got to know who you are and you embrace where you are. And Chad's talked a lot about you look at some of the language we know he's, he's had some challenges in his life and he's had some counseling and things like this, so you can hear it in some of the things he says like, Hey, you got to really stay present where your feet are standing, things like that, right? Don't think about what happened to you, the N F L and why you're not there anymore. Don't think about where you want to be in three years. Think about where you are right now and where your feet are right now and live this moment. You can hear it in a lot of the things that he says and to my appearance, he seems to be doing that. And if Chad, Chad Kelly decides, first of all, I don't know if he's going to have an opportunity to go back to the National Football League because he's 29 and he's going to be a magnet for attention if he goes back. And sometimes teams would like their number two to be CJ Bethel, who's never a magnet for attention. And Doug Flutie faced the same kind of thing when he was trying to go back. He either had to go back as a number one kind of or not at all because he's not wired to be a backup. I don't think Chad Kelly is wired to be a backup. If he can embrace this opportunity, he can have a great life and make a whole lot of money 90 minutes from where he grew up, that's not a bad deal. Living in a city like Toronto, I had be ecstatic to see him be able to do that. I think it would be great for the Argonauts. I think it would be great for the cfl. I think it would be great for Chad Kelly. And look, let's be honest, also, Toronto's a city that needs a bit of cachet. They need something to kind of excite them sometimes more than just cfl personalities and this guy just happens to be the nephew of the greatest players ever played across the lake in Buffalo. So there you go. Yeah, Ken had a comment here. Chad Kelly's probably the reason why Argos and Ottawa had 550,000 viewers last Sunday. Those are west division numbers for an east versus east game also point out Trey Ford, right, his debut and that was the game of my life that night in the roller coaster of my life. With that, let's let Jason get one more in here here and we'll start bringing this thing to bed. Yeah, my question here is talking about quarterbacks here, so we've said for the last several years in the cfl that we're kind of in this stage of mediocre quarterback play. Even you look 10 years ago or even five years ago, you had guys like Bo Levi Mitchell, Mike Riley, go back further than that, Calvio, Ricky Ray, all those guys. Are there any guys Dickinson? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Are there any guys that you've seen this year with all the quarterback injuries that you believe have the opportunity to become one of those guys down the road because the CFO is definitely going to Need them? I would say Drew Brown jumps out to me as one. I was joking with another writer, I'll say his name because he wouldn't mind, I don't think, Jeff Hamilton, the Winnipeg Free Press that we got in an argument in the F Rrc suite last year at Greg Cup about which quarterback was more ready to take on a starting role in the cfl. I said Chad Kelly, and he said, drew Brown, and I joke with him the other day. I said, Hey, we were both right, maybe so Drew Brown, and I'm going to go by more even than just the way he's played. Listen to him when he's interviewed, and I know that side game after interview, some of 'em are just bumped, right? They waste of time, guys just give you a message tracks, but listen to Drew Brown and I think you see there's something there in terms of the way he's approaching the game, the way he's approaching being Zach's understudy, the way he approaches the opportunity, that also really jumped out at me. So I'm going to say Drew Brown is one, and again, I think Dustin Crumb, I know we all got really hot on Dustin Crumb when he engineered the comeback over Winnipeg and then all of a sudden it's really cooled off a bit because teams have taken away his ability to just turn up field and he's not as much of a dual threat quarterback as he was early on and stuff, but can we remember this guy's played four games, nevermind the opposition, not really knowing him that well. His own team doesn't know him that well and I think we have to put what he's doing into the context of what's he going to be like at the end of his second season. Really when we judge, is this guy going to be somebody that's going to have a long future in the cfo? We always talk about that two to three year range. That's why so many people were bullish on Taylor Cornelius coming into this year like, okay, he was better in year two than year one. Now this is year three, here's where it clicks. Boom, didn't happen. But I would definitely say that Dustin Crumb is, and again, guy's got some pedigree, right? Mac Player of the year, and I think there's a mental makeup that you hear his teammates talk about as well that I think suggests that there could be something there as well. So those would be the two guys that aren't starters in the league. Crum is kind of by default because of what's happened in Ottawa, but I would not be surprised if by 2025, both those guys are starting quarterbacks in the league and very successful. Yeah. Benjamin has a comment where would be a good landing spot for Drew Brown after he becomes a free agent in the off season? I mean, I think Winnipeg pays him up and keeps him there, but want to, you can comment on that, but I want your real-time kind reaction to that fiasco. Last Thursday, the Ford Ford comes in, he looks everything we thought he would, drew, Zach goes down. What would you think about Drew Brown after the season then? What was your thoughts on the game before you got out of here? Well, you know what the game reminded me of? You ever turn on one of those college games on a Saturday and it's a total mismatch, outrageous mismatch, right? 23 and a half spread or something, and the team that's the underdog makes some spectacularly wacky plays and all of a sudden they're up 17, nothing after a quarter, and the most important thing in the game from that point on becomes the clock. Not if the other team's coming back. It's when and how much can they get done before the game is over? That's what I felt like watching that game. I said, these guys are coming back now, I got to be honest, when the Kyron Moore play happened, I don't know what Winnipeg was doing defensively playing cover zero and listen, nine guys on first and 10 of the 35, I mean, honestly, at this stage of his career, the best defense against Trey Ford probably isn't to sack him. It's probably to make 'em throw. But they put themselves on an island in coverage and the guy goes 70 odds. At that point I thought, you know what? This is just one of those games, that game where Caleb Evans in Ottawa beat Edmonton before they were horrible and it was Caleb's first start, I think it was his first playtime, and they won the game and it was just a bunch of wacky plays happened. Lao called a flea flicker early on, and Greg Ellingson fumbled on the next series, and you go, this is just one of those days when the Kyron Moore plays. I thought, but again, we weren't counting on Drew Brown being as good as he was. Where would Drew Brown go after this season? Look, I don't think Winnipeg's going to be able to keep 'em because they're paying Zach almost 600,000 a season and they got a roster that they're going to already have to make a whole bunch of hard choices on if they want to stay in a great cup window and keep that roster together enough that that's what they are, I don't think you could ever have a backup quarterback on that team making two 20 or something like that. I don't see how that could happen. So I think the market is going to find him and wow, lemme just think about it. Okay, who's going to need a quarterback next year? Saskatchewan perhaps, although Trevor Harris is 37, is still a very capable quarterback, but it's also makes a big ticket, right? They could have a choice of, would you rather have Drew Brown at 300 than Trevor Harris at five? You have certainly Ottawa, I would say if they wanted to go out, and I'm just making this up, but if they wanted to move on from Jeremiah Mazzoli and decide that they wanted to go with Dustin Crumb and Drew Brown and pay Drew Brown 300 and bring Dustin Crumb in to compete with them as the number two, and Dustin Crumb probably needs a year as a number two. Frankly, I don't think anybody thinks that he's necessarily going to be their number one going in next year. So those would be a couple of plays. And I would say Hamilton as well because we have no idea what Bo Levi Mitchell's going to be by opening day next year with the injuries. Thus far, the performance thus far, it's really, really hard to predict. So hey, there's a reason Bo Levi Mitchell got benched and then got a raise. There's a reason Trevor Harris went from making 110,000 to making five. It's because the market is really, really good and really, really desperate for competent quarterback play. And if Drew Browns steps into that market this off season, I think he's going to have lots of opportunities. Jason, I'll give you the last one to Dave and we'll let him drop off here. Yeah, just trying to see what else I haven't asked here. I want to ask about Hamilton specifically and the change at offensive coordinator to Scott Milanovich. Do you see the Ty Kats getting some kind of bump from that or do you think that more changes are needed down the road here? It's awfully hard because the personnel is still Taylor Powell and with due respect, he is a rookie out of the Mid-American conference, and I think you could see already it's very limited with what they're asking him to do. And I don't know that a different play caller asking him to do things that he's not ready to do. It is going to be the answer, but it's a tough one because Tommy Condell, I don't know, I'm led to believe that his firing had nothing to do with the situation where Bo Levi Mitchell got hurt. I guess I'll believe that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did because he's the play caller on that one. Right, and whether Bo did that on his own or you could certainly make the argument that it's his job to make sure Bo's out of harm's way on that play. That said, it's a Shorty Yarded sneak. It happens all the time. Quarterbacks don't get hurt on that kind of play. I just know that there are probably a lot of people really frustrated in that organization with what happened given the stage of game that it happened at. And again, there's never really been a, whose fault was it resolution, but Tommy was the guy on the headset that night. So look, Scott Milanovich, the one thing he can't argue with, and Tommy Gal has got a really good resume as a quarterback, as an offensive coordinator, but Scott's won a great cup as a head coach. Scott's been on the offensive staff of a couple of N F L teams, and I remember talking to Scott at training camp about when you come back to the cfl, do you think you've evolved as a play caller? Are there elements that you have because you've been calling, I believe he's done in some, I don't believe he called plays in the N F L. I think he had an opportunity last year when they fired Marcus Brady in Indianapolis and I believe he declined it if I have that correct. But he's certainly working with quarterbacks and putting together game plans and things that he could certainly bring back with him to the cfl. But again, I think it's going to be really limited just because of the personnel and the situation. But hey, he's a guy who's had a lot of success in this league. He's had some success with some underling quarterbacks. I mean Logan Kilgar, who is now a quarterback coach somewhere in the N F L, I can't remember where he is. He was a guy who got an opportunity behind Ricky Ray when Scott Milanovich was his coach and they had some success. To answer your question directly, no, I'm not expecting a huge bump, especially right out of the gate these first few weeks. Well, Dave, thanks for fighting through the connection today. Drive safe. I appreciate it and it'll be good. We'll talk soon and we'll see you up here in Hamilton. The whole crew is coming up here in November, so Looking forward to it, man. No, we had some really heavy cloud and lousy weather earlier, so I think that was kind of what screwed up our call. We're now still under cloud, but it's much higher, so thanks for having me on, guys. Appreciate It. Thanks Dave. See you. Well, we did it, the Mariners one, six to four. I was very stressed there. It was at the height of Dave's connection issues. The Mariners were down. Julio came back to your run home, run, Cal Rally got one, so six four won the game. Jason, I want to spend just, I know you're getting to the game as well here for the Hamilton. I want to spend one minute a piece on each of these games before we get out. Did you enjoy Dave's chat? Oh yeah. Dave is always just a great bliss and honestly, just hearing 'em answer every question, it's way better than what we can do. Well, that's good. Yeah, so if anyone find the connections, that was good, we finally got into that. That's always like, oh, I'll just call in. I'm just on the phone. It's like for whatever reason, and cell phones and trying to do the video and all of that. I think on Zoom, I think you can just do an audio call. I think maybe if we could have pre-produced it and Dave could have done an audio call in, but yeah, we got it. We appreciate it. Dave, thanks for fighting through. You're going to the game tonight. Do you expect Hamilton to take care of business? I think so, but I didn't have much confidence in it. I think that, like I said, I picked Hamilton to win on my channel, but I think that there is a part of me that says maybe history repeats itself from what we saw last year. One thing I want to point out in this game is that both teams are getting two key players back or one key player aside. That is Dylan Win is making his season debut for the Hamilton Tigercat in the middle of that defense, defensive tackle, really key guy for them. And Eugene Lewis is actually going to be back in the lineup for the Evans Elk, so we'll see if that helps. Straightforward out In this one, You said you're going to the Hamilton, and then what's the other game you're going to be at? I'm going to be in Ottawa for Montreal at Ottawa on Saturday night. Oh, they're good. So I was like, oh, Toronto's not playing this week. So Winnipeg at Calgary. Calgary looked bad again last week, right? Coming back BC really kind of trouncing them. Any hope here, do you think Winnipeg rolls through? Well, I mean Winnipeg has generally dominated Calgary in recent memory. They've played some great games, but Winnipeg always seems to come out on the winning end of things. But my question is, can Calgary take advantage of another backup quarterback playing in this one? Drew Brown reportedly getting the start in this one. So I think that the stamp, Peters obviously had the luck of playing Chad Kelly's backup a couple of weeks ago. Can they take advantage of another situation like that? And this one, we'll see. I will say, I think it was Monday after we got off and Darren bombing was, he was doing a report on Twitter and you Zach's, Zach's not here today or Zach's on the field, but not he's not dressed or whatever. I kind of live and die by a lot of this stuff. I was like, oh man, Calis is out. Where if he had told me five years ago, I am sitting here watching Darren bombings Twitter reports. You're talking about the starting quarterback for the Win Bay Blue Bombers. This is an interesting matchup. Montreal, really hot coming in. We've talked a lot. Distant Crumb. I don't know, I feel like Montreal with the edge here just feels like they're picking up a lot of steam. What do you make? Well, I took Ottawa in a very close game on my channel, but didn't really feel too strongly one way or the other. Montreal of course, has been the better team this year and their only three losses are against the big three teams and the cfl, so that's worth noting. But I think that Ottawa just kind of has a little bit of magic about them at times this year. Maybe we see that in this one. I think that one thing I'm looking for is does Montreal exploit that big weakness that Ottawa has in the secondary been giving up a ton of big plays over the last several weeks, so we'll see if whoever's that quarterback, whether that be Caleb Evans or Cody Fajardo, can they exploit that this week? And then to me this is a Sherlock. I don't know what the betting odds are, but BC has to be heavily favored even in coming into Mosaic. Right? Yeah, I think I saw it was a 10 point spread, which is crazy for a road team in the cfl I think that think that BC is going to take care of business here, really can't see Saskatchewan moving the ball on offense against BC's defense in any efficient way with Jake Dagal at quarterback. And I think this is a chance for BC to really run up the score again. One thing I'm looking for in them is if Lucky Whitehead has a big game in this one, he's had a very quiet season to this point, so a lot of people kind of writing him off. So we'll see if he can have a big game against the rough riders. Oh, see, I like that with Lucky. I like him. He's happy to play and do, I mean, we've talked about this before. I like that BC's wide receivers are happy to be a cast of characters. I think that he has been quiet, but he stepped up when he is needed. He's gotten Coach Passes when he needs Keon. It was kind of key On's night last week and I like that, that they can kind of all take turns of that where it feels more, I mean, I couldn't even see who's the receiving leader right now for the BC Lions. I don't know. I mean, I would guess maybe Keon, but he's missed games, Dom's, miss games. I mean they've all kind of been in and out, right? Yeah, I agree. I mean it's just a great group and I think that they have different skill sets as well. I think that if some of these guys were on other teams in the league, I think you could count four or five of them that could be number one receivers on other teams, but they meshed together to make one hell of a receiving core and bc Well, that'll do it today. Like I said, thanks everyone sticking throughout that day goes, once we got all that figured out, it should be a more traditional show. I think next week trying to get back on the horse here. I think Greg Parks is going to come on. We're going to talk xfl U, SS F L, how the players are doing here in the preseason. Supposedly Ambrose's doing a media tour. I've kind of got my name earmarked for that, so maybe we can have the commissioner back on. And then I had something else I was working on as well, so should be exciting. Some players coming on and then have some spokes in the fire here coming up, kind of balancing bi-week with all of these teams. Jason, we'll be back on Monday. You have your preview on your channel. People want to check that out as well. Anything else from you before we get out of here? No, I think we've covered pretty much everything this week and let's get out of here. I am sweating through here. It's hot. I was very stressed with everything, but we got it going. Appreciate it, Jason. Steady as a rock as always. Evan will be back on Monday as well. Evan's, just road tripping right now. I couldn't imagine having two people on the phones calling in, so we had the one. We got it. Thanks everyone. Thumbs up the video if you can. We'll see you next. Subject.

CFL 2023 Week 10 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 10, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Monday morning here on the early Monday, one of our correspondents Evans got to fly out. We have a live correspondent at the game this weekend that moving up our production values there, but lots to talk about today. I thought this was a tremendously exciting weekend. We got to get in everyone here the Thursday obviously highlight of my life here just in terms of the roller coaster, but we'll get through everything. Jason, how are you doing? I'm doing good, Reid. How are you? We're good. Evan, Evan traveling for the Mark. Has this weekend spent time in bc, how was that? It was great. We will get into that. I mean that game specifically was over pretty quickly, but it was definitely always nice to see cfl team play or especially BC in this case, given how well they've been this year. But yeah, overall it was great. Great experience. Always love coming up here. Yeah, I messaged Evan, I said if the Edmonton game hadn't have happened, you probably could have left halftime at BC but then you're like, you don, no lead is safe in here but I can't wait to get to the Thursday game. But we'll get through everything else we had here. Just I guess the notes real quick breaking whatever this T Katz trade to kind of fill in, right. Mason's injured and Ella Galles not doing good. Jason, what do you make of this and we'll get Evan sucks. Well I was reading that T Katz punter Bailey Flint is actually, he's injured right now so maybe that's the reasoning behind the trade for them. Pipkin didn't really play for them. I think he signed a couple of weeks ago with the tie Katts didn't really get into any meaningful snaps so I mean I don't think they lose too much from that. Pipkin actually was briefly a cfl starter back in 2019. Actually won the job in Montreal over by and Adam, so he does have a bit of cfl experience has played a little bit with BC over the past couple of years as well. So maybe he gets into the starting lineup with Saskatchewan. They're really struggling right now with their quarterback situation. We'll get to that and yeah, I think that's the reasoning behind the trade for both themes. Evan, you had some insights as well. We were talking off cam. Yeah, I mean Saskatchewan needed a quarterback and I think they went after somebody who had a bit of experience in the cfl. Obviously Antonio Pipkin isn't a bonafide starter, but he has been with multiple teams at this point. He does have that experience in the league and I mean he wasn't with Hamilton for that long so it's not like they were really latched onto him and now Hamilton just acquired Mike Glass who was with the alley Wes in the preseason. So it kind of works out both ways. And I guess Hamilton gets a new punter too, a high upside global punter? I believe so. I don't know. I mean I think it's all right. Again, Saskatchewan is in kind of a desperate situation and it's rare that you see a quarterback punter trade or even a quarterback trade in general nowadays, but it looks like Antonio Pipkin has a greater chance to appear in some games in Saskatchewan than he did in Hamilton. Yeah, like I said, Jamie Nye runs the Green Zone up there and we're friends on Twitter and I kind of gauge Saskatchewan kind of welfare checks on his tweets and he's fine's not doing good. They're al kind end of the world, so we'll get to Saskatchewan. But yeah, definitely kind of figuring that out and then I'd be remiss we have to talk, Nathan Rourke had this big, we can talk because I know they played it. I want to get Evan's take during the BC game when they played it during the game, but we still exist Nathan and the cfl we're playing all that. What did you guys think of this? We'll go Evan first just kind of really went viral. I mean Patrick Mahomes was tweeting about this kind of Nathan work standout. Yeah, well it was pretty cool. So I was at a Lions game last year when Nathan work was starting, one of his last starts really before he got injured and it was just so cool to be there at the game in BC and then they're showing that a year after I had been there when he was starting all around. I mean just a great play and whether or not you knew Nathan Rourke going into that game, I think he really took the N F L by storm. I mean that was one of the best preseason plays I think we'd seen in a long time and the fact that it came from him, of course us everyone who is on the stream, we know who he is, we know what he did last year before the injury, but a lot of people didn't. For a lot of people this was the first time they'd really heard of Nathan Rourke and we always talk about your welcome to the N F L moment being one where you kind of get humbled pretty quickly, but I think this was the opposite. This was one of the best plays you could ask for and I think just in that one play, I mean that might give him the backup job, I don't know, but there was a lot of confidence around him generally and outside of that play too. I mean he looked really good. It wasn't just that one play that he had. I mean he was in there for a good chunk of the game and really had some other plays too that looked promising. So yeah, it was great to see Nathan do that and even better to be in BC where people really appreciated it and I don't think they played the clip until, it might've been between the third and fourth quarter that pause during the TV break, so it took 'em a bit. We thought it might happen at halftime because the play had happened pretty early on in this BC game, but I guess it didn't get to the media team or whatever, but I'm still glad they got around to showing it because I was a bit worried that they weren't going to capitalize on that and it would be a great opportunity to engage with the fans. Your old quarterback going to the N F L, he is fighting for a shot and then he does something like this. I mean how can you not like that? Yeah, cfl doesn't strike me as the quickest moving in that department sometimes. Yeah, like they got to play this right now. I was like, Mike, we'll be happy if they play it by the time the game's over. Yeah, I saw this. They tweeted that Ste. Nate owns your franchise. I had the old man Google what sneezy means and Mike said it was like an old Brooklyn term. It means cool or whatever. Jason, did you like this? I dunno, I feel like we get made fun of sometimes for the xfl when our players do stuff. It's the same thing. I mean it's like cfl feels the same way. Hey, this is our child out here. Someone commented on one of 'em, I would, it was cfl legend Nathan work and they said I would Harley call him a cfl legend. He played really good for half a season and then bailed. Yeah, I mean just to echo what Evan said it was, you can't ask for a better start in the N F L for VER O'Rourke and I think anytime you see a player that played in the cfl or one of these other leagues thriving in the N F L, I think it's really exciting. I'm just always happy for the player and I'm really excited to see what he can do in the coming weeks and if he can earn a spot on this Jacksonville Jaguars roster. Yeah, they had, Farhan had the quote, they were talking with Peterson. Yeah, they Nailor was down there and I mean they really all hands on. I know Farhan was back for the BC game but he had been traveling last week I think for training camp Nailor Peterson was saying incredible poise and all that, so that's cool. I it's exciting, but I think that was funny. I was hardly called this the cfl. Andy Murray said, this guy's going to get murdered here on the thing, so let's get to the games here. Exciting games, nothing to apparently play it according to the CFO website here, but the big time win last night like Chad Kelly, Dustin Cru really coming out too here, but this Shag Kelly video game number is 417 yards. Jason, do you want to start on this incredible run? It looked like it was in danger, but then Argos, by the time I had the game on, they had kind of put it to bed. So I think that this was a really fun game, especially in the first half. I think it was probably the highest scoring first half that we've seen so far this season. And I think that the big thing coming out of this game is that Chad Kelly really stuck his claim in the M o P race. I thought that the last couple of weeks it looked like maybe Zach Calis was statistically it looked like it wasn't very close, but I think that this with a 400 yard and a four touchdown game, it really makes it a more of an interesting race here and I think it's going to be a really interesting thing to follow the rest of the season. And I think that for the Argos it was just good to see them get back on track after an injury PLA week last week. So I think that all signs are good for the Argos going forward. Evan, what did you make of this? And I thought it was funny, they had the graphic up and Mike was tweeting that cfl had Chad Kelly of 28 for 21 attempts and Mike had to tweet at the office and be like, no, it was 21 or 28. It's still an incredible performance even if we're doing 28 completions on 21 attempts. What did you make of this by Jack Elliot? Yeah, dare I bring up the stats issue again, but I'll avoid that. Can't even think of all of us. No, this game was definitely kind of your shootout of the week. I know Edmonton and Winnipeg got pretty high scoring, but of course that was a completely different tale in my opinion. Just in terms of how the game flow went. I mean this was pretty back and forth. Toronto pulled away in the second half, but Ottawa wasn't going away and a lot of the credit in this game is going to go to Chad Kelly because this performance really did separate him. You have people like Emory Hunt saying if he's not m o p, I don't know who is at this point. I mean, yeah, maybe Zach Calleros, but I would definitely lean towards the direction of Chad Kelly. This was a great bounce back performance from Toronto after what happened last week when Kelly got injured and Cam Dukes had to come in against Calgary. I thought they bounced back really nicely here, just an all around complete performance. Again, sometimes it's hard to believe just how high scoring their offense is and I mean their defense is on par. I think the term defense wins championships is used a lot and I think their defense is definitely up to the task. I know Robertson, Daniel had two sacks in this game and he I think set the Argos, I don't know if it's all time team record, but he had 16 tackles last week, which was the most I think for an individual in the game. I don't know, maybe you get Mike Mitchell to clarify that, but I I'm pretty sure it was some record. So yeah, all around great performance from Toronto, but I really want to focus on Ottawa and what enough people in the media or not enough people rather in the media are going to say is, I mean this was arguably Dustin Crumb his most complete performance of the season from a passing perspective. I don't think we've seen this from him yet. Where he goes out there has a high completion percentage, just shy of 300 yards, three touchdowns, no turnovers in previous games. We've talked a lot about his ability to run. I mean, yeah, he can throw the ball, he's a quarterback, that's what he should do, but it was more of his running ability that stood out for those couple weeks where he was starting maybe outside of that first game or whatever. But this game you can really focus more on his passing and what he did through the air and I think that's really important. And even more important maybe was the guy he was connecting to a lot. Jalen, I've personally been waiting a long time to see Jalen Acklin have a performance like this year. I know it's been a slow start for him coming over from Hamilton, just kind of getting adjusted and I think had Jeremiah Olli been the start of this season, you might've seen more of Jalen Acklin just given that familiarity. But yeah, ultimately I thought this was a great game, one of the more entertaining ones of the weekend and while Toronto ended up being the team that won, and you could argue that they were more impressive, I mean I think this was a good sign for Ottawa getting back in the right direction. I mean, Toronto's such a tough opponent, it's going to be hard to just win outright against them, but if you can go out there and you have a guy like Dustin Crumb with such a complete performance, if you go out there and show that, I think Otto is in a good position for the rest of the season and that especially matters. We talked last week about the standings in the east. I mean it's either going to be them or Hamilton, and I know they haven't had those divisional games go their way, but I mean if they can just keep winning, who's going to stop 'em? Right? And I want to have a really deep dive here when we get to the Jake Mayers of it all in Calgary because here we have Dustin Crumb, like you said, Evan, I really thought he was a one trick pony and there's kind of been this whole time and Crumb sanity and well he's just running, he's just scrambling, whatever. But putting up almost 300 yards, I mean he's doubling what Jake Mayer did in the BC game and I know BC lockdown, but mayor's had, I have the stat here when we get to the game, a third of his game, whatever this year been under 150 yards past. I mean he's really been struggling to get the ball down the field where you have Dustin CRO or 2 92 and then Kelly, the four 17 c l news to tweet this out, almost 900 yards of offense here, chunk plays all over the place cfl football at his most entertaining. What did you make of Dustin Jason? Well, I thought, like Evan said, it was probably his most complete effort of the season and the way that he was able to move the ball with his arm and this one was very impressive. It was even more impressive considering they were going against a really good Argos defense that at points in this game they were just moving up and down the field. I thought the running game got going at times as well, even though the averages really don't reflect it in the box score, but I think that that was a good sign for them. But my biggest concern for them is on the defensive side, their secondary has been very poor over the last five or so games. I think they've allowed over 300 yards in the last five games straight. So I think that's a huge concern for them. A lot of wide open receivers, Devar Daniels, a couple of those times, he just was just wide open right behind the defense. So I think that's a huge concern and issue they'll have to fix if they want to be a playoff team this year. But yeah, the offense was very promising. Yeah, imagine here I got on the game, like I said, when Toronto really putting the game to bed here in the last quarter, imagine having Andrew Harris on your team and not even really needing him. I mean he's like an afterthought at this point. AJ just running all over, everyone running down the field really thought, I mean just another stand that performance, he was kind of nicked up. I think he's been not kind of at peak the last couple weeks, but good to see him again with that. I don't know. I mean the Argos look really good. I know it was kind of fluky last week. Evan, what do you to bounce back like this? I mean was it just Chad's back and not, I don't know that we kind of had our game plan back in place. What did you make of Toronto having such a bounce back game? I mean it was a couple things. I mean, being at home always helps. I just think overall, I mean, yeah, having Chad Kelly in for the full game really, I think the balance between the run game and the receiving game is important as well because in this game he had AJ who had one of his better performances of the season, although he's become pretty consistent at this point. And I mean that in a good way. You had that combined with a guy like Devar Daniels who I think had three touchdowns. Once you combine those, I mean if you're going to have that kind of balance performance where you have a rush or close to a hundred yards and a top receiver who's kind of catching everything that's thrown his way, they also had another a hundred yard receiver there too in Cam Phillips. It's an offensive explosion essentially, and I think we will get into bc, but I think it's sort of a similar type of hunger where you come back, you lose to a team that you either weren't supposed to lose to or you lost in dramatic fashion and you want to make sure that people don't lose confidence in you. So then you go out and you spin it the other way and you blow the other team out. So that's kind of where I'm at on that. How do we feel about Ottawa here, Jason, in terms of looking good? Obviously three and six here could be better. I don't know. I mean I feel like they have a lot of pieces. Is there enough here going forward? Yeah, I mean I'm just trying to think how many wins they'll probably need to get into the playoffs. I don't see Hamilton racking up a whole bunch of them in this last half of the season here. So I mean it's really going to come down to how many wins they get obviously at the end of the season. And I think that the biggest problem with them is they cannot beat Hamilton for the life of them, and I think they've already lost the season series to them. They have one more game left, but that could be another huge game later on this season when they go to Ottawa. So I'm really interested to see how that plays out. I think that it's going to come down to, I haven't really broken down the schedules for each team, but the remaining schedules for each team I think is what's going to really come into play here Because Montreal is looking really good even with the losses. They've had really good getting those pieces and we're going to get Cody back and kind of do all that. I mean they had tremendous, we will get to that, but a tremendous scan this week. Even with all that, I don't know, I just feel like they've suffered a lot this year with the OLAS of it all and everything else, and I don't know if there's enough there, but I do think it's cool that Dustin Cru here. It is cool to me here. We're thinking like Bo Levi, that's going to be the story of the season, the quarterback here we have this guy, no one thought comes in plays great kind of rallying that. Evan, any other takeaways from Toronto or Ottawa? No, I mean I'll just kind go back to the whole standings point for a bit. I think Ottawa, like I said earlier, yeah, they lost a season series to Hamilton and that puts 'em at an extreme disadvantage unfortunately. But still we're going on week 11, there's still a lot of time to make up for that. Again, I think the way Ottawa played yesterday, if this wasn't against Toronto, I think maybe, I don't know, throw Winnipeg in there. If it wasn't against either of those two teams, I think they probably would've won. And I don't know BC two, so maybe that's not validating my point very much, but ultimately, again what I'm getting at here is to me it was such a complete performance, especially in the first half. If they can carry that momentum moving forward in their games. I mean, I think they can turn the ship around pretty quickly, more quick than a lot of people expected I think. Well, yeah, and I would agree. I mean in terms of it's, it's tough with the divisions and how it's solved by laid out there. The other thing that just interesting with Toronto and all of this, because they're going on their third buy week here, third buy week coming in and then a long stretch because I've been trying to work through the Toronto office to get some people on the show and they said follow up with us after the last buy herb here is tweeting out. Yeah, Dan July 3rd had been their last home game. Now they played the game. I think they've only had three home games this season now going on the bike. I mean it's just crazy scheduling. I don't know. I mean I'm really kind of concerned for Toronto down the long run here where you got to play however many weeks in a row here. Jason, any thoughts on just kind of this extended second half of the season? Yeah, I mean I'm just so over all of these. One team having to be off every week and just every team playing a different number of games at this point of the season. Like you said, Toronto's already going to have their third bye week and they played two games less than some other teams. So I mean I'm just getting frustrated with it at this point. I mean, we've living with this since 2014 when Ottawa came back into the league, but this is just the biggest reason selfishly why I want that 10 team just to fix all of these week issues so we never have to deal with it again. Yeah, it's just weird. I don't know, I just think there's such a better way you could do it. The comments I always see is even with the buys, I mean there are better ways and not having Toronto have the week one off and not doing this and not doing that. Evan, anything else on this game? We'll move on. No. Okay. All right, let's get here. What is this? Is this, we got the BC one here. Lemme get out of this. This was a coming out party here. Evan was here. I'll let Evan get first takes on this. We had our live correspondent Calgary at bc. Yeah, this game was, I mean I was there for it. I'm trying to get up there to BC for a game every year now. And this one very similar to when I went last year against Edmonton after the first quarter. Really by definitely midway through the second you already kind of knew which way it was going to go. So I don't know that has its pros and cons. I've been very fortunate last year I saw Nathan Rourke obviously have a career game. And then honestly even this was one of Vernon's better games of this season and I've been wanting to see him in person for a long time. So extremely happy that he was able to bounce back off the injury and comes in. And I think any doubt, and you could definitely tell amongst the crowd any doubt that they had in Vernon coming off that injury thinking he might be slow or it might take him a bit of time to get up to speed. All that went away within the first couple of plays they scored on their first drive and at one point it was 17, nothing. And I'm just like, all right, well, may as well. I think you said it perfectly, Reid had the Edmonton game happen, we would've just wrapped it up right then and there. But ultimately from a more statistical perspective, I mean this game was over very quickly. I thought Vernon Adams did a great job. They were really more, it was definitely more pass heavy. They had taze on the lineup, but they didn't really need much of him to be honest. Between Keon Hatcher and Alexander Hollins, those guys were doing their job and doing it like nobody else. Those were the guys that really stepped up this week, obviously. And then, yeah, I mean Calgary, I don't know. I was disappointed last year. I saw Edmonton and I understood the position Edmonton was in and I said, okay, when I come up for a game next year, I'm going to try and see maybe a more competitive opponent. And Calgary. I mean, look, I understand Calgary hasn't been great this season, right? We've talked a lot about their issues and their struggles and at this point it's going to be hard for them to even keep up with Saskatchewan. I think we'll see how their situation plays out, but ultimately Calgary was just extremely disappointing. I expected a lot more out of them. And Jake Mayer, I don't know. Again, I've been a fan of Jake Mayer for years now, and I was excited to see him in person, but the excitement quickly went away after I realized he just wasn't going to be able to do much and that there wasn't a lot of opportunity. So yeah, I mean very slow day for him. Very slow day for the team as a whole. Again, they had no answer. I think we say that too much in football. Oh, the other team didn't have an answer. Well, they really didn't. I mean, Vernon, those guys were just ready to go. And Calgary the main takeaway I had from this game, as boring as that sounds, it was just there was really no hope for the stamps. Even again, by the second quarter I was like, well, it's going to take an absolute miracle. I mean, Jake Mayer's going to have to play the game of his life to get back in this one. And clearly that didn't happen. So overall, look, I was impressed. I mean BC clearly making their stake we're still in it in the west. Part of me did think this was going to happen just because we talked at length last week about their loss to Winnipeg and how obviously it's a good football team, they just need to have a really good bounce back game to reassure that confidence in everybody, which is exactly what happened. So in terms of the blowout aspect, I don't know. Part of me maybe expected that, I just didn't want to admit it. But yeah, overall BC a game that they definitely needed to stay the top of the west. And I think if you're a Calgary fan, you leave this game with a lot of questions. I don't know. I mean, having been there in person, there's just a lot of questions to a point where would you even want to see that team in the playoffs? I think, Yeah, they were showing the flashbacks Vernon last year. He had come in when Nate went down and showing the, oh, they have these crazy games last year. I'm like, this is a far cry from these competitive matchups last year. Those were some of the highlights of the season last year for Jason. What do you make of this? Well, I think that this game really does showcase the difference in coaching philosophy on offense for both of these two teams. Look at bc, they take shots down the field, they take risks, and that's what you need in the cfl to succeed and a three down league, you need to create big plays. It's very hard to be that methodical offense and score a lot of points during games. And then Calgary on the other hand, very conservative offense, very few passes beyond 10 yards, a lot of runs, a lot of short passes, a lot of screens, a lot of slants. And I think that just doesn't get it done right now in the current cfl. You look at the teams that are thriving right now, it's the teams that are willing to push the ball down the field, even look at, we'll get to it, drew Brown this week with Winnipeg, he came into the game and they pushed the ball down the field and had success. So I think that was really missing, especially when you consider that BC got burned by Winnipeg last week by the past deep down the field. So I think that it was very disappointing that Calgary didn't test that. And I think that it's just a very concerning situation like Evan said in Calgary right now, and one of these teams is going to have to make the playoffs in the west, Saskatchewan or Calgary, don't know who it's going to be, but unfortunately we're going to have to see one of these teams in the playoffs this year. And that's another general theme of the season so far. I think there's really only four good teams. I would've said only three a couple of weeks ago, but I think Montreal is really rounding into form and becoming that fourth team. But other than that, I think it's kind of a wasteland the rest of the teams of the cfl right now. Well, it's crazy, and I have this stat here. I knew I had this saved with Hodge that mayor's only thrown for fewer than 150 yards and three of his nine starts this season mean if you go back on here, he had 131 yards total. Vernon had 150 in the first quarter. I mean, it was crazy, the stats, I was rewatching the game yesterday. I had seen the stats coming out of the game, rewatched it, and I'm like, and I'm looking it up, I go, this is crazy. I mean, yeah, Keon Hatcher really coming into form. I can't decide who is the standout receiver for BC here. We had Dominique Rimes out again, it's just incredible to me the talent that Vernon has there. But yeah, Jake, something's wrong there. I mean it was a bad weekend for the Dickinson brothers. I saw that tweet out as well with both of them kind of getting sloshed. Is there enough to salvage here, Jason For Calgary? I think that, yeah, it's really tough and I think this is a good example of a, we've seen guys in the cfl, the first 10 or so starts or 15 or so starts have a lot of success and people will say, okay, they're going to be the next guy. But then the next 15 starts really another test in of itself because of the defenses get film on them and they really figured them out. And I think this is very comparable to the Dane Evans situation that we had last year, and I think that Mayer could still turn it around. I think some of these issues are due to coaching and just kind of the staleness of the play calling in Calgary. But I do think a lot of it is on Jake Mayer and I think he needs to get better, obviously for this team to win going forward. Yeah. Evan, what do you attribute that to? They had that, Farhan had the quote where he's said, well, I talked with Jake and he doesn't want to be known as the system quarterback and he wants to be able to do all this. Okay, well whatever they need me to do. I mean, do you blame mayor's regression kind of on him or on the coaching or both? I mean I think it's a bit of both in every situation, but because I was at the game on Saturday, I do blame it more on coaching philosophy. That's not to say mayor has a lot of work to do. And of course I still believe in him. I've gone on record saying that. But I think ultimately what this is is Jason said it perfectly where BC has been this team now for really, I mean going back to last year since they had Roarke, they're not afraid of anything, they're just going to throw it up. I mean that first drive, it was just big play, big play, big play touchdown done. And they did that again, they kept doing that and then that's how the game was already out of reach because Calgary kept trying this conservative system and I was really waiting for Jake Mayer to throw a couple deep balls, but it didn't happen. And ultimately in a three down league, I'm just going to repeat everything Jason said. I mean you have to create big plays. You have to do what teams like BC and Winnipeg do on a regular basis, even Toronto now. And these are all the teams that are rising to be the top in the league. And the true Gray Cup contenders are the teams that have these sort of explosive dynamic offenses where you have multiple receivers that can go down and do their thing ultimately. So yeah, I mean I think it's really more coaching philosophy. I think Calgary was just way too conservative and I can get being conservative early, but I mean if you looked at that score going even to in the second quarter, I'm like, they got to start moving. And it just never happened. It just never came. And BC they just kept doing it. I mean it was to the point where they put Dom Davis in the fourth quarter because it was already so far gone. And when a team's putting in another quarterback in the fourth quarter of a score, I mean when you feel embarrassed is the losing team because then, I mean I shouldn't even have to say that, but ultimately getting back to just Calgary's sort of stance mean you're going to, I still as crazy as it sounds, I still think they have a game or two to figure things out. And I think just given sort of what I could see from where I was sitting in the overall atmosphere, there is a frustration there. And I think that this game really reminded them of what they need to figure out, even though they've had a couple of positive moments this season, and I think coming off that win against Toronto, I think they thought they did have some momentum, but clearly BC's just a different beast when they're fully healthy. So I don't know, I think Calgary has a game or two to figure it out, but I don't know if they drop the next two and they go to three and eight. I'm taking Saskatchewan for the playoffs spot already and I don't really, I know Saskatchewan might even have more questions, but they have an extra win right now and I feel more confident about that even if, I don't know what I said last week, I was kind of on the fence. I think I lean towards Calgary, but I don't know now that I've seen him in person, I think my opinion has changed a bit. Well, this is crazy. Here we get Kadeem Carey back, he hasn't played I think since week one. It's like seven carries four hours. I mean they just didn't do anything here. It's just remarkable to me how futile this offense is. Jason, thoughts on that and then I want to get thoughts on how kind of Vernon looks coming back, but just how just putrid, I know you're talking like no big shots, but they didn't do anything. Yeah, last year they were pretty conservative offense. They didn't really get too many big plays. I think maybe believe Henry was really their deep threat you could call it. But I think that they were able to run the ball very consistently last year and they just haven't been that dominant running team that we saw last year. And I think that that's a big reason why they're a significantly worse team than they were a year ago. The other thing, Vernon coming back, they made notes, him having the knee brace and did he need more time off? But Danes beat up, so Vernon came back. He had one, there was one point where I think one of his linemen stepped on his toe or something, but he looked pretty good. How did you feel like he came? I mean that's the one thing with Vernon is I do feel like he is a little fragile sometimes. Jason first. Oh yeah. I thought it was really good to see Vernon back in the fold. I think that the biggest thing, he was moving around very well. He had that classic Vernon Adams play extension ability and improvisational ability to throw a couple of touchdowns in this game. So I thought that was really impressive and really good to see. And if he could just play, he did earlier this season, which he did in this game, I think that this team is one of only really three teams in my opinion that can win a great cop this season. Evan thoughts on va? I mean, yeah, he had about as good of a performance as you ask for. He had one sort of mishap. It was towards, they were getting ready to score. I don't know, it might've been the 20 or something, and he tossed an interception. I would say that was more his fault. But other than that, I mean he cleaned that up pretty quickly and they didn't have a problem getting back in it. I mean it certainly slowed down. I mean had that not happened, it might've been 44 to nine or whatever, but I mean, yeah, you can't fault him for that. Other than that he was dealing left and and clearly you can tell this week it was Keon Hatcher and Alexander Hollands, but you can tell he doesn't have hesitation going to his other guys either. It's just who's ever there at the right time. I mean, I cannot tell you enough about how diverse the BC receiving corps is and that having an opportunity to see that in person only made me feel better about them moving forward. And again, you talk about possibility of winning a gray cup, I think that receiving core diversity will be the ultimate factor in that, considering they make it as far as that game. And they were commenting that too. Vernon doing a good job, dishing it out. And I think we've talked on here before BC none of them need to be hero ball. They're happy kind of having the ball go around. Yeah, I thought that interception was quite poor, that misery by Vernon. I think that whatever the defensive guy jumped back in and kind of picked that up. But what I liked it, it was getting to the point where BC really does have that run it up ability where they can kind of play volleyball and it felt like that. I don't know. I know we just seen, we'll get to the Edmonton of it all. Winnipeg is not Calgary, Calgary. I don't see them being down 20 points like, oh yeah, they're going to come back here and they're going to rally. I mean, BC can really pile it on and I think it's exciting. Jason, in terms of obviously the mishap and everything against Winnipeg here, but do you still feel pretty high on BC and their chances? Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, last week on our preview show for week 10 that I think it was just to burn the tape kind of game last week for BC and they really did put it behind them and really beaten inferior opponent pretty badly here. Anything else on this one, Evan? Any other notes? I had the clip we had where they were getting all geeked out with the Nathan Bal, do you have anything else on this one before we move on? I mean, yeah, I guess we can talk about the clip that you're showing now. The Rourke thing again for a bit, it was a really cool kind of segment because at halftime they had Wally Bueno going into the wall of fame and everyone was really excited about that. And then we kind of thought that from the sort of entertainment in person perspective, it was over, I mean, besides the rest of the game obviously. But then they had that and it was kind of a nice little, I don't want to say I was surprised at how many people there knew who Nathan Rourke was and they weren't just the casual fan who was visiting Vancouver for the weekend and went to the game and were confused as to why they were showing N F L highlights. I mean, it made me happy knowing that other people around me were aware of Nathan Rourke's accomplishments last season. And of course, I mean, I'm not saying that BC fans are casuals or anything, that's not the point. I'm just saying in the cfl nowadays. I mean there were people around me who didn't really understand Vernon Adams was or what his career meant and things like that. Yeah, I get it. We're not all cfl analysts. You shouldn't be, obviously, especially in the Vancouver market, it's not even, I mean, yeah, it's an important sport, but it doesn't really compete with the Canucks or anything like that. So yeah, I mean it just made me happy to see people knew who he was and I can't remember if they tried to give a bit of introduction, like former BC lines quarterback, Nathan Rourke, they just showed the clip and expected people to know. But either way, it was a really cool moment nonetheless, and I'm glad, I mean even from the promotional side, you had the Jaguars sort of taking the clip from the game and it's very rare that you'd see an N F L team showing a clip from the cfl like that. I don't really even remember the last time that's happened. So it was just kind of a good moment all around. And the players obviously cared about it too, as you can see there. And I saw it given how close I was there to the home bench. Yeah, I mean overall it was just, I'm glad that I was there for that specifically because I saw it last year and I just know the importance of him as a quarterback and really, I mean, again, Rourke, you have to remember he's a Canadian national. He is from Victoria on the other side in Vancouver Island. I think it would be a lot different if he was just some American import, and I'm not saying that changes the dynamic of things, but work's a local guy, so that adds to the whole sort of story and the meaning of it as well. Yeah, I think John could posted his article about it and I sent it to the group and I just said, we matter. We still matter. We're the cfo, we're still important. James, anything else on this? Anything else on bc we'll get to this Montreal game. Yeah, no, I think it was just really cool to see that and yeah, let's move on to the next game. I was at the Barbie Friday night with the wife caught up on this a little bit. Mariners had a good nine two win over the Orioles as well. Is this accurate stat line the Caleb Evans of eight of 13? That's Crazy. Yeah, he didn't throw many passes. This is blowout here. Ballsy. I was following him on Twitter. Michael Ball was in Montreal. He said, I have the Saskatchewan by four I think, and then I tweeted after the game, I said, I have Montreal by 25 plus here, and this is quite the blowout. Jason, what did you make of this 12 to 41? Well, the first thing I have to say is that I was wrong about the Alouettes this season, and I think a lot of people had them finishing fourth in the east coming into the air. I had them finishing with a five and 13 record and they've already hit that five win total already this season. So I just have to say right off the bat that I was wrong about them. And I will be making a video this week about the ette season so far. But I thought that in this game, Caleb Bevins did a fine job filling in for Cody Fajardo. I mean, he is what he is not a great passer of the football. I think we saw that from his time in Ottawa, but I think they did a good job using his legs in this one, Walter Fletcher and Joshua Antee with a really good job filling in for William stand back in this one. So I thought that was really good to see for Montreal and their defense just continues to be a force so far this season. I mean, this is just a crazy game and I had my stats here. I have these tweets tired of hearing short week long travel excuses. Saskatchewan needs to be professional. Travel is by charter. It's not like they have long hours lack of coaches blaming the coaches for lack of preparation. Evan, do you feel like the Saskatchewan warfighters embarrass themselves here Friday night? Well, I mean I certainly think that they could have put up more of a fight. I mean, that goes without saying, I had picked Montreal last week to win this game. I favored them slightly in this matchup, but I don't think, again, given just where Calgary is, they can afford a loss like that, as crazy as it sounds. And even though they have a losing record now, I don't see this hurting them as much just for the one game specifically. I worry more about Saskatchewan moving forward over the next couple of weeks, especially with their quarterback situation. I think Mason fine got hurt. So then you fell back on Jake Dag gala who didn't exactly have the best performance. Now you've traded for Antonio Pipkin and it looks like it's going to be a tandem between Dola Gala and Pipkin for the starting job. Or maybe they'll play both of them, kind of figure it out. There's a lot of questions there, so I think they can move on from this game. Don't worry about it. Right on to the next one as all the coaches say, but there's a lot of questions there that I think will need to be answered very soon. Jason, what did you make of this? Because people, they've been calling for Dagal the whole time here. Mason goes down and like Evan said, didn't do particularly well. What did you make of the rough riders? Well, I think it just adds to that whole narrative that tall quarterbacks can't succeed in the cfl. I mean, it's a limited sample size. We'll have to see him start a game. I think they would be a second career start because I think he started one last year when a bunch of players were out with Covid. So I'm very interested to see how he plays in the next game, but I'm not too optimistic about it. Obviously the trade for Pipkin, so maybe he gets into the lineup of dollar gall struggles, but the quarterback situation is not pretty right now in Saskatchewan, and I think it's the main source of the troubles. What's the long-term play here? I mean, I got mean, I know it's the West. I mean, they're not dead here. I mean, they're third in the West, four and five, obviously they have a losing record now. I don't know. What's your game plan here if you're Saskatchewan, Jason? Well, I mean, I think I would probably go with Pipkin if in a couple of weeks Dagal is not showing anything. Like Evan said, they could afford to drop up a couple more games because of the sad state of that third place race in the West division. And I mean, like I said earlier, I think there's just a lot of bad teams in the cfl right now, and I think it's not looking good for the potential divisional or the first weaken of the playoffs. I think that there seems to be such a gap between those top four teams and the rest right now in the cfl. And I think that Saskatchewan going forward has a decent chance of making the playoffs still, but I don't even think it really matters. I think they're going to get clobbered by BC or Calgary's going to get clobbered by BC no matter who makes it in there. Pip, was he on BC last year, right? Wasn't he? Yes. Or the year before one of the two? Yeah, We had Nathan and then we had the other Canadian guy. I have too many rosters. Key Jack. We had the back quarter, the Canadian quarterback, was it Michael something O'Connor, Michael O'Connor, and I think Pipkin was in there when R went down. And that was with, yeah, Michael O'Connor got injured and then they put in Pipkin and he wasn't doing, I think he was our short rehears guy. Anyway, my knowledge of that, too many roster. Keep track of Evan thoughts on this Montreal looking good. I mean, I don't think Montreal scored 40 points in all this season to this point, especially without Cody fdo. What did you make of Montreal? Yeah, it was really interesting. So on paper this was going to be the Cody FDO revenge game, but that didn't happen. And you had Caleb Evans in the lineup. Now, Caleb Evans has been in the cfl for a bit, I believe he was with Ottawa at some point. So he has a bit of experience there at quarterback in this league, and he didn't have to do a lot in this game really from the passing perspective. I mean, he completed eight passes and they still scored 41 points. So that's how you've had a pretty good day, but he was effective as a runner. I think the biggest story in this game though, outside of Caleb Evans, for me at least on the Montreal side, I'll get back into Saskatchewan in a minute, would be Walter Fletcher. There was a lot, I mean, it's taken a long time for Montreal's Run game to kind of get going. And William Stanback finally over the past couple of weeks is showing his potential that he had before the injury last year. I mean, well, he came back, but it wasn't very effective. Anyway, Walter Fletcher kind of, I think stepped up. And really, again, Montreal, I was more impressed with their run game this time around than their passing game. And I've talked so much this season about their receivers, especially Austin Mack, who still had a big play in this game. But really I have to give credit to the run game here between Walter Fletcher, Caleb Evans, the quarterback, and then Retwe, who I think is, I mean, I don't know a ton about Retwe, but I'll tell you I was impressed with him in this game, even on limited touches, I think all around that's a good sign moving forward because I think a lot of people look at that roster and they go, well, if there's no stand back then what do we do? Well, honestly, it kind of benefited them not having stand back in a lineup this time because it gave these other guys, Fletcher and an twe the opportunity to run the ball combined with Caleb Evans, who's a more mobile quarterback than Cody fdo, excuse me. It worked out pretty well, I'd say. So they at least have that to fall back on because to be honest, look, Montreal is winning, but their offense has been very up and down over the course of the season. So I'm interested to see if they kind of stick with this run first philosophy, which is kind of almost untraditional, I'd say at this point in the cfl and in really any football league in general. But I don't know. I really like what I saw on the ground from them. So moving on to Saskatchewan here for a brief minute, not a ton to talk about here. I mean, this was a pretty lopsided game. I will say. It's kind of funny how I've complimented the rough riders passing game for a majority of the season, regardless of who the quarterback is. I thought Mason Fine, did a decent job getting it out to receivers, a lot of the receivers that I like on that team. And then I had also said for weeks that Jamal Morrow really wasn't the guy, and then I needed to see more from him because they had a very lackluster run game. And in this one, it was the complete opposite. You had the passing game kind of completely fall apart because Mason fine gets hurt, Dola gall comes in and just isn't ready that day. Yeah, and then you have Jamal Morrow rushing for 81 yards on 18, carries kind of being the big ball carrier, bell Cow, whatever you want to call him. And it was just kind of funny how that panned out. Although I will say Jareth Sterns, who I said I really liked on the broadcast last week, was the leading receiver again for Saskatchewan. So definitely I think for them, an underrated weapon moving forward, regardless of who the quarterback is. And again, I've said it nauseum, they have a lot of receivers. I like a lot of receivers in general, I like in the cfl this year. But yeah, I mean overall, Saskatchewan a tough loss for them, but even though you lost by nearly 30 points, if I'm Saskatchewan, I'm not really panicking too much because it's going to take a lot of losses for your spot to really be in jeopardy. And even if Calgary jumps over them at some point here in the next couple of weeks, I think they still, in my opinion, have an advantage. We can't burn the tape every week. I just burn it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'm hankering to talk some Edmonton. So anything else on this one? Jason? I want to make sure you get all your points out. Yeah, I just wanted to talk a little bit more about Walter Fletcher. Well, I think is one of the most underrated players in the entire cfl. It's unfortunate that he doesn't get as much of a chance because it's very hard to dress two American running backs on a cfl game day roster. So when stand back's healthy, he's often a healthy scratch. So I think he's really one of the top six or seven running backs in the league. He just doesn't get the attention and the opportunity. And I think if he was on a different team, it would be he'd be a lead guy somewhere. He saw it with that one screen pass. He took almost the house 68 yards. So I think he's just a really explosive player, a really well-rounded running back. So it was really good to see him perform in this one. Alright, so that's good, good, good. I texted Tim Capper, I said, man, you had quite the weekend here with the blowout of Saskatchewan, but now I want to get to this. This was the greatest, to me, one of the greatest nights for better or worse as cfl this season. I had worked all day. I was just getting in the shower and I was listening to the game and re four comes in and everyone, Justin dunk apparently started the Free Trade Ford. Even though I think Evan and I take credit for that, we just didn't say that. I'm local provincial sports tv, but re four comes in handoff. They score everything. So I run upstairs to Dorothy. We were going to go out to dinner. We said, we're not going out. I said, we're watching this game. I said, we're sitting at home, had the game on. Watch every snap of this. This was the most exciting night of my life. Texted Dave Campbell after the game. I said, I'm so sorry. He said, that was really rough. Initial thoughts on this one? We'll go to Evan first initial thoughts of what could have been the free trade forward, and then the epic collapse here of proportions. Yeah, so it was really funny because when this game was going on, I was on a flight up here to Vancouver, and when I left, we were on the runway and I looked at the score and it was like 22 to nothing. It was when Edmonton kind of peaked, and then I was like, oh, great, we're going to land and there's going to be this big buzz. My phone will be blown up about how Edmonton won. A bunch of notifications. Finally break the streak. So then we land, when plane lands in Vancouver, it's like a two and a half hour flight. So the game's been over by then for probably a good half hour, and I checked my phone, I'm like, let's look at the score. How much did Edmonton win by? Did they get to 40 points or whatever? And then I looked and I was like, hold on a minute. That can't be right. At first I thought it was Edmonton 38, Winnipeg 29, and I was like, okay. So Winnipeg made a formidable effort. And then I looked again and I'm like, oh, whoa. I was like, what? No, that can't. And then I looked and I looked around, and then I got on Twitter and I was like, oh no. Oh, the worst. Of course it happened to Edmonton where they went up 22, nothing, and still couldn't get the job done. So I don't know, my excitement immediately went away, and then I was really sad. I was sitting there, I was like, I have really no connection to this team, but I still feel for Chris Jones and all those guys. I mean, I was watching that game as the playing. I was about to take off or at least fall along with it, and everyone was just so happy. There was this atmosphere like, we're finally going to do it. We're finally going to win and we're going to do it at home against the team that's competing for a gray cup. I mean, finally after literally months of suffering, you're in a position to where you can do that. And then it all just fell apart and they got too excited, I think, too fast. And I didn't really get an opportunity to look at the later highlights from this game. I know Drew Brown came in and did some nice things. We'll get into that, but it's, it's Hamilton, not Hamilton. Excuse me, Edmonton, we're in week. What is this week 10. This Is curse. There's a curse now. There's still a new way to lose every week. I really thought we had hit the point of the season where there was a low and it somehow keeps getting lower. At least there was a high point. At least they had a lead. But can you even celebrate that when you lose another game? And just the opportunity, it all goes to waste so quickly, and it's not the first time that this type of thing has happened. So I don't know, man. It's one thing to lose a game and get blown out. It's another thing to be up in a game, have a ton of confidence, think you're going to do something and have that all go away in the blink of an eye. That's my ultimate takeaway from this one. Yeah. Jason, you've said on here that you don't believe in curses, but you think that Edmonton's cursed. It does feel that way. Here I did have my tweet and then we'll get Jason's thoughts. I said, even though the elk loose, imagine if Trey Ford had played weeks ago. That was my takeaway at the end of this was Edmonton lost and there was this epic class, but there's no excuse now why Trey Ford hadn't have played, started the season halfway through. I mean, I think Chris Jones I had here, if Edmonton wins, Chris Jones should be fired on principle. What did you make of this? This was truly a remarkable night. Yeah. What do you even say at this point about the Elks? I mean, we were talking weeks ago about has this team hit rock bottom? I mean, is this rock bottom or did they have to lose a 30 point lead? I mean, my heart hurts for that team right now, that whole fan base. It's just like I was going to be so happy for them if this was the game that they finally broke, the streak would've been the perfect scenario to win against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Shut up those Winnipeg Blue Bombers fans that have kind of been gloating over the last couple of years, getting a little bit big ego. I think at the end of the day, it was just a very disappointing effort in the second half. It just seemed like they had lost the game already, even though it was still within reach. And I think that it was just drive after drive after drive. And the most disappointing thing was the fact that Winnipeg had a backup quarterback in there. I mean, no disrespect to Drew Brown, but he was going up and down the field, came off the bench cold, and he just found a way to just put drives together, and it was really, really impressive from that perspective. But Edmonton, I mean, I just have no words for them right now. Yeah, I saw the tweet coming out where Chris Jones had said that Trey Ford played well enough to earn a second, second star next week. I said, I hope so. I hope so. But that was the thing. And they also had the comments out that Trey Ford said, yeah, I felt like we played too conservative the second half and we gave the game away. I wonder why Chris Jones doesn't like Trey Ford here. It's probably because of things like that, but it was just crazy. We had, this was what I don't get. We've talked at nauseum. Oh, Cornelius. And he's so athletic and he can run. Trey Ford had a rushing touchdown the first quarter of the game. He had as many rushing touchdowns as Teo Cornelius has had the entire season. I'm tired of hearing this elite athletic rushing ability of Cornelius. We did see Zach Calleros get injured. He had a pick six, looked very reminiscent of Tarot Cornelius here a couple of weeks ago with the Dustin Nielsen. What is he doing? Are you kidding me? Which I guess now is famous. I saw Awful announcing our buddy over there, Andrew, doing the article on that. Jason, how impressed were you? I know I had your tweet here. How impressed were you with Drew Brown? I mean, you're thinking Claris goes down, this game's done. I mean, they're already up. Claris is down. And then Drew Brown played, I think, better than if you were a Winnipeg fan. I don't think you thought that Drew Brown was going to play as good as he did. Yeah, it was almost unbelievable. What was the stat line over 300 yards and four touchdown passes? I mean, it was dearly flawless. What really impressed me was just how many deep shots this guy was taking, and Winnipeg's Playmakers just really took over in the second half, just said, we are not going to lose this game. Kenny Lawler had the most ridiculously easy looking one hand catch in the end zone I've ever seen. Dalton Schone had a couple of big plays in the second half. Brady Olive Oliveira really took over. Edmonton just could not stop the run in the second app once again. And I think obviously that's been a big issue for them this year. So I mean, drew Brown was very impressive, in my opinion, in this game. And yeah, I think that's all there is to it. I laugh here sometimes. I just make notes on my apple, on my iPhones. Oliver just struck the SS out of that dude. I try to go back so I can remember this. Yeah, this was the thing. Winnipeg, not every team can do this and go down and come back and be down 22 0, but really crazy impressive on that. My, I got 10% left on my headphones here. Okay. Hopefully it just beeped at me. Hopefully it'll make it through the podcast. Evan, any other thoughts? Drew Brown, I don't know, have we heard, what's the update on Callero? Is he day-to-day right now? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'll talk about Drew Brown for a minute because until I get an update on Calleros, I can't, don't know what's going on there. Again, I didn't watch a lot of this game, but I will say Drew Brown, once I saw the stat line again, once I figured out that Winnipeg actually had won the game, I looked at Drew Brown's stat line and I mean, that was amazing. But Drew Brown, the reality is, I mean, I don't want to say this should be expected, but Drew Brown is one of these guys. We always talk about year three in the cfl, and I don't think a lot of people understand that. Drew Brown has been with the Blue Bomber since 2021. He was undrafted in 2020 out of Oklahoma State and then signed with the Blue Bombers later on. He's been there since. He's got a gray cup under his belt already. He has a lot of things. He's had a lot of chances to learn. So Drew Brown isn't necessarily some stranger, some unfamiliar face. Yeah, he's unproven. Well, at least unproven until now. But Drew Brown, in my opinion, was one of the more, I think higher backside or higher, what am I trying to say? Higher upside backup quarterbacks in the cfl that I could think of. And I mean, we just haven't had a chance to talk about 'em this season because all the sort of light gets shined on Zach Calleros and rightfully so. It was the same thing in Toronto where there's so much effort put onto the shoulders of Chad Kelly that I think Brian Scott and Cameron Duke, because I don't want to say they become afterthoughts, but they come into the game like Cam Dukes came into the game last week, and everyone's like, oh, who's this? This Cam Dukes fella in bc? I think it's a bit different because Dane Evans was a starter, now he's a backup. So people are already familiar with that, whereas Drew Brown kind of came into the league and really had to work his way up. And I mean, everyone has to work their way up, but you know what I mean. Drew Brown, he's always going to be in a reserve role, I think, as long as he's in Winnipeg again, besides, unless an injury happens in this case, but clearly he's up to the task. And I wouldn't hesitate starting Drew Brown in another game. Now, keep in mind, I understand Dustin Crumb, it was a similar thing where Jeremiah was solely got injured. Dustin Crumb came into the game, performed really well, then he had the start and took a step back. So maybe we see that with Drew Brown, if that becomes a possibility. Again, I don't know that the situation on Calleros or what's going to happen there, but ultimately, yeah, drew Brown, extremely impressive. And then Trey Ford, if you want to talk about the other quarterback in Edmonton. Yeah, my takeaway was the same, I think as everything that we'd already discussed. Why didn't he play earlier? Again, I wouldn't say this was an elite performance from him, but yeah, for Edmonton standards, this was pretty damn good. This was a great, considering this was his first game and the first action that he's seen, I mean, yeah, that was about one of the better debuts you could ask for. And I mean, I think ultimately, yeah, he still has what it takes to be a starting quarterback, and I want him to continuously start again. I mean, he got that team off to their best start of the season. They couldn't finish the job. But I'm sure if we want to look at the strictly positive takeaways from the Elk side, I think without Trey Ford in that position, does Taylor Cornelius do the same thing? Because I don't think so. I really don't think so. And it just kind of seemed like even if Trey Ford wasn't like a complete 180 from Taylor Cornelius, he just gave a sort of refreshed feeling to that offense that they really needed after whatever it was, eight games, two months. So overall, I think the Trey Ford decision was the right call, and I really hope, really, really hope he can be the one that wins them a game. Please, please. I really need to see that. Yeah. So here's my question for Jason, and we'll put the plane down here pretty soon. Is this sustainable with Trey Ford? Because we see this and people come in and okay, we weren't able to game plan. I mean, obviously Trey was announced as a starter, but Winnipeg trying to figure all that out. Is this, can you replicate this week after week? I think so, because Trey Ford, one thing about him is just, he's a different kind of athlete than what we usually see from a cfl quarterback. He is easily the most athletic quarterback, I think in the cfl, even just day one starting last week. So I think that's going to give him an opportunity alone, gives them a different element to that offense. And it really did open up the playbook for them. But I think maybe they're limited in some aspects in terms of the passing ability, but they weren't getting anything done in the passing game with Taylor Cornelius. There was one play in this game where Ford hit a beautiful ball, the Dylan Mitchell, and it was like, all right, let's go. And I think that was when they were up like 22 to something in the game, and the very next play, Kevin Brown coughs up a fumble. And that was just kind of epitomizes the Edmonton Elk season so far. And they had that drive where it was penalty, penalty, penalty, just gave Winnipeg, I think it was late in the thirties, just gave 'em the whole way back. And yeah, I mean you still see, I mean, Elk's going to Elk. It's still the same fundamentals there. Like I said, I think we were talking before on here, of course we were laughing. There's no way that Edmonton beats Winnipeg, but circle this here, crumb sanity comes to in here. We're going to have that. I think that is your week 12. I think Edmonton breaks a good thing. Okay. We're at 22 games right now, right? I think that is the day here on Sunday, August 27th. I say circle your calendar. That is what happens there. We'll get out of here soon. Evan, any other thoughts on this one from you? No, I don't think so. Although if we want to get in here to the games for next week briefly, I mean, yeah, I would have to agree that Ottawa Edmonton game, I want to say Edmonton's going to win the streak. Yeah, week 11. That'll be the week after next week. Alright, well hey, still, I mean, I think that might be, I think you might be right. I would love to say they would win that game. I mean, they might win at Hamilton too, honestly here in week 11, but I don't know, I think that home win matters a lot more for them. Jason, anything else that, yeah, Edmonton here coming in. How do you feel your tech outs? Well, it's worth noting that they won in Hamilton last year in Trey. Its first ever start, so I think it's definitely possible that they win. But I think Hamilton coming off a bi-week should be better prepared for them this year, but it could happen. Yeah. Evan's got to hop off, get his plane. Yeah, Winnipeg at Calgary here. I think that's kind of a cakewalk. Montreal and Ottawa, that's probably the exciting one on Saturday. And then I don't think I would put any money in the world on BC going into this. Absolutely. Trucking the S out in Saskatchewan here. I think that that's going to be good. Evan will hop off. Anything else from you? No, I think that's it for me, but I'm looking forward to next week's slate of games. And I'm sure, I mean if Edmonton wins in Hamilton, I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about. And I mean that to me, that one really stands out now just given what Trey Ford's done and the kind of state of the Hamilton franchise, I think. Yeah, make sure if you're watching the video, give it a thumbs up. I want to make sure we have as many thumbs up on this video as people watching the stream right now. That would be good check out as well. Jason's going to be doing his stuff coming up this week. Jason, anything else from you? Nope, I think we'll put this one to Ben and get on to next week. Awesome. Yeah, that was thrilling. Thursday night even with a loss. Thrilling, thrilling. Really appreciate that. Thanks everyone. Figuring out this week what we're going to do and we'll see you guys. But yeah, watch out online. I'll be posting stuff. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks.

LIVE CFL Week 10 Pre-Game Show, Winnipeg Blue Bombers at Edmonton Elks + CFL Week 10 Preview!

Well, happy early Monday here on the mark. Has no days off here and no off season. I've seen a lot of xfl podcast taking time off and usfl all that. Not here on the markcast talking cfl today. Huge slay early. I see our guests are getting ready here. Let's bring back in. Jason and Evan and then we have our special guest standing by gentlemen. How are we doing today? Doing great, Reid. Doing great. Jason, did we get our audio figured out? Looks like maybe not. Okay. We'll get Jason figured out here. Evan, early on the West coast. How are you doing sir? Good. Yeah, definitely an early morning, but excited to talk about this week's slated games before they actually happen, which I haven't done yet this season. Definitely looks like an interesting slid. I know we talked about it a bit on the show earlier this week. Just kind of a quick little preview, but obviously we're going to bring in our guests here and we can definitely have an in-depth discussion for sure. Yeah. So we're going to bring in our guests here. I appreciate that. Making time. We were in the same building last night separated by a few tens of thousands of people and many dogs. Farhan, how about those Mariners? Oh, they're awesome. Where were you? You didn't talk to me, you just hung out at least. Did you have Dorothy with you? You Stayed? No. You would've been sad. You would've been disappointed. I had to work and then I ended up coming in the sixth inning, so I bought tickets and then forgot I had a gig, so I flew in. I missed all of Hancock's debut. I missed all of that stuff. I got there just in time for Cal Riley's two. Run home run. Yeah, you know what surprised me in that game was that it had been a while. I did get to a game last year, but I was stunned at how many people actually came really, really late. Like you sixth innings showed up. There were a lot of people that midway through the game even when we got there and the dog lineup was there, we got there and it took us a while to get in and there were hundreds if not thousands of people still outside. And we got in probably in the first inning near the end of the first. So it was people enjoy it. You come whether you come for an inning, whether you come for nine innings. It's just so much fun at the park and another 40,000 plus and seven in a row for this team. There's one team ahead of them in the standings. The team I really can't stand. Could they just pass them after that? It doesn't matter to me. No, it doesn't. My buddy, when he got there, my friend that I was meeting, he said, I've never seen the line this long. Not for a giveaway. I said, no, it's tremendous. It's tremendous. We're talking cfl here today. Jason's having audio issues. We'll figure that out. Farhan, how are we feeling here week 10? Well, I think there's been a lot of unpredictability to this season. You've seen BC in Winnipeg beat up on each other twice. You've seen Ottawa with some miracle comebacks. The only thing we haven't seen is in Edmonton victory and I don't think we're going to see that again. Chad Kelly looking like an M O P candidate then getting dinged up and then Calgary finally winning. So it's been an interesting first part of the season and I think this week should be no different. Evan, do you have any questions for Farhan here while we're sitting? No, I don't think so. But if you want me to elaborate on your question about how the season's gone. I think it's definitely been, in my opinion a lot of the teams that I thought were going to be good have exceeded my expectations and then a lot of the teams that have been bad or towards the bottom have exceeded my expectations, but in a bad way. You look at Edmonton thought they maybe have a win or two on the board right now, but they don't. And then you've got a couple teams in the middle like Saskatchewan and Montreal who are playing each other this week. We can get into that game. Cal Greg, I'd like to see continue to get up there. I mean they just came off that win against to Toronto. Maybe some interesting circumstances there. We talked about that on the show Monday, whenever that was. So I excited to see Calgary maybe get some traction going and yeah, I think Ottawa right now is kind of my big question mark. They had a lot of momentum swinging in their direction with Dustin Crumb for a couple of weeks, but now they've kind of fallen back down earth a bit. So now they're going up against Toronto again. One of the stronger teams. Looks like Chad Kelly's going to be back for that one practicing this week. So really interested to see how that one goes as well. Yeah, Farhan, are we surprised? Elk's struggled last year, obviously coming in, just how bad they are and I mean you said you don't expect a victory tonight as we record this. Yeah, I didn't think they'd be this bad, right? I mean I'm a believer in Chris Jones as a head coach and I thought they'd done some good things in the off season. You question when you spend $500,000 on two receivers, I am not sure that's necessarily the best way to build, but I did think they'd made some improvements in some other areas and I thought Taylor Cornelia should be better quite frankly. I mean I know some of the work that he did this off season and then I applauded them for just saying, look, we've spent a year and a half, two years developing this guy. We like what we see, the physical tools are there and we think if we can surround him with a better group of people that he'll be ready to take that next step. And he's been awful. Culture is a delicate thing for all of these teams that have struggled for a few years. It doesn't take much to just seep back into that morass and just feel like you're a loser again and here we go again. And that's certainly what's happened. And when you have Chris Jones as your head coach, there's not going to be a level of patience and nurturing. There's going to be a level of volatility and inconsistency with what happens when you're losing, where guys just get shuttled in and out on a weekly basis. And they had an opportunity early to beat Saskatchewan a couple of times and they just kind of let it slip through their fingertips and then it just started to spiral. And like I said, when you're used to losing, you eventually settle back into losing. And I think that's what's happened there. We've talked about the cap and preventing them from getting rid of Chris Jones and we've seen, we've got a new offensive coordinator there and we want to talk tie cats as well here with the buy. But how hot seat does Jones have to be? I mean this has to be a really kind of finite situation here. It feels like. Yeah, I think he's safe this year. I really do. And I say that just because there is nobody on that coaching staff that is remotely equipped to be a head coach. There just isn't. So who are you going to fire him and or replace him with? When Lao was on the hot seat a year ago, Bobby Dice had done it before you could see him doing it again. Mike ti had done it before you could see him do it again. The biggest challenge they had in Ottawa was finding a competent play caller because nobody had come close to doing that before. Whereas here it's the other way you could find an offensive coordinator. Jerry had done it before defensively. Could you give it to somebody else? Say I'm sure you could even if there wasn't a ton of experience, but you can't give somebody else that head coaching job and nobody around the league wants to touch that mess that's qualified to do it and there really aren't many people sitting on the sidelines. You just saw Scott Milanovich get hired as the full-time OC in Hamilton. Those guys just aren't there. It's few and far between. So it's a tough situation and ultimately the ops cap got Chris Jones the job because you could do two and now it's keeping 'em in the job. And look, I'm not advocating for Chris Jones's dismissal, but the fact that the ops cap is this punitive in subsequent years is completely needless. I understand there's two reasons for it. One is to ensure competitive balance, which I get and agree with, but that's what the in-season portion of the cap is about. When it's the other part of the cap, the future years that doesn't do anything for competitive balance because it's dead money, it's wrong, it just is. If I'm Edmonton and I feel consumer confidence has been so shattered that next year if I have a complete regime change, I think I can get 5,000 more fans per game. I should be allowed to do that. It doesn't change my competitive balance this year, but the league's preventing it. Now we've seen the other side, right? Saskatchewan probably keeps Craig Dickinson and Jeremy O'Day because they had another year under their contract and they didn't want to deal with that part of the ops cap. So there is some good there theoretically, but in Edmonton's case it's been a complete disaster. I got one more and then that Jason has a question for you. Do you see this changing anytime in the future? I mean is there enough backlash now that you think the league would seriously consider changing things? I think the league should just eliminate the subsequent year penalties on the ops caps for everybody. I just think they should change that within the rule. I don't think there's a lot of momentum to do that. But one thing the league has done is they've found a way to create exemptions. They've given teams the ability to say there's one person where you get to prorate out those losses. So like the Elks this year are still paying for Jason Moss, they prorated that out five years ago they took the hit on Sunderland and Elizondo and everybody else at the Oon, but Moss got prorated. This is the last year of the moss penalty. They will allow you to flip and change who you tag the prorated salary out to. So maybe they have to deal with it all this year, but then in a year they can make a change. And so I don't know if they'll create some flexibility, but I don't know that they'll eliminate it. But I do think one way or the other, I don't know that this is going to be allowed to continue. It's just not right. I mean the fans can't stand it. They're speaking with their pocketbooks unless there's a market turnaround, right? I mean if this team, the rest of the way goes two and eight the rest of the way, there's no chance this regime survives this. But if all of a sudden they go 500 in the last 10 games, maybe it's different. Who knows. Jason, what do you got for far on here? Okay, sorry guys. For my light entrance, here's having some technical difficulties, but my question for you Farhan is we're hearing a lot about Atlantic expansion and kind of the renewed optimism around it, some positive reports coming out about potential interest from St. Mary's and hosting the team there, potential ownership groups being interested in hosting the team there. What have you heard about that? Well, I'm hearing the same things that there's optimism, but Randy's a guy that knows how to exude optimism regardless. And he's assured many people that look, we're not going to let this drag out seasons and seasons anymore than what we've already done. We need to get some answers soon so that we can push this thing forward. And if they do the temporary permanent solution on the stadium, it might allow them to be in a position to expand in time for not 2024 but 2025. But they need to get there soon to do that. I do know that there's a belief there that they can find ownership. I do think there's been legitimate expressions of interest on the ownership front, but the stadium's a solution and the one thing we haven't seen is we haven't seen government officials step up and support this yet. I think they're waiting for ownership to come in and support it and before they kind of get involved in what the location solution is going to be and things of that nature. So I'm not sure that the temporary permanent stadium solution is as easy as Randy might make it out to be just looking at the venues that are there because it's either got to be St Mary's or it's got to be Wanderers Grounds and Wanders Grounds. Seems like it's a long way away from being a viable solution. But ultimately I would love to hear somebody official in government visibly and publicly get behind this and that hasn't happened yet. Evan, what do you make of all this? The expansion we just had, and it seems like every year here it kind of peaks up with all this touchdown and three down was going crazy this week talking about all this stuff. Yeah, I've written an article about Touchdown Atlantic and everything like that and the expansion and how that all kind of ties in. Me personally, I mean this is just an opinion, but I don't know if Halifax in Nova Scotia if that really is the long-term option. Me personally, I would prefer to see a Quebec City, something like that. I don't know what the infrastructure there looks like and I don't know, obviously I'm not in talks with Randy and Brosy, but I just think I look at Halifax, I look at everything, their existing venues and the opportunities for expansion and I think it's going to take a really long time. And again, we've talked about it on the show before. Randy is an extreme optimist and he'll definitely talk about this, but again, there's a lot of work to be done with the existing nine teams in that infrastructure before you move forward with the 10th team. So that's kind of where I'm at on that. How do you feel, I mean in the three years that we've been covering this, it seems like this is the golden kind of chicken goose, carrot, whatever thing that we've been chasing. What do you really feel? Yeah, look, I think Halifax is the place and I think it can work there. Quebec City is probably that next biggest market for sure that you can take a look at. But you kind of need the support of the most important business people there and they don't support it. So when you look at Mr. Tonge who's behind the lavalle program, it's pretty clear he doesn't want this there. And the stadium there is certainly bigger than what they've got at St. Mary's, right with the Rouge, but I don't know that there is enough there for both of those entities, a cfl team and that collegiate team to be successful. And even they're not what they were, right? Just because the R E S Q just isn't that competitive. You've got two teams that are at the top of it and that's just the way it is. And once in a while you might get a third that can sneak in and make some noise, but it really is just going to be Laval and University of Montreal in that league. So those two, when they play each other, draw crowds, but then they go down for the other games significantly. So I don't know that that's going to be priority number one. I think there are the optics around a coast to Coast League that matter and they've mattered for people for a long time. So if they can get that and you're not just drawing from Halifax, but you're drawing from the entire maritime region and that's what BC is trying to do here. They're now making the games a little more accessible for people in the Okanagan and Vancouver Island. You look at Saskatchewan and it's a provincial team. People have talked about, hey, putting a team in Saskatoon, the university team does well, but the football team, the riders work because they legitimately can draw from the entire province and if you take that away, it would hurt the riders. Even the bombers, they draw provincially. It's a little more centered around Winnipeg, but they do draw from the existing communities and things of that nature. So I do think it can work in Hamilton if they do it, but I do think there's a level of apathy even there saying, look, stop talking about this right blank or get off the pot as it were. So hopefully Randy is right in terms of yeah, we're not going to let this drag on and on even further because dragged on long enough Welfare check here. How do you feel about the tie cats? Jason's got his shirt on. We we're going into the bio week here. What did we make of the TCAs? Yeah, you talk about surprises when we came into this segment, and for me the TCAs have been the biggest surprise. They have spent a lot of money. Now for me, I still had a bunch of question marks around this team, even if boli m Amateur was healthy because I just didn't know what that offensive line was going to look like and I just truthfully didn't think they had enough receiving weapons proven, experienced guys that have excelled in this league, right? They'd improved in some other areas though, but I love Orlando and I generally like the culture that they've got there, so I'm surprised that it didn't turn a bit faster. Their coaching is high end and we're going to see because they do have some holes defensively. And now you've got Taylor Powell and we all got infatuated with Dustin Crumb, right? And he's a great story, but at the end of the day, Dustin Crumb's going to show us that he can consistently throw the football. It hasn't shown that yet, right? He's done it in spots here and we know how well he can run, but he's not Lamar Jackson. You're not going to turn a team around and get him into the playoffs once they've seen you on film a couple of times with his running ability. It's good, but it's not ridiculous. And when I look at Taylor Powell, I see good things much like he do from Dustin Crumb, but show me that you can throw the ball consistently. I'm not being critical of the player because this is a hard league and it's difficult for guys in their first year to do that. Maybe he needs more time and Hamilton isn't Edmonton, but they also had a really difficult year last year and it's easy to slip back into that mindset when you don't start having success. And now they've made the change in offensive coordinator, Tommy Conde's a bright guy, it's not going to take him along to get a job, replace him with Scott. Another really, really smart guy. But ultimately Taylor Powell's got to show us he can throw the football consistently and until that can happen and until the offense looks like it's going to be more than just a bunch of hitches and screens and they can push the ball down the field a little bit and get into that 200 yards low, 200 yards, even high 100 yards passing consistently, they're going to continue to lose. That's just the way it is. So show me. Yeah, Jason, did you feel, is this enough change for you this week having the OC change over? I know that coming off the big loss here over the weekend, Well, I do think there's going to be some improvement offensively, but my biggest concern when I was putting together a video, the video I did was on Orlando's Orlando Steinhower tenure as TCATs head coach this week. And the biggest concern for me is they're dead last in points against per game. And I think that is so uncharacteristic of the TCATs, they've had consistently a pretty good defense the years and I think that has always been something that they could rely upon and I don't think they have that this year. So honestly, I think that that is one thing they really need to improve upon above all else. And I think, yeah, the quarterback situation like Farhan said, is not ideal. I think that when it takes a long time to learn how to win in this league, and I think it's very hard to ask Taylor Powell to take the reins here. Yeah. Evan, you had covered the tie cats before, right? For News seven, what do you, I don't know, it feels like it's a stop gap like the Elks did. Hey, we got to make a little bit of a change right now to get people happy. No, this is a meaningful change, right? I mean it's a little bit different. Steven McAdoo and Tommy Kde aren't the same guy. Generally the belief level that is out there for Steven McAdoo really rests around Chris Jones. I don't know that anybody else is going to be looking out there for McAdoo. And that was also an optics move because I think people in the marketplace are a little bit less enamored with Chris Jones and they can't make a change there right now. So they do it at OC and they've got someone there who's done it before. Moving on from Tommy Conde is a significant thing. Now people in that market might be a little bit tired because he's been there for a long time. But league-wide, people really think Tommy Kendell is a pretty good coach. So I think in the case of Edmonton, it was the only move they could make. There are other moves they could make in Hamilton, but the organization really, really believes in Orlando. I do as well. I think it's in Edmonton, that move is kind of perceived as shuffling the deck chairs. I think in Hamilton it's perceived as a really meaningful move. I really do. So we will see what the results are. But again, it's tough and people that I've talked to in that organization that have seen good quarterbacks Ascend, really believe Taylor Powell's going to be a dude, but it's hard to be a dude in your first year. It's just tough. And the league's too good for that. So can he figure it out by the end of the year and can the east scuffle along and they look great. Up until a couple of weeks ago now there's been a bit of a regression in the east if that regression continues and Hamilton can stay in it long enough, maybe in another four or five weeks, Taylor Powell can really hit a stride or believe I mentioned if it's back in the lineup or whatever it happens to be, and maybe they can make a late push, but it's a tough lead, guys. It's a tough Evan, what do you make of this mess? Yeah, I mean I used to cover this team and I think it was somewhat expected for there to be a bit of a downturn. Now maybe I didn't expect it to be this much where you're letting go of your offensive coordinator in the middle of the season. Like Farhan said, Tommy's a very well-respected guy amongst cfl circles and I was reading it's not going to take him long to get another job. And I definitely agree with that. But yeah, I mean Hamilton, there's a lot of questions there, but they're not out of it is the big thing. Even with all this change going on. I mean, again, like Farhan said, if you just ride, you see what happens with the rest of the east. If you can just kind keep afloat and you don't have to blow out everybody, but if you can just at least scrape by in a couple of games, I mean this team will, they can be back in the playoffs without a problem. So yeah, I mean Hamilton, it's not completely over for them, but you can definitely tell they invested a good chunk of money in the off season to a bunch of guys, Bo, Levi, Mitchell, duke Williams, James Butler. But so far, I mean have any of those acquisitions really stood out? I mean you can debate that. Not really in my opinion. Definitely not Levi. But yeah, interested to see what happens with Hamilton just given the situation of the east. Here's the thing, if you want to build confidence in a quarterback, people talk about the offensive line and talk about the receiving core and get a great defense. To me it's a quarterback league, but the best way to develop a quarterback is to make sure he doesn't need to put up 35 points a game. If you can build defensively where you're tackling and you're playing functional defense and you can get other teams off the field. Now a quarterback has time, he's got time within a game and he's got time within a season. And when you look at how that team's been built defensively, there just hasn't been a consistent pass rush there. They haven't been able to get that done. I think there was probably some expectations around Jager Davis who either through injury age or just desire or fitness that didn't work out. There's holes in the backend at various spots, and then when injuries creep in and you're thin to begin with and you've got holes to begin with, now those small holes just become big, big gaps. So it's tough. So whoever's in there in quarterback, there's so much more asked of them that makes it that much more difficult. I got a question here regarding and we, if you're a few more minutes and then you got to hop off to your T S M work, I appreciate you coming on in terms of the quarterbacks and we had our good friend Dave Nailer on earlier in the season talking about should there be a necklace, should the quarterbacks be exempt from the EG list. Here we have the pesky usfl and xfl stealing up all the talent here. What would you like to see in terms of teams being able to acquire a more quarterback talent with the necklace? Well, I think they should limit the necklace. First of all, it shouldn't be unlimited teams shouldn't be able to carry 10 quarterbacks on their necklace. I think you should be kind of forced to own in on who you actually think you've got a chance to get. So if you said, okay, look, you can't put more than three quarterbacks on your necklace, that wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm more of a process driven guy in terms of how you identify and evaluate. So number one, I would take a certain number of dollars out of the salary cap, maybe $750,000 for the sake of argument, remove it from the regular cap and create a quarterback cap. Things like don't allow a quarterback to make more than say 9% of the total cap, which is around $500,000 because that's still a good living. Guys aren't going to say, no, I'm not going to play because you won't let me get six. Have a minimum salary on quarterbacks at a hundred thousand optical. You might get a few more guys that can come up and then create development opportunities for them. For example, the cfl used to have off-season OTAs that you would allow teams to go have a weekend minicamp. Well bring that back. But if you have played more than say 18 cfl games, a full season's worth, and I don't mean dressed in game, don't let those guys participate because you don't want guys getting hurt. The union will probably be more likely to accept something like that if you have some limits on who can participate. But now you're starting, quarterback doesn't come. He can come and watch film and do all of that, but he doesn't get a single rep. Let these other kids get reps and get properly evaluated. I watched Chase Bryce at Alliance Practice and he does individual drills and then sits on his ass, stop doing that. Let these guys even get scout team reps. But they don't do that. So for me, I think they need to create meaningful opportunities where you can develop a guy, do some things around the third quarterback. I hate that teams have changed that rule and they've basically made it its own position. Well, that third guy should be your developmental guy, your backup, ideally he's got a little bit of experience and can plunge forward in short yardage. But your third guy should be a developmental guy. I like who do we see in, I'm just having a brain cramp here in Toronto that played the second half of the game last week. Yeah, Cameron Dukes, and whether you do or don't like Cameron Dukes, something was gained there by the Argos playing him for a half. And if they decide to sit Chad Kelly because there's a buffer in the standings and they play Cameron Dukes, something will be gained there. Something's been gained with Taylor Powell. Something has been gained with the quarterback Dustin Crum in Ottawa, what was gained by the BC Lions having 34 year old Dom Davis go out there and play half of football. He's not the quarterback of your future. You know what I mean? So if you change the mechanics of how you handle all three quarterbacks in your roster, so I'm a little more process based than that. And truthfully, if you talk to cfl executives about who in the usfl and xfl could really help McLeod, Bethel Thompson, notwithstanding, there weren't a lot of guys that told me, yeah, that quarterback should be in our league and can make it better. Here's where those spring leagues have really hurt. The cfl, the offensive lineman talent available is not as good. It's so hard for these guys to bring in quality offensive tackles, right? Because those are the scarce commodity in football across the board. So that's hurt the quarterbacks more than the quarterbacks itself. Jason, you have anything quick for Farhan before you just got to drop off? Yeah, for sure. So my question's more of a general question, Farhan is what is the story of the cfl season? If you had to just point to one thing so far this year? Wow. I think it's probably the balancing at the top of the league, right? I mean, Winnipeg has been so dominant in the last couple of regular seasons here and we go into a season just assuming even maybe they're going to be old, but assuming and now that the fact that Toronto and BC were able to take steps to get closer to that top rung and yeah, I know people are going to point to 50 to 14, but I think those two teams are a little more even. So the fact that we've got three teams that are up there punching I think has been good. And we've had a chance to see some young quarterbacks. Crumb mania, the cardiac kids in Ottawa has been fun for a while. We'll see if it can continue, but those are probably the main things that jump out to me. Just that other teams coming to the top to push Winnipeg and just some fun with a bright young quarterback. Well, Farhan, Godspeed, go do your real work here. I appreciate it. Maybe we'll see you in the game or else we'll all be in Hamilton, so we'll all be up there. We'll be hanging out. Nice. I appreciate, yeah, appreciate your time. Yeah, We'll do that. Give my love to Dorothy and yeah, hopefully we see you at T-Mobile soon and I'm going to be at the Seahawk game tonight, so maybe we'll see you there too. Yeah, well good luck with that. Yeah, we got that. Who is that coming up? We've got Minnesota preseason. Yeah, Minnesota. It's going to be exciting. All right far. We'll see you soon. Alright bud. Well There we go guys. How is that Farhan joining? You can go check him out on T S N here, Evan. Thoughts here going in. We can do kind of a proper preview here and then we'll get out of here at the top of the hour. Let me pull up the schedule. Winnipeg, Edmonton, what are your thoughts going into tonight? Yeah, not many thoughts with that one. Honestly, I think they really hate to be critical every week about this. But I mean, look man, Winnipeg Edmonton, the last time these two teams played, I said, look, hear me out, maybe Edmonton has a fighting chance and they did in the first half of that game. I remember that specifically a couple weeks ago now. But to be honest, I don't know. I think at this point Edmonton, they're looking forward to week 11 in Hamilton when they might have a chance again and Winnipeg. I'm interested to see the flow of this game more than anything, but I have no doubt that Winnipeg's going to win this game. I mean, if Edmonton does somehow pull this one out and win it home, I mean, boy that's really going to make this cfl week probably more interesting than any of the other ones we've had. But maybe besides that one where we had three shootouts or whatever. But yeah, ultimately, I mean look, we know at this point what both of those teams bring to the table and Winnipeg in theory should win this game. I go back to that Ottawa game for them and whatever week that was where they blew the lead and then lost in overtime. I hope that Winnipeg has officially moved on from that. And I hope I don't see that again from them this season. I don't know why I'm bringing that up, but I always bring it up. It was a fun game, but ultimately from them, yeah, I think they just need to ride that one out and move on to the next thing in Edmonton. I don't know, maybe they need to move on to the next one too. We'll see. Hey Jason. So we've got Trey Ford starting tonight. Finally the calls have been made. I don't know if I see a win tonight, but we have Edmonton at Hamilton next week. That feels like a very winnable game. I know that doesn't do anything against the losing streak. And then we see Ottawa coming into Edmonton in week 12, so I don't know if this is enough tonight, but if you get Trey Ford in, get him some reps here, see what he looks like. I dunno, I think those next two games, I mean I don't know if two and what would that be, two and nine or whatever. I don't know if that does anything for you, but mean, what do you make of this tonight and what do you make of the next couple of weeks for Edmonton? Yeah, so I mean, wouldn't that be a great story if Trey Ford comes in tonight and beats the blue bombers, breaks that 21 game losing streak. But I'm with Evan, I don't think it's going to happen. I think that it would really take a miracle at this point. I just think the team around him is just not equipped to beat the blue bombers, even though Edmonton has been pretty competitive over the last couple of years when they played the Blue Bombers, haven't walked away with a win in any of those games, but I think that this game will probably be close in the first half, like Evan said, but I don't have much confidence in Edmonton in this game, and I'm interested to see if re forward's legs make a difference for that Edmonton offensive. If they change the flow of that offense, does it create more running lanes for a guy like Kevin Brown? Maybe a little bit of read option kind of offense there. I think maybe the off script offense will be a little bit better for Edmonton as well, but I don't know how much of a difference we'll make in this particular week. But yes, I'm circling. You read that game against Ottawa in a couple of weeks as a potential streak breaker there for Edmonton, Just because I think at that point Farhan said the crumb, this of it's kind of worn out and people seem, that's the thing, it is so funny in here, the people, oh my God, crumbs the next great C F O quarterback and it's going to go crazy. It's like, let's give teams a couple of weeks. I mean, I think you always get that backup quarterback bump kind of when they come in and you're not really sure what to expect. But yeah, I could see, I don't know if that does anything beating Ottawa there, but it could be exciting. I want to get, because we didn't have Jason on the show and we'll Evan's kind of continued thoughts on this and just the Winnipeg dominance of BC over the weekend and the donut boys that they put up at 50 with the donut. What did you make of Winnipeg? Just dismantling bc? Well, I think we saw the true potential of that Winnipeg offense on the field really for the first time this season. I mean, Kenny Lawler missed the first six games or so of the season with that visa issue. So we were able to see him, Dalton Schone, Nick Demsky, all those guys on the field at the same time and add a hundred percent and you saw how dangerous that they could be big play offense. Kenny Lawler, I think is arguably the best receiver in the entire cfl. I mean, just what he can do deep the field is pretty impressive and I think that Winnipeg just proved that they're right still in the conversation as a Gray Cup favorite this year. And I think that BC is going to have to go back to the drawing board and see what they can do when they play in BC later on this season. I believe that's in September or October. Yeah, I think people keep saying October 6th, I guess it must be. Evan, thoughts about Winnipeg here? Any continued thoughts here following? We were all kind shellshocked on Monday morning. I mean, look, adding Kenny LOLer bag helps. And to be honest, I may be said it on the show at the top of the week. I kind of forgot about Kenny Lawler and what he could do. I knew he was around, I knew his situation with the Visa. I knew that he was still with the team, but I wasn't really thinking about him this season as someone who was a contributor just because there was so many other things going on at the time. It kind of got lost and it just wasn't at the front of my mind. But now, yeah, I mean clearly welcome back to the cfl Kenny Lawler. That was last weekend. Seven catches, 200 yards, one touchdown. I don't think he's going to do that this game, but all it's going to take against Edmonton, and I think this was the case last time these two teams played two, if you hit one or two of those deep balls, whether it's to Lawler or Dalton s Schone or Nick Demsky, Rashid Bailey, whoever it is on the receiving end of that football, that might be it for Edmonton. And I'm not saying, I mean, I don't want to say Edmonton can't compete in games. They have, despite the record, despite everything poor that we've said about them, they have been able to compete against some good teams. Again, Winnipeg, they were riding with them for a full half a couple of weeks ago. So there's definitely a sign there that could happen. Now I think for Edmonton, the one thing that I really want to bring up here is this is almost more of an experimental game putting Trey forward in for the first time, you're kind of just testing the waters. I don't think there's necessarily an expectation as there was a couple of weeks ago maybe when you still had some hope, well, maybe I shouldn't say that they're out of hope yet, but I mean, oh and nine, I mean, you need to win out just to look remotely decent and we know that's not going to happen. So ultimately I think for them, Edmonton putting Trey Ford in, they're just kind of seeing what's on the table here over these next couple games and maybe what can give them the best shot to win and maybe the final couple of weeks of the season. So you avoid total disaster because I do think the Elks will win maybe two games the rest of the stretch. That's my sort of evaluation assumption, whatever you want to call it. But how do you get that done now? You have to start throwing more things into the mix and figuring it out, especially given that you've already lost nine games to start the season. I want to say I put this on the thumbnail for this week too, for the logos, but the indigenous logo here that the Elks have might be the best thing they've done all season. This is hot and I've seen some people say that this should be their logo moving forward and maybe we get kind of a fresh rebrand tonight. I know people haven't been happy with the rename of the team and all that kind of stuff, but this is hot. I think this got collective appeal for that. Jason, do you have any thoughts on the, I guess temporary, but we'll see how long they roll it out. Yeah, I really like those logos that these indigenous artists come up with. I really like the one that the BC came up with. I actually have a t-shirt of that logo on it and I would love a t-shirt with this one on it as well. I think this is maybe even better than the one that BC came up with. So yeah, I think maybe this provides a little bit of a spark. I don't know how much of a difference it'll make, but yeah, I like the logo. It's hot here, so let's get back. I've seen, I don't know if this is the most exciting game of the week here, but the one tonight, but we have Saskatchewan here going into Montreal. Montreal, I'm trying to remember, did they win? Did they win last week? Yeah, with the dominant win over Hamilton, Evan, thoughts about this one? Saskatchewan traveling into Montreal? Yeah, so this game is a bit interesting because both teams have four win, but Montreal is one game behind because of the buy. So you've got Saskatchewan at 504 and four and then you've got Montreal above 500 at four and three. So Saskatchewan, I don't know, I'm liking Montreal more in this one. Saskatchewan still has a lot of questions, but look, if Saskatchewan does win this game, I think it might mean, I want to say it might mean more because then there are two games ahead of Calgary maybe, and then you start getting in, well, that's all numbers. I think I've said before, I can't do math to save my life, but look, if Saskatchewan wins this game, I'll tell you right now, it gives them an advantage. And I was saying last week, or well this week, whenever we had the show, Saskatchewan is one of these teams where there's a lot of questions, but when you're at 500, it's really choosing your own destiny. And Saskatchewan I do think has the ability to win games, unlike some other teams perhaps in the east. I feel like they do have a bit of a stronger core there. I like Craig Dickerson, I like all those guys, everyone that's on their staff. I really think that there's something to be worked with there. And Mason fine, I think is still the big question. He hasn't really, last week I think was his best game that we've seen from him so far. But prior to that it was kind of choppy waters. And look, I'm not going to rule Mason fine out, but I think if Mason fine doesn't work in this game, maybe you start looking at Jake do gala or somebody like that because he came in that touchdown Atlantic game and had a nice series. So yeah, Saskatchewan, a lot of questions. Montreal coming off a big win against Hamilton, this game is at home for them. I would probably favor them in this one, but Cody Vado has been a bit up and down. You don't really know what you're going to get. And yeah, again, I think I've talked about Montreal's offense as a whole, how much I like that William Stanback getting involved for them has been extremely helpful over the past couple of weeks, finally getting him going after a very slow start to the season. But yeah, ultimately this should be one. I don't know if I said, well, we'll get into the Calgary BC game, I'm going to be at that one. Maybe I said that was going to be my game of the week for obvious reasons. But Saskatchewan, Montreal, I think from a peer viewership perspective is definitely one to keep an eye on because it's a very, very evenly matched teams and it's between two different divisions. So those ones I always like. Jason, I want to get your thoughts on kind of the Saskatchewan Mason. Fine looking. Last week here, 23 37, 2 96, rod had a segment this week I saw on Twitter. St. Traveler got released from the Jets, and I think he had injured his thumb during their preseason game, I guess the Hall of Fame game. And it was this that Saskatchewan fans are never happy. It's always like the grass is always greener. And we had Cody, but we didn't want Cody. And then now we have Mason. Okay, let's bring in Chris Reer. Rod really kind of pounded the table for Mason fine here, saying that he's done good so far in this start. What do you make of that situation? The quarterback Mason, fine, everything else. Well, I think a lot of these quarterbacks around the league, it's too early to tell whether or not they're going to be something in this league. I think that Mason Fine has proven that he's pretty accurate. I think that he's completed a large percentage of his passes or a high percentage of his passes in all the games that he's played. And I thought that he had a really good game last week versus Ottawa. I had a couple of dimes that he dropped deep down the field against that Ottawa secondary. But when we get to talk about the Ottawa game, I think one trend that's coming up with them is that their secondary has really struggled over the past month or so. So I'm looking forward to seeing what fine can do against this Montreal defense, which has been very impressive this season. I've seen them a couple of times here in Hamilton, in person, they throw a lot of exotic blitzes at you. They have a really good secondary and defensive line. They just added Sean Lemon a couple of weeks ago and he had a big game last week versus Hamilton. So I'm excited for that particular matchup in this game and if fine can replicate what he did last week, Yeah, show me. It was immediately in that game, right? It was like the forest fumble on Powell. I think it was that first drive, I mean immediately kind of making his presence felt there. In terms here, Evan's going to be heading out here soon to go to the Calgary BC game. Is this a bounce back for bc? What are we looking at here, Evan? I do think it's a bounce back for bc. I think I talked about on the show on Monday, how with that Winnipeg game look, that's disappointing, right? You never want to have a game like that, but Rick Campbell was sitting in the locker room, guys, it's time to move on next game. Don't worry about this. We're still a good team. And I totally agree. The Winnipeg game was just kind of a blip in time. It was one of those mistakes that you have where you start slow and you just can't pick up. And you could argue that good teams don't make mistakes like that. But personally, I mean, I still feel like in a league like the cfl where there's only so many teams, BC's still going to be in that West Final. I keep saying that against Winnipeg. I mean that's pretty much a lock unless there's some huge upset and I'll continue to say that over the course of the season, unless BC goes on some big losing streak or something, which I don't expect to happen with their insane amount of depth that they have. But yes, I do think this is a bounce back game for bc. As much as Calgary needs to win more BC could honestly afford another loss, B six and three, I think they're fine. Calgary needs to win more, but right now I still don't see enough from them to where they could take down a team like BC at home. And again, they've made progress. I know that they came off a win against Toronto that surprised a lot of people. Now, I said before in that game, I still think Calgary wins regardless of whether or not Chad Kelly gets injured just because Calgary has previously kind of figured out Calgary on multiple occasions, or Toronto, excuse me. But yeah, no, I mean you look at Calgary, there's a lot to there. I think they still have a fighting chance if Saskatchewan wins the game against Montreal. I don't know. Then we might be saying some different things, but I still think Calgary has a fighting chance for now. I like what they have too in certain aspects of both their offense and their defense, especially Calgary's defensive line and is something else, man. But right now I just see BC winning this game by, I think I said maybe 10 points, something like that. Jason, I hated how Coach Campbell kind of looked at the loss here. We played. I don't think we played, I had the locker room sound here on the Monday show talking, oh guys, you just got to watch this one and move on. People in baseball, I think it's a little bit, okay, we got a hundred whatever games. Okay, we could chalk a couple loss. You're not going to lose, I think cfl. I get that vibe sometimes it's a marathon and don't worry about it. I hated this. Well, we got our ass beat. Don't worry about it. We'll come back. What did you make of that of Coach Campbell's kind of message to the team following that? Because it really, to me it was just an embarrassing loss. Yeah, well, I mean, I actually said on my recap video that I thought it was kind of a burn the film type of game for the BC Lions. I mean, just nothing went right for them in that one. I think it's worth noting that they didn't have their starting quarterback there. I think that made a big difference, obviously to the first matchup we saw against Winnipeg. So I don't know how much you can draw from it. I think the biggest thing is that their defense got torn apart in that game, really looked vulnerable for the first time this season. So I'm looking to see if they have a big bounce back in this game. And like Evan said, I think it's a prime bounce back opportunity for the alliances. Jake Mayer and Calgary have really struggled against BC over the past couple of years, so I'm really interested to see if that continues. And I had a video actually looking at how Jake Mayers played against both bc, Winnipeg and Saskatchewan earlier this season, and how he struggled in those matchups against those three teams that are kind of playoff contenders in the West Division. And at the end of the day, it's going to be interesting to see what happens for BC and if they can bounce back here, and especially with Adam's back in the fold, it looks like, Yeah, I got to hear his, I found they had it. I just wanted to have something that visually here while we talk about Vernon, you and I'll get Evan's thought as well, but first Jason, were you surprised Dane didn't look great? I felt like Dane really felt like, okay, I got to make a big explosive play right now. Okay, they get down, we're throwing it. If they had just had a couple sustained drives going down the field, I think that slows the momentum. I think that that helps kind of the crowd and kind of everything else. Were you surprised with how Dane played? No, not at all. Because of how much pressure Winnipeg was putting on them right from the jump of that game. I feel like every time he let go of the ball, he was getting hit by Willie Jefferson or some guy on that defensive line for Winnipeg. So I think I'm not too surprised because Dane Evans, when he does face pressure, he doesn't tend to handle it very well. And when you can block up front for him, that's when he can have a very effective game. But they just didn't look like they had that right from the jump in that game. Evan, is Dan kind of what we thought he was. Were you underwhelmed overwhelmed with his performance last week? Well, I was definitely underwhelmed this week, but I left that game. I still believe Dan can be his starting quarterback in the cfl. Now. My opinion on him has changed. I don't want to say drastically, but it has changed over the past couple seasons. I used to be big on the Dane Evans hype train, especially back when I covered Hamilton in that great Cup season. I really did think Dane Evans was the future there. And unfortunately that just wasn't the case last year. I don't want to say he regressed. I hate to put players in a position like this where I have to say negative things, but if we're being realistic here, I mean, he didn't live up to my expectation, let's put it that way. And now he's in bc, he's behind Vernon and Vernon's played so well. It's like, well, and Dane hasn't, again, prior to the Winnipeg game, he looked all right. I think it was against Saskatchewan. It was okay, but it's at a point now where unless Vernon gets hurt again, I don't think he plays this season. And I think the bigger picture here is what does this look like moving forward? Does Dane become a career backup and how does this really affect his development? I know we had talked with Farhan, and we've talked about it in previous weeks too, about how the cfl quarterback development situation has been altered over the years, and perhaps it's not in the best way with just the number of quarterbacks and you have a designated short yardage guy, which takes away from your ability to just develop as a peer passer or even just a regular sort of scrambler if you want to talk about mobility. But yeah, mean we will see what happens to Dane Evans. He's definitely one of the bigger, I think questions now more than anything. And if you had asked me that two years ago, I don't know if I would've ever imagined saying something like that. Well, it's crazy. You look back, like you said, Evan, with the Gray Cups here to have Mazzoli and Evans. You keep you dish oli, he gets hurt. Then we dish Evans and we bring him Bow. I don't know, Jason, how do you feel about that? It's like a Thai Katz fan here to be a Rouge and whatever overtime away from a Gray cup win here two seasons ago now to where we're at. I think you're on mute. Sorry. Sorry about that. That's okay. Yeah, so on one hand, I think maybe a part of me says that they should have brought Dane back for another year. But then the other side of me says they really couldn't have justified bringing him back, given how poorly played at times last season. I mean, I think he was 16 touchdowns. 16 interceptions last year, but five of those touchdown passes came against Winnipeg. So I mean, you take that away, 11 touchdowns, 16 interceptions over the course of the season just isn't going to cut it. And Evan, I was very high on Dane after that 2019 season and after the 2021 season, I thought they made the right call going with Evans over Mazzoli, he was much younger, quarterback had much less checkered injury history as well. So I mean, I don't think that, it's unfortunate that both of these guys aren't really starting quarterbacks right now in the league. And unfortunately for Ola, that's due to health reasons. And then Evans has had some health things the last couple of years, obviously was knocked out in the Great Cup game in 2021 as well. So I mean, at the end of the day, I don't know where I was going with this, but I think that Hamilton, it's a struggle for what they've been doing with the quarterback situation over the last couple of years. And as it pertains to Dane Evans, I think he can be a starting quarterback in this league, but I think he's one of those guys that is dependent on the situation around him more than anything. And I don't think you could say that about a lot of guys right now in the cfl. Well, I think that we've talked about this before on here. I think the end of this season, going to the next year, I'll be very curious to see what the quarterback situation here looks like up north. Because depending on what Mazzo does and what Bo does, yeah, if Dane has played his way out of, oh, we could trade for Dane, Arbuckle did that this year, right? Okay. He's duty now. We don't, he used to be in that conversation like, oh, we just all got to bring in Nick Arbuckle and do that, or we got to bring in whatever last game here, crumb sanity going into the Argos. We'll get Evan's thoughts first, and then I want to get Jason on kind of how pedestrian the Argos looked last week with Chad be and her, but Evan, what do you make here? Ottawa going into Toronto? Yeah, I think this game, I mean, Toronto should win this game, right? They should get back on track after that Calgary game. We've got Chad Kelly coming back after he got knocked out due that injury. But even if Ottawa loses this game, I guess they're projected to, I'm not out on Ottawa yet either, and especially in the east. I mean, you look at between Hamilton, Ottawa, and even Montreal, again, if Saskatchewan wins, Montreal loses everyone's kind of right in this pot. And let's say Ottawa pulls out some miracle win against Toronto, then things are really interesting between those three teams. Montreal, again, Hamilton Ottawa, I'm not out on Ottawa yet, even though they're last in the east. I'm not out on Dustin Crumb. I'm not really out on any of those guys. I think Bob DySIS, I've never gone on record saying this, but he might be my favorite coach in the cfl. And I mean, look, I love Rick Campbell, love those veteran guys in Winnipeg and things like that, but Dim Whitty in Toronto as well. But Bob Dice just kind of has this, he's got this almost swagger about him. It's kind of like he's the underdog. You always got to root for the underdog. And I just remember seeing him backpedaling after they won that overtime game against Winnipeg and the whole team just comes together. And it's a beautiful thing to see that in football and in sports in general, really. But I mean, that's kind of getting off topic, but ultimately I like what Bob Dice does there. I really think that he can rally this team when they need to. I'm not going to say Otto is a playoff team yet. Even if they do have hope in the east and things are kind of evening out behind Toronto, I'm not going to say right away that they're a playoff team. I mean, the team still has a lot of work to do and clearly there's still things to be done in the off season. I mean, even though they've been able to kind of turn things around late, it's still far from perfect. They're not a team that you're going to really put a lot of money into. I think if you're, well, maybe not a fan, but you're not going to be placing heavy Betts on Ottawa a lot, let's put it that way. So yeah, Ottawa, I have hope. Ultimately I'd probably take a team, I don't know, I might even take Hamilton over them talent wise, but look man, Ottawa, I really wish the best for them. And I do think that there's going to be points in the season, even if they lose this game, they're what, three and six after that or whatever. I still think they can rally at times and they'll get back closer to 500. And even if they finished the season, let's say they finished this season with seven or eight wins, I would still consider that a success given how rough. I mean, you can't forget how rough things were in the first month with Nick Arbuckle and then Maol comes back and you have the ultimate heartbreak of him being gone again and you feel like everything's lost. And then finally you have Dustin Crumb and there's a bit of hope. And even if it hasn't been the same in recent weeks with him and the rest of the team, there still is something there to work with. And maybe you can build off that to next year. Maybe you don't have to blow everything up and just cancel the whole thing as some of these other teams have to do. So it's an interesting spot for sure. And that's more of, I think, an Ottawa season outlook than just I came against Toronto and Sunday, but hey, I think Ottawa has been one of the more talked about teams this season outside of say, Edmonton for obvious reasons. Jason, what do you make of this? Toronto Kelly gets hurt. They drop the game here. I think when you're riding this undefeated thing, I think it's helpful to maybe have a fluky loss like they had last week and hey, okay, it wasn't our night like we said with BC or whatever, but what do you make of this them coming back? And this has got to be a tough one for Ottawa coming in. Yeah, about the game last week. I think the biggest takeaway for the Argos is just the amount of injuries that they suffered in that game. Obviously Chad Kelly's the big one, but also a Darius Pickett, one of their best defensive players went down in that one. Alex Brinkman, a good rotational defensive lineman as well. A Joe Ette actually was banged up earlier in that game, was able to return, but I mean the injuries started to pile up for the Argos in that game. So I mean, I'm not too worried about them. I think that, like you said, it's good to get that undefeated streak out of the way because I think that it could kind of wear on a team. I think we saw that from Winnipeg last year. I mean, they went up to, what was it, 11 and oh before they lost? And at the end of the day, I feel like just the pressure that's mounting every week that you win is just a lot of pressure to play under, and it distracts from the ultimate goal of surviving the marathon of the season and ultimately winning the Great Cup. And I think that now that that's out of the way for the Argos and that they look like they avoided the worst case scenario with Chad Kelly. I think that the Argos will be fine going forward. Yeah, I think, what was it, D Witty I think was saying, or they were quoting him in one of the games. Yeah, we play each game. We're one and oh every week. You can say that, but I think you sit there and I think there, there's a lot of undue pressure with that, but it should be good. I mean, they still obviously a hot team. Evan, are we glad here before we kind of wind out the show that Chad kind of like we said, avoided kind of the worst case scenario here just in terms of not only the team and him, but just kind of the marketability of the league right now? Oh, well absolutely mean, look, if you lose Chad Kelly, not only are you losing the starting quarterback of the Toronto Organ Knotts who are in Great Cub contention, you're losing a big part of Canadian football culture right now. And I think that goes without saying because you look at, I mean, Chad Kelly, first of all, he's recognized in the United States because of his background being the nephew of Jim Kelly. So there's that connection, but then also just he's playing at such a high level that it's making the game interesting again. And now that's not to say that Zach Calleros and Vernon Adams and a couple of these other guys haven't been doing it for multiple years, but Chad Kelly just kind of burst onto the scene as an elite quarterback. And again, because of his background and just because of his, a lot of people know who Chad Kelly is because I mean, look, unfortunately, well, he was drafted in the N F L, had some legal issues. Again, there's the Kelly family connection like I've already talked about. But that's I think what separates him from some of these guys like Zach Calleros and Vernon Adams. Like you look at Zach, I mean, he's been an elite quarterback for X many years now, been in the league for even longer bouncing around before he kind of settled down and Winnipeg as a starter. But people don't know who that is because he played at G five Cincinnati and then just went up there and outside of Travis Kel maybe giving him a shout out because he was his college quarterback. You're not going to hear much about Zach, but I think Chad Kelly, I've seen on certain tweets and things like that, people are like, oh yeah, Chad Kelly, I remember him, Mr. Irrelevant and the whole thing, and he was at Ole Miss and all that. So there's definitely, that I think is at least bringing a bit of attention to the league. And if you're a cfl fan already, not someone that's on the outside looking in. Chad Kelly has added an extremely positive element to this league, and I think Farhan put it best when he said, what's nice about this season is you don't just have Winnipeg and a bunch of teams below that. It's BC and Toronto especially, again, with them being undefeated up until last week are kind of rising to the top of the crop here, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I mean, look, if you lose Chad Kelly, that would be a big blow to just the cfl season as a whole because people have enjoyed watching him, I think, especially if you're a Toronto fan, but me, I'm kind of a neutral fan. Maybe I lean towards BC a bit, but I've really enjoyed, he brings an element to the game that's been missing for I think many years now. And again, that's not to discredit Calleros and all these other guys, but there's just something about the storyline of him coming into the Great Cup, having barely played in the cfl before that, and then within a couple months of an off season turns around and becomes one of these better passers. Because again, like a guy like Zach Calleros, I'm not trying to take away from him, but Calleros has just set a standard now, and if Calleros doesn't throw for 300 yards and two touchdowns a game, then it's like, oh, I mean we probably should give him more credit, is what I'm trying to get at here. But still, it's just we're so used to that now it's not very exciting, whereas Chad Kelly brings this extra element of spice or whatever you want to call it, excitement just makes the overall product better, I think. Jason, anything else from you here before we get out of here? Yeah, my one thing I'm watching in this game is that Dustin Crum has really struggled over the last couple of weeks. They don't have an offensive touchdown over the last two weeks and they're going up against that really good Argos defense. So my question is, has the cfl figured Dustin crumb out? I guess we'll find out this weekend? No, I think, yeah, like I said, it was funny and I enjoyed when we had Steve Simmons on a couple of weeks ago because it was following that and crazy weekend and Crumb coming back and winning and all that. He said, yeah, it was the most exciting weekend. But I don't know if that's a good thing right now where we kind have this maybe a quarterback, I think we call the episode the quarterback crisis here coming. But I appreciate it. I appreciate Farhan getting up early today. I'm making time to come on the show. That's appreciated, you guys making the time hopefully and my work scheduled next week, but I have some emails out, could be a banger show next week. Could be a very banger, very cfl heavy show. Could have a couple big time guests so sometimes when it rains it pours it. We'll see. But this week I thought this was a good solution here, having to work the rest of today and with these Thursday games. But we'll see. Next week could be exciting. Evan, safe travels, cheer loud for BC America's cfl team, make a sign poster and I appreciate Jason as well and we'll post this video over on his channel as well. I appreciate you guys. I got a dip, so we'll see you next time last I see you, if any other comments. Alright, we'll see you guys next time. Take care.

CFL 2023 Week 9 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 9, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Monday here everyone. Monday, August 7th. Hope everyone had a great weekend. Coming off a little slow moving today. Coming off. Dorothy and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary last night, but still going strong here. Appreciate it. We have Andy Murray hopping in here, Jason, under the weather today probably due to the Thai Cats performance. Andy, Andy, you'll make that joke here. And we have now a new nickname here. We have the professor Andrew Murray, and now we have the director here, Evan Willmore. Evan, we can probably get into that more once Andy hops off the stream later, but how are you doing? Congratulations, Evan, first and foremost. Yeah man, I'm doing great. It was an exciting weekend of football here. Obviously we've got plenty of things to talk about me personally and the slate of games, but yeah man, ultimately I was impressed. Maybe it was a bit of a slower week. You had some blowouts, you had some closer games, but honestly, I mean, yeah, there's there's a lot to get into this week. I, I'm excited. Yeah, Evan announcing over the week, he's now the assistant director of player personnel for the Vegas Nighthawks here of the I F L. Very exciting. Andy Hopping on here last minute this morning. Andy, how are you doing sir? I'm doing great. I love swooping in and just stealing other people's thunder. I hope Jason gets better, but I am always happy to fly in last moment. But as far as Evan goes, congratulations sir. That is a fantastic honor, great distinction. I have no doubt you're going to absolutely rock it when you do that. I'm really excited for you, very stoked. I know we've talked a little bit about your involvement as far as scouting and all the work that you put in. You have impressed me from day one since I met you with all the work that you put in, so I absolutely cannot wait to see what you do with them and the new role that you have. So congratulations sir. Appreciate it man. That means a lot really. Yeah, it's cool. Just we've seen Jay here come from the new sub family, go to work with the Braas here and obviously Evan, I just like kind do this for fun, have my own thing that I do, but it's cool to see guys that are passionate about this at work and Evan earning this and kind of really stepping into this role where years ago, what are we going to do? And you're still so young, but it's cool to see this working towards something. We can talk more about that. We have James here checking and Monday Mark has, let's go and then we have Jeff here. He says, yeah, first time tuning in live. Usually listens to Rod. I guess Rod Peterson's off today, so like and subscribe. Abby, you're here. I have some newsy stuff to fill. We can talk about the Darnell Sanky and everything going to the xfl. Do we want to do that at the top or at the bottom? Do you guys want to talk on that now or do you want to do the games first? I think we have to talk about it now. Okay. Everyone's going to cross Call it. Alright, so we had the over the weekend, Darnell Stankey, right? Going back up. He said he is leaving the xfl going back up to the cfl. I'll pull up the tweet. Evan thoughts on this that you covered him as part of the renegades and everything else. Lemme get the tweet up. Yeah, I mean I had followed Sankeys story a bit. Him and Cam Kelly came down too from Hamilton to San Antonio. Not a lot of people talked about that. Sanky was definitely the big cfl acquisition and I remember last year when people were kind of up in arms, at least the cfl community was about that Sanky leaving and going to an American league. And I haven't read, I mean look, we're going to get into this. I kind of skimmed over that article. I didn't really read it fully. So I'm interested to see his true opinion, but ultimately I can't blame him for this. And I honestly think as much as I, maybe I'm pro xfl or whatever, I think Sankey, I mean he had a great run there in Saskatchewan and if he can go back there, go to another team or whatever, I mean look, he did his job in Arlington, he won the championship, he kind of hit the pinnacle there I think you'd say. So now he can go back to Canada and just kind of resume his career the way things were. Plus there's also that familiarity aspect there. He came into the xfl not knowing anything, not really knowing anybody, but now he has the opportunity to go back to a place where he has all these established connections. The fans probably have a better idea of who he is because let's be honest, the average American fan isn't going to know who Darnell Sankey is, N F L or xfl usfl, whatever. I mean unless you're a fan of the college he went to, which I'd have to check on what that actually is. But anyway, yeah, ultimately I think this is probably a good move for Sanky and honestly it gets him back on the field sooner. I mean if he signs during this season, I mean we just wrapped up what week nine, he'd still have so many weeks to perform and have an opportunity to win another championship and then you get into the story of how cool would it be for him to win a championship in the United States in May, go back to Canada and then have a chance maybe win another one in November, which you and me will be there for Reid, possibly. Yeah, I just didn't like Andy, let's get your thoughts. I got a little piece. Look, I don't blame him for taking the risk to go down south and play in another league. We've seen that with several players, namely we had him, we obviously had McLeod, Bethel Thompson who went south and played at the usfl until further notice. He's still trying to get into the N F L. It doesn't seem like he's going back to Canada anytime soon despite how badly people tried to will that into existence after Ottawa's quarterback injury peril that they went through for a couple of weeks. So look all the power to say Mr. Sankey, I think he explored an option, it didn't really work out for him personally and he decided to come back. I read the article in full and let me tell you the tone of it does not match really what people make it out to be as far as reading the headline. I think the main point that Seiki was getting at was that he personally did not find what he was looking for in the league that he played for. But if you go and look at some of the quotes in the article and some of the pieces that were pulled out, he clearly recognizes the viability of something like an xfl and he said it himself basically that the level of competition was pretty much almost equal in terms of yeah, this quote right here, the competition level was very equal in that matter. And so I think for him it's an important comparison to make of course. And he seems like he loved his time in the cfl so much that he wanted to go back to it. And a lot of people who've said that they have established themselves in the cfl do hold it in high regard and it's a league that's been around for so long, the xfl is in a lot of ways it's still an experiment. He makes that point as well. There's still a lot of things that they are figuring out. He mentioned that the travel aspect and the hub thing was a little bit weird for him and some of the players in terms of going back and forth between the homes, cities playing in the homes and then going back to Arlington. But that's what comes with this whole thing with trying to start up the league again. But overall, the tone it seems to me is that it just to me read as to each their own. It didn't work out for him specifically for certain reasons, but he's not dogging and saying that it can't work ever or that it's inferior in any way, shape or form. But other people want to take that context out of that article that's all on them because I do not get that sense at all reading that article. Yeah, that's just my piece and we've had Hodge on and I love three down for what they do. I just wish they weren't so, oh, oh see, see he said something bad about the xfl here, he wants to come back. We had the quote like Andy said, I would argue the Insurance of Competition. I think it's pretty much the same. I said that's a lot less sexy quote than like, well the xfl just wasn't for me. That's fine. And I have argued on here for the last year and a half now that we've seen this new xfl, I think it realized way too much on we want this to be a platform for players as opposed to we want you to be able to work here for 5, 6, 7 years and earn a paycheck. And I think that's kind of, but I did see where was the quote and Andy of course ballsy chiming in. I could have told him that before he left and I said, why would that be? Why would that be? He came to the south, he made 55,000 plus dollars, worked 12 weeks, won a championship, and now he's back up and he is probably going to be able to jump on the team and make, like Andy said, another deep run here, what was so bad about him? Even God forbid, thinking about going south and playing in the F l, I don't get that this tribalism. I mean I know ballsy works for the rider, so I think he's got a little bit more skim, but three down I think if I think three down is a little too tribal for their own goods sometimes when it comes to like, well we got to protect this and God forbid anyone speak ill about the cfl. So that's kind of my 2 cents on that. Do you guys have anything else on that before we want to get to the games? Well, I mean I decided to put some of those specific quotes, his points in his posts there. I just wanted to sort of illuminate how Psyche was really spinning it versus how other people would spin it. So I just wanted to make that clear as far as, look, I just want to make sure he's doing his homework. Got to you, make sure you read the article. As we always say, we keep hanging on about that. So I think that's a really important part to consider and just, yeah, again, they're all different leagues. They have their different mindsets. I watched the I F L championship game on Saturday. I'll be honest, I have not really watched a lot of I F L and so for me it was a good experience just for me to get more acclimated to other players who potentially, who knows, might make their way to the xfl or some of these other leagues and sort of be more familiar with the style of the game mean we have as our comrades. Sam Shady will tell you there's a bajillion different arena iterations out there. So it seems to me like it's important to get familiar with some of the bigger, higher end ones like I F L, which I mean it was on C B S Sports Network, it was on a decently syndicated feed there on Saturday. So for me, I enjoy all of it. I don't really care for tribalism. I've said that from day one. I really don't make my points and I'll say what I want to about all these leagues, but I really don't care for all the pitchforks in the fire. So let's get into this. We have kind of an interesting slate of games here. I as previously mentioned out last night, watched the other ones over the weekend here, Andy up in arms about this, Ottawa, Saskatchewan, lots of, I saw lots of coaching, QEs and everything. Evan initial thoughts on this and I have some tweets I can pull up as well. Yeah, so the game last night, right, Ottawa, Saskatchewan. So it's interesting, I didn't mention this one last week as a game to watch my game that I was really talking about was BC and Winnipeg, which, sorry Rita, I know we have to get to that later. It's unfortunate. But anyway, yeah, so the Saskatchewan Ottawa game, this to me, I really thought Ottawa was going to win this game just given the way that Saskatchewan's been playing lately. I didn't think they had things figured out and there were some questionable decision-making in this game for sure. Maybe we can get to that later. But again, this felt winnable for Ottawa and now it kind of feels like there was all this hype a couple weeks ago, Dustin Crumb, everybody coming in, but now it's kind of fading away again and especially in this game, I felt like if Ottawa doesn't win this one, they're kind of right back to that point of, I don't want to say concern or alarm, but they need to do something again, right? They got to pick things up, get things going, but ultimately this was a good win for Saskatchewan and it puts some, I mean Calgary won against Toronto this week, which was surprising but for different reasons. Another game we'll get into, but Saskatchewan with this win I think has kind of really put themselves, I mean four and four, they really do kind of control their own destiny, not, I mean there's many ways in my opinion this could go, they could lose, I haven't looked at their schedule. They could lose another three games in a row or they could win another three games in a row and then we'll have a really good idea of where they're at. I mean, to be honest, even last week I didn't really know where Saskatchewan was, what they were doing, where they were going to go. I had a lot of questions and some of them I think were answered this week in this win for sure. Andy, what do you make here? I've seen a lot of, we're calling for the Mason fines of it all. What did you make of Saskatchewan win here late? Listen man, this all goes on. The coaches in this game, this was abominable. I'll get into the players in a second, but I need to talk about the coaching decisions in this game for a second. This fourth quarter was maddening as a football fan. It was absolutely maddening to watch. So Ottawa offensively really was not doing much this entire game and I think people have figured out Dustin Crumb to a degree and his passing numbers have been low. He was sacked six times. Ottawa didn't get any sacks whatsoever, so their ability to protect him or his ability to just sort of throw the ball away is something that he needs to develop if they're going to be able to move the ball consistently. They were pretty pedestrian on offense overall, but as far as some of the decisions that were made in the fourth quarter, Ottawa was driving down the field. They had this long sustained drive in the fourth quarter and it looked like they were going to take the lead. They were down, they were down 23 to 21 and they get to around the 30 yard line and it's about a second and two and they decide that they're going to throw a V pass to see if they get a big player or a touchdown. It doesn't happen to falls incomplete. This is Tyler worm by the way, Tyler Grom is in because they're going to fake running short yardage. Mind you, it's second and two, the cfl, everyone plays a yard off the ball. So getting a third and one or second and one is almost automatic, right? Well it's second and two now it's third and two, they decided to run a sneak with the piro in the next play. They don't get it. So they get no points. You they could have kicked a field goal and they could have gone up at that point. They would've been up 24 to 23. So there you already have a pretty questionable decision by Coach Bob Deis later on Saskatchewan in their own territory, decide instead of punting the ball away to an offense that really hasn't done much all day. Look, you can argue all you want about execution and process. Some people would argue that the process was correct. I disagree if the other offense, Patrick Mahomes is not on the other side of the field, do you really fear that they're going to move the ball that much? I would've taken my chance and said, let's see you move the ball again. Crumb and I think in that case Saskatchewan made a horrendous error. They went for it on third one in their own territory. They didn't get it. Now they've given a clearly opportunity for Ottawa. Ottawa takes the ball to get all the way down to the one yard line and they don't make it on second down, Down, yeah, that's what I had. This is when they get down to the one yard line instead of going forward and getting a touchdown or just giving themselves, giving Saskatchewan a really long field to potentially get the ball back. They go for the field goal and it's like, okay, well you're up now, but now you've given too much time to Saskatchewan. And then on top of all of this, after all these decisions, they decide that it would be best for them to kick off to Mario Alford, who in my opinion is basically the Devon Hester of this league. He is dangerous. Do not let him have the ball, do not let him have any free reign, free kick, any sort of space to work with and they kick it right to him and he gets it near midfield and possibly could have broken it even further and then they kick that long field goal and take the lead and win. Bob dies. Look afterwards, I said he needs to apologize to the team for what he did. Well he apologized not for the field goal decision, he apologized for kicking it to Alfred on the side of the field. I think he should apologize for all of it. He made three really horrible decisions in the fourth quarter that cost his team. I think that this was just a really bad breakdown in coaching this entire quarter and it really was maddening. The watch the football thing, I think it did a disservice to the players in a lot of ways. So now look, overall I like Bob Dice, but he led his team down here. He was not good in the fourth quarter. Yeah, well it's really the first time we've seen him coop like that. That's why I had this three. I think only we can PPO the cfl see fans to serve only three down can. We can criticize, but otherwise it's not for good. Evan, what did you make of this breakdown? I have a lot of tweet saved calling for both Dickinson and Bob DySIS heads here. Yeah, it's a weird ending and every time I see a team get extremely confident about kicking one of those field goals with over a minute left, I'm just like, no. I think in the moment there's certain people who forget that it's not that hard unless it's a field goal. Let's say if it was 20, I don't know if that was a field goal. If Saskatchewan was to tie the game instead of win it on the field goal, I would get why Ottawa would take a field goal there. But the fact that they knew that if Saskatchewan got in the field goal range and kicked it, that would win them the game. That doesn't make any sense. I mean I get a field goal is a safer option, but they were right there. Even if you don't get the touchdown, then you have to drive all the way down the field and like Andy said, that avoids the whole situation with Mario Walford. You don't even have to worry about 'em because it turns over on down. So yeah, I agree. It was definitely a weird ending and I think in the moment again, people just get too confident that they think we're just going to kick this field goal and it's all about the defense. The defense are going to stop, defense are going to stop. Well, it's not really about the defense getting stop. If the returner takes it halfway up the field and then you've already eliminated half the field, the defense can only do so much in that situation. They have nothing to do with Mario Alford because that's a special teams play. So yeah, I don't know. Definitely a weird ending and I agree. I think Bob Deiss should have taken a bit more credibility Now, the fact that he apologized at all really does say something because you'll get a lot of coaches that will just keep pounding the table. No, I'm right, you're wrong. We thought this through that was not thought through. In my opinion. That was just a weird way to finish a game and to be honest, I mean it's great to see a team win on a field goal. That's obviously one of the more exciting ways to finish a game, but it doesn't feel as good when you knew that the other team made a silly mistake and they could have just had the win right then and there. Yeah, I don't know that last minute in the C F O game just last forever. I mean if you can make completions and I mean there's the whole debate about the three downs and you miss one, you try to maintain momentum going down the field, but if you can get those little completion, those little short little out whatever route thing, you can go the whole length of the field. And so this debate about that, I had the quote here, not to make this a Michael Ball show here, but Andy is Mason, find the best quarterback too in the he is so high on Mason. Fine right now I do feel like it's just this Saskatchewan Hom and I saw that with, I love Rob Vanstone, but a lot of the Cody Fidos last year. A lot of we got to defend our quarterback here. What do you make of Mason? Fine. Four and four rough riders with Harris out. Well, if he thinks one touchdown in four interceptions qualifies for QB two, then I'm really worried about the health of the rest of the league. That's all I'm going to say. I don't think Mason fine's got it. I would call him Mason, fine Mason, okay, Mason, whatever. I don't really care because he's average. We've seen it. We understand who he is right now. This is who he is against a better matchup in Ottawa, which wasn't the same level of defense that he saw against BC in Toronto. He still looked fine, but again, he just wasn't spectacular. I think this is who he is and this is what he is. He's not the best second quarterback in the league. Okay, I'll take Dave Evans over here many days of the week. I know that's saying a lot. I get what we just saw this past weekend, but I would still take Dane Evans in a lot of cases. There's a lot of better quarterback twos than Mason. Fine. Sorry Mr. Ballsy, you're going to have to take a hike on this one. Go find someone else. Where's Dole Gala? I want to see more of Dole Gala too. I'd rather see more of him getting burned than Mason. Fine, because I don't think there's really much mystery left here. I think Dole Gala is somebody that needs to see more of the field and have more opportunities if writers look, I don't know if they're, it's a survival game for them at this point. They've been some crazy games this year also that Calgary game, they almost came back in at home and then lost ultimately on the long field goal. I mean they've kind of living on the edge here. They got to be careful because them and the Stampeders are going to be knifing each other until the finish line to see which one gets in. I mean this bottom tier of the playoffs, it's looking grizzly man. Like I said to everyone on the chat I think on Friday night or Thursday night, I said, look, it's Argos, it's bombers and lions and everybody else is just basically in a giant tussle in a ditch somewhere trying to get out of it. And I think this is really, there's not really much to write home for Saskatchewan. They have a decent enough defense, decent enough special teams, their offense uninspired. Evan, how did our boy sanity do here? Like you said, figuring him out, is the mystery gone right? They lost last week as well near the end of the game. Oh yeah, definitely. And it started last week really, and I was hoping maybe this week you kind of swing that momentum back. But no, I think teams are starting to figure out his game plan and he had a peak, but that peak again is gone and I think, I don't want to say it's gone with the rest of the team. I still have hope, I still have belief, but I do want to talk about some other players in this game transitioning off of, well, I mean we already talked about Mason fine a bit. I agree with everything Andy said. I mean if you think Mason fine is the best QB two in the league. Oh boy, I don't know. I mean either you're a really big Saskatchewan fan or you just haven't watched enough cfl football and look Mason fine at this point, I think this is his third year in the league. It's nothing against him just mean has yeah, this performance was better. This was definitely his best performance as the starter, but the past couple weeks, I mean it was hard to watch him and I think it was maybe last week or the week before I was saying one of the weirdest quarterback performances I'd ever seen from a guy. And that's not necessarily a good thing or I didn't really mean it in a good way, but I agree with everything Andy said. The two things I would take Dane Evans over him any day and yeah. What about Jake Dole Gala because he actually looked good in the touchdown Atlantic game, so dunno what happened to that, but the one guy I really want to talk about here, at least on the Saskatchewan side is Jareth Sterns. Now a lot of people don't know that Jareth Sterns actually signed in the cfl and he was a really big xfl target. I remember Max was singing his praises a while back during the xfl draft. But yeah, I mean Jareth Sterns signed recently with Saskatchewan during the season couple weeks ago. I don't remember which week it was, but signed up there and this was the first game where I think he really saw action and he led the team in catches. It looks like they kind of got a steal here and I was pushing for Stearns to be signed during the xfl season with a couple teams and that was probably the top receiver on my list. So good to see him up in the cfl. Definitely not where I thought I'd be watching him play, but at least he's kind of kick-starting his pro career. He was with the Bucks for a bit and then with the Rams last season and then just looking on the Ottawa side, I think there was somebody here I was going to talk about, maybe not, maybe I was looking at Saskatchewan, well maybe I was going to talk about Sean Bain because he had another nice game and I've really liked his progression this season. But outside of that, I think I just really wanted to talk about Jareth Stearns because everybody knows how much I love Jareth Stearns. Andy, what do you make? I don't know. I think I talked about four and four riders. I don't know what to make of this team. It doesn't feel like they have any identity. I know the Trevor Harris thing really pulled forward. I worry here two seasons kind of back to back missing the playoffs. What do you make of this team overall? Like I said, I think their defense is commendable and they get a lot of pressure on the opposing team's. Quarterbacks, like I said, they got six sacks in this game and they really caused hell for Justin Crumb. Their past defense was pretty good. I mean they only gave up 174 passing yards and overall, I mean you give up 222 total on defense is pretty good. You're doing your job. The only things that really kept him in was turnovers on offense and just this inability to really understand situational football. Again with Dickinson deciding that he was going to go for it in his own territory, it just was a disservice to that defense and they still held their ground and they managed to keep Ottawa out of the end zone somehow. And actually, and that's the biggest thing, Ottawa had three chances inside the red zone. They didn't convert any of them for touchdown, so they clearly have been able to stand up tall against some formidable situations. I mean they did a good job against the Argos last week actually. I really have to say they managed to keep Chad Kelly in check and that was a really big deal for them in Touchdown Atlantic. It's just at some point it just fell apart for them on the other units. But for their offense, again, it's kind of a shame that their receivers don't get more burned. I really like the receiving core. It may not be the top end in the league, but I really like some of these guys. Sean Bain has been excellent. Samuel Emli has a great skillset. I just love the way that he comes out of his brakes when he catches the ball. Jake, I mean he was really nice in Montreal. Really good third option there. I like the receiving core a lot and Jamal Morrow is a solid back. He's a solid cfl running back, but it just doesn't feel like they can really get a lot of this to mesh. Their offense line obviously is still, it's in Fluxx because of some of the injuries and some of the early retirements that they had. Jason Labatt retiring two years ago after Covid because they hadn't played for over a year. And a couple of the other guys that they had, or sorry, Brandon Lab, excuse me, Brandon lab guy, they're tackle who retired from the team and so I think it's unfortunate because they just have a lot of skill position players that I really like, but they just don't have the consistency. They just don't have the quarterback. They haven't had the quarterback, Gerardo, we know just famously did not pan out after last year. He just at some point just broke down and he couldn't really do it anymore for Saskatchewan. I think that's where it all stems from. And again with the coaching decisions, I mean Dickinson's had some really questionable decisions in some of these games, especially in that BC game as well. So I don't know, I just don't trust them. But in a game of survival, I mean they might be able to just kind of etch their way into a playoff spot. That's really what they're trying to do. But as far as contenders go, no, they don't really have any staying power as far as making a run or having anything that they can do in the playoffs. But even when you talk here and we'll get off of this game, we get trucking here on a couple other ones here. Even when you look at this receiving corps and like you said, it's fine, it's fine, but I mean look at BC's receiving corps. Look at Winnipeg, look at Toronto, this is fine. This is a finely built team. You have Mason fine as the quarterback, I don't see anything spectacularly. Yeah, Sean Bain's really good and when he gets the ball but you don't have a quarterback that can elevate any of these receivers. We've seen Edmonton try to elevate the quarterback with better receivers. I just don't see anything here meshing at all. I think that there's going to be a lot of turnover here in the off season. We already saw that going into this season and I think it's going to go even further up and down, but I don't see anything exciting if I'm a Saskatchewan fan, I don't feel excited about this win. I don't feel excited about beating Ottawa like oh, the game came down to the end again, kind of this whole cfl thing. I don't know, I just feel like there's not a lot of faith I would have in Saskatchewan and kind of the leadership there if I'm a fan. Evan, do you have anything else on this? We'll get to the what have we got the TCATs game, Evan? No, nothing else? No. Alright, so let's get over to this. I watched this, I was out or I had weddings both Friday, Saturday, so I watched this on the C B S Sports network on demand or not demand record here. Cody Fudo here, FAL train at the beginning. Andy said kind of having his best Levi Mitchell impression here, coming back, winning really rough first half for Cody coming back. Hamilton kind of falling apart. I have some notes that we'll go to Evan first. What did you make of Taylor Powell, everything else with the tie cats and like I said, yeah, maybe this is why Jason's out today. Yeah, definitely. I thought Hamilton might sneak away with a win here. I was a strong believer in Taylor Powell and James Butler had a pretty nice game, even if it was on limited, carries a big game in the receiving department, but yeah, I don't know. It was just a really, yeah, first half Hamilton looked like they had some momentum and then Montreal just exploded in the fourth quarter and took the thing right out of Hamilton's hands and that was it. That was all she wrote. So I don't know. I mean again, I don't know. Hamilton is just in a, I know they've been in the rebuilding spot for a bit. I think that's safe to say. It doesn't help that the quarterback that they brought in to be the franchise guy has only played in so many games. Even Matt Schultz looked better than him before he got injured, right? I'm talking about Bevi Mitchell now you have Taylor Powell. Similar situation here to Dustin Crumb, a guy who's never played before coming in and is asked to start multiple games now I don't know what the timeline is for what's his name? Schultz, but I can't say I expected a bit more from Taylor Powell because he is only played in so many games, but this was, I don't know this left. Definitely some things to be desired. Now look, three for 200 yards, great completed 20 passes, great. It wasn't all bad, but to be honest, I would take Cody's performance over him in this game despite that first half. But let me just get into some of the players here where I really shine and I'll quit rambling on about things that I don't don't a hundred percent know about, but so if I look at William Stand back will stand back, whatever. We had talked about him last week as finally kind of coming on and I think he had 80 something yards last week or whatever and now he had a hundred yard game first time in forever that I can remember. He's had a hundred yard game, didn't score, but averaged 5.6. So good for him. It's really nice to see him finally get going. I mean, two years ago this guy in my opinion was one of the better all around players in the cfl, not just at the running back position, but I was a big will stand back fan and I still am nothing against him. Austin Mack, I mean how many times have I said his name on this show before continuing to shine, being at the top of the receiving leaderboard? Tyler Snead, no one's really talked about him a ton, but he's kind of come on in recent weeks. Him and Courtney Davis are starting to have larger roles. I don't think Keon Julian Grant played in this game, I believe. Was he on the sixth game? I don't know, But I think he's out. Yeah, Yeah, I know he's out. I read something about that, but I can't exactly remember it. But yeah, and then Tyson Philpot coming back. I think that was a big addition and I mean you talk about, I'd said many times before Montreal lost so many receivers, but now it's almost like they have not more that they can handle, but they just have so many guys that they can go to and I don't think it's necessarily on the same level as BC obviously, just because a lot of these guys aren't as experienced. But I mean Tyson Philpot coming back, he had four catches and then I'm still waiting to see what happens to Greg Ellingson because that was the other guy that we had mentioned for a while and I get he's a veteran now, so probably going to have a limited role one way or another. But I love Greg, he's a great guy and I've had an opportunity to talk to him before, so hopefully see him back in the lineup at some point. And then with Hamilton, yeah, Terry Godwin, another name I had mentioned previously who was a draft pick in the N F L in 2019. Forget which team he went to, I want to say Steelers or maybe Panthers, but he was with one of those teams at some point. Nice to see him catching on, having a larger role. Again, one of these guys first year in the league, it might take a couple weeks. I mean here we are in week nine and he's finally kind of breaking out. So good to see him on that front. And then on defense, I feel like we never talk enough defense on this show or at least I don't, I love offense is my thing. I like talking about offensive players, but Simone Lawrence not a name that I've brought up on the broadcast this year, but back when I covered Hamilton, I mean it was Simone Lawrence, everything. Him and Brandon Banks really. It was those two guys that I was talking about all the time, singing the praises, whatever you want to call it. But yeah, Simone Lawrence in this game, this was kind of vintage and he's getting up there in age. I mean you're talking about he might be in his final season or couple seasons, whatever you want to call it, and especially just given the state of the Hamilton team, is he going to want to move forward in a rebuild? Who knows? I mean the cfl is nowadays, at least it's a short-term league where everyone is kind of on a one year deal. Some guys might be on two year deals if you're really good, but that's another conversation for another day. But yeah, I really was impressed by Simone Lawrence in this game. Really good to just see him out there kind of at full force just given his age. It's just been such a long time since I feel like I've been able to mention him in a broadcast. I guess. Andy, how do you feel here? If you're a TCA fan, how are we approaching this? Because they're in the bi-week now, right? I think I saw JC Abbott had the article that they're going to dress the elephants in the room during the bi week. What do you make here? Attack cast fan. Those are going to be some big elephants and I don't think they're going to like what they see. Look, I think Jason would be the first one to tell you R Jason. Not that Jason r Jason would tell you that it's not happening. This Hamilton team just doesn't have it. Unfortunately they don't have the horses they've needed to rebuild for a while. They kept trying to push all their chips in the middle of the table. They need to blow this up. It's not happening. Taylor Powell, he's okay. He's fine. Nothing remarkable. Nothing to write home about James Butler. I mean, I like James Butler a lot. I wish they would run the ball more. I can't believe they keep trying to make fetch happen with the pass game. It's absolutely maddening that they don't try to run the ball more, especially with Tyreek McAllister. How is this guy not getting the ball at least 10 times a game? He is explosive. I saw him come out of the end zone and they kicked it deep and it was in his own end zone and he ran it out to the 30 yard line. I mean he almost had an equivalent of about 50 yard return out of the end zone to switch up field position. I mean he really needs to be utilized more often. Somebody's got to get this guy the ball in his hands. So for Hamilton, it's not going to happen. And it's unfortunate because they took a big swing on Levi Mitchell. It didn't work. He got hurt, he didn't play well when he was on the field. Obviously they've had Matthew Shilts be hurt as well, which I think would've helped some of it and mitigate some of the problems. But if their defense has gotten worse and worse, they gave up 422 yards to Montreal and it's just not happening for Hamilton. I think for them they have to take a long hard look at a lot of the roster and they might haven't gut it. If Orlando Steinhower is going to be able to stay around, he's going to have to gut the entire roster, which I don't know if he will at this point, if it's going to continue like this. I don't know if he's really going to be walking around these hallways much longer. So for Hamilton, Bob Young I'm sure is immensely disappointed. Obviously he keeps putting in resources and money into this team expecting to win and break their great cup list streak and it's just not happening for them this year in the east as far as Montreal goes, yeah, Gerardo started off really rough. He threw just two really bad picks in the first quarter and then he got over it, but he played much better. He is not taking as many sacks finally, they finally kind of figured that out. That was a big issue early on and he's not taking as many as those now as the season progresses. I think the biggest takeaway here from Montreal is William stand back. He's finally looking like himself and that's great because we were not sure about him last year after his injury. He started to kind of slip away, but he's looked fantastic for them this season. Really happy for him and I think that's a huge key for them going forward, just to have some sort of stability in offense can be expected to do everything, but he's played well enough and probably better in a lot of ways than he did last year with what he has. One guy that I just absolutely still love in this Montreal team is Austin Mack. His run after to the cash ability is fantastic. He had a little turnaround in the first quarter and he just ran away from a bunch of the defenders. I really like him a lot. This receiving corps is really interesting. It's just kind of an amalgamation of a bunch of random guys that all kind of get done. I mean Tyler Snead had that huge game against Toronto and back and forth that they had that one game a few weeks ago and I think they have enough on offense to get it done. Obviously they want, I think put more emphasis on their defense and having that be calling card for this team. But offensively they can just, I guess for me their threshold is like if you could score 20 points, I think you got a good chance to win your game. So for Montreal, I can clearly see them being the second team in the east coming out and probably matching up with Toronto again, maybe in the Eastern conference finals again. We'll see. But I think that's kind of what we're destined for. Again, this Montreal team has enough resources, whereas the rest of the division just doesn't have it together. Ottawa, I really want Ottawa to start stepping it up again, but they're going through a lot of their own issues. So Montreal I think has pushed the right buttons so far this season and they've played pretty well. Even in situations where they're offensively not getting it done or if they just don't seem to have enough on one side of the ball, another side of the ball kind of makes up for it. We got Tim Kaber checking in here, go Als go. He's got to be happy. You got to be happy winning. Winning record here. I had a couple notes. Kote had a couple of bad shanks for Al Wes, he's normally pretty reliable. Milt Stegel was kind of calling for his head at the halftime like, well, if you have a kicker, the can't kick. I liked that he was kind of a chippy game. I mean felt really high stakes in that regard. Felt very divisional, kind of felt that way. They had Jason Moss's keys to quarterback success. You need to be tough, smart, and accurate. That is what he says. Andy is Cody Fajardo Toughs because they basically said Cody Fajardo was tough, which means he's not smart nor accurate. That was the sideline reporter. That was me. What do you make of that? Cody Fdo. You need a tough, smart, accurate quarterback. I mean, meatloaf saw is two out of three ain't bad. Not one out of three ain't bad. So I guess that's not really boating well for Mr. Ferdo. But look, that guy does get beat up. I cannot believe he has not sustained more injuries in his career. That guy takes a licking every time he goes out there, whether he's taking a sack or not. That man just keeps getting body blows. But yeah, maybe Mr. Moss wants to rephrase that wording a little bit for his quarterback. But look, I don't know what else he's going to expect to have out of his quarterbacks besides Verdo compared to the rest of the league. I think they're actually in pretty good standing considering what we've seen this season. I think they should be thinking they're lucky stars that he's out there and he's performing at the level that he is. So for them, I mean yes, he still makes some boneheaded decisions, but he overall is able to make enough plays on offense for this team to be competitive in every game that they play. I haven't seen them really be out of a game. I've seen them be a little bit inefficient. Sure, but I haven't really seen them be completely out of a game. I want to see them play again. Play teams up to the standard like Toronto, Winnipeg, bc. They're not quite in that tier yet. They're below that tier, that echelon of really, really outstanding teams in the league. So they're right below that. I'm not sure what their secret ingredient would be to get to that level. I don't think they quite have the roster for it and I don't think they have the playmaking to really match any of those three teams. But again, Ferdo for what it's worth is going to get you a certain plateau of wins and a certain floor of performance. You may not have as much of a ceiling as you would hope, but I think as far as floor goes, it's going to be better than guys like Mason, fine guys like Taylor Powell, guys like probably Crumb. I hate to say that, but Crumb's still figured all his stuff. He has a lot of upside, but I think his floor is still a little bit low, whereas Fudo is going to be consistent enough that he's not going to get you into a lot of trouble most of the time. Obviously his first quarter was not good, but after that he settled out and figured it out. Evan, anything else on this one? We'll double time the loud, but I want to get to the Chad Kellys of it all. I know Andy's got to head out here soon. Anything else on this one, Evan? Yeah, I don't think so. I want to get to this Toronto game though because that one I think might be, well maybe the most to talk about outside of this Saskatchewan auto game. Andy, do you want to give your 2 cents on this? I know you got to jump off here and then we can, Evan and I can tackle this and then the BC game As far as the Toronto game goes. Yeah, yeah, look, I just hope Chad Kelly comes back and is all right. That was really unfortunate that he got hurt in this game and obviously their offense just completely sputtered. And I have to say this, I got to eat Mike Crow, Mike Mitchell, you were right. This team know how to Calgary knows how to play Toronto. This staff knew Dinwitty, they knew his offensive scheme, they knew his style and they took him to the woodshed, especially after Chad Kelly got hurt. It's a real shame because I thought Toronto was going to play much better. They didn't. Calgary I still think has a lot to figure out, but I mean this was a primetime matchup for them as far as the get right game and they clearly took advantage of it. So I have to give Mike Mitchell's regards. I thought Toronto was just going to straight up out talent this team and completely blow them out of the water because I just thought they had way too many resources. Clearly there's limitations to that, especially when your star quarterback gets hurt. So there you go. Alright, Andy, appreciate it. Get to your meeting. Evan and I will talk about this Evan insane stat line here. Jake Mayer, the efficiency coming back here. We had the Chad Kellys of it all. What did you make of this? This was not what I was expecting. I was at a wedding following this along, was not expecting the 20 to seventh victory with Calgary. Yeah, well, let me put it this way. I think a lot of people are going to say, well, Calgary won because Chad Kelly got hurt for Toronto personally. I think even if Chad Kelly stayed in that whole game, I think Calgary would've still had a pretty good shot. Not going to say they would win outright or by this much, but I think they would've definitely been in the running and probably could have pulled away because yeah, Calgary knows how to play Toronto. Mike Mitchell was saying that and it was just true. I mean, this was Toronto. I mean, you want to talk about coming back down to earth. I mean, this made Calgary look. I mean I don't even think Calgary was that impressive in this game, but it made them look extremely competitive. They could run with the top guys in the league. And personally I still don't think that, I mean, look, I'll talk about the Calgary side first that we can get into Toronto. So I'm looking at Jake Mayer. I mean, yeah, completed 22 of 24 passes. Great, but only threw for 149 yards. Didn't have a touchdown. I mean, yeah, you didn't turn the ball over, but still pretty pedestrian. This kind of shows me that you were being very reserved, kind of short passes. Now, I didn't watch a ton of this game outside of the first quarter, but I will say Dedrick Mills, we had talked about him at the top of the season a bit. It was kind one of the bigger names. I mean, he was the one who really carried the offense in this game more than anybody. I mean, yeah, there were a couple guys being worked in the receiving corps like Tommy Lee Lewis, obviously, who we've talked about too, but nobody really had an impressive game on the STA sheet in that department. I mean, outside of Dedrick Mills, Jake Mayer didn't really have to do a lot, is what I'm really trying to get at here. And I don't know outside of that, I really don't think there's much to say for Calgary. They just kind of got the job done, that's all. It didn't take a lot for them to pull away in this one. Again, once the Kelly injury set in and I mean just all around a really slow day for Toronto too. I mean outside of, well, the most beautiful play in my opinion of probably the whole cfl weekend was that Cam Phillips touchdown. It was gorgeous. I mean, yeah, I'm biased. I get it. I watched Cam Phillips in 2020, whatever, but I mean, come on. How can you not like that? I mean, that was vintage right there. I say vintage Cam Phillips, even though it was only three years ago that he was doing that stuff. But hey, I mean it feels like a long time with the way the world's been and how so many different careers have branched off for certain guys. But no, I think the real big elephant in the room here is Chad Kelly. I mean, we can't talk about this game without talking about what happened to him. I actually didn't get to see his injury, but clearly it was enough to where they kept him out of the game. I think the more surprising part was that they put Cam Dukes in the game over Brian Scott. Now, we'll get into my new endeavors later, but it's been known that Cameron Dukes used to play for the Vegas Nighthawks and that Springboarded, his opportunity to the cfl Cam has been very good in short yardage this year. There's no doubt about that. But I was just kind of surprised to see him. I just don't know if he was ready for this type of opportunity where he had to come into a game and start throwing the ball. Now I wish things were different. I wish Cam went out there and threw for a hundred yards, two touchdowns, whatever. But the reality is there's going to be some growing pains, and I think Naylor was the one who said the one thing nobody talked about during the preseason was who's behind Chad Kelly? It was Cam Dukes and Brian Scott, and then the other guy they had was Reed's best friend Ben Holmes. But that didn't work out either. So yeah, no one really talked about that. And then in this game, I think there were a lot of fans like, oh, who's this Cam Dukes guy? We've only seen him on Shorty yardage a couple plays this season. I was surprised that they didn't put Brian Scott in. I don't know if it was just, maybe Dukes has done a bit more for them. Maybe he's more like, I don't know. Again, Brian, Brian's a great guy. I'll pull for him any day and I thought this was his chance, but maybe right now there's just other things they want to see and they wanted to give Cam his fair shot and that's great. He really deserves it. I mean, cam is at a pretty quick rise to the top here. And to see a guy from the N A I A level who went through indoor football to get to the cfl and is throwing passes, I mean, that's a story I really want to hear about. I don't care if he threw a pick or whatever, only completed half of his passes. I think his rise here is pretty impressive. And that was my positive takeaway from this game. If you're Toronto, I mean, you're walking away from this one thinking, geez, we were on top of the world now things are coming crashing down. Obviously look Toronto's fine. They're in a fine position. This isn't saying their season's over or anything like that, but I think we can use the term humbled here, they got humbled real quick. That's the way the game is this time. Now for Calgary, they absolutely needed this win. I mean, if you're losing this game, regardless of whether Chad Kelly's healthy or not, I mean, you're sitting at what, two and six? And by that point, Saskatchewan, I mean, I was saying earlier, they kind of controlled their own destiny, but like hell, I mean, Saskatchewan would've been in a really nice spot, had Calgary lost this weekend, sitting there at 500 and they got their win against Ottawa. So yeah, I mean then it kind of becomes a numbers game, but all around, I think that's what made this game interesting. It wasn't necessarily the play for some of it. I mean my obviously strong point is talking about players, but for this one it was really more about standings and where guys are and what this means, if that makes sense. No, totally. Like you said, I have the standings here. Yeah, if you're Calgary here and you're two and six, it's terrifying. Terrifying here, especially in the West with everything. A couple things and then we'll pull the band-aid off here and talk about bc. This was interesting. I had saved, and like you said, the stat line can be misleading because it was only for, what was it? How many yards was it for? 104, nine yards. But Jake Meir had the fourth highest completion rating in cfl history. Insane. Insane that I didn't know that. I mean, hell, I mean honestly, that by itself, I will say, yeah, I mean I think people are going to focus more on the yards, but completing 22 passes is not easy. And if you're only throwing 24 of them, I mean, yeah, I don't want to say the yards don't matter, but I can't discredit Jake Mayer again. I've gone on record being a huge Jake Mayer fan, so if anything, I'm going to support the guy here and root for him. And it's nice to see Nathan Rourke on that list too. I will say, and I'm pretty sure, I don't know if that was the game I was at where he went 34, 37, but I remember he had a pretty high completion percentage when I was there last year in Edmonton. And the last thing I'll bring up about this game actually has to do with next week because I'll be seeing Calgary live next week in bc. So looking forward to that. And again, maybe that's why I also found this game more interesting and probably why I was paying more attention, kind of like what should I expect going into next week's game? Yeah, no, anytime we see Nathan work on, we still exist. Nathan, cfl still here if you want to talk to us. The other thing, yeah, looking at the schedule here, what is it? Toronto here, if you want to have a bounce back, I think here, Ottawa at Toronto. I think that'll be good. I think that's going to be rowdy. They're going to be motivated with all that. Hopefully you have a motivated BC team here coming into that. I guess we need to rip the bandaid off here. Are we ready to talk about this BC Lion game? Nore? I'm ready. I just don't know if you are. Yeah, I think this happened last year too, and I need to talk doing these. It was one of the game where Nathan war got hurt and I think we did the same thing. I think we did a pre-game. I'm like, Ooh, this is the big Thursday night. We're getting all excited. And then I get Dorothy, we go sit downstairs and that was the game when Nathan war got hurt. We didn't know at the time. At the time, that doesn't look very good. Ended up being very poor. Let's get into this. I had tweeted and I had many angry tweets. I'll pull up. I needed Evan, my director therapist here of this. I'm fine being a fan because I'm not the Danny Austins of the world, Danny, I'm a reporter. I don't cheer for my team. I cheer, I'm a fan. I just don't want to be embarrassed and put up 50 points against bc. Finally, I had my split screen and the Mariners took priority because at least we came back and won with a grand slam Kade Marlow in the top of the ninth here to win that one. But this was a terrible no good, very bad game. Evan, what did you make of this one? Yeah, I mean there's a lot to talk about and there's also not much to talk about depending on which side you want to take. I remember I was out with Andy a couple days ago and he was saying, yeah, I think Winnipeg is going to maybe beat the brakes off bc. He definitely said they were going to beat him. Yeah, Reid, I agreed with that statement just because I feel like BC was kind of due for one of these games now maybe, I don't know. They went from pitching a shutout to giving up 50 points, so maybe I wasn't expecting that part of it, but they were due for a game like this. And I say that because the reality is, I mean, they've been a good team, they've been a really good team. They've been holding momentum for a long time, but every team kind of has this, and you can just sense, okay, at some point things are going to give out. Look at Toronto. I mean, again, as I said before, Chad, Kelly, whether he gets hurt or not maybe doesn't matter because Calgary has them figured out probably more than maybe any other team in the league at this point. But yeah, ultimately I'll start with the Winnipeg side, the more positive side of this game, at least if you're a Winnipeg fan. So I was really impressed. I mean, look, everyone's going to talk about Zach Claros 369 yards, three touchdowns, but we're used to that at this point. That's just a good Zach Claros performance. I don't really think you need to discuss that much further. And I mean even Drew Brown came in two of 2 78 yards in a touchdown. Mean, Yeah, we saw Drew Brown. Would you ever see Drew Brown? I know Drew Brown, another short yardage kind of guy. You don't really hear about him and not a player I'm extremely familiar with. I think he was at Hawaii and then Oklahoma State, something like that. But then, yeah, what I really want to talk about here is the run game, because as weird as it sounds, I mean they had, even Dakota P Cop had two carries for 21 yards in this game. They just had, I mean if you look, they had Brady Oliveira, their top rusher average 7.4 yards per carry had two rushing touchdowns. Now again, only on nine carries, but still extremely efficient. And then you had two guys below that, Nick Demsky and Dakota Kopp. Like I said, both of those guys averaged over 10 yards of carry, only two carries. But hey, those are still big runs in themselves. And then you had a couple guys after that, nothing too much. Greg McCrae maybe had a couple one 11 yard run it looks like. Then you get to the receiving core and this is where it just explodes. I mean, I don't know if I had mentioned Kenny Lawler at all on this show prior to now or maybe prior to last week, but Kenny Lawler, I mean, has immediately come in and if you thought that this offense already wasn't explosive, I mean Kenny Lawler was just the icing on the cake. Not that they even needed him, but my God, I mean this guy, I honestly thought he might've lost a step and it was going to take him maybe a month to get up to speed. Clearly not clearly. The preexisting connection is still there. This is where he wants to be. I mean, that was a phenomenal, I mean, can't 200 receiving yards in a game on seven catches. I mean, that does not happen very often. And I don't, man, just hats off to Kenny Law. I won't salivate over him for too long, but Daltons another one. He was extremely good last year. Shone was kind of, everyone talked about Nathan Rourke last year, but Daltons Schone was kind of another breakout star, still doing it here in year two. And then you had a deep Rashid Bailey touchdown. Shout out to Rashid Bailey, man, that guy's been doing it for, I don't know how long. He was a division three guy too. And he's crafted. I mean, he's probably making so rare to see a guy from that level have a long pro football career. But the reality is that can happen in the cfl. I mean, Jake Rena is another D three player up in this league, and those guys are killing it. So shout out to Rashid Bailey. Any D three players up in Canada really looking at the defense, I don't know their defense, they only gave up 14 points, but I don't really think there were any players that stood out too much. I mean, DAMA Houston had an interception and he's been dama Houston has been a very kind of steady contributor, I think for that Bomber's D, but now I'll get into the BC side of things, the not so great side of things. I won't be too critical here. Again, like I said, I think this game was just kind of bound to happen at one point. And again, bc the reality is without Vernon, I mean they're dealing with some issues. It's not like they're still a good team, but they're not exactly complete right now. So Dana Evans, we had talked about Dana Evans last week. I said he had a very solid performance, would definitely take him again. But then Dane Evans has these things where you say that and then the next week he goes out and you're like, okay, well maybe I need to take my word back on that. Now again, I still think Dane's a good quarterback. I would take him over Mason, fine. But yeah, this one just, it really left a lot to be desired. And Dane, I think this is the reality as to why he's not starting in the cfl just because there's so much inconsistency. Now, again, it doesn't mean he's a bad quarterback. That's something he can easily work on, and it's hard when you're not getting game reps all the time. It took the Vernon injury for BC to even consider playing him because Vernon was playing so well and we had talked prior to the season. There was a time where Dane, Evans and Vernon, I think that battle was closer than a lot of us maybe expected or how it turned out, whatever. And then you had Dom Davis come in and Dom Davis won eight of 18 for 76 yards. Not a whole lot better. He didn't throw any interceptions, but I mean he didn't necessarily complete a lot of passes and I don't know, one of those games where you just kind of feel defeated, you don't really know what to do. The receiving core, they did what they could. I'll say that it definitely wasn't a great day for them just because, I mean the quarterbacks were only throwing for so many yards, but it was, I mean, what are you going to expect right when you're down, I mean when you're giving up 50 points and then the BC defense, well, there's not a whole lot to say. Bsco la combo was good in this game despite the team giving up 50 points. He had a nice outing. But yeah, outside of that, I mean just not a lot to talk about. I think this is a game if you're BC a fan player, coach, whatever, onto the next one, just onto the next one, don't even think about this because the reality is, I mean, you are going to be running with Winnipeg for that spot probably in the Gray Cup in the west, and I've been saying that for a while now. You can't let this affect your play for the rest of the season. This is a game you absolutely need to move on from immediately. It's embarrassing, it's sucks, whatever. Move on, get on with it. It's life. That's football. I mean you could say that about a lot of teams, but I'm saying this is really important here, this kind of ideology or whatever you want to call it. Because again, BC and Winnipeg, those are the top two teams. I think those guys are going to be in the Western final and there's not much of a question about it. It would take a huge upset for maybe Saskatchewan, which I don't see happening unless injuries depleted team or something. But it would take a really big upset for it not to be BC and Winnipeg playing in that game. And the reality is BC can beat Winnipeg. They did it earlier in the season and it was almost the opposite of what we saw where Winnipeg was on the side of, we just need to forget about it. We just need to move on, get rid of it. And then Winnipeg's had a couple games like that this year, the Ottawa one, definitely a game that you Get off the slate. But yeah, I think if you're a bc, I mean you just really have to, you go on to Calgary, you go on to the rest of the slate and you worry about this again when it's time not, why do we play so poorly? What do we need to do better? I don't really think, yeah, obviously you need to play better. Okay, you give it 50 points, but it's less about them changing the strategy. I just think it's getting back to full health. Maybe you need to recharge again, you need to be humbled. Just like I said about Toronto, it's about being humbled. You take a step back, you look at things at the bigger picture. I have no doubt BC is going to go out next week and beat Calgary. I don't know by how much. I'll say 10 right now. I'm going to be there at that game. So dare I say anything too extravagant. But yeah, no, I think that's kind of where I stand on that game as a whole. And a lot of people are going to look at that and be like, geez, what happened to bc? Things were going so great. Well, they are still great. Yeah, maybe I'm biased, whatever. But I said that about Winnipeg when they lost to Ottawa. Okay, yeah, they had a bad game. So what Winnipeg's still going to be in Great Cup contention. It's not the end of the world. Well, yeah. I got a couple things here. I had tweeted this out because back when we had lost before, not quite as, that was the July 3rd loss. Revisited that because like I said, I'm a fan here. You talked about not wanting to live with this too much. Hey, I'm straight up not having a good time. This is what bothered me was it's one thing if your VA's out Dane, we love Dane. There's a reason why there wasn't a hot market and I think cfl fans tend to hype. Oh, Dane played decently last week. Okay, Dane's here and we have that. Or you could trade Dane and he could go to Ottawa or come back. Dane Evans is still Dane Evans, we know at this point. But my problem with this was our defense was this atrocious. I don't care if Dane throws two A 15 and gets sacked, and this is Ryan Phillips' defense and these guys were just wide open running down the field when they won the toss, opted to keep the ball at the beginning. I said, you better score right now. They didn't. Winnipeg came out where say write two completions through the field score. I'm like, oh my God, we are in for a nightmare here. And the last thing, I don't want to play this, but Rick kind of addressed the room and he said, what? You said, we need to move on. Don't take anything away from this. And I don't like that mentality. I don't like that mentality in baseball where it's, oh, there's 500 games and we lost and I think you need to take away. And I understand that Winnipeg was coming off the buy and they were able to game prep for a week and a half for this. BC had just played and they were a short week and traveling in, but something was wrong there. I don't know if the defense is tired, but I did not like that kind of this hallmark trademark of the BC Lions here as their defense and giving up that much. I just thought it was kind of disappointing. Yeah, well, I mean you're definitely not using the Donut boy's nickname this week, that's all. Definitely not what happened to the donut boys. Thank you. Yeah, well quite the opposite. They had, Hey, the score on the other end finished with a zero. There was just a five in front of it this time. Maybe five donuts. I don't know. We're joking. Anyway, we'll get out of here soon. Not good bc, like I said, looking to bounce back with Calgary. Evan had exciting news. We talked at the top. Anything else you want to share about that now before we get out of here? Your new director position? Yeah, I mean I'll talk about it briefly. Just go over some things that maybe I didn't initially say in my tweet or announcement, whatever you want to call it. Yep. I got position assistant director of player personnel for the Vegas Nighthawks, this type of thing, personnel related has been in the works for a couple months now. I've definitely, I'm trying to, excuse me, transition a bit I think out of media. That doesn't mean I'm giving up anything right away. Don't get too excited. Right after I put out this tweet, I said, look, before anybody says anything, this doesn't stop. My xfl coverage doesn't stop anything else I'm currently doing. It might shift some things. I'm going to be putting more time into different things now and this is going to keep me extremely busy through the next year. We got to start building the team pretty soon. I F L season starts in March. But yes, so just to clarify some things, this is a remote position. Alright, I'm working in school. I'm going to be out in Vegas at some point, but I'm not living out there while I'm building this roster. This is all done through databases and just remote virtual work and things like that. I'm not going to go into too many details, but yeah man, I'm really excited. Again, this was something in the works for many months and I think just I've always had a great knowledge of players. That has been my one thing that I think has separated me from certain people in this space and having the opportunity to get players together and build a team. I mean, I think this is what a lot of people dream about. I mean if you're a kid and you're playing Madden and you're building your franchise on the Madden game, I'm doing this, but it is in real life and I don't really care what league it is. I mean I was out in Vegas at the I F L xfl combine and I won't go too much into that either. I've already talked about that a bit, but I think I was out there and just kind of finalized everything. I had talked to a couple teams about this sort of thing. I believe it or not, I was talking to some cfl people at one point. I won't name names or teams, but I was talking to some guys in the cfl and maybe I realized I wanted to step down a bit and just kind of have a position with a different league where I could maybe do more because the reality is right now I have the title of assistant director of player personnel in the cfl I probably would've just been a regular scout, which is fine, but the opportunity really wasn't there anyway, so this is going to be awesome, man. I'm really looking forward to this. And again, there might be some things that I have to keep quiet about nowadays and whatever, but I mean, yeah, it's time to get to work. I was saying earlier if I wasn't working hard before this, I'm definitely going to be working hard now. So this next year, while it's going to be fun, I'm putting my head down and we're really doing a proper evaluation of a lot of things I guess. Well, I guess at the top it's exciting. I think it's cool that people, and this is all these leagues, cfl X L U S L, it's guys and girls covering this, they're passionate about it. That's why we choose to do it and it's cool to see people that want to take a step into this and it's always been your interest to be able to transition. So I think that's exciting and obviously we're all super excited for that than anything you need to do. But that's great. Like I said, you couldn't say enough how proud and everyone is and just seeing what it's been two, three years of this journey of all of us on together in our group and so we're very excited for that. I will get out because I'm sure Evan's got stuff to do as well. Go scout players big week here. I think we have Elks to the slaughter. Hopefully I don't see that. That would be the story. If the Elks refers what would it be? 22 game losing streak on that. But it's exciting. It is exciting week. We'll see. Anything else, Evan, before we go, I got to figure out what we're doing. I don't think the Elks, Winnipeg deserves the pregame show this week, like the Elks bombers did last Week. Yeah, I mean I don't know. I'm definitely looking forward to the Calgary BC game because I'll be there and I don't know, I don't know if it's the most intriguing matchup of the week. I'm definitely interested to see how BC bounces back I think is the key thing over everything really. The game I'm looking at, I know you had mentioned Ottawa, Toronto, but honestly I think Saskatchewan, Montreal is kind of one of these underrated ones that might slip under the radar just given Saskatchewan kind of finally pulled through this week and we'll see. I feel like either this is going to be a really close game or one of these teams is going to pull away early. I think that's kind of my take on that, but definitely one I'll be having my eye on out of that slate. Pat has a funny comment here. Yeah, we have Trey Ford now getting to play I think morally, Scott reported he's going to be starting. Trey Ford, going to go four. Tds Dakota, we've got masterclass taking the victory away from it. Yeah, this is a Trey Ford season here. Hashtag free Trey Ford, Justin Duncan, all of that. Really appreciate it Evan. That should be a good week. Like I said, like and subscribe. We'll figure out what we're doing. I got some emails to send here, but that'll be it for me and Mr. Director here. We'll check that time and I hope Jason feels better. I think thoughts of prayers, Jason with his under the weather so we, I'm sure he'll bounce back, but maybe just a poor tie cast performance. So anyway, we'll see you guys next time. Thanks.

LIVE CFL Week 9 Pre-Game Show, BC Lions at Winnipeg Blue Bombers + CFL Week 9 Preview!

Well, happy Thursday here. Special Thursday live episode. I have a wedding to film tomorrow and Saturday, so I appreciate our guests making time today. Exciting day. Anyway, football is back apparently we had a little rant about that. Kudos to Andrew Murray for coming up with this meme and I retweeted that here. Now if I see, I don't know what we've been podcasting about on here for since February here, 18 weeks in a row or whatever with Pat and Andy and Evan and Jason and everything else, but we are talking cfl today. We have a special guest. I'm excited for this one. We have Bryson best neighbor here from P F F. How are you doing sir? I'm good. Thanks for having me. This is good. Are you glad that football's back today? Yeah, I I've heard that too. I know I've been watching football for the last, what, nine weeks now, so it's been back for a while for me, but I'm excited for the N F L to kick off too. It'll be good. Yeah, I feel like that's how Canadians feel like and now it's like I'm welcomed into that outside here today, normally quiet in our backyard. We have Seafair this weekend so the Hydroplanes and everyone's practicing so they've rerouted all of air travel over at my house this weekend, so we will be muting here as we need be. But Bryson, how are you enjoying the season? What do you make eight weeks into the cfl? Yeah, I've, I've been enjoying it a lot. I think this has been an interesting season. I think some things have gone the way I thought they would, other things, but I think it's been exciting to see some of the teams. I've been pretty excited watching Chad Kelly in Toronto and that whole team and it's been a surprise for me for sure, but it's been fun. Yeah, we kind of got into this with the xfl and we had the canceled season and come back. It felt like that was, what was it, 2021 was a little rough, right, it felt like last year. Do you feel like the cfl is getting back up to speed now? Kind of. We've had some more exciting games. I mean obviously the quarterback injuries and all of that, but do you feel like it's getting back up to what you expected? I think so, yeah. I think the last couple years since it cancellation has been a little rough. The year off was hard for everybody. The cfl, it's not the same quite as the N F L where they can train all the time and do the same kind of level of still playing if the N F L is canceled. But yeah, I think this year know again what the third year since the cancellation, I think it's starting to ramp back up into the old levels of play, so I'm hoping that I'll continue. So the exciting thing this year obviously was P F F getting involved with the cfl and I know I think even with the xfl and stuff this year it was kind of like how many resources are we devoting to this? Can you talk about you guys and getting involved with the cfl this year? Sure. So it's actually been a multi-year process been, I want to say since 2018 maybe that we've been working on this. It started out with cfl teams wanting our college data so that they could use it for scouting and for getting guys from the states that were making the N F L to come play up here. And then as they found our data, they were like, Hey, maybe this would be good for our league and we were going to, I think it was going to happen and then Covid hit and so 20 years we were going to have it and then they couldn't do it because the cancellation season and then the last couple years they've just been focused on getting back into the actual season and running the league itself was. And this year finally they were like, all right, we we're settled in enough, we could get you guys to come in here and partner with us. Does it strike you as the cfl A little slow moving when it comes to some of that stuff and getting everything on board? Yeah, I mean I think just look at the live stats issue right now, it's as proof, but I think I'm glad they're doing it and I, they've been very, very great. Obviously it took them a while but I think once they got it, they've been super nice. They've been very gracious for us and wanting us and partner with us, so it's been a great partnership so far. Yeah. What kind of reaction has it been for them having you guys on board and what kind of feedback are you getting? Lots of positive I think, I don't know what it is, but I think we've just been getting a lot of positive reviews. They love the work we're putting in, we love what they're doing with us and using our info and putting it out there and then they love the content we're doing and a lot of the fans are loving it too. So I've gotten pretty much all positive reviews from it so far, which has been fantastic to see. Well I like cfl and I've gotten back and I've gone back and forth with them a little bit here in the last couple weeks staying with the xfl and the usfl. I just wish some of these and we call cfl Alt football and I know that they get all in their reers about that, but anything, and we're here, we're talking BC Lions at Winnipeg here before the hall of fame game, but these alternative leagues, let's work with some of these creators and what you guys are doing and when it's the N F L, it's okay, we're going to go kind of walk wherever we want and do whatever we want, but I like that and them kind of relying on that, what do you make of the whole stats issue this year anyway where them and it's like the genius sports and they were trying to do it and it worked before and it doesn't work now. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I don't want to criticize too many people for this, but I mean obviously it's an issue, it's almost halfway through the season now and they don't have live stats, they don't have old stats on the site. It's trying to get those stats as an issue. I should have download A P D F to see the stats every week and read through that. So I mean I hope that what's coming is great, but I wish it was happening how I wish they had figured this out during the off season and then had it working week one. Well it was interesting to me and obviously we do the xfl stuff, I was reached out to by some of the C CFL people, like, hey, what are they giving you guys? What is their weekly, what does your media portal look like? What are the things they're providing seemingly to me that hey, to figure, let's incorporate if there's any good ideas. So yeah, I certainly not I, I've had the xfl for it had faults whatever this year and so did the US F L getting game summaries out and stats out and getting all that stuff and the app worked. If the xfl's able to do that a season in, I mean know we've, we've come back and forth with fixing the cfl from the xfl standpoint, but in terms of major storylines you're tracking right now, you mentioned Chad Kelly, what do you have your sights set on this season so far? Yeah, I think before the season started especially, it was all about ROS for me and could he do three straight MLPs? He's won two in a row. He's been the best quarterback in the cfl for a couple years now. So watching that and then Chad Kelly came in and kind of took the lead by storm and has been playing very well. So kind of watching him, Vernon Adams too, obviously he's been playing super well before the injury, so seeing him finally hitting his stride a little bit after being in the cfl so many years and having issues. I mean injuries have always been kind of his issues, but if you can get back to healthy, it's good. I mean the cfl is such a quarterback driven league that it's going to always be a lot of quarterback storylines on defense. I think the Matthew Betts and the SAP record is kind of the one I'm looking at to see if he can do it or not. He is kind of right on track there right now. So watching that And obviously we'll talk a lot of BC here and kind of everything else for the weekend and I got the schedule pulled up here, we can do that as well. But in terms of BC and this defense, how dominant of a defense is this that we're seeing here with Ryan Phillips coming in through what through the season now? It's great. I mean they've been playing super well obviously I know they're leading in a lot of the categories right now for defense. They got a wicked pass rush. Obviously Betts is good but they got other guys too and the secondary is good. Gary Peters that corner. It's been fantastic. So I think having guys that on the outside and on the inside that can do damage has been great for them. So they're the real deal. It's weird. We we've tracked on here and I think it was Farhan who was saying earlier in the season, the cfl is such a kind of win now league and that BC and Phillips was the what the code defensive coordinator, whatever a couple years ago and now we're building up and it just seems like the depth that BC has on both sides of the ball. But Vernon goes down, we've got Dane comes in, we haven't had even all of the wide receivers ready to go. What do you attribute the team building behind BC in general and how it just seems like they have a wealth of resources where some of these teams are struggling right now. I think they kind of looked at the league and said with the CFL especially top guys are good but you need depth because the top guys go down if you've known to replace 'em with the dropoff is pretty steep for some positions If you lose a starting left tackle, look, if they lost Broxton for example, they'd be kind of screwed or at right tackle and I think having the depth has been key for them and they've been doing a good job of building that up and making sure that they have guys that are backing up that if they need to start they can start. Obviously Dane Evans is an example of that, right? He's the backup and he's going to be the backup when Veon comes back, but right now he's one of the best quarterbacks in the league the way he's playing. Are you scared about Dane here tonight with Winnipeg's defense? A little bit. I think he's had a good few games but he's played some not so great teams kind of taken advantage of some lesser defenses and Winnipeg has a good defense and has a good pass rush. So I a little scared of it but I think he could do okay. I think it's the worries that he tries to do too much and starts forcing the ball and try to make too many plays himself and that's where it'll go. It'll get bad for him. I mean we saw even last week where not having, and I don't know if Vernon, I mean they always say Vernon's is more athletic. I don't know. To me Dan always seemed like he, he's as athletic but I guess not in terms of him being able to get caught a little bit more last week and it seems like BC struggled kind of keeping him upright all the time against Edmonton, so I'm kind of worried what that's going to look like tonight with Winnipeg and they've talked Winnipeg's defense not be, it's kind of varying degrees down here and now in a couple years from the elite it was maybe two years ago. Do you worry about that seeing how Edmonton and Rena and everyone that was able to get to Dan last week? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's true. Obviously with OPEC's defense it's the same defense from two, three years ago. It's getting older, same with their whole team is getting older and slowed down but I mean Jefferson is still one of the best pass masters in the league better than anyone at Edmonton. So I think that is a worry for if you're BC of and I think you're Evans is underrated for his athleticism, I think he can move. I not quite Vernon, Adams Ken but not that far off but I do worry just about Winnipeg, the defense being able to get to a little more than at Edmonton could have been, they did pretty well Edmonton, so definitely a worry. So we're not seeing Adams tonight riding, Rick said that it was short week was part of it and obviously kind of giving him that break. What we've seen with Vernon so far. I was really scared him coming into the season and we love Vernon and friend of the show and everything, but he gets a little panicky and we saw obviously the six interceptions against Toronto. What have you made of a VA so far here and what you've seen? Yeah, I mean if you take out that game he's been playing phenomenally, obviously that was a tough game but I think that was just a case of him getting in his own head and a little bit of a trying to force it way too much. I think noticing what he's done this year, definitely. Again, I take it out that game he's toned down, the force passes the into double coverage kind of looks and his turnover throws are way down compared to what they were last year even when we graded them. It is time when he played last year. So I think just he's become more of a passer, which has been nice a little more and he's always been accurate. I think just keeping that up and not forcing too many bad throws into any boneheaded decisions again if you take out that one game. Yeah, I feel like with him, what was it was I think the first Edmonton game before it got blown out of the water there but they him trying to just force pass more, I think he needs to still be able to utilize his mobility where like you said, even if it's 10% whatever, better than Dan Evans but him for forcing more of that. But to me it was watching Russell Wilson in Denver last year and I, I've lived in Seattle and watched Russell my whole life. Russell's not the pocket passer, he got around the round and scramble and all that. Do you think they're hitting a good balance with that? Yeah, I think it's a good comparison because I think he's similar to Russell where he doesn't want to move out of the pocket to run but he needs to leave the pocket to make more throws, get out moving, get on a pocket, get on the roll, get outside the pocket, plant his feet and throw rather than scrambling. But I think they sort of figured that out and I've always said with a lot of these cfl quarterbacks, if you could design your offense around them, you'll be better If you try to force him into a different offense, he's not going to be good in a straight up drop back system but if you get to move it and they've done a good job of that this year, so I think that's sort of why he's been a big reason why he's had the success so far that he's had. Yeah, it seems last year coming in it was rough, a rough spot for him with Rourke and everything and obviously they had a lot of tools they do now. Are you seeing anything different this year? Like you said, is it more of the offense now that he's had a year with it and they kind of know that he's going to be their guy? I mean he has similar traits to Nathan in terms of being able to run and do stuff. What do you attribute him having more because like they won some games last year but it was rough with Vernon in there last year. Yeah, for sure. I think obviously he didn't play terribly in those games but he definitely was a step down from how work was playing and I just think yeah a whole year in the system knowing that he's the guy, they had the whole off season with him and they knew that all right, he's going to be the guy as long he proves it and he did. So I think just getting in that system and getting more familiar with the guys and the system and playing out he wants to play. I think it's been helpful. That's why sort of he's been so good. In terms of we saw the dominant performance last time at BC at Winnipeg, are you obviously Winnipeg making adjustments? What are you expecting tonight coming in? Yeah, I definitely don't expect Winnipeg to score six points only at this time. I think they'll make some adjustments. I think obviously that week was just the pass rush of BC got to them and cos couldn't get anything going so I do think that they're going to adjust with that. I think it'll be better. That line is getting older but they're still good Winnipeg line so I think they'll be okay. I think there'll be some pressure but not nearly as much as there was. I don't think it'll be a blow either way. I think it'll be a close game. In terms of Calleros here, few years in now, what are you seeing of him now and is he still playing at that elite level like you said expecting? Were you looking for another third m o p season with him? Honestly I think he's been playing better this year than he has in the past. He had a rough stretch but I've always watching him last year in the last couple years he's always been just a chuck it down field and no throws at that throw for him. So he had a lot of these, these big time throws where he was throwing at 40 yards for touchdowns but he also had a lot of interceptions with that, a lot of turnover throws because he was just forcing it into double coverage he wanted to throw deep This year his turnover throws are way down as low as he's ever had, but his big time throws are still way up so I think he's sort of figuring out when to take the big shots and when did not take them and he's been playing super well. He had a rough stretch after that BC game obviously, but then since then he's been lights out again so I think is he's having one of his best seasons In the limited time that we've been following the cfl and covering it. It's been Winnipeg's world seeing BC at the top of the power rankings right now and the standings isn't new and very welcoming. I have my BC hat on, I call them America's cfl team, so excited for that. But were you surprised at the leap that BC took this year? I mean obviously they had a lot of momentum last year and the roarke and everything else, but I didn't really know what to expect this year. Are you surprised that they've been as dominant as they are? I'm not surprised. I think, I guess surprised at they're first. I didn't think they'd beat Winnipeg in that game. I thought Winnipeg would still be the class of the west, but I thought BC would be good. I thought that Vernon Adams would a was good enough that he might not be at the level that Nathan work was last year, but he still good enough that that team was so stacked around him that he could play and do well and the defense was so good as well. So I don't say I'm surprised they're this, that they're good. I might be surprised that they're this good early on if they win tonight. I'd be surprised just because early on winning against a good team twice it's pretty tough to do. I saw, I think Winnipeg, they just tweeted that they've sold like 30,000 plus tickets tonight, which is I think tremendous for a Thursday game here. Is that a good number? Are you impressed with that? Yeah, I Am. I it's anywhere you go unless you're Saskatchewan, that's a high number, right? Saskatchewan's always going to sell out their games and have numbers and even Winnipeg too, but bc yeah, everyone getting those numbers is good. In terms of are you expecting Winnipeg to bounce back tonight? Like you said beating a good opponent like that twice in a row? Yeah, if I had to pick, I'd pick Winnipeg just because I do think that this early the season try to beat a team twice. I think Winnipeg will have their number but I mean it wouldn't be shocking if BC won again. They're playing that well. What adjustments do you expect from Winnipeg tonight? Just knowing how dominant BC was before? I think a lot more quick passing a lot more. I think that was an issue was getting the was reps took too long to go and the pass rush got home so I think they're going to adjust the offense to sort of help out the pass rush and quick pass. I mean they got Kenny der back that's big obviously Dalton shown is great and they've got the weapons to do it so a little more quick hitters not so much long developing place that'll take the pressure off the a little bit. We mentioned before Matthew Betson just even watching him last week, chase was at Cornelius kind of around the playground, just the athleticism he has. Are you impressed with how good he's been performing this season? Yeah, I didn't see it coming right. I didn't think I had it on my top five edge rushers. I didn't thought he was good but I mean not like that, not this great and he's been probably the best pass rusher all season obviously aside that he's getting the stass but he's also just getting other pressures, getting hits, right? Winning his pass rush snaps. So I mean he's been phenomenal and it's been awesome to watch him. Yeah, I mean because been a couple where even if he's not going in and getting the sack, he's kind of able to stand there and target and then if Cornelius or whatever is running really I guess for him there in terms of Edmonton, obviously having the bi-week right now, which is probably a good thing for them to have. Yeah, we've seen offensive coordinator change come out. I think that was Monday as we went live for the show. Are you surpri surprised or not with how poor Edmonton's been this year? Kind of similar to bc, the opposite. I thought to be bad, didn't think they'd be this bad. I thought knew they'd struggle but to be like, oh at eight that's tough. I didn't think they'd be winless at this point. I think I watch them. I don't think they really have any identity. They don't know what they're doing, what they want to be and you're not going to win games if you play like that. We've had a lot of the coaching salary cap and I had posted last week, let's fix this salary cap issue before we add temp team, let's try to get some of this stuff. Do you blame it on that? Do you blame it all on Jones? Is it like the culture that was there before? I mean it was bad with Jaime before when he came back to the xfl. What do you attribute just, it just seems really seems like it's a dumpster fire right now. Yeah and I don't know if there's any sort of one person to blame or one thing to blame. I think it's a combo of all of it. I think obviously the coaching cap is stupid and it hurts the league I think. And I think you're right. I would rather take that out before getting a 10th team in there just because it's hindering the league. But I also think Jones has not been coaching well and then I think the whole and the team itself doesn't have a ton of talent. Again, it's a quarterback league and you've got Cornelius and whether or not he could be good, he's not good right now. His confidence is shot. I don't think starting him is useful at this point I think. I don't think I like Cornelius. I don't think he's great but I think he can be effective in a certain offense but I think he needs to just sit for a bit and just get himself back into it. Right now you watch him out there, it looks like he doesn't want to even be there sometimes. Well it really fell apart that the second half last game where it felt like they came back from halftime now I guess, right? He's going to be shorty yardage, we've got Aggy coming in and then Trey Ford. Are you surprised we haven't seen more Trey Ford this year? Especially after, I mean he had success last year before the injury. I think. I just don't see why not, right? I think you're o and a obviously Cordio working. I mean know they say well in practice Cordio is looking the best and that's why we keep playing and I get that but at some point it's like it's not working in the game so maybe just put forward out there for a couple series and see what he does. I don't know what the worst thing that could happen is you lose again. Right. I just don't see why they're not even at least trying to chase something up. And I like going with IESs fine. Dougie's been playing okay, but I don't see why not just try Trey Ford for a game and just see what happens. In terms of, you've followed the league a lot longer than we have historically. How poor are the Elks performing right now? Very. I've never seen anyone this bad. I mean to get shut out this twice already in a year and just the way they've played to be in these games and barely ever are they even close to being in the games? I watch the games and I'm like, oh if they've already lost this right? There's been maybe two games all year where they've even kind of been in it. So I, it's been a struggle to watch them play and it just, I don't see any positivity. I think they'll win a game this year. I don't think you go oh at 18. But it's hard to imagine 'em winning a game right now. The way they're playing. This is a stupid question, but has the team ever gone to oh one 18? No, not that I know of. Okay, alright. Well I said we're the new, it was last game. I mean they weren't even touch the red zone, I mean the entire game. It's remarkable to think, I know they had that one long field goal attempt that went poor but to not even be in a situation where you could score the, I'm trying to explain to my wife how challenging it is to get shut out. Not once but twice, but I Do you attribute that, I mean I know it is probably both, but what do you attribute it more to BC's dominant defense or them just being inept offensively? Yeah, I think it's definitely both. I would probably go 60 40 on it, just being Edmonton leading that. I think obviously they're bad and BC's good so that's why there's zero points and not seven or 10 but Edmonton just, they're not scoring anybody really and they're not moving the ball well and if they do move the ball well that's going to end with a bad turnover at the goal right at the goal line, stuff like that did a couple weeks ago. So just things like that and I just, they just not play well and I think this bi week's coming at a good time and hopefully they can figure at least something out. How bad do you feel for Victor Que and kind of the rest of the staff there? Where here we've seen the mark come in and I mean even Gary Stern back when he was involved in this, it helps to have a team win and you can run promotions and have on field suites with TVs and couches and what does, I think I saw that some of the BC players jumped in them and they were sitting on there and there for one of the celebrations, but you can do all the things in the world, but if you're not winning, how do you feel about the rest of the staff there in Edmonton? I feel awful. I mean the 21 wins in a row or lost in a row at home. That's so bad and I think for the staff and for even the people working for the organization, how do you sell tickets when you haven't won in three years at home and you're not showing any signs of it of possibly happening. That's kind of the thing. If they were close to these games and losing close games, you could say maybe, okay, they're right there. There's a few things here and there, but they're not, they're just not getting close to these games and so I just don't know what you do and I feel bad for the staff because you're right, even just one win would change the morale and to not have any is tough. We got a couple comments here Tim. The 1949 Tiger cast when Owen 12. Okay and then Max of course is our fact checker here. Yeah, worst was Hamilton going one in 17 in oh three Modern era also we got our co-host here, Jason Huey checking in from our Monday show and Sauce boss asking where's Jason? Evan, that's the Monday show we're the special, like I said, I have a wedding tomorrow so Bryson is happy enough to come on today and kind of do this. I don't have to give up at seven tomorrow and post all this stuff. We we're filming all day. How do you feel about the health of the cfl right now in general? Because we have some high heights and I want to, we'll talk Toronto and all this, we'll move through the rest of the games but we have some high heights but then obviously you have Edmonton and even Hamilton's kind of a dumpster fire a little bit right now even coming off a win. So how do you feel about the cfl as a whole? I am optimistic cautiously. I think it's tough now and I think they need good system because I think now with the xfl, the U S L sticking around, that's a lot of talent from down south that's going to stick around there and not come to Canada. So I think that's going to be an issue for them if they don't sort of figure out the game and I think it's going well. I, but I do think it's tough when you got teams Hamilton Calgary's not look so good. Obviously ton's bad and the top teams aren't good but if it's the same teams every year it's hard to establish anything. If you just got Winnipeg, BC and Toronto every year. How do you feel about Commissioner Ambrosio right now? Because obviously stats aside, it seems like the c l season's going pretty well. Yeah, I mean I see D dunk reporting demographics are up and ratings are up and I have my own thoughts about the cfl plus and everything here in America, but it seems like it's been a pretty not controversy free whatever. Not that there's a lot of ever controversy in the cfl but it feels like it's how do you feel about the state and Ambrose and everything else? I think obviously the stats thing is an issue and we touched on that and he needs to figure that out. But other than that, I mean I had to touch out on medic last week that was by all accounts a huge success going down east so I think it's good and I think part of it is that the game is kind of trending back up to what it was it used to have. The whole point of cfl is exciting games, they come down to the wire, it's like it could be anyone's game in the last three minutes and they're getting to that point where these games are exciting leading up to that and then at that point you don't want to gain as boring until the last few minutes. You want to gain as exciting all the way through and it's still exciting at the end. We've had a couple of those games right now that have been super exciting and I think that's just after the covid year the plays picking back up so I think having that has been helpful. Just like to sell the league on as an exciting league. I don't know if three down just got, I don't know if they're bored this week and I mean I know we're coming off of the touchdown stuff. I've seen a lot of articles posted about the expansion like Hodge is talking about. There's a couple different sites and I just saw Rod Peterson was talking with AJ Jackie Beck about how there's certain ownership that's more interested. One of our friends Todd had just posted over in our cfl Chatter Facebook group that the touchdown of Atlantic sold out took 72 odd days. You had 6,000 tourists coming in so it wasn't like it was this overwhelming local response for that. What do you make of this 10 team nonsense here? Because it really, I think it must just be the game was last week but it's really picked up here on my feed. Yeah, I think it's picked up because of the game last week and obviously there's been talk of that for years now and I do think that the 10 team, it's kind of ridiculous that we have nine teams, an odd number and there's a crossover just get a 10th team. But yeah, I mean you got to find a place that wants it and like you said the Atlantic was a success but I don't know how much of it was local and how much of it was just anybody in that sort of area out eastern, the eastern Quebec that just came up for it that would go to a game every game if they had a team there, they just went for the one, the once in a season game. Well yeah, I mean because even Saskatchewan mean they're big travel here coming out. I mean they're of anyone is like, hey we'll travel we'll come out for our team, right? Yeah. Well and that's kind of the thing, you put Saskatchewan in it, they're going to, half the fans are going to be them traveling. They do that every week to every game so it, it's a good look for them but it's an easy look if you put Saskatchewan in that game because on the other hand they put Toronto in the game so Toronto has no fans. Wow. Hey now, so let's talk here. I want to talk and we can touch on any more BC seven at the end if we want, but this Toronto Calgary game, this feels like it's going to be a bloodbath. I think Mike Mitchell took the upset and said that he thinks Calgary is coming in here. I mean Toronto historically. Great. I know Jason had just posted a video on his YouTube channel about how good they are in the history of kind of the cfl and the Argonauts franchise. What your thoughts on this game coming in? Yeah, I mean like cfl, anyone can win but it's hard for me to find a way to see Calvary winning this game. I just think that they're struggling pretty badly and Toronto really has no weaknesses right now. I think Toronto, if they're going to lose is going to be just having an off game against a good team. I don't know if, I don't know even the worst game is enough to lose to a bad team. I think that the way they're playing and the depth they have all around and I don't think Calgary's a great team. I think Jake Meyer's been struggling the run game, they've just given up on that the last two weeks defense has been hit or miss so I don't know if they could do it. In terms of last week Toronto Kelly didn't have his best game, probably his worst game of the season mean do you attribute that? Is that just jet lag coming in? I mean they were off played their worst game here with only scoring 31 points but it still wasn't even the close. I mean what do you attribute the weak performance of Toronto last week? Yeah, I was and I tweeted that it's crazy that they had by all counts their worst offensive game and they won 31 to 13. That's how good they've been playing. I think it could just be travel off week. Kelly is like, he's still new to the game to the cfl. So as well as he is been playing, he's going to have games where he's not just going to be on his game totally. He is very new to the cfl so I think it could just be a combo of that and Saskatchewan would showing up to play and playing well but I'm not concerned for it any long term or anything. I think it'll bounce back this week. Are you surprised with how quickly it feels like Chad Kelly's been able to pick this up and mean we saw a little bit last year, but we talk him with this talent struggle now with the xfl and the U Ss F L and like nailer saying it takes three, four years to really come in and be a cfl quarterback. I mean Cornelius, god knows we've had multiple years here to figure it out, but are you surprised that Kelly's exceeded as well as he has so far? Yeah, for sure. I think that I say about him is that the tools that he has is built for the cfl, right? The strong arm, the mobile feet, that's what you need for a wide field and the three down system. But it was always the mental game. It's getting those passes off and finding the 12th defender and getting through the coverage. But definitely surprised at how he's been playing. I thought he'd be good. I didn't think he'd be this good. I thought he'd he'd have some more issues. But I do, I credit a lot of it is that Toronto's offense is designed very well around him and they run the ball a lot, run the ball very well and it puts him in fortuitous situations which helps him. He runs the ball well. So just having an offense that designed what he's done with that offense has been fantastic and it's really helped him transition a little easier than he would've been if he got just thrown into the wolves. In terms of someone here and it's not even really a sophomore slump, I mean he played kind of whatever when Bo got hurt back two years ago and the mayor last year taken over. I don't know if the moment's too big for him mean what do you attribute that Jake Mayer's kind of struggles this season? Yeah, it's similar to what I saw last year with him. I think he's an accurate quarterback but he doesn't like to push the ball down field and then when he does he can make some questionable choices with it and accuracy wise, he's not always there, doesn't read the field super well. I think it was tough the last two weeks, I guess the last two weeks before last week he had a good stretch of two games. He looked good, he was making throws, he was looking pretty good. And then last week he had his worst game of the year, just chucking it up to everybody had the worst grade of his season and our games had four turnover throws. So I don't know, I mean don't know if it's a mental thing or it's just like he can't quite figure it out but it's been like I wish he was, I wanted to be good. I wanted every quarterback to be good at his best when they've got a bunch of good quarterbacks. So yeah, I don't know. In terms of him, we were talking on the show on Monday where Calgary has rested a lot on their laurels the last few seasons and they really haven't been in elite team since pre pre pandemic even I think it was 20 18, 20 19. How do you feel like Calgary is standing right now in the world of the cfl? Yeah, I think you're right. I think they're a team that people, if you mentioned Calgary, the cfl fans, they're like, yeah, Calgary, they're pretty good. Always pretty good, but you're right haven't been good for a few years now and they don't look very good at all this year. They're two and five, they're not good. And I think the perception is there, but the play on the field, which is, I mean I don't know if that helps 'em or if it makes 'em worse, they kind of feel content like oh we're like we're right there, but then they're not. Well especially here, I mean the west this season obviously Edmonton's kind of the freebie here but the rough riders and I want to talk about them as well because certainly issues with quarterback and all that. But yeah, it just feels like they've continued to slip here for years and I really don't know. I thought they were poised this year, mayor coming in, like I said, I don't know if the moment's too big injuries, do you attribute that and as many people as they've had to go through in terms of for the Calgary side, A lot of injuries, which has definitely not helped. I think I said for the year Kadeem Carey at running back was Calgary the last couple years has been, they run the ball like nobody else. That's their bread and butter is run the ball, run the ball. And Kade Carey was so good last year and then losing him was tough and DJ Mills played well the first few weeks. Then the last couple weeks he's not played so well and teams kind of started loaded the box on him and forcing by to beat them and he hasn't really been doing it. I do think if they all get healthy they'll be better than the two and five team, but I don't think they're at that level of the BC or Winnipeg side yet. So in terms of the Toronto Calgary, are you taking Toronto with that by Mile I, I'm taking Toronto by a fair bit. Jason, you has a comment. The last two years of Sams couldn't be the top teams, it could be almost anyone else this year it feels like they can't close games against anyone really kind of clutch. I think it was Ryan, one of our Calgary fan listeners saying that Mayor not Clutch, Calgary can't close kind of any of that or going into overtime knowing that they're not going to do that. Yeah, it feels weird. I don't know if there's coaching staff issues there. Hot seat coming in at the end of the season. I mean are you anticipating any change over there if they don't get it turned around? I think yeah, even they don't turn it around, right? It's been a couple years of this and I think that it's right. I think they've been in the past good enough to beat the bad teams but not good enough to beat the good teams and now they're just not good enough to confidently beat anybody. Like you said it could be they could lose Edmonton, right? They're that they're playing that kind of weight right now. So I think if it stays as bad they finish with five wins easily. Coaching change could be the cards. Well yeah, you wonder how long their Dickinson can ride off that. Because like you said, you in your mind you think, okay, Calgary whatever, powerhouse and it was just so weird. I remember we had mayor on preseason, I think it was last year and you think, God, how fortuitous is it? The Calgary, they've had Bo forever and they got his backup ready to go. We have all these different teams and the Edmonton and they can't get anything and then mayor comes in and has not played great, certainly not up to even what he was last year. It just seems weird. It feels like something's missing with him. Like I said, the moment's too big or whatever. In terms of this Montreal Hamilton game, and we'll talk Hamilton here in more in depth, how impressed are you? He's a new friend of the show here, Cody Ferdo here in Montreal, the new look. Cody, how do you feel like he's been Great? I I've been surprised. I think I he great. Well last year for us I had a pretty high on my quarterback rank in seventh the year I got a little bit of flack for that. Everyone said that Cody sucks and he's not going to do more, but I think he's good. I think he's still got his issues. I think he takes a lot of sacks that he doesn't need to take and that was a big thing I had early on in the year when mud shuts line graded super well and everyone's like, but they're on pace for a hundred sacks. And I said, well some of those sacks are on Cody for sure, but no, he's like, he's great, he's been accurate, he's been throwing the ball deep, which has been big. I mean he does scramble still. He is still got the mobility, not quite as much as he used to have, but I think he, he's played very well. So I think he's the reason they're three and three and the reason they could be the second best team in the east Here, three and three coming in, I mean hasn't been outstanding. I don't think you have to be obviously here to win the East or be competitive but certainly looking better than Hamilton with all of their stuff going on. I do you Montreal was what a field goal kick away or whatever it was last year, right from getting in was Gary Stern was going to be on our show there in Regina if they had gone. I had verbal promises from Gary, very sad about that. But I mean obviously right now, but do you see them being the contender here going through to the Great Cup? Yeah, I, I saw what asked me last week and I said I think Montreal is the second best team in the east behind the Argos. Obviously I think it could be hard to beat the Argos this year for anybody, but I do think the Ettes are a good team and I think they can contend, I think they've got a great defense. Their line is very good and pajamas played really well. So I think they've got the pieces there to compete. In terms of Hamilton here, obviously we kind of had the Bo Levi of it all and coming in, what did you first off thoughts on that last play and him coming in? It was supposed to be a knee and just like you're shaking your head already. Yeah, I don't know. I mean got to, someone's got to say just take a knee, right? You've, it's not like you're on what inch side, you've got a yard Desp spare going for the stake like that. Or why even put him in the game at that point, right? He's just coming back from injury, he's your guy, just take him out, put someone else in for the knee down. Right? I don't know, I, it's been an issue with the cfl with and putting these quarterbacks in too long, just risking a lot of injury in any league. Why bother is what I think In terms of we talk hot seats with coaching. I think Hamilton absolutely here coming with at the end of the season. What do you make of that and their coaching staff and any changes that you would see? Yeah, I think they got to figure it out and they think that they haven't, right? They got these injuries and the injuries are part of it. If you're not ready to manage your team past the injuries and you lose the back of what's Shilts as well and believe right now you're playing it with the third stringer and it's not great. So I don't know, I think could be fine. I think they're still going to be okay. I think that they're going to win some games so they might be okay for saving the coaching staff there, but I don't know and just they're not great. Well it felt like it was really kind of an all-in season this year here we're bringing in Bow and we're hosting and obviously they were a rouge in a weird overtime away, was it two years ago when they had all that there at the Gray Cup. It felt like the drop off last year was huge from being in the Gray Cup and all that missing out and Dame playing terrible and everything else. Now that season, I don't know mean it doesn't even feel like they're on the radar anywhere close. I mean I know in the standings here in the east, never that far out, but are you just surprised with how much they've struggled this season? Yeah, I, and also I think I'm surprised that when Levi, when he's been playing, he's been bad and that's been tough. I think people wrote him off last year and I thought he played pretty okay, not great, but I thought he could still be a starter and play well. But hitting his snaps, he's been pretty bad with the football. He's our lowest grade quarterback by a lot because he's chucking it to anybody. And that's been tough. But then now without Shilts as well, you've got Powell in there. Powell is fine, but I checked down. That's all he does, right? The last game he played, his average at the time was like five yards. So Well, and Bo had right five interceptions here before the injury last week. I mean that's the thing is he comes back and I mean, I know you can't go to Shilts. Do you think Powell is, I mean obviously they don't have a lot of options right now, but is that a sustainable long-term play here for Hamilton? I don't think so unless he shows something that he didn't show in his one start, but I watched that and I thought he was fine, but he's not going to win the games the way he's played it now. He's so new to the league, like he said, takes you a couple years to get into it. I think he could be okay, but the way he played in that game was just a lot of check downs. Didn't push the ball at all accurate enough, but it was never really a threat. And so I think Tee's going to load the box on him and stop the run and force him to throw it. I don't know he's going to do it. So I think it's going to be a rough stretch for them now without Shilts or Bo Levi. It's just so weird to me. It just feels like Hamilton doesn't have an identity here where they came out and it's the old June Jones, we got to pass it and we acquired James Butler, but we don't want to run the ball. And then we decided to run the ball and it felt like two weeks ago he really kind of, okay, we're giving James we're moving the rock. And then I guess it was last week and they just fell behind too much and then they're chucking the ball all over the place again. It just doesn't feel like they're, I guess disciplined in whatever approach they want. And I know when the game's getting out of hand, you kind of got to do whatever to win, but they're not going to win with Taylor Powell throwing the ball. No, I mean I think he had 45 or whatever it was a crazy amount of attempts last game. It just doesn't feel like that's sustainable. No, it's not. And I think I thought that going to Butler's good, I think what Butler's doing this year is crazy. I think he has something like 80% of his yards are after contact. He's getting hit early and he's making the miss and he's, and he's still playing well. He's the best running back I think right now in the league and they're just not feeding him. They should have a couple games there where they do and he looks good and they look good. But I think especially with pow quarterback, you have to run the ball with a young quarterback. You have to get into good situations for him, if you make him pass it 45 times vote, Levi could do it. A veteran, he wasn't great last week, but at least he's a threat and defenses are scared of him and they know that they have to play good past defense, otherwise he's going to beat them. I don't think with Powell that they're going to think that, right? I think they're going to just load the box, play a lot of man or cover one and just see if he can beat them. And I don't know if he can. Yeah, I guess it was two weeks ago, last week we were on vacation, so time we did the recounts, but time was a little, yeah, it was the 41 attempts here against Toronto and it's like you just can't have Powell do that coming out. I mean, Butler's only carrying eight times for 14 I, it's just insane to me that I would think and Meisel's doing good for bc. BC right now coming back from injury. But you would wonder if we had still have Butler that would even look like with this good as my Z's been so far. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing with that, I know like you said, if you get down big, you want to pass it, but with a quarterback young that it's almost better just stick with it, right? Run the ball. If you force him to pass it four one times, it's not going to be good. You're not going to win anyway. So run the ball, run your offense. You should just get him comfortable with it. And if you lose the game, I mean your play, Toronto, whatever, you lost, your defense didn't play well anyway. Just get him comfortable so that if he has to play again, he, it gets into it. You don't have to pass it a million times and wrote his confidence. So in terms of this game here with Montreal, here at Hamilton, who do you have that here? Hamilton, like I said, coming off a win, but it kind of like the Thanos. What did that victory cost a lot. What do you make Montreal coming in here? Yeah, I think Montreal's going to take this one. I think the just defense is going to shut them down. The Montreal's defense is good. A little underrated. Good. And Hamilton's line has been struggl a bit, so I think the D line, D-line on Montreal's going to be going, going to go off a little bit. And I think they're just like, they're going to load the box and they're going to play a lot of man coverage, a lot of cover two maybe at the most, and just force Powell to beat them. And I think he's going to check out a lot and that's kind of going to be it. And then I think Fido's going to have a good day on offense and just do enough. Yeah, I think he looks more SW to me this year. It looks like sw. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. How does he say? Yeah, they fell behind 20 zero first half he had to. Well, yeah, I know I, it's weird to me that we acquire one of the elite running backs from the cfl and it's like we're not going to use it. So here we have autos Saskatchewan here as we round out here before the bottom of the hour. Has sanity impressed you? Yeah, it has I think little bit back down to earth last week, but I think he still played pretty well. I, I thought those first few weeks everyone said he could be a star. I thought he's going to have a kind of back down to earth game. He is so new to the cfl, you're not going to be that great that early say with Chad Kelly, right. Kind of thing that it takes some time. You got to have off games. But I think he's a great dual threat. I mean he has something more, I think he has more than double that Miss Tackles force than any other quarterback running the ball, something like that. He is 17 in the next one has four or something like that. He's a threat on his feet even more than Cordius maybe is. So that's big. And then his throwing has been okay and he's been solid. He's not taking too many risks, not taking a ton of chances throwing it, which is he's going to have to if he wants to be a great quarterback. But I think for where he is right now, he's playing well. Are you surprised with, and I say this with the spark as they're here at the bottom of the east but it's closed on. Are you surprised the spark that Crumb has had for them? Because I really felt, I remember I was at a wedding getting the text that I was filming, getting the text like, oh my God, Olas down again. And I thought, oh mean, yeah. Yeah, I kind of thought their season was over and I mean obviously losing last week here but coming in and I certainly think this is a winnable game in Saskatchewan. Are you surprised with the spark that OT has had with Dustin Crumb? Absolutely. Yeah. I thought the first couple weeks was just rough with Tyree Adams and whatever playing quarterback and they look bad. It was just like, let's kill time before Olli gets back and then he gets back and he goes down right away and he's outright and a lot of tees would be like, that's our season. We're done. We were all in on the solely as our quarterback and now he's out and what do we do? So the fact that they're rallying around Crumb like this and he's playing well has been a huge surprise and what I definitely didn't see coming. Does it feel like the Red Blacks have had a really rough, it feels like the Red Blacks from the time that we've been covering the cfl, which obviously is not as long as a lot of people, it feels like the Red Blacks have been fairly irrelevant. Is that fair to say? Yeah, For sure. They were good when they first came in. They obviously, they expanded when I was in Ottawa still at university and that was what, 2013 or 2012, whatever they were bad start and they got good, they had a good run there and then they've kind of fell back, fell fallen back down a bit to just a lot of mediocrity. Right? They're not Edmonton where they're so bad you talk about them, they're just kind of there but they're just kind of irrelevant, which has been tough to see. So it's fun to see them actually have a tee to talk about Now The struggles they've gone through and obviously last year and the big injury with Mozilla, I mean we got rid of Paul AP Police and Bob Dice coming in. I mean is coaching, is that the problem there? Is it just the injuries? Is it, what do you attribute that? I think it's a bit of both. I think injuries, they're the coaching there, just the players that come there and they don't have a ton of talent, not a ton of top talent, but I think they've been playing well and if they can keep gelling, I think it would be a good team Because I watch that behind the R and they're like, Sean Burke's, I'm assembling the greatest team here and we're making all these, I'm like, okay, I'm all in. And then I turn on the games and I know the bed. Jason has a question for you here. When I watched the Red Blacks, I see a team that needs to create more big plays. The numbers at P FFF backed that up For sure and that's kind of what I said with right, I think he's good scrambling. He is good at it, but he's not pushing the ball downfield a lot. He's not, and that's partially because I don't know if they have the receivers to do it and that becomes more of a coaching thing, but if you don't have the receivers to just chuck it to, you need to start scheming up more routes to get 'em deep, get 'em open and give sort of a little bit easier time for Cru to throw it. But yeah, he's definitely not been creating a ton of big places. He's been doing it picking up first as with his feet and then 10 yard throws here and there never, there's not a lot of big these 20, 30, 40 yard throws that some other teams are doing. It feels like it would, and we saw this with Winnipeg not do it. We obviously Redbox won, but it feels like that would be easy to game planned against. Right. Okay. We know Crumb's going to, he can't, does not have an elite arm. It feels like you could defense plan against that. Are you surprised that he's been able to get away with it as much as he can? I think it's because of his scrambling that kind of helps him. He game played against his passing, but unless you're having a guy spying him and you might still miss the tackle, he's that good and you're always kind of scared of him with his feet, which is what I think. And I've said with Cornelius guys like that who can run it lean on that more because that'll help and I think they've been doing a good job with that, but I think eventually tease will start to figure out if you stop him from running, he can't beat us as well through the air and that's going to be kind of the downfall a little bit if they get into that In terms of Saskatchewan right now and obviously of this team or whatever and kind of all this other stuff, but really not having a good go at it right here. I always friend of this show Jamie Nye and I see him tweeting this Saskatchewan, need a new quarterback, new quarterback already not going to be good. I mean they're not terrible here third in the west, but what is going on with the rough riders? I think guess the perfectly average team right now is how I described. We've got some right, I got some good here, some bad there. And obviously the quarterback injury issues is a big thing. I thought L Harris is huge. He even played great and he's such a different quarterback. He's one of those guys that you can't blitz him because he's so quick that we do the field and getting the ball out that it changes defenses the way they play and now, now defenses can play against these guys, they play against other quarterbacks and it makes it a little easier to defend and I think Mason fine, he played well last week, not great. I think starting again this week is fine. I thought, I know people want it. Dolan gala, he had that great drive, but I mean that was, Toronto was playing prevent defense basically and he just picked it apart. So I think fine has issues. I think he's got an arm strength problem which will bite him, but I think give him a chance to see what he does this week. You think the drop off is that much from Trevor to Mason? Yeah, I think so. I just think that mean the arm strength for Harris isn't as great as it used to be, right? He's, he's never been a strong arm deep kind of guy, but he's so accurate and he's so quick at reading that I looked at the stats recently. There was something like the average quarterback that seemed like it blitzed at a 45% rate, he got blitz at a 29% rate because teams are so scared to blitz it because they know if they send too many, he'll find that one-on-one and he'll hit it so quick at reading it. So he is so different than other quarterbacks. No one else does it like him that and five can't do it like him. So I think it is a big drop off In terms of we talk hot seats and stuff on here in Saskatchewan hosting the Great Cup last year, missing the playoffs and certainly not a crowning moment for them. How long can they wallow in this? I think not long. I think the Harris injury could help though if they do poorly now and if Harris comes back and they do okay after that, but it's kind of too late because they had a bad stretch. That's one thing. I don't know if Harris is going to come back. I don't know how long he's out, but I think They say they were hoping for a late season. It wasn't that we're hoping. Okay, Yeah, that's what I thought. But that could just be out of the season. They're trying to not write it off yet, but I think that might help them sort of buy, they could say, well we lost Trevor Harris this year, that's why we were, we're bad. And that'll save them. But if it happens again next year, that's probably the end of the line for this coaching staff. That was last year and it was horrendous when Nathan went down and the injury and all of that. And I remember via BC tweeting out like, oh we're expecting the late season. I wanted to text Matt Baker and be like, you're totally full of it right now. But then lo and behold he was throwing then coming back with the boot. But the question, Vernon BC had such a lead and Vernon I did not play great last year. I mean they won some games but I mean really just kind of existed until Nathan Rourke came back and I never had any confidence going in against Winnipeg there at the, what was it, the semis or whatever in the west. Saskatchewan is in the much, much more rough spot right here where I don't think Mason flying can kind of write the ship long enough for Trevor to get back. No, I think you're right. I think a team itself isn't as talented as BBC was last year and B, I don't think fines as good as Vernon Adams was. And Vernon, like you said, Vernon wasn't great but he was kind of passable for them last year and the talent they had was enough to keep them afloat. But yeah, don't, not optimistic about Saskatchewan's chances this year being anything more than an average team with these quarterbacks. So do you see a bounce back here for Ottawa? Do you see Crumb leading another game, winning and final drive or something? Yeah, I could see it I think would if I had to pick Crumb in Ottawa, but I think this was probably the closest game for me to pick. I could see Saskatchewan winning too just because I think Ottawa still has some issues and last week was kind of a blueprint for Chrome and Saskatchewan can get to that could stop him, but I think Ottawa comes away with this one Not, I mean except for tonight's exciting. I'm ready for this. I mean not the most thrilling games on paper here. Which game are you say for tonight? Which game are you looking at? You think? The standouts Sunday night? Yeah, I like that. I just think that'll be a more exciting game I think be fun and kind of a toss up. I think Toronto will win. I mean Toronto's probably the most exciting team to play, but I think that that'll be an easy game for them. Well and I don't know man, I mean McMahon has struggle all year with attendance anyway there and I mean know Calgary coming in if they get their ass beat here by Toronto, I'm kind of concerned about what that does long term. I mean there was already comments coming into the season where, oh Calgary's down 30% on season 10, whatever it was, the number is, it seems like they're already kind of struggling on there For sure and I think got to figure out a way to bounce back a little bit, at least. I joked to on the money recap, I said the sixth is our anniversary and last year we went to this Italian restaurant, we waited out in line, it was like an hour wait and I remember watching, it was bc I think it was Edmonton at BC and it was one of the games where Nathan Rourke just absolutely went off and I'm sitting there watching on my phone waiting in line for dinner for our anniversary of this. I don't foresee myself doing that maybe this year with the Ottawa Saskatchewan game. I don't know if there'll be as many fireworks going on in that game. Yeah, probably not as many as that. You might see a couple of nice runs here from rum. That's it. We'll start to wind up here soon. Any other thoughts from you in terms of either the game tonight or anything else cfl? No, I think it just, I'm excited for the season. I think it's been a good start. I think it's been one of the sort of better starts in recent years that I can remember for the cfl and I'm glad that it's sort of taken off a little bit. I've seeing more Americans on Twitter talking about it and watching the game. So it's good that we're kind of finding some people down there and hopefully it keeps growing. Tim had a comment here. I love the parody of the sea. The potential of an east crossover is wild. Yeah, I mean the bottom of the west really has fallen off this year. I mean here we've talked at least since I've existed on here the east and whatever, but here this year everyone relevant. Are you liking the East being a little more relevant in the cfl this season? Yeah, yeah, I love it. I think it's funny. I mean I don't know all how true this is, it's probably not that true but to me it's been the West crossing over and every year since I can remember it always even it feels like the last 20 years it's been the West that crosses over just because those t's are stronger. I know it's not the truth, I know the East cross over a few times here and there, but I think it's cool to see the east in the chance cross over and it's just kind of different to see. And again, aside from the top kind of three teams there, everyone else has kind of got a chance. You got five teams sort of right in there. Obviously I think Toronto here with a bullet in the east, at least favorites here going in. Do you see tonight as a preview of who you think is going to win the West? Is it still too early? Is there still too much of a season left with BC and Winnipeg? No, a lot of season left but I don't see any of those tees below them catching those guys. I think they're just too good with the injury to Harris and Meyer playbook. He is, I don't think they're going to catch up. So I think this is kind of a little western preview. If people want to follow more about your stuff and the kind of, what else do you have going on, what would they do? You follow me on Twitter at pff underscore Bryson, that's where I post all my content on the site. I'll get links there. So that's on pff.com. That's kind of the two spots you can find me at. Have you guys, I know we talked off the top in terms of the league and everything, have you guys seen good traction, good numbers on the site for all the cfl content? Yeah, for sure. And that's one thing I wanted to kind of mention. I know I'm getting a lot of people asking me about grades, can they get access? We know we have our premium stats for the N F L in college, not for cfl yet. And I know that it's been tough for them. They had, building that database has been harder and they've been focused in the N F L so they have no time for this year but they, I've been told basically if the traction's there they'll work on it. It sounds like the traction is there so that we're hopefully going to work on it so that by next year everyone who subscribes will have access to all the grades and all the stats that they get from the N F L and college, which is very exciting. Well that would be good. Like I said, I think cfl having that working relationship with you guys kind of leaning into that, especially if they're not going to do a lot of that stuff or be able to do a lot of that stuff themselves I think will be good. I rising, I appreciate it today. Like I said, kind of a special Thursday live show here getting ready xfl we had, I think we're up to 43 player signings right now, which is crazy in terms of going to the xfl and u. SS F L I believe was at 17 or 18 last I checked and those numbers have gone up today. I know Max will comment on here if I'm wrong, but good to see that. Good to see the cfl stuff. We'll be back on Monday. We'll have our recap with Jason and Evan and everything else on that kind of talking cfl week nine and then we'll figure out next week and we might do a couple of these cfl shows here, xfl news and everything else A little slow but we're getting through here. Jason, not Jason. Jason, my Bryson. If you had to give the cfl A season grade thus far, what would you give it? I would give it a B right now I think it's, it's been good but lot of room for growth still. So give it a B to a B plus. Well that's good. Yeah, certainly like I said, the best that we've had on here, I appreciate everyone checking out. Like I said, weird time, a time of day and time of all this on here. Bryson's got stuff to go to. We got Hall of Fame game here at five if you want to check it out, but I think this'll be one of the games of the season. I got Dorothy, my wife went and we're making nachos and stuff. It's going to be a whole big thing. Yeah, maybe we'll do a I F L recap Max and we can workshop that. But I got weddings tomorrow and this is my busy time of year so Bryson, I appreciate it. We'll get out of here. Everyone enjoy the game and go BC Lions, so hopefully you can you co-sign that? Yeah, all go BC I'll I'll give you that one. There you go. All right, thanks guys.

CFL 2023 Week 8 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 8, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Monday morning here on the markcast football is back this week, I guess according to the N F L tweeting out the Hall of Fame game kicking off this week, Thursday, but we've been talking football all the time here on the Mark cast. I thought of exciting weekend here. Jason was saying maybe not the most exciting football, but I think we have a ton to talk about including breaking news here. Jason, how are you doing today? I'm doing good raid. Pretty laid back weekend for me, so got to watch a lot of the football this weekend. Yeah, we'll get into that as well. Evan, how are you doing? Good. Yeah, slate. The games this weekend wasn't exactly amazing. I don't really have many notes, so a lot of what you're going to hear today from me is off the top of my head, but excited to talk about it nonetheless. Well, we'll get into all of that here. So first and foremost, and I'm losing my notes here, we have breaking news coming out from a friend of the show, Dave Campbell. I had reached out to Dave. I said, do you want to come on this week? You morning. He goes, well, I got to catch up on some stuff. Well, here we have breaking news coming out. We can talk about this game now or later, but we have Edmonton making a change here promoting Jarius Jackson to the OC here, getting rid of Macadoo. Jason, initial thoughts on this? What'd you make? Oh, they had to do something right. I think that's the ultimate thing here is that, I mean there's just so hamstrung by that football operations cap that, I mean, they couldn't move on from Jones, so I mean I guess this is almost the best thing they could do in season here and they just had to do something to two shutouts in this far into a cfl season. I don't even remember the last time a team's been shut out twice in the same season. I think that would be something interesting to look up. But yeah, I think they need to do something and I think Jarius Jackson brings a little bit of experience to the table. Obviously he's a Chris Jones guy there as well, but I think at the end of the day he is a guy that does have some experience being an offensive coordinator in this league. So you don't worry about it from that perspective, but hopefully a new voice will provide a spark for the team. Yeah, I just can't figure out here, obviously there's problems with Cornelius and there's problems with the penalties and there's problems with Jones like Evan, is this enough? Is this kind of a bandaid here? We have to do something here on the bi-week losing you going oh eight? Oh definitely. I mean, I don't necessarily think this is what Elk's fans wanted, but I mean at this point in the season, given where you are, I mean you have to make some sort of change and if this is what it's going to be, I mean this is probably the best thing that they can do. So yeah, Jarius Jackson mean before this he was holding both quarterback coach and pass game coordinator roles. Those always kind of go hand in hand and it says, the Elks just said that he's going to retain his job as quarterback's coach. So this is doubling up too with the OC role. But yeah, ultimately I don't really see this as a very impressive move. Maybe it will help things I don't know. We're going to have to test it, right? But I mean, I think if you ask a lot of Elks fans, this isn't exactly what they wanted to see. We all know what they wanted to see and that involves Chris Jones, not Jarius Jackson. Yeah, Well, and even I saw this week Justin Dunk, I don't know if he's friend of the show yet, we're working on it, but he was on SportsCenter. I'm starting the free Trade Forward hashtag. I said, welcome to the party Evan Will's wearing, we've been doing it hashtag free trade forward. So excited to see that. We'll, I think we'll get into this game. Go kind of reverse chronological order here. Overall, Jason, you said you didn't think this was the greatest slate of games this weekend. What did you make overall thoughts of the weekend? I just think that the defense is really dominated this week and I mean I know there's people out there that defensive football, but honestly I just prefer when offenses are scoring touchdowns and not field goals especially. The game last night just drove me insane. We'll get into it, but zero offensive touchdowns. Each team had six field goals, just not a very watchable game from that perspective, and I thought that the execution from the offenses was way off this week pretty much from every team. It looks like here we're having our illustrious cfl.ca stats issues here, all these games in pre-game here. Evan, Evan, thoughts for the weekend? I know you had your, what was it, Lynyrd Skinner concert as well concert. Was that more exciting than some of the C F O football? Yeah, definitely. I think took away from some of the games for me, but I still got in a bit of watching I guess of the games here and there. Ultimately, like Jason said, definitely more of a defensive weekend. We've become more accustomed in recent weeks to these high powered offensive games in the cfl that we haven't seen in a long time. But now this week definitely marked a shift, I think where teams were scoring less. You saw a lot of scores in the teens, things like that, so it was definitely slower. But yeah, if you like defensive football, I think this was a good weekend for you. So we had the Sunday night game here. We had Calgary at Montreal. I am listening through and I had tweeted out, I was filming, I do this filming for a Indian temple here over in Sam Amish on the east side, and they host a bunch of music events and cultural events and like, Hey, enjoy our culture, kind of see what we have going on. And so I'm listening to this is how I listen to the Mariners game and I was listening to Marshall Ferguson all the way through the rain delay, which I do a hundred percent blame Marshall Ferguson. I think there's something cursed with that gentleman. The xfl never had two rain delays here this early end of the season, but listening through all of that, so I heard the game, I don't know, was this a good game, Jason? I know it came down to the wire ride and it was close and we got paradise kicking all the kinds of stuff. Was this a good game? Well, a hot take, I think this is the worst game. That was a one score game that I think I've ever seen. Honestly, it's very misleading. Came down to the final play. Calgary still had a chance to get it in the end zone to tie the game on the last play, but ultimately couldn't get it done. But yeah, zero offensive touchdowns as I mentioned before on this one, six field goals, a piece for each team. The only touchdown in this game was a pick six in this one, so the execution from both offenses was really sloppy. They both could move the ball a bit, but they just could not punch it in when it came down to it. And honestly, I think that's a big problem in the cfl right now. The red zone execution is very off around the league right now I think. Well, I think Edmonton would like to have any further red zone. Red zone all these guys because that was the thing here. I mean mayor, we see these stat lines 24 44, 2 56, I mean getting down it. I think it was last week he had the really high stat line. They were talking with his passing on there, but Evan with this, yeah, it came down. Not all of these one score games are built equal. We saw this a lot in the us. It l like 98% of our games were decided in the last minutes. Yeah, well but it was 12 to eight or what? I don't know. What did you make of this and the thoughts on Calgary? Yes, I agree with everything that was said before. Extremely misleading is what I'm going to go on with this one. I mean, yeah, you look at the score and you think, geez, kind of a back and forth. Montreal gets into the twenties, great, whatever scoring wise, but ultimately, yeah, I mean offense really struggled in this game and I mean had it not been for that pick six on the Montreal side, I mean you're looking at a potentially unwatchable game nearly from some aspects and I just think yeah, mean it's such that this is really a steep drop off from, again, everything that we've been seeing this game specifically now there were a couple other games BC had a nice day on offense against, well the Elks of all teams. We'll get into that later. Not looking forward to talking about that one either, but I Am. Oh, I'm sure you are Reid, but man, it's it. I just feel so bad every week anyway, we're not on that yet right now. Yeah, just looking at, I mean Montreal, I think the one good thing from this game offensively and really it comes from either side of the ball I know had a good game for Calgary, so did Reggie Beton receiving, but the one point I really want to talk about here from this game on the offensive side of the ball is Stanback getting worked in for Montreal 15 carries for 86 yards I believe was averaging. Yeah, what is that? 5.7 yards per carry. Finally, William stand back in week eight of the season, two months in is finally getting his work and I mean we've been waiting so long to see him get going because if obviously Stan back, I think it was last season that he missed due to injury or he missed a large chunk of that and then he hasn't really, I mean I remember in 2021 him being one of the better backs in the league, so I was kind of excited to see that this year, but we haven't seen it really until now. He's finally starting to get some reps and he did have a game I remember, I don't forget which week it is, but he had a couple catches he was getting worked in on that side of the offense, but to see him get into this stride again as a pure runner, I think that's really good to see and I think that really is going to benefit Montreal moving forward a ton if he can carry the rock like that. Especially because Cody Fajardo did not have the best day passing here too. It was like the mark cast curse last year. I think I had stand back on pre-season and he was doing in Georgia or something and he was like, I've been working out here on the street with my boys and the lift. I'm like, oh this, this guy's going to come in and go. We we're doing a lot of ettes interviews and then he came in, was it that first game Jason that stand back got hurt last year And then he came back for the last month of the season and like Evan said, didn't look the same until we saw that yesterday. I have some hot take tweets here. First off, you might know this gentleman Hussie talking here, one of the worst goal to go goal to go sequences I've ever seen, five yard penalty, lots of just bizarre kind of play calling everything Ryan here, checking in too many men followed by a time count violation is kind of, I don't have a beat on what they want to be as a team right now. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with them either. I think that it's very uncharacteristic of them. The mistakes that they're making, I mean they just looked confused on offense. They look like they have no composure. I think that, like you said, the goal to go sequence was what drove me insane in this game, but there are also several moments where they were kind of late coming out of the huddle and they take a time count violation or very close to taking a time count violation. A lot of guys standing around not looking to know what the play is. So I think that's just uncharacteristic of what we've seen from the stampeders over the last 10 to 15 years really. So I think that this is very new and I think that the Stampeders started two and five in 2021 I do believe and then they ultimately ended up eight and six, but I think this is a different feel for this team. They don't seem like they have that veteran core leadership that they've had in recent years to really rebound from this. So it's not going to get easier with them having a tough sch schedule up ahead. Yeah, tell me about that and we can look at the schedule or coming up. Yeah, I saw, I can't remember who it was tweeting out they, they're seeing Toronto twice and BC in there. Evan, I have the last play here. Let me get this up. I have the last play of the game queued up here and Michelle, there was sound with mayor I want to talk about as well on here, but should mayor have run for the run it here, gotten the first down, we're throwing the long into the end zone it seems like he misjudged here, whatever, not a great decision. What do you make of mayors that thoughts you're on the funnel drive? Yeah, I mean on that play specifically, I definitely think he could have run a bit more before at least throwing it obviously well line of scrimmage, whatever, but I think ultimately yeah, I see that as more of a play where you need to because if you look, I mean right there he's throwing it guy's not even open. This is a lot of reaction right here pretty much. But no I I think he could've definitely run there and I think Jake Mayer I want to say mean, yeah, he had 44 pass attempts in this game. So again, one of these days where I think they're throwing the ball a bit too much and being a bit too excessive in that department and he only completed 24 of those 44 passes. So yeah, ultimately, again, I think I brought it up last week, but these quarterbacks that are throwing over 40 passes and not throwing any touchdowns, it doesn't even really matter at that point, your completion percentage. I mean if you're not scoring that way, you're going to lose the game and in this case that's what happened. Now on the other side of the ball, Cody fdo was 16 of 29, so not exactly much better, but at least they were a bit more efficient in the fact that Fajardo's arm wasn't falling off by the end of the game, if you know what I mean. Yeah, he hit his hand too. I heard them talk a lot about that going into half. Jason, does he seem fine? I could because again I was listening to the game, apologies not one, but they were speaking of him kind of waving his hand off, what do you is is Farjado going to be all right here? Have we seen anything about that? Well I think it's definitely something to monitor going forward because look, it looked like after that happened every time he had to push the ball down the field at all, he came up favoring that forearm. So I think that is definitely something to watch this week and if it hinders him at all going forward, obviously he had that injury last year that lingered for him, so I mean hopefully he could stay healthy because he's looked very healthy so far this season and I've been really impressed with his overall body of work this year. Not the best game in this one, but ultimately didn't need to with the way their defense was playing. Jason, do you think Mayor, do you think this was the right decision here? No, I think that mayor should have took it off and run with it, but I will say that as I said, I was communicating with Marty York on Twitter last night and he was saying that that he's not a very mobile quarterback, but I think the biggest problem with him is yes, he's not a great athlete but he doesn't take off and run when he has those easy opportunities. The defense naturally if you're not a very athletic quarterback, is going to dare you to take those opportunities and he's had several opportunities this year where he could have just taken off and ran instead of forcing a short throw that ultimately ends up incomplete anyway and I think that he passes that up way too often including that last play of the game. You see, I had the tweet here keyed up, that's what you call producing keyed up on here. No, like Anne there I want to say, and I, I'm not going to play the sound, but I had here and they were talking with mayor after the game and I do at least how he kind of carries himself and we've gone back and forth with Cody, but last year when they were struggling we had a lot of Cody and well, I need better receivers and I'm having all these issues and it was even two years ago, I think Paul and I had this Cody Rado, the man in black, he kind of heel turned Cody where mayor's like it's on me, gave the team a lot of credit, they played us well. They were obviously prepared for what we were going to do, but I feel like he at least is saying the right things. I don't know if that always is going to translate them off the field, but at least from a commentator and a fan aspect I feel okay as a Calgary fan at least with kind of mayors handling that. Evan, any other thoughts on the game? Mayor Cody, anything? I have a couple other tweets I can pull up too. Yeah, I mean I will say just going off what Jason said, I don't think Jake mayer's necessarily the most mobile quarterback either, but I mean what exactly, when the offense opens up and you have an opportunity to run, you're going to take that really like Tom Brady did that many times in his career and he wasn't necessarily a mobile quarterback. He can at least scramble for a couple yards here and there and then in that case, I mean they're the 10 yard line. I mean I think Jake Mayer, if he really needed to, could run for 10 yards if it meant he was going to have an opportunity to win or tie the football game. Yeah, I mean that's ultimately where I sit on it. I had a couple tweets here first I guess we can do these is the Bob Irving tweeting out Calgary St. Peters. I haven't had a losing writer since oh seven. They're two and five after the 25 and 18 lost to Montreal. And then we have friend of me, the show here aro and this is always interesting to me and I want to get Jason's thoughts because obviously we're coming into this kind of with all the xfl stuff. I've been saying this since the cfl returned in 2021, the stamps are just a reputation team taken seriously because of 2018 and prior now of what they are now, the reality Calgary's been poor for a while, three seasons that playoff wins and this bunch looks lost. Jason reactions to that? Yeah, I think I'm one of those people that fell victim to this whole idea of believing in the reputation of this team and I think that is what allowed me to pick them to finish second in the west before the season started. But I think ultimately when you look at the big picture, yes, they have been declining over the last few years. They had a pretty good season last year, but when you looked at how they played against the best teams in the cfl particularly over the past three years, Madani says they really struggled and they just cannot find the plays that they need in these big time games. Like I said, they have no composure, which is a far cry from what they were 2018 and before Madani said, Yeah, let checking in. You really thought Calgary was going to be taken a lot better this season and their record reflects. Evan, did you have something to say? I mean, look, Calgary, the reality is I think a lot of people are sitting here and they're surprised about the way Calgary has been performing. Me personally, I think there has been a definite shift since the team returned from Covid and even before that they won the Great Cup in what, 2018? So over the past I think five years, there's already been a shift towards, I guess the term we could use the term rebuild maybe, right? You're bringing in it's the end of an era, the consistent playoff appearances and things like that. This might be the year where it officially ends. I mean we're looking at two and five right now. Like Jason said, they started two and five in 2021, they turned things around, but that was a shorter season and I just don't get the same vibe right now. Again, they don't have the same personnel. Two years is a long time ago in football, so I'm interested to see where Calgary goes for sure. I do think this team has potential every time I watch this team, it's less about, I mean it's a completely different situation than say, I mean, oh God, Edmonton, I hate bringing this up again, but I at least look at Calgary and I'm like, okay, they have some pieces, they have the right idea. It just hasn't all come together. So I could see this version of the team maybe no playoffs this year, but give him another two or three years. I mean I do see Jake Mayer still as a starting quarterback in this league for many years to come and somebody that can lead this team. I have a lot more belief in him than say somebody like Taylor Cornelius. Now maybe that goes without saying, I don't know, but I, I think ultimately Calgary's outlook is one that will definitely need to be monitored, but I think it's also one, it really shouldn't come as a surprise. I think this has been something that has been pending now for a couple years and we'll see where they go. I mean there's a lot of ways this could branch out as the season goes on. We're in week going on to week nine of a 21 week season, so we're bare. We're not even halfway, but yeah, interesting discussion for sure. Any other thoughts? I just want to shout out Jenna checking in here in the chat as well. Jenna's been absent on social media, so I'm glad to see Jenna's back. Hope she's doing good. Coach Craig checking in. Jason, anything else from this? We'll get to obviously the game of the weekend here, but any other thoughts on this? Yeah, so one thing I wanted to say is that Calgary is far from out of it. I mean Saskatchewan's doing everything possible to leave the door open for that third spot in the west. So I mean Calgary definitely just needs to string a couple of wins together, but at this point I'm losing hope for them. All right, so let's get in here. I guess this is a good way to start off. I had this little tweet I was proud of. I said, this is Luis pfo watching all Is All of Us watching the Go Elks this season, and this is when they were getting the D P I against, I think it was Whitehead, near the end of the game, this tremendous game here. I have many reactionary tweets about this. We'll toss it first I guess to Evan just because Jason just spoke what second shout out here BC of Edmonton. We talked obviously the new OC at the top of the show. Thoughts here on this game? I mean, again, I think every week I'm like how low can we go? How low can we set the bar on a weekly basis? And I want to say we've hit the lowest of lows now with the second shutout and I don't know, but something tells me next week something worse will happen. I just, it's one of those things where you know, have to see it to believe it, you have to watch the Elks to really understand what the season has been for them and it really is just a disaster. Again, I've tried to be reserved around this subject for the course of the season, but now it's at a point where, I mean you look at not even just Elks fans, but anyone that looks at the cfl as a whole, whether it's just fans in general media, I think there is a level of criticalness or whatever surrounding this team just because I think people expected at least some improvement by this point. You know, at least win a game. You at least score some points, but that, I mean it's like this team just doesn't try and I'm not saying there's not people on that team who care because there is a lot of people who care and there's a lot of people on that team who I know are frustrated. Again, it's a difficult sport, difficult business, whatever, but I mean, come on man again, every week, well they've been at home, they've had an opportunity to break this streak and at least get a bit of momentum going, but each time it becomes something worse. It's like, well, not only did you lose this game to set the all time record or whatever it is in sports history for home losses, you did it by being shut out for the second time right in the season by the same team that had shut you out before I how many times it's many things can happen before I can just sit here and just laugh and not say anything. And that's really sad more than it is funny, but it's just the reality. I can't wait to see what this team does in the off season. I mean I think, yeah, they've just had the OC switch, but in my opinion that's really minor in the grand scheme of things. I really want to see the direction of this team once the season is officially over. I mean we've already talked about, again, they're kind of stuck where they are now with what they have and I mean it, it's very, again, disheartening. I can only use so many of these negative terms, saddening terms, but disheartening because in week one or week two I was saying, well the Elks are already, this is already a rebuilding year and for a team to be saying that not even a month into the season, it is like you, you're already waving the white flag you've given up and there's been no change in that philosophy really through two months. I mean we just wrapped up with week eight and I have seen no improvement from Edmonton and really any aspect of the game I do, I do their defense I think a bit more, not that they really played well this game, giving up 27 points, but AC Leonard, couple of those guys, again, there are pieces on this team and I have discussed that before, try and find the positives in this terrible situation. But ultimately, yeah, I think the Elks at this point, it is just like now it's like I don't even care at this point. If they win at home, I just want them to win a game to just save them from some of this despair. It has to stop. I mean it's what's the phrase they use? It's like don't poke the bear when it's already dead or whatever. I mean that's what this feels like. Yeah, I was, I got Jed Roberts here, friend of the show. Rock bottom is beyond even this with disaster Defense may win championships with offense, sell tickets, zero point score equals no fans and no fans equals no money, no money. Gate driven league equals no team dangerous game of chicken. I think it's interesting and we'll go to Jason here. We talked these losing streaks, losing 19 games at home of the row of basketball is a little different than four years here of football and losing since 2019 that these aren't all equal in terms of games played and home games, all that. What do you make of this really kind of a disaster? It just defies belief at this point. I mean I just cannot understand how it's gone on for this long and how they have not won a home game under the new name. And I, like I said earlier this year I think it's starting to feel like a legitimate curse and I'm not an overly spiritual person, but it really starts to feel like there's something wrong with this. I feel like there's just some kind of curse over this organization, some kind of dark cloud and I think for everything that they do, it's one step forward and two steps back. Every time they have something positive happen within a game, they make a couple of more mistakes to dig themselves a bigger hole and I think the quarterback play is a big culprit of it. Obviously getting that position will be a priority going forward for this team. And then it's going to be interesting like Evan said, to see what they do in the off season with that. But I think in terms of what they're going to do the rest of the season, I mean I just don't see any hope for this team. Even if they do put Trey forward out there, I think that it would be more exciting. I think it would be more interesting to watch, but I think that ultimately, I don't know if they're going to win a game with him either, so it's going to be interesting to see them play the rest of the season and I think I'm going to do a video on this week, rank the teams that I enjoy watching in the cfl and Edmonton would be an easy last right now. I mean it's been a long season. I really don't look forward to watching their games at each week. Yeah, the interesting you were saying that because they kind of do it both ways where the penalties and I don't know mean Dane played good and what was his, he was like 25 or three, two, he played good, played clean, but even the bc, their defense, they give up. Know Cornelius got that one huge long shot near the end of the game. It was like a couple minutes left and then he immediately gets to the interception and they're like the defense, it bends, it doesn't break. Like, oh, okay, we got beat that one play. Okay, now we're going to come back. Now we're kind of really angry on that. I want to talk about, I have the tweet here and this, I didn't know that this was a thing and I saw this yesterday, the donut boys calling the defense, the donut boys putting up oss and I thought that that is tremendous and Rick co-signed it. He said he is okay with 'em calling it that. Jason, do we like the donut boys? I said this is what the cfl needs. It's like the steel curtain or whatever like the N F L. Do you like the donut boys? Yeah, I mean I think you could call yourselves whatever you want when you have two shoutouts in the cfl. I mean that's pretty hard to do defensively. I mean I'll be really, really impressed if they do it against someone other than Edmonton. But yeah, two shoutouts in one cfl season. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, we had Terry Jones here good in shoutout 27 seventh year. The c l is virtually impossible getting shout out in this league twice by the VC lion in the same season, set the North American pro sports record with 21 consecutive losses. Fire the GM head coach, OC release the quarterback, something that has to happen. Yeah, we talked about that. I don't know if doing the OC is kind of enough to do all that. Like I said, we got Dave here talking rock bottom, embarrassing. Evan Positives here from bc. How did our Boy Dane look? Oh yeah, well there were plenty of positives on the BC end. I mean, yeah, starting with the donut boys, I do think that nickname is earned. I think pitching two shutouts in a league like this, you definitely deserve a nickname and again, hopefully they can do that again. I'm really interested to see what BC's defense can do over the course of the rest of the season. Are they going to pitch another shutout? Yeah, hard to say. I don't know about that one, but I mean you never know. I think they definitely have the capability to do it, the personnel. But yeah, going back to Dane Evans and that offense, Dane had a great game. This was one of the better games I've seen from Dane Evans in a long time and that goes back all the way to Hamilton when he was starting there. I was very impressed and to me, again, I think I brought it up last week or the week before. Vernon should keep his job when he gets back, but to have a guy like that just ready to go all the time, it really is valuable. And this has been proven here, even if it's an against an opponent that maybe isn't exactly of the strongest variety. But anyway, no, I mean Dane Evans is definitely finding his stride here in place of Vernon and it's good to see him get some reps in this season because to be honest, if Vernon doesn't get hurt, I mean he was playing so well. I don't know, Dane might have just been sitting there hanging out with the clipboard, but all love for Dane, great game from him. I was really impressed with Taquan, mazel, mazel in this game. However you say, it really had a nice, we had sung his praises back a couple weeks ago, but I think he's been injured, hasn't really played, I mean I'm Not then Shiver in the slave. Yeah, It was Shiver For a while. Shiver was in a couple weeks, Right, so it was shiver in and he did a good job too. But Taquan was always kind of the guy that I was hoping would break out and this was I think somewhat of a breakout game, 117 rushing yards, had a receiving touchdown on two catches for 30 yards all around a great game from him. And then I do, I even do even need to say anything about the receivers at this point. I mean I feel like every week we're just talking about how strong that receiving core is and it just speaks for itself the production. Not only the production, but again spreading the ball around to different guys. I mean everybody gets 4, 5, 6 catches. You don't have one receiver that ends up catching 10 balls in the game. I think that is one of the best things you could see in football right there, that little receiving box score that is an extremely impressive, and again, they do this week after week. Why do you think this offense has been so successful over the course of these two months? Because they just have so many playmakers and it's obviously going to be hard to retain all those guys going into next year. They're definitely going to lose some in free agency, but right now I don't think that's a concern because again, and maybe I've said this before too, I do think BC has the personnel to make a great cup run this time around. Well, I wanted to talk with Jason about, and I had my notes and I had some funny things I could pull up too here. But we look at the depth that BC has and I, I've been watching the Kraken a lot, right in the last year and off season, the kind of depth building, looking at the minor league and how deep our roster and the Kraken always kind of had a different roster where they didn't have a lot of superstars. This year BC has all these huge names. Last year we got Nathan Warwick, he's on this penny deal. We're able to resign. Lucky, we're able to bring on Keon kind of all this stuff here. Now we get VA have such this backup here. Dominique Rimes has been out, Lucky's been out Keon, all these guys. McGinniss is stepping up, mazes even taking passes. That's why they wanted I guess bring him back versus shiver. He could catch us a running back. Vernon goes down, we have Dan Evans. The depth that this team has, I just can't figure out is that just Neil McAvoy credit? What do you attribute it to the bc? It seems to have no lack of depth here in any position in where all these other teams that seem to be struck Edmonton can't get a quarterback here. We have two quarterbacks, so they're playing phenomenally well right now. Yeah, I think you got to give a lot of credit to Neil McAvoy the gm. I think he was very proactive in bringing in Dane Evans. I think that was such a good move this off season. Even bringing in Dominic Davis as the third spring guy, I think he's an excellent short yardage quarterback. That quarterback room is just so solid all around. And then I mean any quarterback could succeed with the wide receivers they have. I mean the offensive line I think has shown a lot of improvement over the last couple of years and I think that's allowed them to be a pretty good team as well because it was just a disaster a couple of years ago. But I think that's probably still the weakness on that offense, but it's no longer a huge deficiency. And then I mean they just have depth, like you said, all throughout the defense. I think defensive line, they rotate heavily. And I think that in this game, Ryan Phillips, the defensive coordinator who I think is going to be head coach in the cfl next year, he was really just toying with the Edmonton Elks offense. I think they were just dialing up blitz after blitz and Cornelius had no answer for him. It does feel that way it feels like. And I think it was last year, and they're talking like they're wide receiver by committee. They don't care. No one needs to be, which it is. Big words when you have all these former N F L guys coming up. I think that says a lot. The lucky is I don't care, I don't need to be the star here. He kind of does his own thing. But yeah, the defense and where it's been three years now of us covering this team and covering the league and seeing them and Brian Phillips and where he was, the defensive, whatever it was, and then getting promoted here and building up and it does feel like they're poised right now. I mean I thought last year with Rourke and we kind of saw everything fall apart without him, but it does feel like expectations are pretty high right now. Our tickets are booked already to Hamilton, but it does feel like BC this game this Thursday is I think going to be a real testament to see if they can do the Winnipeg again. Evan, thoughts on that. And I got some other funny stuff I want to pull up. Yeah, I mean right now I see them. I mean if there's a West final between them and Winnipeg, I personally see right now BC taking that in the revenge game and I mean it was just so, you know, I talk about Ryan Phillips personally mean we don't really talk about many coaches on this show, but I've really enjoyed watching him and seeing what he's done personally. I mean look, I'm not going to start making connections here, but let's say, well, I would imagine that the Elks move on from Chris Jones in the off season. And if you're going to do that, or at least maybe take Chris Jones away from a certain role, give him one hat to wear as opposed to three, then maybe you bring in a younger guy like Ryan Phillips who used to play in the cfl Ryan Phillips, bring him in a younger guy with a different mentality, different philosophy because personally, yeah, I definitely see him as a head coaching candidate for sure for 2024. I had a couple other funny things here. We were talking the salary cap and all of that. I said let's fix the salary cap issue for coaching staff before we add a temp team. Let's go, let's put the cart before the horse here. And then I did, I think this was funny, I kind of thought about this. They were talking on the broadcast how Jones took the whole team to go see Mission Impossible. And I thought, well that's like, I don't want to poo POH on that because well, okay, let them have a little bit of levity here. They're living through all this. But I thought they could've went and seen Barbie, Barbie or Oppenheimer and they chose to go see Mission Impossible. So I said, if you want everything you need to know about the Alex Historic losing streak, I did notice, I don't know if you guys did, I put obviously Fog Jerseys, fire bc. I'm like, God, those jerseys just look really good. But if you guys notice Jones, he's normally been wearing that really high button polo, right? It's kind of a look, right? I got my thing up and he was in a quarter zip and to me I'm like, he is Juju as well. He's sitting there, he is like, we haven't won this season. I'm switching up my outfit. I don't know if you guys saw any of that, but I do think 139 penalty yards by the Alex at half Kate Burnes, who was even so high that she didn't even have it calculated correctly and then they were talking at the end of the broadcast, you have to go tore four can't be any worse than four and 23 it. It's insane on that. Jason, any other thoughts on this? We'll get to the Touchdown Atlantic. No, I think I'm pretty tired about talking about the Elks for this week. So let's go on. Alright, so this was the game I probably have the least amount of notes on, so hopefully Jason's got a little bit on that. We have the Touchdown Atlantic here. What did we make of this? I guess we'll start back to Jason. I'm watching, I'm filming the wedding at this time. I'm watching the notifications on my phone come up. I'm like, oh, this feels like a very safe game for Toronto. Was this ever really a doubt? No, not really at all. And I think that to add on what I said earlier, I think the offenses just didn't look very good in this one. This is the first time that Chad Kelly kind of got, he kind of struggled a little bit. I think he threw for 122 yards and he really didn't have to do much. I think the big turning point in this one was really early in the game when Jevon Lee had a punt return touchdown for Toronto and that was really all they needed. Saskatchewan just once again could knock it into the end zone with Mason, fine at quarterback, and then he gets hurt late in the game and then Jake Dal comes in and when garbage time was in there and led them for a touchdown drive there and finally got in the end zone. So I mean, just a disappointing game for Saskatchewan and I think they're honestly one of the toughest watches right now in the cfl. I mean right up there, not close to the Edmonton, but I think they're probably the second least watchable team in the cfl right now just based on how their quarterback players looked. Post Trevor Harris here. And I think at the end of the day, Toronto just once again looks like the best team in the cfl. I mean when your offense plays like crap, honestly, and you still win 31 to 13, I think that's still pretty good. Yeah, this is another team like Calgary. I just don't really kind of know what their identity is. And we've talked and Mason fine, and I have the quote here from where's, where's Dickinson here talking? Yeah, I feel like Mason, it did play enough, played enough to continue to star, yeah, you 27 to 39 for 3 0 2, but obviously with the two picks in there and no interceptions. I just don't know if you're Saskatchewan here coming off of last year. I don't know what you do here. Evan, do you have thoughts on Saskatchewan or Toronto? Yeah, I mean I'll start with the Saskatchewan side first and I'll get to Toronto. They're definitely an interesting point, right, Mason, fine. Is he the quarterback to take over? Because personally he had another kind of weird game where he was close to throwing 40 passes and still had a ton of yards, but no touchdowns, turnovers were a problem. So I just don't really know what to make of this so far. And then you have Jake Dagal who comes in, someone I had kind of written off, not someone I had really thought about. He comes in and he actually looks pretty impressive, I mean compared to what Mason Fine did. So maybe Jake Dagal gets more reps moving forward, I think Craig said. Yeah, I mean you got the tweet pulled up here. What am I saying? Yeah, he said that fine, we'll remain the starter. But yeah, he wanted to put Jake in because the game was out of reach by that point. I don't know personally, I would like to see more of Jake after that. Again, not someone I had really thought about immediately, but he comes in and probably, I mean, just exceeds Mason fine really in that time. I mean he completed four passes to Mason's 27, but was so much more efficient and actually got a touchdown out of it that you kind of have to point that out once again. I mean it is very similar to last week, Sean Bain and Tevin Jones, great receiving duo there. I mean they had a phenomenal day there catching the football, but no run game. I mean still like, yeah, Jamal Moore was a tiny bit better, but everyone else, I mean they're barely, they're what, just over 50 rushing yards. It's not great. And that's been a problem. I think that's really limiting this team's ability on offense you're asking again, the more you throw with a quarterback who maybe doesn't have as much experience, this is the result. If you can't run the football, you're still not going to score many points in this specific situation. Yeah, I mean, Saskatchewan, it's just hard right now. I don't know what's really make of them either. They're kind of at this impasse, sort of like Calgary is, again, they're much farther ahead of a team like Edmonton. I think that goes without saying at this point, but Saskatchewan and Calgary are really these two teams. It's like, okay, who's going to start winning and really pulling away from the other. Now it's still hard to tell, but then on the Toronto side, this wasn't exactly a traditional game for the Argonauts either. Chad Kelly really slowed down and I mean really slowed down from what it's been before. 122 yards, one touchdown, one interception. I mean, he had probably one of the more poor, I think quarterback performances across the cfl this week. Maybe not. I mean, again, if you threw a touchdown, I think you got bonus points. But no, I may, I'm being a bit too harsh, but still ultimately, Chad really, he didn't have to do a lot and I think Jason already brought that up. His offense compared to a situation like Mason Fines did more of the work for him. They had a better ground game, the receivers, I mean, they didn't really have to just go directly to one or two guys. I mean Cam Phillips and this one is the top target, but I think Devar Daniels and even AJ Ette, the running back getting worked in there were equally as important. But yeah, ultimately I just think it goes to show Toronto is more of a complete team and hell like, huh, Chad Kelly threw for 122 yards and turned the ball over and they still scored 31 points. And I think a large part of that was because their defense was highly successful in this game, just allowing the offense to go with Es. I mean, Winton had one of the better defensive games for the Argos that I've seen really from a lot of defensive players this season across the cfl. So wanted to give him a shout out there. And then a couple other guys, Quantas stickers, the guy that we had talked about so much coming from F C F and he's kind of having a, I don't want to say breakout season, but he is definitely had a bit of a hot start, more impressive than I would've imagined for a guy jumping up to this level. So immediately, but ultimately all around just a great day, I think for Toronto. And more importantly, just personally, I really like the Touchdown Atlantic series. I'm glad that it's kind of back and it seems like it'll be here to stay at least for, well, I don't know for how long, but I did an article on that touchdown Atlantic stuff probably a little over a year ago, and I talked about every time someone brings up Touchdown Atlantic, it's automatically brought into expansion talks, right? Because they want the 10th team's been connected to Halifax for so long. I don't know mean you could say that they're testing the venues and things like that, but ultimately, I mean, every time they play this touchdown Atlantic series, I think it's a pretty good turnout. Clearly there is a hunger for football there. And I mean, look, I don't know how many fans in those stands are actually from Nova Scotia or if it's just people flying in from Toronto or whatever. Again, not that I had that stat, but if we did have that, maybe I would be saying different things. But ultimately, yeah, I mean look, I really like the series. I hope it sticks around and ultimately I hope that as much of a complex discussion it is as it is, and maybe it's not something we should be worrying about right now. Whenever you're talking about Halifax and Touchdown Atlantic, that 10th team is always going to come to mind. Yeah, we got here the sign that best sign, best sign from the whatever Halifax wants you. And I go back to this, let's fix it. Jason, what do you make of the Argos performance? I saw a tweet put out, they flew in the night before, and I guess a lot of the teams usually go out there the week of like, do you blame jet lag on? What? Do you blame their slow, sluggish game? Well, I just think it was bound to happen. I think that, you know, can't be firing in all cylinders every week of the season. I think Toronto, up until this week, was firing on all cylinders every week so far this season. So I think at the end of the day, one of these stinker games was bound to happen and good thing for them, their defense really showed up. I wanted to highlight some players on defense for them, Sean Oakman and for Lara and Oral Malade, what an inside outside pass Rush duo. Those guys are going to wreak havoc. They're going to stay healthy the rest of the season. They're going to be a dominant force for this team going forward. And I thought the secondary really gave the rough riders receivers really no space to work with in this one. Deshaun Amos obviously had the pick six stigers, like Evan mentioned, Royce Mechi had a big fumble that he forced at the goal line when Jamal Morrow tried to reach out for the goal line. And I thought that was a huge play in this game where Saskatchewan still could have climbed back into it. And then Roberson Daniel also had an interception in this one. He's had four interceptions so far this season. So I think Toronto's defense played excellent and I think this is a really, a true team that's playing complimentary football in all phases. Their punting is really excellent. Josh Haggerty's excellent punter for them, and I think that was another strong suit of them in this game. And I think at the end of the day, just a great effort from Toronto. Yeah. What do we got here? Coming up here? We're in the pregame next week with Toronto at Calgary. I think this is when they were talking about kind of the Calgary's rough schedule here coming up. That seems like a tough game here. We'll talk Montreal, Hamilton and all of that. But yeah, Toronto here cruising. I was so confused, and I've never been more confused in my life. When I was getting ready to watch the Ottawa Hamilton game and they had the rain delay on there and they're cutting to the panel and the panel's on the field. I'm like, what is happening? And I'm like, oh. I was like, just had it up on my phone. I'm like, oh, they're at the Touchdown Atlantic. Like, wait, what is happening here? Why is the panel in Ottawa wherever it was so very confused about that. A couple of just funny comments here at Sky checking that the elk season is mission impossible and then that Chris has this to win one game is mission impossible. So I thought that was funny. Anything else on this one? We'll get to, we'll do welfare check on Jason here with the Tie Kats. Anything else from this one, guys? All right, so I feel bad. I probably should've checked in at the beginning here. Jason, how are you feeling here? This was rough. A win. A win is a win, but win, it's like Thanos. So what did it cost? It costed a whole lot here. What did you make of the Levi Mitchell of it all here with the Hamilton game? Well, I mean, it's just so unfortunate that he gets injured right at the end of this game. I mean, the first game back, I mean, there's questions about whether this pole, Levi should have even been playing in this game, given that they took him off the six game injured list, a game early. So they don't even get save savings from that, if I'm remembering how the rules remember correctly. But I think at the end of the day, it was just an ugly win for the tie cats. It was good to see them get back to playing Tigercat football. In terms of playing well defensively really kept Dustin Crumb contained basically the entire game and really kept them out of the end zone the entire game. So I think that was good to see from that perspective. But on offense when Bo was in there, five interceptions, some of them his fault, some of them not. And then obviously just hate to see that at the end of the game. Just a bizarre coaching decision to have him in there at that point. I know it was on the two yard lines, so maybe you do want to plunge forward in that situation, make sure you don't give up the safety. But even then they were up by four points, so I don't think a safety would've cost in the game even. So I think at the end of the day, any point in the game you wouldn't have had Levi running that play. And I think that I saw a report that maybe it was Bo Levi that went ahead and said that he was going to go and plunge forward on that one. But regardless, I mean as a coaching staff, you should not have allowed him to do that regardless, and it shouldn't have even been a possibility for that to happen. So just really unfortunate and just a nightmare season for Bo Levi. Yeah, and Evan, this was, I don't get, because like Bo comes back, comes early, we've like said all this and if Bo comes back, is that going to be the savior comes back, throws five interceptions. So it wasn't even a even know, and I know coming back off injury and all that, but it was a second worst performance of the season compared to our boy Brenda Adams here with against the Argonauts, but comes back, throws five picks and then gets it's hurt again. I What would you do here? What are your thoughts? I mean it's just really sad again, and we've talked about it before, just mean it's been a bit of a downfall here for Bo Levi in Hamilton. Not just because of the injuries, but when he does play. I mean in this game he wasn't exactly spectacular and it's just like if this is the way that he's going to go out of the C Ffo, I mean that's just really disappointing and I'm not saying, I mean he could come back for another year given another shot, but when you're hindered by injuries at this age and things just aren't going your way, it's so hard to I think find and regain confidence that you can keep doing this. Yeah. Ultimately mean this was just really, it's a shame because we had, I mean, well I don't know, you talk to somebody like Andy Murray, I mean he was already saying, oh, Bo's not going do it in Hamilton. And me personally, I mean I didn't think he was going to be one of the top quarterbacks in the league, but I certainly thought it would be better than whatever. This has been just ultimately a very disappointing season for Levi and I wish him the best really. I mean I hope he can get off this six game injured list in whatever week and come back and finish the season strong. But who knows where the team is by that point. I mean right now I think they're three and four, but looks like what's going to happen is Taylor Powell's going to come back in. Maybe Matt Shilts fills in later on depending on how Powell plays or what that situation looks like mean right now we don't even know when Bo Levi's really coming back. To me it looked like more, I mean I thought it was when I saw it initially, to me it looked like he was going to be out for the season. And it's the same situation Saskatchewan with Trevor Harris. Ruff Ryders are saying there's the chance he comes back in the final few weeks, but I don't know mean maybe with Bo Levi, if they put him on the sixth game, that really does say something, but he could easily come back off the sixth game again and just get injured and we're right back and then that would be ultimately the end of his season. So I don't know, it's a tough scenes over there is what I'll say. And I mean fortunately now look, Hamilton's quarterback depth ultimately I think has been good considering they've had to play three guys or whatever, Bo Levi, Shilts Powell, I mean Shilts and Powell have actually shown a lot of promise when they've appeared. And of course it was unfortunate to see Schultz go down too. And now I believe they have Antonio Pipkin behind Taylor Powell moving forward. So we'll see. It's ultimately, it's just one of these things that I wish we could avoid it. There's been so many quarterback injuries in the league this season, but just bad luck and bad timing. I the, I think whether or not he should have been in the game, that's a whole different discussion. I'm not going to touch on that because I see it happen too many times. It really is a complex issue because it comes down to a, well, is it the coaching staff or the player? And was it really that big of a deal in the moment? I don't know, there's just too much around that. If I start talking about that, we're going to go well over our time. So Yeah, and I had the quote from Nailor as well. He always worries about getting in there. So someone getting injured here when it's running out. I did have this, I felt bad for said will I Levi Mitchell. So it's five interceptions, it gets injured. InTown tie, Kaz win. Anyway, we have a question here. Matt Chatter wants to know how did Crumb look? Yeah, the end of Crumb sanity here. Jason, how did Dustin Crum look? Well, I think he still made his fair share of impressive plays. I think that it looked like on that final drive he was going to lead them to the promised land and yet again with another dramatic victory but just could not close in the red zone. And I think overall they were the better team offensively in this game. Hamilton had a lot of yards, but I think that a lot of that came on a few plays. And I think Ottawa, the big problem with them is they're not getting anything down the field at this point. They have to be so methodical with their offense. Kind of like Calgary, we've talked about how they're not taking any shots down the field. Ottawa just hasn't been able to hit those big explosive plays and that's forced 'em to really drive the field methodically and they get drives that stall out in the red zone. And I think that's been their big problem for this game specifically. They hadn't really had that problem in the games against Calgary or Winnipeg. But I think that another issue here is that Hamilton has dominated Ottawa. Ottawa has not beaten Hamilton since 2018 now. So Hamilton has won the season series against Ottawa. That's the big consequence coming out of this game is that if Otto and Hamilton end up tied at the end of the season, Hamilton's already won the season series over the red black, so that could come into play later on. Well that's the thing here. I mean we talk all of this, everything you want to poo Hamilton's quarterbacks issue, whatever. I mean they're not that far out of it here in the east it it's remarkable here with the four teams and we had it Jason, if you lived through the cfl in the air, the xfl and the S F L season, we had lots of talks about playoffs and the teams winning divisions with losing records and all this stuff. I would pour the cfl to consider that as well. Let's get the division winners and then let's get some other stuff in here. And now I have to have a couple three and four teams on all of that. I did, I had a quote from Dave, which was I thought was interesting. There's a stat I invented in starting tracking this season. I call it the give back play plays where a team creates a turnover and then gives the ball back before the end of the play. The Red Blacks had a critical give back tonight. Yeah, they talk about that with they have the five interceptions and still not be able to do that mean, what do you attribute that to Jason to be able to have that many turnovers and still come up short? Well, Dave is actually Attri that place referring to is a play that I think Hamilton turned the ball over to Ottawa, but then Ottawa it and Hamilton recovered in the next play. Kai Loxley gets a 75 yard touchdown on a screen pass. And that was really the difference in this game when you look at it, Hamilton got in the end zone two times. Ottawa didn't get in the end zone at all. And yeah, like I said, I thought Ottawa was the better team. But yeah, I think Ottawa a lot of missed opportunities in this one. Obviously anytime you win the turnover battle by that much, it's disappointing not to come away with a victory. But again, like like I said, I beating a dead horse here, but I think the biggest thing is that it could not punch it into the end zone. A lot of teams had that struggle this week. I had that. I flashed this stat up at one point, but we had this, but Bo has nine interceptions in 12 quarters of play this season. Evan, what is your thought see in that? Oh, I'm just going to leave that one alone. I can't see, I feel too bad for Beau to be ripping on him here mean if I'm in his shoes, I'm devastated, so I'm not going to, I mean, yeah, it's like, well obviously it's not great. That goes without saying, but I mean you can't, yeah, like I said before, don't beat the dead horse. Don't poke the bear when it's already down or dead or whatever the case is. But yeah, I mean I will say just a couple more points from me here about this game before we move on. Kai Loxley really cool to see him get involved at Receiver. It was kind of known beforehand, even when he was with Edmonton, he was not necessarily just a dual threat quarterback, but a dual threat player can kind of play multiple positions in this case had a 75 yard touchdown and I would like to see more of that from him this season. Maybe this is a better role ultimately than a short yardage type of deal. So I would like to see him have more opportunities like that in the receiving department. And then on the Ottawa side, so Dustin Crumb reverted. I wouldn't say he was bad in this game outright, he just reverted more to what he looked like in the first two games and one of them was his first start where there was a lack in passing, but he ran for 82 yards and was very efficient doing so again, extremely mobile, hasn't stopped flashing that since he's come in and replaced Jeremiah, but Ottawa in my opinion, should have won this game. This was such a winnable game for them. Again, having five turnovers on your end and not being able to pull through just sucks. But it ultimately comes down to, like Jason said, two touchdowns versus none. I mean if you're going to get in the end zone twice, it doesn't really matter if you throw five interceptions because if the other team isn't getting the end zone at all, I mean the chances of them winning the game are still slim regardless of how poor you perform or whatever the case is. So it was an interesting game from that perspective. Definitely an interesting result. And yeah, I didn't expect Hamilton to win, but Ottawa didn't have the last minute heroics in him this time. And ultimately now it's sort of like how I talked about Calgary and Saskatchewan in the west. Excuse me, it's kind of Ottawa and Hamilton and East, it's which team is going to pull away. And right now Hamilton au has the automatic advantage with the tiebreaker. That's a fascinating stat to me that Ottawa hasn't beaten Hamilton since 2018. I mean I know Hamilton's been a pretty good team since then and Ottawa's had their fair share of struggles to say the least. But I mean five years is a long time even with that covid year. Jason, final thoughts on the Tiger Cats here. How are you coping with all this? I really don't know what to think at this point with the quarterback situation has just been a whole circus so far this year and just how unfortunate it's been with the injuries. So I mean I'm just kind of waiting to see how Taylor Powell's second start goes next week and then I should have some more thoughts on that then. Well, here we go. We'll kind of put this horse to bed or the cart. I don't even know the same. We'll put this show to bed here, we'll get out of here. Just looking forward, I think this week I have a couple emails to send here, but I have a feeling this week the show is going to be a live preview show on Thursday with a special guest. I have a wedding Friday, so that kind of gets in the way of posting some stuff then. So I think if all goes, I got email some xfl people, but I have a feeling we'll be doing that previewing that because very excited for this b BC at Winnipeg game. I mean clearly the game rematch whatever of the season. Evan, you looking at the schedule here, the game that piques your interest the most? Yeah, I mean bc, Winnipeg by a country mile. I mean if you think about it, BC wins this game. They've already beaten Winnipeg once this season. I think Winnipeg would move to five and three and then BC would move to seven and one. Now you're talking about real separation. And again, I'm not saying Winnipeg isn't competitive. We've been over this. I think Winnipeg's a great team, even if it sounds like I'm always ripping on. I just think again, they might be a little step behind where they were a year ago, definitely two years ago. And with the way the lines are playing, that could really hurt them. And right now I'm thinking this is again the West final rematch that BC is going to win. That's my prediction and I've been sticking with that for the past couple weeks. So looking at that game, I mean that could tell a lot and especially if BC wins it at Winnipeg too, I think is extremely significant. So yeah, that game I think above all and the fact that that's the first game kicking off the week should be very exciting. Jason, any thoughts on that? Any of these other games before we get out? Yeah, so yeah, that's obviously the game of the week. This week everybody's going to be circling the BC Winnipeg game, but I think these other games have some intrigue to them. Ottawa, Saskatchewan, who's going to walk away with a victory in that one. Someone's got to win. I think that if Ottawa bounces back, that'll be interesting because one trend that we're seeing in the cfl so far this season is that the east teams have been relatively competitive with the west so far this year. So it's going to be interesting to see if that continues the rest of the season. And Saskatchewan, it's going to be really hungry for a victory in that one. After dropping a bunch of games in a row here, Montreal and Hamilton, I'll be at that game. I'm excited to see how Hamilton plays in that one. After Montreal really kicked their ass the first time they played for the TCATs home opener. And then Toronto and Calgary looks like a mismatch on paper, but Calgary did beat Toronto. I think it was 31 to two last year when they played in Calgary. So I mean that's where noting mean. McLeod, Bethel Thompson versus Jake Mayer. Now it's going to be mayor versus Kelly and Toronto. Just completely different vibe right now, but I think at the end of the day that could be an interesting game and maybe a potential upset there. It's funny, so last year this time our anniversary is August 6th, and so we went to this, there's this Italian restaurant down on Alai and they don't do reservations, so you kind of just go down there. They're like, oh, it'll be 45 minutes or an hour. And I remember watching it was, I think it was the BC Elks game. Evan, you were there, it was the game, yeah, whatever game when you went up to BC that you're watching. And it was like Rourke just went off and Evan tweeting and I was standing there in line on our anniversary and watching the game on my phone. I don't know if Ottawa, Saskatchewan will hold quite my attention this year, but I'll I'll P V R it or DVR here and check it out if on the C B S sports network if I can't. But yeah, a little bit of different stakes this year for that. But I remember it was one of the BC games of the season and Evan was sitting there. I said, how lucky are you that you got to go watch that live? Oh man. I mean look, I, I've said it many times. That game that I went to last year, BC, what is it? It was BC Edmonton? Yeah, I think it was Edmonton. It was, no, because I remember because like Emmanuel Arsenal was coming up and signing stuff, he was in Edmonton, obviously been in BC for many years, was coming up and talking to people. I remember that pretty well. But I also remember, yeah, I mean that it was a Nathan Rourke clinic and I, I mean I was sitting there on my phone during the game. I'm like, this has to be one of the best quarterback performances I've ever seen live at any level. Keep in mind I've seen plenty of college football games, handful of N F L games, but that, I mean just cleared anything and it's a bit crazy thinking that I saw that Chris Jones led Edmonton team knowing where they are now, making the wrong kinds of history. But this year I will, I think it's not this weekend but the weekend after, I'll be up in BC again for the Lions Stampeders game there. So excited for that. I haven't really announced that formally yet, but that'll be my other cfl I guess event outside of the Great Cup this year. Very nice. Jason, anything else from you? We'll get out of here. I appreciate everyone sticking through. No, I think that's all that needs to be said this week. Well, we did it. Check back Jason, like you said, doing some recap reaction videos and then I'm, Jason will have his preview and like I said, I think we'll, we'll do that. I got to figure it out, but it's a little slow right now in the xfl and the U S F L, but that's good. No off season here. So I appreciate everyone like and subscribe, get on Jason's channel. I'm sure everyone's on there as well. And we'll see you guys next time. Thanks.

Episode 155 - LIVE XFL 2023 Combine Recap + CFL Week 8 Preview!

Well here we are. Happy Friday everyone. Special live episode this week coming off of a cabin season here, cottage season. Been on Vacay this week watching the xfl combine. Getting ready for cfl week eight. So I figured we would do a live show today. Luckily Andy Murray gracious enough to find time in his busy schedule between you working and watching the combine and everything to come on. So we'll do kind a half xfl combine. What did we think? Thoughts? I watched a lot of the post combine interviews with Ms. Garcia, with Bob Stoops, everyone else, so we'll talk about that and then Andy's been chomping to the bit to talk to cfl, so we will get that as well. Andy, how are you doing? I'm great man. It's so good to be back and also congratulations to you for escaping from the Woods. You made it out so you, you're a little sabbatical there and did well. It was good. Yeah, my father-in-law, Dorothy's father, we rent rent a house out. It's really easy but you know how it is. Sometimes getting back from vacation is as tiring as going on vacation but we're back was excited. Jason Hussey and Evan joined us on Monday. We did the cfl and all of that and then obviously we'll do previewing today. Excited. We don't always get to preview. I know Jason does his cfl previews as well over on his channel if you want that, but we'll get Andy's thoughts. Andy xfl combine was here, we did our off season charting xfl needs more off season content. What did you make of the combine? I mean it's the second football related combine we've watched this year so far including the N F L one, so we've gotten quite a bit of that and honestly as far as the idea, I think it's great. I think the idea of having this sort of setting where you have new talent that's potentially coming into the league, you have players who are working out with all the coaches, you have interactions with the standing coaches, league executives, you have some of the media personalities involved there with obviously with Sam Ocho being able to interview but everybody and kind of rogue around. I think that is a great idea. As far as terms of the technicalities of it, I mean it's not going to be a really nice posh studio show kind of thing. I wish it was a little bit more than that, of course I would. But for what they have and what they've done so far in their first year at iteration as a league, I think it's a welcome thing because last year all we had was some of the reporting on the showcases like you did in Arizona with the guys and it was not really, it wasn't live content. This is full live content for two straight days. I mean that's outstanding. That's more than I would've expected coming out of the season, two months out of the season. I did not think they'd be doing two full days of this on YouTube for everybody to see. And also interactions with the fans, all the giveaways, the trivia. I think that was also great. So as far as just giving us something to really latch onto at this point in the year when it's been two months since the season ended, I think it's tremendous. Yeah, I give kudos and I've kind of gone back and forth and I've had time to digest this. We were on vacation, I pull it up and it was very overwhelming. I was surprised how many people were on there. I think when I tuned in there was over 800 people live and commenting. That's all great. I've gone back and forth because it originally I was very down on it. I thought, hey, this maybe like you said, wasn't this polished but then I've sat here this week and what else do we expect? The N F L combine is boring by all accounts anyway and here we have this live thing. You have the interactions. I thought they were great. I thought Sam was great. They got a little marky mark in the fun bunch a little bit when they were talking with Ms. Garcia and oh thank you so much and they, you're the host, you work, you're with xfl here, this, if I was there I would be kissing the ring. You work for the league here, let's not whatever. But my only critique would be handheld nonstop for three hours, two days was a lot. Let's get a stationary. Let's have, I don't know if it's Matt Berry, I don't know if it's stormy if you want to have heard because it's really hard to maintain and I know this just from, we do live streams and with weddings and stuff it's really hard to have nonstop handheld. I know we have two cameras, we're kind of switching back and forth. That would be my only thing from a technical standpoint I, I don't do to the scale of this, but if I could look at something to go, I could probably replicate that. That's not a good thing. But I thought that the content was great. I thought they were awesome. I thought it was really cool. Hey, we're live here day two, look Danny Garcia's talking to the people right now. I thought that was cool. You really felt in the moment. But that would be my only thing. Let's get a home base and then we can keep going back and forth to check in on Sam and KJ and not have them have to carry it the entire time. I cannot imagine in whatever how hot the temperature was there, how sweaty and hot they were going live for two days. I mean kudos to them. Tremendous effort. I was very impressed with that. Yeah, great point there. Especially with the weather. Obviously we're used to the N F L combine being in a nice air conditioned venue even though it's late February, early March, it's a lot colder in Indianapolis so it's nice temperate inside and there's not a lot of weather conditions to deal with there obviously and as opposed to this case when it's nice and toasty down in the D F W at this time of year. So I think that's a good point. Just give them a bit of a break. I give 'em props for running around so much doing that and this sort of almost Blair Witch Pro project S level of handycam, it could be done dulled down just a little bit. I agree. Maybe you get a steady cam in there or something or at least have some more stationary items to work from. But overall, like I said, I I'm impressed that they were able to keep up so much and be able to interact with all the different kinds of individuals. I mean you just saw so many different people involved in the league. You have to be at least happy, especially getting the new coach in there. Blevins getting talking to him was great and that's putting a face and a voice to somebody that you may have not really heard from very much in the past unless you followed him very closely. So getting him involved and getting him into the fold was great too. I'm sure there was a lot of notes from the management meeting they had last week. We were able to trickle out obviously I think that the timing on that was really well done as well. So yeah, I think going forward you want to have maybe a couple more cameras have kind of a stationary setup where people can toss back between that and then maybe Tcho or somebody else and maybe another personality to go roam around and talk to different people. You want to have that, just those two different dichotomies for covering these kinds of events. But again, seeing the people who were involved, I have to be pretty happy with who we were able to get at the end of July And just, I'm looking here at the numbers on here, 13,000 for the stream Thursday half that 5.8 for the, well I guess for the Thursday they have both of these titled Thursday the 26th and Thursday the 27th, so that would've been Wednesday the 26th and Thursday the 27th. But generally that, and I thought he was really good. The KJ sales, how did we hear the story on this? Because I watched a lot of it but obviously I didn't watch every second. Did we get the story of how he was involved because obviously Sam and he's been on the broadcast. How did KJ get that? Do we know? Great question. I was not able to ascertain that. I don't know exactly how he was able to accomplish that role. Good for him though. I mean I know he's been involved as a player and we've seen him on the field, but see him kind of interact in this role. I wonder if maybe that's something he's transitioning into. Does that mean he's not going to be playing? I don't think that's the case either. I haven't heard anything about that, but he certainly seemed very, very gregarious. He had a lot of great energy. He was just very involved in the entire production of it, so maybe this is sort of a transition thing for him. Again, it's going to be interesting to see, we obviously know about the slew of E S P N layoffs that happened the previous month and some of the content shifting around as well. Some of the individuals were not kept on not just the larger sports portions but also a couple of the xfl people didn't get to stay on too, so maybe they're kind of trying to groom some future stars or notable personalities to put into place later on once they start figuring out what their strategy is going forward with E S P N. So I, I'm happy for kj. I think that was a really good role for him, but I don't remember hearing about how he got that role exactly. Well last we be Remi vax KJ said it on the stream. We talked to Eve who's a social media director, how he could be more involved with content. They came back with him with this. I think it's great because now if you're a defenders fan, you're watching that. I, one thing I thought fan control football did really well and they did lots of things well and they did some things not so well, but it was like how can we brand and market these players and give them opportunities outside of football? How can they use their time in Fanger CHO football to elevate their stock as a marketable athlete and stuff like this is really good because he was, for all intents and purposes, one of the faces of the league here the last two days along with Sam. I thought that was great. I just had this article pulled up. This was sent out ahead of time. Peter Warrens, one of the staff writers, nine players to watch in the xfl combine. I would've liked a little bit more like, okay, we have, who are we seeking out when I was on, it's like, who's the chat? Want talk to eight, talk to eight, talk to nine, go talk to 87. You're like, okay, okay. I just a little bit more like, hey, let's try to hit these couple people. But again, I was a little critical about it, but then I'm sitting there and I'm like, you felt like you were there. You felt like you were at Choctaw, you were kind of walking around. You mentioned, and I heard this and I had to go back and check. I didn't want to give unnecessary hardship here, but when they were talking with Blevins, Jim Haslet was there and they were talking with Jim and they said, Hey, what are you thinking? What are you going to do with quarterback and DeNucci? ISS going, going to be in Jennifer and he goes, and I love Coach Hasley, our coach here at this house. He dragons. He goes, we're set quarterback. We have Harrison, we have our third string quarterback. He's good. We have Harrison Frost and Montez sweat. And I said, I didn't know that Washington Commanders Montez Sweat was throwing ball. Jim that that's a little terrifying. I understand that was the primary qb Steven Montez, right? Dressed for every game. Harrison Pros was there. I thought that was very terrifying. You're going into the xfl C drag off season. The coach know that Haslet is the stereotypical example of the old school defensive coordinator in that if he runs a football team he worries about his side of the ball and then whatever the offense does, he says, that's your jurisdiction. Don't, I'm not involved with that. I don't care. Just don't mess it up for us. That's very much his whole mantra. It's very old school traditional in terms of how he runs his operation and that obviously was the case with DeNucci last year. I kept making several different jokes in the variations of, well DeNucci just turned the ball over again. I think Hazel's probably sharpening his knives, getting ready to take him out behind the woodshed after this because he always was just so upset. Obviously he literally said after a game on national television, I'm going to kill you after the game, after he had one of the most hideous performances, I think it was against San Antonio. So I'm not surprised that that's kind of his mantra towards offense. Yeah, I mean, hey good for Monte Sweat. I'm glad that he's able to play quarterback apparently and he plays for a different team. Kudos to him. Yeah, I thought that was loud. I had here too, they were talking about, I thought it was cool seeing I seeing Randy Mueller, I seeing some of the guys we know the DPPs but getting them kind of getting their spotlight. He was talking about them being able to do a more just selective job this year in terms of, I think they were in panic buyer mode last year of like, okay, we got to have to field these teams. We have to get X number of players where they said this year and this was echoed a lot, we can really meet with these guys and talk with them and interview them. I thought that was nice and I thought it was neat seeing that they had David Dykeman on as well. He's really active on Twitter and social media. I like that could, like you said, Blair Witch we're kind of walking around, oh here's Dave Ackman, let's go talk with him for a little bit. I like that it felt a little bit more alive that way. I think so too. Yeah, that's again like M T V reality show and just like, okay, camera crew's got to run over here. Oh wait, hey can we talk to you for a second? Just really run over and sort of pursue people in the moment, but it almost like I guess a less glamorous Hollywood stars act kind of thing, right? Oh look, it's go talk to them, but it's good to see Coach Wade Phillips. It's good to see Coach Sups. It's great to see all again these of characters involved again, just being able to put personalities to the league again, like you were saying, it's just important to keep that connection for all the fans to latch onto. I mean I'm going to remember players from last year and coaches from last year who are no longer with the league, but I'm just going to remember them so prominently liked it is just a guy that I don't really forget about. Even someone, I'm sure the Expel doesn't want me to talk about this, but Coach Rod Woodson, I'm going to remember Coach Rod Woodson and he really got put in front of us and it's stuff like that that I think gives you context and also gives you something to revert back to or referenced in the future when you start talking about results or how someone reacted to a certain way or kinds of things like that. That's how you build your personality. You build your mantra and you build your league because now you have things and you have notes and you have personalities to latch onto. I had some notes here they posted in the media portal. They did some more formal interviews, kind of media scrums with everyone afterward. I had some notes they talked with Danny and Heinz Ward, Bob Stoops and then Wade Phillips. One interesting note and then I had some quotes from Danny, obviously chairwoman and owner I wanted to get into, but one of the local reporters asked about what her connection was or what she was able to translate being a professional athlete in the running the league. And I thought it was, and we've talked about it before, we know, okay, Danny Garcia obviously met the Rock at the University of Miami and they were in the weight room together and she's a professional bodybuilder, but I thought it was interesting seeing her off the top of the stream day two addressing the athletes that she really is able to put herself in that psyche of being a professional athlete in a way that no offense to Vince McMahon or someone like Vince portrays to kind of be an athlete. Vince is not Vince Torres quad walking to the ring twice here at the Royal Rumble. So I thought that that was cool and to me that gives a little bit more, not validity but just I resin it resonates more just seeing her address, talking to the troops. I like that and I know that the Rock does that as well and I mean the Rock is an athlete in his own way, but I like that where Danny Garcia had just retired from professional bodybuilding, kind of do all this. It just feels a little bit more like I get you guys. I don't know if we, we've talked about that in the past, but I thought her talking about it in the post and seeing her on the stream kind of resonated with me. I mean it's something for her to relate to and it's something that she can use as a connection to the players because you're right, she knows what it's like to put in the hard work and dedication to be a bodybuilder. She knows the struggle, she knows just the work that goes into having dedication and trying to make a name for yourself, trying to make a brand for yourself. She really knows what that entails and so she's trying to do the same thing for the players too. I believe she's trying to get them to have their own identity, their own brand in a lot of ways, but a lot of that involves hard work and it involves opportunities to do so and she truly believes that and I know it comes through her spirit. I can tell how much she caress about it. I don't think it's fake or any sort of mantra giving off that she doesn't care about it. She really does and I like that a lot. For somebody who owns the league, I think you should and that's awesome. McMahon to his credit, I think he cared too. I think he just had a little bit more ego mixed in and not saying ego doesn't mix in with his other individuals too. I'm sure the Rock and Danny both have a little bit of that as well, but Vince was much more like, Hey, I got the pockets to do this so I'm going to do it. I'm going to walk around and show off my guns. It's like, okay, cool man. You have every right to do that and ultimately it did end up being for a good cause. It just came from a different angle, but with Danny and the Rock and even the rock a little bit too, being able to show this humanity of we were at this point before we had this happen to us and this is where we got after all this time and all this hard work. So I think it is extremely relatable. It's kind of like we talk about player coaches, I mean this is player ownership, this is kind of how it feels and it's uncharted territory for a lot of people, but it's really, I think it's very engaging and it's very humbling in a lot of ways for these players to be involved with this and being able to relate to this. I think that's why some of them do gravitate towards the Rock. And Danny, So I had some quotes here I wanted to get into with Danny first and then we can do, because I thought Heinz Ward had a couple. If it was said by any other person and I read this quote, I would think that it would be very alarming. But Danny looked very excited in the post event interview. I just thought you could really tell I am, I'm in this. They asked, how did you feel about season one? We said We're extremely pleased. And she said, I don't want to say but, and we're in year one of a startup league. There's a lot of challenges. We can look at our rules, health safety player success, over a hundred players at N F L camps, 31 that had been signed. We could look at the play quality that was on the field and I thought this was interesting and we could look at our ratings, our ratings compared to our other competitors who are out there. We did a really wonderful job and I don't remember a lot obviously talking to usfl on there. xfl doesn't mention usfl a lot. I thought that was interesting for her to purposely say, we can look at the ratings of our other competitors who are out there. We did a really wonderful job. Any kind of things strike out to you. I mean she sparingly mentions it and I really think the last time that she prominently mentioned it was when you asked her about it in person last year at almost this exact same time in Choctaw Stadium and you asked about putting teams in hubs and putting teams in their own harm harm markets. She made that quip about like, well, we're putting our teams in their own home markets. So she that's, but they don't get too much into the weeds with that, especially Russ Brandon is very careful to talk about stuff like that. Russ Ju Julio is really careful about saying stuff like that. They're really, they're not trying to kick up as much dirt as much as the usfl does sometimes in trying to compare themselves to the xfl. I think the xfl just says, this is our mission statement, this is what we're doing. Of course they're going to compare themselves. You all ultimately are, I mean you're in the same space competing for the same players at the same talent all of us at the same time. Of course you're going to compare yourself. The cfl does it all the time too, and they're not quite as aligned as everybody else. But I mean ultimately at the end of the day you have players that you have to compete for. So of course they're all looking at each other through their window blinds, but it's a matter of which one of them are talking about it to their neighbors openly out in the field or in their front yard telling people how much they don't care for their neighbor. That's different attitudes with that. So I think for Danny, I'm not surprised that she sparingly mentions the usfl or any other leagues. I do believe she's solely focused on what they're trying to accomplish, but when they do have something they can kind of champion, of course they're going to take that opportunity and say, Hey look, this is what we did. You should at every angle you should, you're going to have to try and jockey for position and for attention from other people and notoriety to make your brand known more than the other competitor. They asked about wanting to have more of a grassroots feel to the league and Danny said, we want to be relatable. I think that's interesting as well. And we've talked about that in terms of kind of the B D E that the usfl has sometimes and wanting. I like that quote. We want to be relatable. We purposely want this to have a grassroots feel. Anything on that? Well, I guess I'm trying, Do you feel like the xfl is relatable? I do. I mean do, Sometimes I think they get a little too glitzy for their own britches and sometimes they're a little tone deaf, but not all the time. But I do think they're a little bit, I it was, to be honest, I thought 2020 was a little more grassroots, if I'm being honest. I thought just because Vince McMahon, that's his thing. He's just like, he's the every people's entertainer. The every man's billionaire. Yeah, yeah, Every man's billionaire. Exactly. That's how he pitches himself. So maybe it's just when I'm comparing it to that, maybe that's why it doesn't feel as grassroots, but it is more so than trying to flex on every other person who doesn't believe in your product sometimes other leagues do. And so I think this is why it's important to establish that identity and also just again, at the end of the day, I will say, as much as they try to be relatable, at the end of the day you do look at Danny and the Rock and say, well, you guys are in pretty nice positions in your lives. Obviously it's hard to relate a lot to that. I mean you try to relate to it in terms of their early years of course, but we've moved far past that era. So I think for that, I do think it is important to focus on other individuals, the players and some of the coaches who are getting their opportunities. That's where you can get more grassroots. That's where you can get more relatability and that's where you can get people who really believe that they have a shot to do something special. It's saying, look, this guy had been toiling around here for so long and now he has this chance to be a head coach or be an assistant coach or to be involved in it this way or this player never really got this opportunity or never had really a shot to play and now here he is a starting position here. If you keep the focus on that, then you keep it grassroots. And I do think I will say the combine and the showcases do give me much more of that feeling too, where it's just anybody has a chance, anybody has a chance, they come in, they work out, they have a chance and it's all about them. And if someone doesn't show up, if a player no shows that's on them, you had your chance and you didn't take it. Okay, well that's like a job interview. If you don't show up to the job interview, you're not giving yourself an opportunity Also to relay back to having KJ sales on there, I thought it feel that helped it to me feel a little more grassroots where, hey, we got players on here. It's not just, you know, watch the N F L and it's, it's Eisen and you know, got Kurt shot by and we're all suits and ties and we're here. I like that KJ and Sam kind of sweating their lives away, stumbling around Chatta Stadium. They asked about changes after the season. Danny said, we looked at what we needed to change, we may change it structurally within the organization so that we could be very fine tuned for execution moving forward in relation to obviously laying off some of the marketing people. But this is now, we've talked about this before. As we went through our first season, we realized we could go to a more seasonal model. So we staff up and we staff down. We didn't actually need that many individuals all year round. We will continue to respond in that way. We'll make sure there's no discrepancy in the quality of the deliverables to our athletes that play in our fan experience. Well look, a lot of leagues do this. I know the X l's not unique in that way. There's a lot of teams that hire for seasonal employment. If you're working in ticketing or if you're working in sales or sometimes you're working as an AV staff or something in an arena, you're going to get part-time employment with an entity like a baseball team. I mean I've seen ads for my teams down here and it's all seasonal employment like hey, we want you to work with these games and then once you're done, you'll be on your way. Go find something else. So that's not too different than what I've seen in the past. I think it's more of just can they stay structurally sound in terms of what they're operating and how are they able to get content out? Clearly they've done a good enough job so far in the first couple months to get a lot out that they weren't able to last year at the same time. So they were at least able to execute that. It's just a matter of can you have some of the teams operating and keeping them in the fold or communicating with the head office or the staff. I think that's something they're still trying to figure out. But obviously they had to cut a lot of fat because they realized that their budget may have been a little bit over what they wanted it to be after the season ended and they had to make some adjustments and that's going to be a process. How many people do, can you keep on, who can you keep on? How important is it to keep on some of these individuals really? And that's part of any league. I think it's just the fact that they're trying to figure that out is maybe the part that feels a little unsettling because most other leagues know exactly who they need and what they need and when they need it because they've been around for so long. So that I feel like it's going to be a little bit rocky for that part of it for a little bit at least. And that's just something they're going to have to figure out in the next coming years. It struck me that Danny at least felt and said to me the correct things of like, well we lived through this, now we know we didn't know. We thought maybe whatever. I will say between doing the combine, we have the eight one thing coming up. I think they've done a tremendous job and this is a really slow time of year for NFLs getting in and cfl, we didn't even have xfl on the show last week. We led with cfl. And so I think considering all of that, I think they've done a very good job right now mean we pounded the table and said we want to see some off season content. I will say so far I feel good and to me what I liked even better was talking with the interviews where they had with Stoops and with Heinz and with Wade Phillips football people are still working a lot, you know what I mean? So yeah, okay, maybe we're scaling down and we don't have as many game day experienced managers or whatever you want to call it for that. But I do feel like from the football side, they're working tremendously hard right now. I mean they just obviously did the showcase and everything else or the showcases in the combine, but at least where it matters, it feels like the people, like you said, that they're keeping those people on board right now. And I think that that was what matters. The talent accumulation is the most important part of this entire operation and they've done a great job of that. They did a great job last year and I think they're doing a really good job this year still being able to maintain all that. I really want to see who's going to stay and what players are going to be still be there next year. That's that part kind of excites me the most is alright, are we going to see start seeing familiar faces and people to latch onto from the previous year? Obviously we want to see people go and do well in the N F L, but are we going to be able to get some of those familiar faces like a KJ sales for example, or what happens to some of the quarterbacks? Are they going to come back like is D r King going to come back at some point or is he just going to be on a practice squad floating around forever? And those are the kinds of things that I wonder about as far as getting an identity built. Obviously the U S of L had that a little bit this past year and it works to their favor. Someone like Alex Magoo got so much more not notoriety and now here he is at Green Bay Packers camp signing autographs. That's incredible. And he was not in that position at all last year. I thought he was very pedestrian his first year and second year. He took leaps and bounds, he was much better and that's because he was able to stay in the system and build upon his resume and really work and focus on his craft. And then once he came around, I mean he proved me wrong when Jaymar Smith went down I was like, ah, I don't know man, this still Stalin seems kind of in trouble and he came out like gangbusters. He was awesome. And that's something that a lot of, there might be other players under the surface who you may have not been impressed with last year who suddenly take that leap in development and you go, oh my god, and where did this come from? And you are going to have that hopefully happen next year. And just sort of building on that, that's something that's really important for all leagues honestly. All leagues need that and that's what the whole point of this is. It's not just the new guys coming in, it's the guys who were there before and how are they continuing to trend upward. We have a couple comments here, let's just check in the Jersey King is saying, how'd you guys like the combine? Obviously we we're talking about that. Go back Hailey checking in here. Our Sea Dragons manager and I think she was down at Choctaw or at least helping kind of manage all of that stuff. She's coming still trying to give the fans so excellent content this we can, trying to keep the hype going and then we have comments and I tweeted about this week I was on vacation, what was it the xfl Central I think account posted about the La Wildcats trademark being trademarked by the xfl. I already tweeted all of that out but the LA Wildcats has been trademarked since I believe August or was it August or December and then it went live but of 2019 that this is just paperwork transferring it over. So I know that that got a lot of play. I think it was sent to me and then I was sitting by the campfire that night and I'm like, wait, what? 50,000 impressions later, what is going on? So no, I do not believe that anything with the La Wildcats is involved with eight one. Mike Mitchell already reporting. I think my internet cut out there, Mike Mitchell already reporting that eight one's going to be the season ticket sales going on sale. So Mike already reported on that so that's kind of confirmed. So the eight one thing will be exciting but yeah, the LA Wildcats, I don't know, do you have anything to say with that? It was such a non story that really blew up. I'm like this has been trade it, it's, it seems like am and not that I'm any better but these amateur like internet euth going out on trademark databases. That's what I was under the impression too. I thought that trade trademark had already been commandeered and it was already in the system that had been reported by a couple people we got over a year or two ago that had been already in the system. So I was surprised that people were reacting so viscerally to it. I thought it'd already been around. But the idea of the Wildcats coming back is a fascinating one because one, I think it runs anti to what the league has going right now, which is saving money and putting a team in LA I don't think would just be saving them a lot of money as far as structurally goes. I mean you could go back to Dignity Health Sports Park if you were trying to put a team there, but I don't know if that's the most viable option. I think it's just something to hold onto as far as they're building their identity and their brand. If they're going to hold onto that for the time being until further notice that's that's all on them, that's fine, but I don't know if that means there's going to be any movement. I agree with you, it's been in the system for a while and it's not something that's going to change drastically all of a sudden. This doesn't portend to things that are going to change in the future, at least not that I'm aware of. And yeah, I don't think it really changes anything. Nothing in the time being. I mean like I said on here, this is, it was filed in August of 20 20 19, August 15 published for opposition May 26th, 2020 just transferred over and the original L L C here is basically changing their uses. They're eliminating a lot of their uses so they're just kind of moving stuff over. So it's exciting but again people, I don't know, I don't think you can change cities that much and do one. Yeah, Haley's C corroborating here, the xfo kept handle, so some of the teams 2020, yeah that that's all it is. So others post videos and I guess try to capitalize on a lot of that. I don't try to do that. I don't try to do a lot of that clickbaity stuff on here, so that's why I try to do that. Anyway, so that's a couple other quotes I I thought with Heinz Ward and to me, I don't know if this is people that are covering this at the combine and not having watched the season a lot, but they were asking the bra is we're not good. And so I would say, how are you guys going to be better? Where it was, well you're former N F L superstar and what do you think here and what's it feel like coaching? And it was a lot of those kind of things. I'm like How would you fix this season? He blamed injuries for a lot of it and he said, I'm going to get things turned around. This was the quote and then I have another quote to transition to the other coaches. This is a direct quote from Heinz Warp. I don't care about wins and losses because I know I'm a winner in life. Now we know Heinz in Heinz is very famous individual. If you had heard that from many other coaches, not knowing the individuals whose mouth that came out, if that is an alarming quote, what do you think about the quote? I don't care about wins and losses, I know I'm a winner in Life. Well I'm glad he doesn't care about wins and losses. The fans really do. So that's nice signs also, I don't think he cared about it very much in Batman when he was running around and the field was blowing up and Bain was causing mass destruction. So clearly he didn't care about it in that film either. No, I look that's an odd quote to have, especially considering what they went through. I understand he's probably frustrated because they just had terrible luck this past season. I mean every quarterback on the roster kept getting hurt. Reed, Annette, it's a real shame he got hurt. I thought he had a chance to do something with them and maybe helped turn their season around mean between them and the renegades. I don't think they were that dissimilar in my opinion. Them the renegades were very on the same pathway of okay, defenses are great, they have a special teams player that's really good, our kicker's really good. I mean John Parker Romo was awesome. I know he missed that final kick of the season, but if he makes that kick they go into the playoffs instead of the renegades. Think about that. They were not that far away. So the bras just weren't able to get that break. The Renegades did where they got Perez and they caught fire. So I mean for him I'm sure it's a lot of frustration, but that's such a weird sentiment to have you. It does matter. At the end of the day, every other team in this league and everybody talks about in this league is people care. Players care. They want to win. This isn't just some like side stop. I mean for me, maybe for a few of them it is obviously DeNucci was very gung-ho about getting back to the N F L and some of them are, but a lot of people care. This is a livelihood and this is something that a lot of people care about. They want to win, they want to do well, they want to compete. I cared, I thought about that every time I watched The Guardians, anytime they lost, I just thought, man, that's a shame because they really are putting in the work and the dedication. Terrell, Buckley caress about this. He really wants to win. Well also your players win bonuses. I certainly care whether you win or lose. Yeah, his financial incentive Ward Is not Heinz Ward is on the incentive train. I mean, well he is on the gravy train but it's his own gravy train, not everyone else. No one else is on that. Yeah, exactly. I it's, it is bizarre. It feels a little tone deaf. But again, if he said that anywhere else, yeah, he gets flanked. I mean the media eats him alive for se something like that in a bigger role. So I think he's still trying to figure this whole coaching thing out. Jason Hussey checking in here. We haven't gotten to cfl yet, Jason, so cover your ears. Jason, what is this X L doc here, Hailey? Check. Fun fact, I'm an extra. And the Dark Knight rises in the football scene. So now we know where they got. Now we know where the bras did get their uniforms from. That is incredibly small world on that. And the other thing that the quote we had from Hines, and this relates to Stoops and Wave and then we'll kind of round out this portion of the conversation unless you have anything else. He's talking about getting guys to the N F L and he says, I don't want a 10 year career guy in the xfl. We have talked a lot on here and you and I have with a lot of people. You need to have some not, not everyone, and I was doing the math, so there's like 50 guys per roster. We had injuries and all that, but 400, 425 guys went through the xfl a hundred people have gotten camp visits and 31 signs so far and we had a couple guys that got cut that weren't actually signed. So maybe that number is actually higher, but if 25% of the guys that played in the xfl get a look, that's a lot of people that didn't and that's fine, but you need to embrace that side of it too. You have to have guys that are going to play in your league for any sustainable time. What do you make of that? I don't want a 10 year career guy in the xfl. I mean is he going to be around in 10 years? That's my other question. That's really the thought. That's the I have. It's like, well maybe he says that because quite frankly, I don't know if he's going to be around that long, but I disagree. You need to have continuity, you need to have faces to relate to the CFL's going through this right now where look, people are already talking about this season as great as someone like Chad Kelly or Dustin Cru and how electrifying they've been. People are already talking about their next opportunity in the N F L. You just lost Nathan Rourke who you desperately needed as far as quarterback stability this season. And you're already talking about guys who aren't even at that level who are already potentially going to be moving on. I mean that's disheartening as a franchise. You want to keep those guys around. You want to have those kinds of players to build off of because you don't get a lot of people like Bernon Adams Jr. Or Oli by Mitchell being able to stay around forever and being prominent in their role. I know people get debate about how effective VA is, but you need that kind of stability. MA's hurt, MA's career might be over and he had at least had some sort of consistency and prominence to his role in the league. You need to have people who stick around. You need to have guys who play vital roles in their community and also in just having a face to look to. And I absolutely believe you need to have 10 year players in this league. I don't. And not everyone can. And some people, again, at end of the day, some people just want to play. I know everyone says, and I know Pat Rafino posted about this yesterday because there was an injury to Joe Burrow about his calf injury and he said, well, one of the people they could call upon immediately and it was a photo of AJ McCarran, but look, AJ McCarran, his whole point of being in the xfl was to play in front of his sons and he got to do that and he probably wants to keep doing that if he goes to the N F L, maybe he's another shot to play, but there's no guarantee of that. And some of these guys just want to do that. They just want to get out there and they want to fall out. And I give them tremendous props for wanting to do that and not just trying to sit and collect a paycheck. I get it. Some guys do and there's nothing wrong with that either, but you need to have tenure players. I don't agree with that sentiment at all. Every league needs to have identity and every league needs to have people that you can latch onto if you're going to be able to build your brand and your style. And again, some guys just maybe prefer that. Yeah, yeah. The other quote here, so this is going on to stoops here, Bob Stoops, he said they're asking, what are you players going to the N F L getting all these signing? He goes, we're all for it. This is what this league is all about. And just to echo that, again, that can't be what this league is all about. It can be a good portion of what this league is about. It could be a majority of what this league is about, but it can't be when you have a 75% churn rate of guys that aren't making it on there. And it's just the practicalities of it with building a football team. A lot of the quotes we're also talking about from all the players and everyone, it's so much easier now that we at least have some foundation and that's going to continue, but it just can't be with all it's about. He had a quote, he was expecting offenses to be up to speed from day one. Wade Phillips said he expects football quality to be enhanced in season two just because of the continuity of all of that. We've lived through usfl season two. Do you share those same sentiments just by nature of them coming back now that because usfl was slow starting out? Yeah, I mean it is a bit of a slog as far as getting all of your pieces together and everybody trying to get out of the gate. Again, I don't think there's a lot to be said about how much people need to get all their players together and how it just, it's going to generate, try to generate interest. It's just going to take a while and this is something with competing interests. Now how it's going to take, especially the s l has to think about this too as far as what players and continuity they're going to have and how are they going to get people to latch onto them and continue to keep interest in their product. I mean we saw this past year, obviously one of the biggest names we were looking for this past year was Case cus and the Philadelphia Stars, well, they flamed out, the offense didn't stick and case got hurt, he got banged around, he got sacked a bajillion times and it didn't ever come to fruition for them. So it was kind of like, well now what have we looked for now? So you need to have the ability to have something to look to when you're coming back out of the fold in the cfl This year I was excited for, because there were some names that I was familiar with, people that, players that had finally been following for a while and were able to look at to step at every team. And that's something that again, every team needs to work on and be able to establish their identity and moving forward. I just think it's going to have to take some time to get all of that together. So I, I've know I think the N F L, again, their messaging needs to be a little bit different, especially for the coaches just saying, well, we're trying to send all our players and we're trying to get rid of every everybody, and it's like, I don't really want that either. That's not what I look for. I want guys to get chances of course at the next level, but I don't expect them all too. By the way, what do you think about someone like Austin Pro? Do you really think Austin Pro is going to be latching onto an N F L team anytime soon? No offense. I think he's going to be an xfl player for perpetuity from here on out and if it means him, we working with his dad on the St. Louis staff. Great. Awesome. I like that. That's good. That's a good story. And if he does well and he plays well, he has in the past and he has a role to play, then what's wrong with that? There has to be some sort of balance there. And I've talked and we had Greg Parks on and the good to go back to Vince and the wwe b e, that NX team model, that was when N X T with it was at its peak, it was always known that the ultimate goal of the N X T was to develop the guys, get them up to the main where they could get the big million checks, but you have to make a compelling product in the meantime. And so I wish the coaches, I wish more and they're talking on the live stream, but at least the interviews I saw, it was a lot of like, yo, we're getting our next crop to go to the N F L. It's like, I would like you to get your next crop to help win games as well. Again, I don't care who wins the xfl champ, I'm not like Sea Dragon, it doesn't matter to me, but I just think for the health of the league you have to also winning also matters and having Heinz Ward say, well I don't care about winning as long as we get these guys on. And we had the quote from back to last year, if every single player from my team went to an N F L roster that would successful. Yeah, yeah. And I agree with that. I don't care. But for the legitimacy of the league, you have to value winning as well on that. Well, I mean if you're a college coach, do college coaches run around saying, yeah, I can't wait to get these kids out of here. Yeah, I still remember a press conference back in the day when Pete Carroll was at U S C and Mark Sanchez announced that he was leaving the school and early, he declared for the N F L draft early and Pete Carroll walked out of the press conference. He was so upset thinking I could've had you come back and we could have made a run in a national title and now they can't. College coaches very much care about winning and they know very well that, okay, I understand the circumstances are different because kids have to move on eventually. But I just, yeah, this almost gun homeness about like, yeah, I'm trying to get you the hell out of our league so you can go on and do better things. It's an odd sentiment and I don't think the usfl really feels that way. I know they champion it sometimes when a player gets signed, but I don't hear the coaches being like, yeah, obviously we're trying to send everybody off to the N F L. I think to me sometimes the U SS F L coaches care maybe give off the mantra at least that they want to win. Do they get Now whether or not they execute that vision very well is up for debate, but they obviously have the intention I think, of trying to win. It's in most cases, but it's hard to say. I think everybody's in it for different reasons. It's kind of the same thing with the players. The coaches seem like they all have different reasons for why, what their skin in the game. Is it just trying to coach again, is it trying to be successful in that league? Is it trying to send players off to another league? Not really true. The cfl obviously it's all a standard. It's like we're trying to win, trying to win the Great Cup end of story. No other debate. Well, that was also why I didn't like Marshall Ferguson's comments here on the xfl. Was it week one or two where he is like, well, what is this? I'm like, this is week two of an upstart football league. You're like, I've seen cfl worst play in week 17. Well, you tell me who the Edmonton Elks are. Marshall, I want to hear that story. Tell me about that team. We'll transition here. The cfl I don't want to keep you forever. I know you need to work. Any other thoughts and any other thoughts Combine? Like I said, again, presentation wise, I'm fine with it. I do want them to scale up their production next year, next time they do this. Now do we get another one of these? I don't know. I don't think so. I think they're just going to do showcases and then we'll work our way towards the draft eventually. I don't know if we really need to have a second combine. One is one is good enough. Really. I think the timing is great though. I'll say you were mentioning earlier, July is a good time to do it because there's nothing else going on. If your baseball team isn't in it, you don't care. The only other things that are going on really is like W N B A, which I watch now a little bit more these days. Certain players that I follow. But I mean the summer's kind of a scourge. There's not a lot going on besides maybe the occasional P G A event or a tennis event. It's an open realm for content. Obviously the cfl we watch religiously, but even then during the middle of the week, there's not really much going on. So I think for them it's a great time to do this. It really is. And right before training camp start, before the N F L starts kicking back up, I think it's a good time for them to do it. So more of this just maybe make some schedule, some production adjustments going forward and maybe get some other individuals in involved with this. To recap, we probably have more people watching now than we did the start of the show a plus effort. I was thrown back at the beginning tuning in, wasn't quite sure what to expect and that having lived through it and kind of processed it, I think this is a good fit. I don't think there's a juice versus the squeeze of how much we could scale up another a thousand fold and are you getting 10% more engagement? I thought they did good. The numbers looked good for me. I thought having as lively of a chat I thought helped it feel alive. We get chat here with our peanut viewers compared to what they had and it makes it feel like more than you're just sitting here talking into a vacuum. So I thought that was good. Like I said, I just at a stationary next year have whoever it is, maybe have, I don't know, Sam was good walking around. You need someone, like I said, get Matt Barry or someone just sitting there and we can just bounce back and forth, bounce back and forth and that would be good. Mike says, I hope they live stream the draft on you two as well, fan the engagement. I'm cool with them, not as if we can do it. So if you know I'm, I'm happy to carry that mantra and then hussy is chatting in here. I hate the snobbiness of some fans, one of these out leagues and not the others and feel the need to crap on it. Whatever you get the chance. Oh yeah, football, football is football. Andy, any other combine and we're going to preview cfl week eight here real quick. Well not real quick but not 50 minutes worth probably. I can't wait to see some of these guys potentially be on the field next year. I want to do more tape study and kind of look back at some of the things that they've done in college, but overall a lot of research to be done, a lot of things to be done and again like this isn't going to be all the players obviously there's still many more that I think are going to be in the fold. Who knows? We might get some surprise names. I'm curious too, with all the free agency news, obviously with a lot of players who haven't been signed yet, keeping a close eye on some of those names too as far as what players don't end up being brought back in the N F L if they don't sign during this year. If some of those guys end up being in another league, who knows? There was obviously a guy like Marvis Bryant for example, who showed up in the xfl didn't really do much but there are going to be players like that still floating around who might end up coming back or Brett Hunley or something of that nature. We are going to see, I think we're going to see more guys like that too, but not too many because again, the X felt does a really good job of balancing, saying Hey, we know you're a veteran, you have good chops and you've been around for a while, but we also want to give chances to people who haven't had a lot of them either or really young. So I'm very curious to see how the training camps and the free agent lists shakes out too in the N F L in the coming months. Yeah, talking here. Yeah, Gary is agreeing how he have my preferred leagues Don't talk down to anyone. Yeah, max says because we're talking Hailey's saying she doesn't think people would be interested, we'd be interested in people analyze draft interviewing players and they announced the picks after they actually did the draft. I get it's hard to do a live show with the resources available. Yeah, I guess mean Rick Rick's been on here a bunch and give us the list. Rick knows all these guys or get Evan get us on. We know these it, it's hard to do the big dump that way at least if we knew when it was going to be. Like I said, I had emailed in and I said, can we get on the Zoom call? Can we get, can get some of these players and start making notes and stuff as opposed to just this freak out like oh it's all happening here. But anyway, good stuff. Like I said, shout out all the players who got the opportunity I think 200 plus and shout out Sam and KJ and everyone and like everyone at E S P N and Hailey, all the other people involved in that. A lot of work with that so just we appreciate it. We're on here pounding, wanting off season content. So cfl week eight here. Hussy and I have been obviously doing our weekly recaps. Tonight we have Hamilton in Ottawa. Dustin Crumb sweeping the nation here for the cfl. Andy, what do you make of this? Because it's a couple weeks ago, this isn't that exciting of a game. Bose coming back, right? Bose on, I think I saw him activated so this is going be Bo versus Dustin Crumb the game we didn't know we wanted How that trailer for that new Willy Wonka movie dropped and how they're trying to come out with another one with a and all that it. Yeah. Okay. Well if Crumb was a Wonka bar, he crumbed MPT because he has been nothing but sweet for this Ottawa team. I am enthralled by Dustin Crumb. I love his play style, I love what he's done. I was so impressed by him against Calgary because they took away his legs, they started spying on him and he just started dropping bombs down the field. That guy has so much talent to him. I'm really, really excited for him and I am so happy for Ottawa. This team has been in such a dirge as far as notoriety, as far as success, as far as not being able to win at home. They've won back-to-back home games after their just horrendous home losing streak that they had had for years plural and for them, I mean it's awesome. I think Ottawa has a real chance to now get into the playoffs, which I did not think was going to happen even before the season started, but especially two weeks ago when it just seemed like their entire world had crumbled, no pun intended and it seemed like it was over, but that comeback against Winnipeg has just completely jumpstarted them. They're exciting. I don't think they get into another overtime match this time around this game. I feel very confident in 'em taking, I look Hamilton Jason would tell you first obviously that they're having a lot of struggles. Their defense has just been gradually going down further and further and further in terms of efficiency. A guy like Simone Lawrence can only do so much and I know he's getting up there in age too, so this secondary for Hamilton has just been tested and has not really shown up in a lot of context. Ottawa is just really getting their stride, especially offensively. It's really exciting to see all these things developing for them and I like Bob Dice, I like their coach that they hired. He's really, I just think he's, he's seems like a very players oriented coach and he seems to really get a lot of these players and a lot of their personalities and it's very exciting for this team. They just feel like a young upstart team in a lot of ways and it's thankful to finally see this kind of come to fruition for them, especially after all just the horrendous injuries they've had happen to them. The bad luck they've had. I see Ottawa taking care of business here pretty easily. I don't know. Yeah, Bo didn't look good before he was hurt. Now we've had all this, was it, was it Tyler Taylor, the third string for Hamilton? Taylor Powell. Taylor Powell coming back. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I kind of thought Crumb was a one trick pony here and then obviously being able to do it against Winnipeg and being able to do it against, who is it against? Calgary. Calgary here. I'm going back here. There was a long way. So last week, it was a long week ago here. But no, I mean this is exciting. I like this. We had the Nathan R of it all and everyone knew that okay, he is going to be whatever or people I knew you know knew he was going to be good. You didn't know how good he was going to be here. We've had injuries, everything lead to this. I mean this is a movie here at this point. I said week one when Crume came into relief that if it was a movie he would've made that touchdown at the end was tackled short. He ended up doing it, taking them to overtime and all of that should timing me. Is this the game of the week? I suppose so in terms of the matchup, the quarterbacks, I mean Hamilton's desperate. They definitely need to get a win in trouble. This is this eastern playoff picture. I know the other teams in the division besides Toronto are a little bit weak but they need this desperately because it's very much a difference between if they're second or third and potentially they could be last if things don't go well, if Montreal somehow ends up winning then they could be looking at the basement near if they're not careful. But I would say it's not the sexiest matchup, but I do think it is one of the most vital matchups of the entire weekend. So as far as the east standings go, yes it is something that they have to be, be cognizant of what could happen to them if they don't. Thai cats don't get their, there's things together. It's going to be a rough second half of the season. The first third has not been very kind to them. Levi Mitchell, I don't know he he's just like you said it at the beginning of the year, you said it before the season started. I mean his physical tools have deteriorated and he's been hurt and I don't know if he has it anymore and also this receiving court just is so frustratingly inefficient. This team cannot punch it in the red zone. They just keep having these instances where they cannot score in the red zone. I thought Matthew Shilts has played the best out of all the quarterbacks. He just had a lot more bravado. He attacked downfield a lot more, but even then, even with him, they still couldn't get it done in the end zone. I remember that game. I think it was against not Toronto, who was it? There was Montreal when they played against Montreal at home. I thought that was a real lost opportunity because they just could not put in the end zone. Montreal scored touchdowns and Hamilton scored field goals. That's kind of the story of their season. I very much see the same thing happening this weekend where the Red Blacks will be able to punch it in and Crumb will be able to work some magic. The tiger cats are probably going to end up kicking field goals and ultimately that's going to end up in them dropping another one and being two and five. Yeah, I don't know this the tie cats red black series, the big division game Friday night, that excites me looking here, Saskatchewan going and this is the big, what is it, the touchdown Atlantic here, Owen or five, not oh five five in. Oh Toronto here we have Mason fine coming in. Trevor Harris going down season ending. I don't have high hopes here for the Saskatchewan or Fridays. Is this the upset of the century? It would be especially considering how inept their offense was last week. And also as far as a coaching matchup goes, this is a huge mismatch. Craig Dickinson is going to be in big trouble this season because he did not perform very well last week. That third down decision when he went for it, he got it and then he didn't go for it when there were five yards out from the end zone and decided to kick a fuel goal after burning time on the clock and then being down seven was, that was extremely negligible. I cannot believe that happened. That being said, Saskatchewan still had a chance in that game because the offense for BC had just kind of run into a rutt. The one thing that Saskatchewan has going for them is Mario Alford. That guy is electric. When Sean White went out for that field goal to go up 10 to kick it, to make it at 10 point game for BC and he starts lining up and I'm seeing Alford in the end zone. It's less than a minute left in the game and all I'm thinking is if this doesn't go well, Alford could run this back and he could tie the game after all of that, despite how poor and inefficient Saskatchewan had been, they still had a chance to be in that game and Alford is really their calling card but against Toronto, I imagine they're going to neutralize him and I don't think they're going to have a lot of options and this Saskatchewan defense is just going to get worn out by Toronto's run game. Chad Kelly has been playing outstanding. I think he's getting better and better every week. His accuracy, his rapport with receivers has been awesome. Devonte Koch, he's been great. I love AJ. Hollet is just awesome. I mean he's kind of a man crush. He has to be one of the most marketable players in the league in my opinion and this Toronto team. I mean this going to, this should be a walk. This is not really much. There's not much that Saskatchewan can do and also the travel distance. Saskatchewan had to travel to BC back to Saskatchewan and now all the way out to Halifax. That's rough. That's rough. Travel schedule, travel. Travel schedule. Toronto doesn't have to go that far obviously. So yeah, I mean this should be a walk for Toronto and not really much of a matchup to look forward to. I mean it's great comradery. It's great for the league playing out there and having this whole situation, but I imagine mean two weeks ago you were looking at Trevor Harrison at above 500 squad against an undefeated Toronto team and it looked like a pretty decent matchup and in two weeks it soured pretty quickly. Yeah, I don't know. Here I Toronto seems to be rolling. Who are they playing next week? They're at Calgary. I mean Ottawa Ottawa week 10, but that's at home. I don't see a game where Toronto loses here for a long time. They're back on the by in week 11. Then maybe they get banged up. Maybe that's it. They go on their by and then they came back. I mean I see Toronto making a big run here, especially like you said with the travel and everything. I don't know d does the Touchdown Atlantic do anything? I mean I know that this is always supposed to show we're doing the expansion. I think Hodge had posted today sites that we can use for future. I kind of tired talking about this wi with the expansion. Any thoughts on that and trying to get that area of the country excited. I mean this is deja vu because Jason did a great thing yesterday where he posted a video of detailing the history of the touchdown Atlantic series. This has been going back since the eighties. This has been an idea from the league for quite some time of putting a team out there and putting a 10th team and it has never come to fruition because of one reason or another. It's Randy and Bro's mission statement to make that happen. I don't know how viable it isn't happening. Would I love to have it? Yes, absolutely. I mean having a 10th team would solve so many problems. I can't believe they didn't have Toronto playing the first week because it being nine teams and they left them off the schedule. Your first game of the schedule should have been Hamilton at Toronto first game of the season, like no excuses. That should have been your Thursday night matchup and instead we had to wait till week two at the end of the week on Sunday night for that. That's ridiculous. And this whole 19 thing has always been really weird to me. That being said, trying to force Nova Scotia's hand and to try to fund a team here, it's hard to publicly and encourage people to fund a team or put resources into building a team when not everybody is going to utilize that resource. You have to play your own hand and unfortunately I don't know if the league has the resources to do that or is willing to do that. So for them, I mean it's a nice series, it's cool, but it's got to at some point push comes to shove, something has to change here and something has to be done because they can't keep playing this game of chicken forever. People are going to get frustrated and fed up with it. If they haven't already, then something has to change. I don't know what should they just have the mantra, the Vegas Vipers and Rod Woodson saying, well we'll play in a parking lot. It doesn't matter. So they just take that mantra with them and just do that instead because I don't know what's going to get it out there. You can't just wait around for the perfect venue and be able to have the perfect situation. Maybe you're just going to have be a makeshift situation. You're just going to have to eat it for a few years. I don't know, it's just, I don't know. I always feels like we just get bored on here and we go forward with this and it's kind of like the xfl expansion talk with the trademarks like, oh, how can we pop some impressions right now? Let's talk about it. Just amazing. Is our quarterback Greg Sson giving fine a long leash as rider I, I mean don't think they have many other options there. Craig, if you were cool with Mason, fine, you wouldn't have gone out and got Trevor Harris. So it's really hard now to be like, well we're fine. I mean, I don't know, you mentioned Cody last year you did all this stuff and then now to be in the same position it has to feel, I don't know. That has to feel upsetting if you're the Saskatchewan rough riders like team building here. We really thought we were going to make a run and they had such a pitiful last year and missing the playoffs and hosting the Great Cup in Regina and kind of all that coming back out on here, Hussie had a comment about Dave Evans throwing four interceptions and giving me nightmares this week. What do you make of this? Is this a trap game for the BC Lions BC at Edmonton here where this would be loss number 21. This would be the record breaking, right, because they've tied the record now at 20 it would be the record breaking at 21. All right, Reid, listen, I think it would be, and I'm an insane man in some respects. I so badly want to pick Edmonton to come in with the upset here for a couple reasons. One, I like David Evans, but he is not that great of an upgrade and not having VA around I think does alter the offense a lot. It's going to be a very low scoring sluggish game in a lot of ways, but I can't in good conscious at pick Edmonton and here's why. Last week, in my opinion, Chris Jones did what I thought was comparable to a fireable offense and here's why. I know everyone's up in arms about Trey Ford. I know everybody's incredulous about the start. I know everyone's just losing their minds over, what was it, Maurice French who got released from the team this week. A lot of the creative control differences with how he handles players but players. Here's my point about it. You just watched game tape of the Winnipeg blue bombers failing miserably to contain dusted crumb in his legs because one, they didn't put a spy on him and two, they're an older defense they can't chase after running quarterbacks. I've seen the one Keeley seal for Winnipeg this year is they cannot stop quarterbacks who run VA gave them trouble and Crumb gave them trouble. Now here you are with Taylor Cornelius who we all know has been less than enviable as far as a passer, but one of his assets is his legs and a couple of times he got out, he made some big plays with his legs against Winnipeg. Did they go back to that at all after he made a big play with his legs? No, they continued to try and throw the ball around and pretend like he was a 70% completion faster and he was not and he has not been and he will not be. I don't understand why Chris Jones decides to make fetch happen when clearly all you have to do is put Tre Ford in a position to use his legs and use his assets, get out there and make Winnipeg earn it. That was extremely negligible to me. I cannot believe that they not find a way to get any sort of mobility packages, R P o, anything to get their quarterbacks to run against that Winnipeg defense, which is old in running down. It is, it's an Achilles heel heel for them. They clearly did not do enough tape study or it was just some sort of forced idea of what they were going to run on offense. To me that was extremely negligible. I don't think they would've won the game, but they would've given Winnipeg a run for their money and instead they just folded and quit in the second half. They usually do. So I can't trust this Edmonton team at all until further notice. And Chris Jones has completely lost me. We have a little bit of breaking news here. I have pulled up, this was shared over Mike Mitchell in our chat, Gregory Parks sharing it here, but was it Michael Bandy being signed to the Denver Broncos would be and we got to need to get because well isn't this 32 because because FA go and the other one they were cut before this. They were kind of on the rosters but unofficially officially 34 players here assigned to the N F L here. Any comments on this? I saw it coming into the chat. Mike could send it over to, I mean good for Bandy. I think he ends up on the practice squad again. Obviously he got a lot of burn with the chargers last year and was sort of an emergency option after all the injuries that they had to their wide receivers. That's someone else like Bailey Gaither is getting looked at by the charges this week. But my comment at the time was, well there's no room for him, but maybe there would be room if something happened. Now of course I don't want that to happen. I don't want any anymore charger by receiver injury, so I'd very much prefer that doesn't happen. But that's the case for someone like Bandy who's just going to have to wait around until something happens. If Sean Payton likes you, that has to be in something, right? So I think good for him kind of keep away around hinting. It's a shame that he's not able to be around. He is a multifaceted option. We obviously saw him play quarterback that one game when the quarter Broncos had no quarterbacks because of Covid and for Bandy. I mean that's a good opportunity. We'll see. He's probably going to get a lot of preseason burn now and I'm not sure what his familiarity with their offensive scheme is, but that's good that that's a good spot for him to be in and that's going to be the reality for a lot of these players who are signing in this late. It's just going to be, okay, well something happened, we need somebody else. Who do we know? Oh, we know this guy. He played this league. Oh he has this tape. We know we have information on him. Again, end of the day, that's all it is about right. It's just having information on all these players and be able to pass it around and be able to use this analytics and the models and say, okay, we can go call this guy. So yeah, good for bandy. I mean not that Burrow is injured, but you got to Herbert going out and getting his bag kind of in this pissing contest back and forth and then Burrow going out and kind of getting hurt. I mean I hope that that's not a serious injury but it it's crazy to think that they were kind of doing this holdout back and forth and then obviously Herbert gets and then Burrough coming out. Let's get here. Final thoughts and then we can wrap up if there's anything else. Calgary at Montreal. Cody's looks good. I like my boy. Cody, what do you make of the ettes here? He's been fine. I mean I think he's got more stability in his life now. He doesn't have to worry about being chased down by people in the grocery store anymore. So I think for his sanity it's good for him. But as far as Montreal overall, I'm not crazy about them. I just don't think their offense is run as efficiently as I would've liked and I'm not really big on them as far as what they've been accomplishing on that side of the ball. I still can't believe, speaking of Mario Alford familiar, I can't believe they let him just go to Saskatchewan. Like that to me is insane that they let Mario Alford walk because that's such a weapon to have on your team. As far as Calgary goes, I mean look, Jake Mayer stats wise obviously had a very good game last week, but the thing that still gets me about him is he still just throws picks that really hurt his team. The turnover margin for Calgary is not good because of his negligible decisions and their defense is getting pounded on. I mean they've given up a lot of points in some instances and they've got to be careful where they're going forward because they just have not really been able to have a pass rush or really been able to get any sort of pressure under these quarterbacks. I mean again, crumb just absolutely diced them up all game last week. So for them, I mean this is kind of a must win, but at the same time Saskatchewan is also falling apart. So for Calgary they might luck out and still get the third slot in the west because Edmonton is just in a black hole and Saskatchewan is trending downward, says Calgary might luck out ultimately in this season, but they still have to win games if they're going to expect to do the crossover. Really what you're looking at here is crossover potential Now. So here if you look at the standings, what's going to happen at that bottom tier with the east now the east is much more even in terms of who has wins and who doesn't. So somebody from there is probably, I mean they might just stay put and kind of have their spot, but who's going to do the crossover here? It'll be interesting since Calgary is kind of floating around and I think they just have to win enough games. But clearly I said it before the season started, I said, I think they're not going to be as good as people expect them to be because I think don't been able to replenish their talent and that's clearly been the case so far. The rest of the league has outpaced them. Blue bombers are always good and Lions have been great. Ottawa's revived themselves and are going to start just steamrolling people. So it's kind of for me, Calgary, they have to fix some of their issues. I don't know if they can fix it defensively. Offensively, they just need to stop turning the ball over and mayor needs to stop throwing picks. Yeah. Matt Chatter commenting here. Am I just muted? There's someone like me in here. Well you were asking about Alex Magoo, we talked about Magoo off the top of the show getting signing the autographs over at Packers training camp. So I mean we're doing our thing. I can't control the chat too much on here. Mike has a question in regards to the combine. Our combat player's going to be added to the upcoming draft or individual teams who making offers to the players they liked. It was my understanding that they were going to be part of the first supplemental draft and then there'll be the second supplemental draft that'll be kind of not like leftovers, but anyone else, N F L players, specialists, kind of anything with that? Am I correct in that understanding, Andy? Yeah, it's all calendar related. So it's all just players that are coming out of the showcases and the combines and then following that, anybody who's been a roster or got onto an N F L roster and then becomes available after that will be the supplemental draft following that. So it's kind of like what the N, the usfl did a little bit. Although this case obviously since we're in the middle of the N F L season, there's potential for a lot of transition, a lot of change because this is going to be in the fall and then it's going to be a winter for the second one. So it's sort of all this transition going on. But yeah, I mean the first one is just going to be all the players that come from these showcases and the combine. Yeah, and we had our big talk with, sorry, as I micro on there, we had our big talk with Russ a couple weeks ago that I, for whatever, whether it was timing, timing and everything else going on, I didn't perform super well. So if you want to know about the xfl off season, it was what, 40 minutes or whatever with Russ talking kind of all that stuff and getting his thoughts. So that was all on there as well. Anything else? We will wrap up here soon. Anything else on the games? Like I said, I have a fear trap game here circled with the bc but anything else from this week? Obviously Blue bombers on a buy here after taking care of business against who did they beat? Demolishing Edmonton. I think we're going to see a lot of status quo this weekend and it's funny to say status quo with Ottawa in terms of winning, but that's kind of where we're at with them right now. I think they hold Pat, Toronto's going to be fine. BC I think will be okay because I just don't trust Edmonton that Calgary Montreal game's going to be really weird. Some stuff's going to go down to that game. I can see that getting really out of hand and just being really wacky. So that might end up actually being the most entertainment tan game of the entire weekend. Maybe the matchup we look forward to the most is the Ottawa game, but that Calgary game just reeks of weirdness. So that could be end up being the most wackiest matchup. But as far as drastic trendsetting or anything, I don't think there's going to be anything different. Your division leaders are going to probably both win and Ottawa I think will continue to ascend and be above 500, which be at this point in the season it's tremendous. So I'm looking on here just on my bo, the Saturday games are both going to be on the cfl or C B S Sports network, whatever, but the game tonight I think should be free on CFL plus if you want to watch a game tonight, if you want some more football content after the XL combine and all that, I think there should be a good one tonight Bo coming back and like I said with Dustin Crumlin. Anything else Andy? We did good here. We did. I appreciate it's kind of a weird week and the combine and hours of live content to go through. Anything else you want to get off your chest before we get out of here? Well thank you for having me on. I've been chomping at the bit to talk about cfl Every time I watch you and Jason and Evan chop it up, I just want to desperately jump on and say something be like that road caller. But I appreciate you having me on. I am excited about some of the other showcases and I mean we're getting into N F L training camps. We're going to see some of these players that we know out in the pre-season game soon. We're going to have some real familiarity with some of these players. I will be at a pre-season game myself in two weeks. I will actually be at a Raiders preseason game, so we'll see if I have any familiar faces to observe in that game. So this is really exciting time for people that we follow and players that we've been religiously watching for the last year or so. But am football season never ends for us. It might be starting up for a lot of other people, but for us the rollout continues. I mean you got to keep doing it on here, no weeks off. And it is interesting that it's exciting and like I said, I like having the cfl stuff right now. I wish that performed a little bit better. I don't know if that's a demographics thing or if it's a Canada thing or whatever, but the season's been good. I still think there's problems to be had that we had C Simmons on. We're talking. Yeah, it was the greatest weekend of cfl games was at two weekends ago. There's still a lot of glaring issues here where I think a lot of cfl people look and they're like, oh look, see this is great, we're fine. It's like, well you know just happened to be that Dustin Crumb is the second coming to Michael Vick or something here. We didn't going in. So things change and it's good that it worked out but I think there's stuff like that X L retweeting out. Oh that's good. Oh it's talking about KJ sales on here. They're tweeting out Marquette King's new songs. Yeah, I mean like I said, the best thing the F C F did was help get these guys doing their own streams and everything else. So that will do it. Like I said, we will be back Monday Hussy and Evan I assume at 9:00 AM Pacific and then I got to figure out next week here could be another dry week post xfl combine. We have a Thursday game here BC at Winnipeg, so that'll kind of throw a wrench in things. We had the eight one announcement on Tuesday. Like I said, they'll be cool but Mike Mitchell already reporting the season tickets going on sale, so I don't think we're getting full season single game ticket schedule here in August. That feels very early I do think. We'll hopefully we'll get that earlier this year, but it's something to kind of make waves here. Andy, anything else? Keep on trucking man. Hope the weather's treating you well and hope your baseball team's playing better than mine. Well I'll tell you, we just had a come from behind victory there against the twins and then Julio's hitting it again. We're going to Arizona tonight and then we will be, socks are coming into town on Monday, so we will be there for the SOX game. Mariners at that. So yeah, hopefully was it The friars are doing all right. Is that what they, is that abort mission? Man, it's not happening. I appreciate it. I appreciate Hailey stopping by everyone else. Appreciate Andy and we'll see you guys next time. Thanks.

CFL 2023 Week 7 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 7, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Monday morning here. Welcome to the markcast. It's cottage season, cabbage cabin season, as I said on Twitter on vacation like many cfl fans and not watching. Can't watch the games if we're out at the cottage, whatever. We are here no days off. We have Jason Hussie here, Evans on vacation as well, having fire issues. So we'll see how that goes. We have Jason here. Jason, how are you? I'm doing great. Read a great weekend of football and the weather's great. So no complaints from me. We had a discussion a few weeks ago. Is Chad Kelly the most important player in the cfl? Is Dustin Crumb the most important player in the c l right now? I mean, if Chad Kelly didn't exist, I think yes, he would be for sure. I mean, just an incredible couple weeks for Dustin Rummm. Haven't really seen anything like it. Who to have Dustin Car to have the Ottawa Red Blacks as a whole be kind of must watch cfl TV right now. It's pretty insane. The Sunday night game really has lucked out With that general thoughts just coming into today, what did you make of the weekend? Well, I thought that the weekend on the whole was pretty disappointing up until the Sunday game, but last night's game made up for it and then I thought this was one of the most entertaining cfl games that I've seen in many years and just seeing both quarterbacks at the top of their game, just going back and forth trading blows, it was just such a fun game to watch and really the highlight of the week Because we've had complaints right about mayor and everything and I watched early on he had the pick six and everything coming off. You think mayor kind of stepped up last night? Yeah, absolutely. I mean obviously he had the three turnovers, the two interceptions, and then I think he also had a fumble. But honestly I think overall he played really well. 450 yards, four touchdown passes. Had his team in position with the lead late to win the game. If the defense just got one more stop, they would've won the game. So I definitely don't fault him for the loss at all. I thought he played his best game of the season by far so far, and I think that's a good trend that we've seen the last couple weeks. I thought his best game of the year was last week before last week and then this week was even better. So it's good to see that from mayor and any quarterback in the cfl. I mean this really feels four 50 yards passing and four TD really feels like this is what was promised when we kind of got into the CFL and it's like, okay, what's the deal? Is this crazy Canadian football league and you get Matt Dunnigan throwing for however many hundreds of yards and do it. It felt a little bit more high octane that way than maybe we've seen in the last couple years. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like the last couple of years it's just kind of been a feeling out period. I mean, we had a period about five to 10 years ago where we had a bunch of Hall of Fame level quarterbacks and it was kind of similar to this. We saw games like this all the time and hopefully we're getting back into that era with a couple of these young quarterbacks emerging here and hopefully the two quarterbacks we saw in last night's game are part of that. We'll bring Evan on here again. Evan's fighting wifi issues just at the hotel, not his own. So we'll see how it holds up. Evan, how are you doing, sir? Good. Yeah, having a bit of network problems, as you've probably already said, but I've got my personal hotspot going and that seems to be all right. So we're going to test this, see how it turns out We do our best here. I wanted to stay, and I was going to say off the top comments last week on the show because Jason posted a video over on his channel and oh, what's the deal with you guys not watching all the games or all the games are watched? All the games were watched between all three of us we're on vacation. I've worked the last five days, I'm on vacation with my family. Evan's on vacation in Palm Spring on this personal wifi. Jason's watching the Games on demand. I don't want to hear any of this. We're doing the best we can here. Why to Brian bring this coverage on your Jason, do you have any comments to add to that? Cause I know it was on your channel. No, just that we do our best to watch every second of football that we possibly can. And like you said, we all work jobs, so yeah, we just do our best around here to give you guys the best analysis we can. Yeah, the comment was, I'm going to go back to three Down Nation to watch it and then John Hodge, was that a wedding last weekend? Weekend? This some of the games, how that works out. Evan, Dustin Crumb effect here really in spectacular fashion. What did you make of our guy? Yeah, I mean Dustin, I think the Dustin Rum era has officially arrived and it's been great to see him really hit his stride and you never want to speak too soon with these type of things, but I really think that this could be the beginning of something special and maybe Ottawa now has the ability to go on a run that they didn't have before. And I will say this, even if things maybe are still a bit rocky here and there with Crumbs performance, he could easily go out next week and throw three interceptions. I certainly hope he doesn't do that, but it's a possibility. I think this is the most hope Ottawa fans have had in a long time. Right now there's a lot of excitement around the Red Blacks and using the term excitement and Red Blacks together has not been used again in a very long time, and that's not a shot at the Red Blacks or their fans, but it's just the truth mean, haven't been winning many games, there hasn't been much to write home about there. So to see Dustin kind of finally lift this organization up and make them competitive in the east here early in the season, it definitely shakes some things up. I mean if you look at the standings right now, they're ahead of Montreal, they're ahead of Hamilton now. I know Montreal was on the buy this week. They played one game, but still, I mean they're making a lot of progress here. It went from Ottawa being kind of at the bottom bottom with no way to go up to now it's like they're just behind Toronto. I really did think that Crumb was kind of this one trick pony and we had seen the scrambling and all that and we had talked last week on the show and how was Winnipeg not ready? But being able to do it on the air with his feet and on the air, it feels a little bit more well-rounded where I thought that this was, they were going to be able to figure it out or okay, you can only scramble so much, Jason. I mean what do you make now to be able to do that half game whatever and then the twofold games now of him being able to replicate this. Yeah, so I thought the same thing as you, Reid. I thought that in the first half of this game it was much like we saw against Winnipeg where he did most of his damage with his legs and obviously he's a gifted runner, like six foot four long strides, very tough guy to bring down in the pocket, but I thought in the second half, Calgary really adjusted, slowed down his ability to run, really put a spy on them. I think it was Cameron Judge, they used to kind of shadow him and he still beat them with his arms. So I think that was very encouraging, just being a true dual, dual threat quarterback and I think that was very encouraging to see. Yeah, I had your tweet here, you talking biggest story coming out Dustin Crumb. We also had here Gary Stern watching the games all weekend. Yes. What a great game I love. I love Live tweeting along with Gary on here. And then we had this Mil Stegel friend show, the Red Flag's the most exciting team and the cfl. I'll present that first to Evan and then you Jason. Yeah, I mean I think Emory Hunt put out a tweet and he said this is starting to look like that Bronco season with Tim Tebow where the team might not be essentially on paper one of the better teams, but they keep finding ways to win at the very end and having these exciting back and forth thriller type of games. But really I think the reason Ottawa won this game just again on paper, is they had more rushing yards. They were able to run the ball more effectively, and we'll get into this with the other games, but a lot of teams this week couldn't run the ball. It was a shame. And I had mentioned last week, the reason Winnipeg lost to Ottawa in that overtime game where Ottawa came all the way with back was because Winnipeg couldn't run the ball, they couldn't run the clock. It was just really unfortunate on that part. And I mean several other teams struggle with that this week. Calgary was a juggernaut on offense who had Jake throwing for 450 yards finding Mark and Michelle Reems Dukes. We'll get into more of those guys here in a minute, but they couldn't run the ball either. And Ottawa just had such an effective ground game that they were churning out so many yards on both aspects of the offense, again, on the ground through the air Calgary, even if you're throwing for 450 yards, which is an insane number by the way, for a single game, even if it goes in overtime. I just think they were no match at the end of the day with the way Ottawa was running that ball. Jason is Ottawa the most exciting right now? It's close. They're getting up there. Obviously these back-to-back exciting games really puts them up there. But I got to go with Toronto. I think Toronto is still the story of the sea and I just love watching what Chad Kelly's doing, even as a Tigercat fan, just removing the bias from it. Just a very exciting player to watch. They look like a fine oiled machine and I think they're the most exciting team in the CFL right now. Yeah, we had a tweet here as well, Dave Waral, he's friend on Twitter here and also today, I dunno if their tweets anymore, if we see the X now Twitter rebranded like, oh, we got got to pull up this X whatever. I wish I could find the tweet, but our man Farhan said earlier this season, red Blacks are a good team waiting on a quarterback. I think they found their quarterback. I ain't been against them the rest of the year. I mean we talked about this with Oli coming back in that Horrificness and hey, they're just ready to go and we didn't know when they come back, is he going to make a difference? Evan, what do you make of that? And just through however many, was it been four quarterbacks now kind of finally figuring out that maybe we have a landing spot here with Dustin Crumb? Yeah, definitely. I mean I think again, crumb and I had mentioned this before, has had now over a year to develop in that system. He signed with the team last season. So I think he's finally sort of adjusting and it looks like he's definitely been prepared for this opportunity. There's a lot of quarterbacks that come into this league and they're not prepared. It takes a long time to develop the quarterback position, especially in the cfl, but Dustin Crumb is kind of proving that wrong and he's been one of the better all around players I think in the league over the past two weeks. Again, at first we kind of just thought he was more of a mobile quarterback, could have been, I think had this scenario not played out. I mean he could have been one of the better short yardage quarterbacks in the cfl just given his rushing ability. But clearly he is a true dual threat and this game was the perfect display of that. There's been a couple, even in that Winnipeg Ottawa game again where Ottawa came all the way back, crumb did a lot more with his legs in that game I think, than he did with his arm. But in this one he finally kind of opened up the offense passing and really got the ball out and was just really efficient all around. So yeah, I think right now Dustin Crumb is definitely sort of the biggest up and comer in the league. There's a couple other guys. It really does go to show though, you know how I mean, and this is across all football, any league, whatever, college, how much the quarterback position really does affect your play because I feel like a lot of these teams are one quarterback away or they lost the quarterback. I mean, look at Saskatchewan, we'll get into them later. Mason fine had one of the weirdest games I'd ever seen where he completed over 30 passes but didn't throw for 300 yards, still had two turnovers. I mean, just such a wild kind of event. So it's a very kind of complex thing. You open it up, you say, well yeah, Dustin right now is the guy that he was their missing piece for Ottawa. But I feel like you could say that about so many other teams in their situations as well. Jason, looking ahead here next week, Hamilton at Ottawa, are you scared now? I mean you might not have been too scared about this game a couple weeks ago. Well, if this is Taylor Powell versus Dustin Crumb, it'd be interesting because these are two quarterbacks coming out of the Mac conference, if I'm not mistaken. So would be an interesting thing. I think Taylor Powell actually did look pretty good this week. We'll get to that when we talk about the tie cats game, but I think that would be a very interesting matchup. Just reading before I went on here that Bo Levi Mitchell is back at practice for the TCATs as well. So maybe he's back this week. We'll see what happens. But huge game for the TCATs. If they win that game, they'll be three and four and jump the Red Blacks and the standings and win the season series already over them. But if they lose, they're really putting themselves behind the eight ball this first third of the season. Just Ryan, I just wanted to show this Ryan checking in. Has stamps ever won an OT game? Not clutch. Not clutch in there. I feel that way about talking about the Mariners sometimes here watching the game yesterday and then the CFL news here. I getting, hey know, buy your tickets to exciting games. Gary Stern predicting the sell. I mean, who knew this was must watch either way here. Let's get into the actual game here. Thoughts, I guess we'll go, let me pull up the standings or whatever. We'll go with the Jason first. Thoughts on thoughts on the game itself? Yeah, so I thought the game was just your classic back and forth. There were a lot of lead changes in this game. I thought that Ottawa jumped out to a pretty big lead in the first half. I believe it was 11 points or so after a couple of turnovers by Calgary's offense. But Calgary made several big plays in this one, and I think that's the most encouraging thing coming out of this game if you're Calgary, is that the big criticism was that they couldn't throw the ball deep down the field. It was a bunch of slant routes and the running game that was really the driving force of that offense. But they hit a lot of big plays in this one and it was very encouraging to see. But as you saw at the end of the game, I think Ottawa just matched them punch for punch. Dustin Crumb was up for every challenge. The Red Blacks just kind of have a little bit of a feel about them right now. Rookie head coach and Bob Deis bring a lot more energy to that organization. So I thought this was one of the most exciting games I've seen for the CFO in a long time, like I said a few minutes ago, and I thought it was a great game. I mean, we had the last weekend and then we had our big is quarterback, what's happening here in c o quarterback crisis. Not all the games must watch this weekend, but certainly this one that kind of living up. And we've talked about this in the four, when you have four games a weekend, you you're going to have some skis. Know the nfl, we can put panthers, browns or whatever in the morning, 10:00 AM no one's going to watch it. Evan, what did you make of this really kind of the standout game of the weekend? Yeah, I, well, I thought it was nice that it was the last game of the weekend because to be entirely honest, the three games before that were pretty hit or miss at times. I think especially, I just felt the other ones felt so slow. And then you have this one where both teams are scoring 40 plus points and it's going into overtime and everything like that. I've already talked a decent amount about the Ottawa side and what it means for them. So I'll focus on Calgary a bit more here. I was impressed ultimately with Jake Mayer. I think again, like Jason said, Calgary's big playability has been pretty limited. And to be honest, a lot of their offense for the entire year I think has been centered more around the run game more or less outside of a couple bigger games from Reggie and maybe Luther Hanu last week. But then, I mean, man, the floodgates open this time it was just boom, boom, boom. Like big play here, big play there. Mark and Michelle, legacy game. It was my big takeaway from this one, and I had mentioned on the show a week or two ago, I really thought Mark and Michelle could be the wide receiver won in this offense now that he's back. And that's nothing against Reju who I think might be the best receiver on this team, one of the best. He's right up there with Mark. But I think just Michelle bringing whatever it is, four years of N F L experience back to this St. Peters from the last time he was there. I think that can't be overlooked. And it really showed in this game, I mean, man, he was all over the place, two big plays and I mean it's just really good to see that from him. And it's a very, to be honest, I mean it's quite a uptick in performance from what it's been. He's kind of had a slow sort of start getting worked into the offense there. But then obviously in this game he was the number one receiver and it wasn't really close. I mean, the other guy, Trey Odoms Dukes, who was the other a hundred yard receiver in this game, I'd also talked about him previously as someone who I thought could be worked into this offense. Like him and Luther I think are in the large scale of things, probably two of the more, most underrated receivers in the entire cfl, not just on the stamp Peters roster, but Trey stepped up again big time and again, just good to see him doing his thing. Jason, anything else on this One? Yeah, so I want to talk a little bit of defense here. So first for Ottawa, I thought that one of the big keys for them is that they slowed down Calgary's running game, which is something that Calgary always likes to utilize. Couple guys I want to shout out here. Brandon Dandridge defensive back, had a pick six in this one, back-to-back games with a pick six for him. Also had a punt return touchdown earlier this season. So he's accounted for a lot of that team scoring so far this season and is on pace to be a cfl all-star By the end of the year. Lorenzo Malden, who was carted off midway through last week during practice, it didn't look good, but then he ended up playing in the game and he had a big Bumble recovery in this one. So really impressive for him. And then for Calgary, I think a couple weeks ago I would've said I was more concerned about Calgary's offense, but now I'm more concerned about their defense. This defense cannot close games out to save their lives. They tried to give away the game last week against Saskatchewan. Obviously that big Hail Mary by Mason fine, and then they were able to get it back in the last minute. But they had a couple of opportunities like I mentioned before, that they had a lead with a chance to make a stop late in the game and they just could not do it. And Dave Dickinson I think had said something like that in his post-game press conference that he is sick of this kind of lack of killer instinct with this team. And I think that it's really true with this team. They're just not closing games effectively. And that's just kind of a weird thing to see from the stamp Peters because of all the success they've had over the past decade or so. Yeah, changing times here. I had a couple of just last tweets before we get off of this game. He's the goat Renee to clutch there. Getting him in 2000 career points. Obviously not enough to win the overtime, but getting them in there. To me, I'm like, there's no doubt. I'm like, oh, this game's going the overtime. I had it pulled up here. I just wanted to shout out Tim baes for too long on unwatchable Redbox can't miss after winning another overtime thriller beating ot. And I thought this was funny. Dave Naer tweeted from Justin Crumb's NFL draft bio. He lacks the creativity and power to make defenders miss or break tackles someone tell that to the win. Fake blue bombers. Really enjoy that. Guys, anything else on this one? We'll go to the America's cfl team here, but anything else on that game? No. All right, let's go here. We we're pulling into the cabin when this game was going on and then I got it pulled up. Vernon already going down before I even had the game up the notes today, I think was he's, he's fine. They might rest him this week against the Elks. I'm glad we didn't ship Dan Evans here kind of when there was the big quarterback people trying to, hey, to find different whatevers and bring Dustin crumbs to the world. Thoughts here? I guess we'll go to Evan first. Thoughts on Saskatchewan, bc? Yeah, well definitely a slower game. I mean, 19 to nine, the score kind of indicates that unfortunately there's been several CFL games, really, I think over the past, I don't know, maybe two seasons that have gone this way, but now you're finally seeing the league as a whole kind of pick up on offense. I think the games last week obviously, and then the big shootout between Ottawa and Calgary, CFL's definitely getting back in their groove and I think I put a tweet out about that. But anyway, going back to this game specifically, the fact that BC was able to pull away despite losing Vernon early, I think is a big testament to their defense. They had a lot of guys in that unit that really stepped up and it kind of made it to where they didn't have to worry about things. But then on the Saskatchewan side, just a really weird game on their end. I mean, I talked earlier about Mason, fine, just kind of felt like short pass here. Short pass. I mean, he completed 31 passes in this game, which I find fascinating. And I mean he did have a big play long of 44 yards, whatever, but on the entire game slate, he only finished with 278 yards and through two picks. It was just so weird. Typically if a quarterback completes 31 passes in a game, I mean they're throwing for 400 yards and three touchdowns. It's like a career evening. But this was the opposite of that I felt like. And again, the run game, I had talked about how some CFL teams struggle with that this week. Saskatchewan's was atrocious, unfortunately abysmal. There was no other word for it. It was just really, really bad. And every time I look at a team where they throw 40 times a game, but they're not able to run the ball effectively that typically I'm like, you don't even have to show me the score. I know that team lost, and in this case, Saskatchewan did that. Now they did have a couple bright spots, I think it was Tevin Jones and Sean Bain Jr. Were kind of a nice receiving duo. And both of those guys I think have kind of stepped up this season, maybe more so than I expected. But yeah, ultimately I think this was just a testament really to BC's defense more than anything to close this one out. Yeah, I had the tweet here, Hodge, I think Dave Campbell put out something too talking about like, Hey, I think Saskatchewan stole Edmonton's playbook of these short slam passes, whatever. Yeah, really weird offense. Jason, what did you make of this one? Ultimately they said fine was fine In this one, I thought that he was okay, but ultimately the number that tells the whole story is zero touchdowns. And I thought it was a big missed opportunity for Saskatchewan. This could have been a massive win, and it was a winnable game for the most part for them. Their defense played really well, really dominated the BC offense of line throughout this game. And I thought that if Saskatchewan just got one quality drive from their offense where they punched it in the end zone, they definitely could have won this game. So I thought this was a very disappointing game from their perspective on the offensive side versus Saskatchewan. I thought that BC's defense becoming one of the stories of the CFL CS and just, I don't know how many touchdowns they've allowed now, but I mean they are allowed just very few touchdowns the whole season. So I think that is a big story for them. I think Matthew Bets got a late sack in this one 10th sack, and he's all the way on his way towards breaking the Canadian sack record, which is I believe 17 by Brent Johnson with the BC Lions, I do believe as well. So I think that is really impressive. I think that Gary Peters was the guy that I highlighted in the preview this week. He ended up with the interception late in this game that really kind of helped close it out for the lions. So I thought that their defense played really well and were the driving force for this team to victory. And I thought that Dane Evans, when I originally thought that Vernon Adams injury was much more serious. I mean we still don't know a hundred percent for sure, but if it was much more serious, my big concern with Dane Evans coming in to this offense was that he's not the most mobile quarterback to Vernon. He's not a guy that's going to extend plays. So I think that was a big concern because of how BC's line, offensive line has looked like it's regressed over the past couple weeks here. But I think it's very good news to hear that Vernon may be back sooner more rather than later. So at the end of the day, I think that, yeah, defense was the big story for the Lions in this one and a missed opportunity for Saskatchewan. Yeah, they Vernon. I mean that was the thing coming into the season. I think we all had doubts of Vernon and wanting him to succeed, but not being sure. And then here he's really been on fire except for the six pick Argo game and now him going down. We're fans of Dane. Evan, did you feel like he is a suitable replacement? Was it worth having him stash here in the back pocket to pull out? Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Oh no, you want to go, Jason? It's all good. You Can go if you want. Man, Evan. Evan, go first. Yeah. All right. Yeah, no, I mean look, I think Dane Evans was definitely worth the weight here. I had in my notes it wasn't a spectacular performance, but I take him over Mason fine, just because he had the touchdown pass was a bit more efficient still in over 200 yards. So he was definitely ready for the opportunity. And I had said previously Dan Evans would be a great trade asset given all these quarterback injuries. They wouldn't be likely to trade him in a division, so him going to Saskatchewan or something like that wouldn't be very viable. But ultimately I thought he was a good trade piece. But now, I mean again, you're looking at, we don't know when Vernon's going to be back. I mean just the state of the cfl in general right now to have two starting quarterbacks that are, or at least capable of starting multiple games on your roster, that's like unheard of practically. I mean BC's in a spot here where they really have that luxury. And it kind of reminds me of when Hamilton had Dane Evans and Jeremiah mis, and there was this kind of fight, I think sometimes between some of the fans. And back when I covered the team, it was always, who's the better quarterback? Is it Dane or is it Jeremiah? Who do you play? And now in BC it's like, I mean I still think Vernon's the better option and I don't really think BC fans arguing about that. But I mean, hey, Dane could come in and play really well and who knows. Then maybe you're starting the question whether or not Vernon starts to now look, I mean that's all hypothetical. I do think Vernon will come back and start the rest of the season barring any setbacks because he has been really good and I think he's exceeded all of our expectations this year. But ultimately, yeah, I mean Dane Evans, I think WA was great to keep around and it was worth it and it still is. Same question to you Jason. Was Dane worth it? Yeah, a hundred percent. I think he's definitely not a perfect quarterback. We saw that last year in Hamilton, but I think still at the end of the day, he is still one of the better quarterbacks in the league. I still think he's in the top 12 or so quarterbacks in the league. I think he's probably the best backup in the league right now, at least the most experienced one. So I think at the end of the day, I mean he's going to have some issues. He may turn the ball over more than Vernon will. I mean, I mentioned the play extension abilities more of a pocket passing guy, but I think at the end of the day he's definitely a suitable backup that BC can still win with because their defense is that good. We have the thing here, Jamie and I friend of the show, I wanted to talk that we had the Ruffing, the pastor that was called back, was it holding or whatever, and then this about Aquar. Do you want to see a quarterback change like Jason if, where would Saskatchewan go here? I don't know if fine kind of was the backup guy, what would they do if fine is not the answer? Well, I know that they have Jake Dola gala on the roster. He used to be a backup. I think for one year he dressed for the Cincinnati Bengals, didn't get any playing time, but I mean we saw him start one game last year for them, didn't look too promising. So I think they're just better off just rolling with fine for a few more weeks, see if he gets a groove going, and then maybe if they're still around in a few weeks, if they're still in the playoff mix, I think maybe they look around the league for maybe a trade option or a free agent pickup. But at the end of the day, I think I would just stick with fine and see if it gets better. Yeah, no, I guess it was a rough in the pass. This was before I sat down to watch, God forbid here, a couple of drives, but the rough in the pass, right? That was called back for the safety. Evan, did you catch that? I did not actually that That's interesting. Yeah, I only watched a part of this game. I mean we're going to get into the whole how many games did you watch? Question here. Cause that always seems to come up and apparently I know nothing about the CFL cause I don't spend 16 hours or whatever every week watching every game. But no, no, I did not see that is the bottom line. I watched mean if you really want to hear what games I watched, I watched half of the Calgary Ottawa game. I watched half a quarter of this game and then I watched most of the Hamilton Toronto game. And then most of the, honestly probably all four quarters of the Edmonton Winnipeg game, cause I was actually intrigued by that one. Believe it or not, We're going to get canceled. Jason, talk to me about the rough and the pass call here. Yeah, so I mean this was a huge turning point early in this game. It looked like, I can't recall the play specifically. I think it wasn't like the most dirty hit that I've ever seen, but I think that at the end of the day, they're going to call any hit that's up high on the quarterback. Really. That's just the way football's going, even if it's unfair to defenses. I think that's just the way that the leagues are protecting their quarterbacks nowadays. But yeah, it was a huge turning point early in this game. I mean would've obviously given Saskatchewan two points and then given them the ball back as well. So I mean it could have been a big swing in this football game and it was tough for Saskatchewan. Speaking of who probably watched all the games here, I had a couple tweets and then CFO put it out together. Chad Cinco, did you know a friend of the show? Chad was on, I believe episode two of the Mark cast, if you want to go back talking about, and we actually broke the news to him that the CFL season was canceled. So if you want to go back into the record books for the mark cast, but Chad watching the show here talking, Sean White was clutched and I was his Montreal. He's still clutch later if that's the same Sean and then CFO without this thing pov. You're watching the games last night with Chad Ochocinco. Evan, any thoughts on that? I mean, I think that's good pub. I think when you have someone like Chad that has as much kind of cloud in the Twitter space, and obviously he spent time in the league and everything else. Oh, it's great. I mean, yeah, Chad, I remember, I mean I was really young when he kind of had his stop in the cfl. I think it was after he was with the Dolphins and all that kind of fell apart. But yeah, no, I mean Chad, look man, I mean if you're getting publicity from Chad Ocher cinco, you're doing something right. I mean that guy is always been very vocal, very, I've always liked him in the media space just because he's very honest, straightforward, tell it to you. It is no BS type of guy and I've always appreciated that and I think it's cool to see him constantly promoting the league and he's not one of these guys where it feels forced, right? He's actually just sitting there in front of his tv, like us enjoying the games on a weekend or at least the games that we're able to watch on any given weekend. But yeah, no, I mean look, I think Chad is he, he's great publicity for the league ultimately. We had another just last tweet here on this, I posted on Twitter, we're going live. What did we learn? Farhan checking it. We learned it's great when your sole focused as the cfl, Hey now, hey, now far Han's not liking the US ffo attend on here. What are we talking about? And the Raiders. Jason, thoughts on that? Anything else? I mean wide game here BC A wins win here. It was kind of ugly. I think that's what I tweeted out. Any other thoughts on this one? Not really. I think that Craig Dickinson had a very controversial decision in this game. I think that he went for it on a third and two inside the 20 yard line. He actually got that one and then a couple plays later, they had a third and goal and then decided to kick a field goal. So I mean some of these in-game decisions by these coaches I think are quite confusing. I think Dave Dickinson, Calgary had a couple of those this week. So starting to question some of the in-game coaching decisions for some of these coaches Orlando get to with the TCATs as well. So I mean that's another takeaway I had from this game. Yeah, I was it last week when it was like they call it the Brothers Bowl or whatever when you got the Dickinson's facing off against each other. Evan, anything else on this one? We'll move on. No. All right, let's go back here. Let me pull this up. Toronto coming in was hoping this one would be a little bit closer, I'm sure if you're Jason out here. Jason, were you at this game? No, actually I was on vacation on Thursday and Friday. Had to watch those games on demand after the fact I was, what you call it, I actually was on my way back from vacation when this game was going on, so it caught a bit of it on the radio, but ultimately when I went back and watched, I think that this game was pretty much over in the second quarter because the TCATs defense I thought really needed to play well in the first half to give their rookie quarterback making his first career CFL start a chance. They ultimately battled back, made it a one score game in the fourth quarter, but then that's when their defense kind of fell apart again. So I thought that it was very disappointing how the TCAT started this game. It's been all too common of a theme so far this season for them. But the Argos, like I said earlier, are a fine oiled machine. And Chad Kelly really is the story of the cfl so far this season. I thought we were getting, I know we've had obviously the quarterback change. I thought the Thai cats were getting back to running the ball here a little bit. We have 41 attempts by a rookie, a rookie coming out here, only eight carries by Butler. Jason, what do you make of that? The game script? I think that's what happened is they fell behind 20 to nothing in the second quarter. Yes, one of those plays was interception by a bad decision by Powell, but I think that the defense gave up a couple of long drives early in the game and we're down 14 nothing and then 20 nothing. And then that really dictated how their play calling was the rest of the game. They really had to drop back and pass and see what they could do. And I think that Powell did pretty good considering Evan. Thoughts, Chad Kelly, still Chad Kelly in Toronto certainly being able to put up points here, 31 not, I think that's the lowest they've had, right? In terms of average game score, but what did you make of Chad? Yeah, Soll talk about Toronto first. Chad Kelly at this point, I mean it's just kind of textbook I, I've said it with Winnipeg and Zach Eros and their crew. You kind of just know what to expect after a certain point and now it's kind of like every week if Chad Kelly doesn't throw for 250 plus yards and two touchdowns and complete 70% of his passes, I'm like, well, what happened? But now it's just this kind of automatic thing. I mean bottom line is he really is that good? And this question keeps coming up, is Chad Kelly the most valuable? I'm pretty sure he is the most valuable quarterback but valuable player in the cfl as a whole right now. You can definitely make that argument still and I think he has the most hype around him. There was a lot still. Now keep in mind Chad Kelly finished that great cup game off and we always talk about that, but there were still some questions about him heading into this season. Whether or not you can actually hold that momentum. I don't think everyone in Toronto was just sitting there. Yeah, Chad will be fine. He's a bonafide starter to be honest. He was really unproven. He was coming in from the n f where he really only played in the preseason. I think he appeared in one game with the Broncos but didn't throw a pass. So he was very unproven going into the cfl and really outside of that Great Cup game, he hadn't done much. And now this season it looks like the development is finally starting to show and maybe it's happening a bit quicker than some of the other quarterbacks in this league, but yeah, man, Chad's still got it. It's the swag Kelly era, just like it's the Dustin Rum era, I guess. Yeah, two outstanding quarterbacks, sir. Jason, what did you make of Chad Kelly here we got the two zero here for the Q E W rivalry. Well, for NFL fans that may be watching this, one guy that he kind of reminds me of is a young Ben Roethlisberger. He seems like a guy that he's a big guy, hard guy to bring down in the pocket, has a big arm, has a bit of ability to extend plays, not the fastest guy in the world, but can get out there and run if he needs to. And I think that the deep ball passing the arm strength is just so apparent when you see him just doesn't look normal for a cfl quarterback. He had a couple of throws in this game that were absolute lasers. I think he had the wine touchdown to Curly Getts Jr. That I was like, wow, there wasn't much room to throw that ball into at all and he got it in there. So I think it's been incredibly impressive for Chad Kelly so far this season with the Argos. Let's talk a little Hamilton here. I had Todd, Todd gets angry on Twitter, but I thought this was good. How does wearing the Steinhower still going question as the head coach and the c l level one have job, Evan, what did you make of the Thai Kat's approach to this game? Yeah, well, I mean if you want to talk about Steinhower first before the TCATs overall, I do think there is questions about that. I mean, yeah, we don't really talk about it. Not often that we talk about coaches on this show. I think it's more player focused. But yeah, I mean Orlando, the TCATs are clearly entering this phase where it's a bit of a rebuild. I mean you've moved on from your two sort of bonafide quarterbacks, Brandon Banks who was there for a long time. That era's kind of long gone already, so it's definitely kind of entering a new phase. And is he the one to lead this team through the new phase? Well, I think you'll stick around for this season, but if you're looking ahead at 2024, I mean, yeah, you're definitely going to hear more questions about this later on I think. But overall, j just this game and the approach again, inability to run the ball I think really hurt. Hamilton, James Butler had this incredible game against Edmonton last week. Now keep in mind that's against the Elks, I get it. But still had a really nice game and then this game you wouldn't have even known he was playing really. I mean, yeah, he had a couple catches and things like that. I love James, nothing against him, but when you're averaging 1.8 yards per carry on eight touches, I mean that's just so forgettable and it's really like if you're quarterback is the leading rusher in the game, that's typically not a great sign. Now it worked for Ottawa, I believe Dustin was their leading and perhaps most efficient rusher. But in this case, again, Taylor Powell who was in his first cfl start had to throw the ball 41 times and that's just not now. I think he did a pretty good job given that it was his first start completed 27 passes, could have averaged a bit more here and there. I think there was still some things lacking, but ultimately the one stat category I guess that really stands out to me from him is that 283 yards there. I mean he was really getting the ball around to different receivers and moving on to that category. I think it was really nice to see Terry Godwin step up in this game. Now for people who don't know who Terry Godwin is, he was a former seventh round pick of the Carolina Panthers in 2019. Then went on to the Jaguars and I think he was with another team before coming up to Hamilton, but that was someone I think I had my radar on preseason and then I kind of forgot about him and then I was watching this game and I'm like, oh, that's right. Hamilton has Terry Godwin and I think him and Duke Williams again finally kind of got going in this game. I don't think last week he had a target, let alone a catch or anything like that. So yeah, I think Terry Godwin and Duke Williams, if they can kind of be a one-two punch in the receiving core moving forward, regardless of who the quarterback is, whether it's Bo Levi or Taylor Powell or maybe Matt Schultz comes back in down later in the season. I think those two guys right now are probably the best options for Hamilton on offense. Jason, how are you feeling this season? I think the biggest concern with me, and I always, when I look at head coaches specifically and how I judge them, I always look at what side of the ball are they specialized in? Are they a defensive guy, are they special teams are the offense? Steinhower is a defensive head coach and the defense has gotten worse every single year under his tenure. And I mean they made a big gamble and keep in mind that Steinhower is now the president of football operations, so he makes a lot of the personnel decisions as well for this team and what you call it. He decided to go really young in the secondary. They were had a lot of experienced veterans back there in the secondary last year and they had a pretty thin depth on the defensive line last year. This year it's flipped. They decided to invest a lot of money in the defensive line. It is not paid off and the secondary has looked very poor. They looked young and inexperienced just like they are going into the season on paper. So I think at the end of the day it's very disappointing to see what's happened at this defense that used to be something that Hamilton could hang their hat on. And then I think in terms of their offense, it really just comes down to offensive red zone efficiency and I think they just have not scored enough touchdowns. If they score two touchdowns more in this game, it's a brand new game. So I think at the end of the day, that's something they need to fix. But I don't know what the answer is because the three quarterbacks that we've seen out there, none of them have really been able to find much success in the Red Zone Is, I know we've talked about this, but just looking at this eight carriers for Butler, it's just insane to me. I get you to say we're falling behind, we have to do that. What's the timeline on Shilts coming back? Do we know anything? I know he was kind of T B d, is he on the sixth game? He's on the sixth game injured list and he was up in the press box for this game. I don't know if that was just trying to give them a different view of the field or whatnot, but it doesn't look like he's coming back anytime soon. But like I said earlier in the show that Bo Levi Mitchell is back at practice this week for Hamilton, so maybe they get a boost if he comes back. But I think at the end of the day, I think there's bigger problems besides the quarterback position on this team right now. Well, that's my concern and we'll go to Evan. Bo didn't look good when he played and got hurt and now he's back. I mean, I don't know what Hamilton does here because we've talked, they're hosting the Gray Cup this year. We're all going, it's, it was kind of like Saskatchewan last year. We want to do everything we can to be in it. I mean, they were talking last year, like break the salary cap, get everyone, do whatever you can to get to the break up here, or Hamilton's trying to do that. And if Bo comes back, I don't know if this makes a difference, what do you think this team should do or could possibly do? I just think they need to get more from the guys they brought in this off season. I don't know how they make that happen. I think that, like I mentioned, I think the coaching has, they've kind of been out coached in a lot of these games this year. One narrative I think we could put to be is that I think over the last couple years, Tigercat fans have thought that we definitely had that coaching advantage when they played against the Argos, that Orlando Steiner was a better head coach and we had a better coaching staff than the Toronto Argonauts. But I think at the end of the day now, it's just quite clear to me that Ryan did what he always has his team ready, better, ready, prepared to play against Hamilton. And I think Steinhower just, they don't look prepared at all to start the games. You look at the first half this season, it's been brutal. Evan thoughts for you? Yeah, I mean look, I hate to be critical of any team and everything that I say is constructive criticism. It's not a dislike towards anybody or anything like that, but I think Hamilton is in a serious period of regression. You just look at, I mean, yeah, Steiner is one thing, but like Jason said, I mean that defense used to be one of the top in the CFL led by Simone Lawrence and others, and now you kind of look at their defense and it's just like, okay, there's nothing really to write home about there. I mean, hell, you could look at some of the other bottom tier, I guess you'd say, teams in the cfl and they probably have better defenses at that point. I think that's just because Hamilton's lost against so many players since their Great Cup runs to free agency. I mean, they've retained a couple pieces, but the team definitely looks a lot different than what I was really invested in even just two years ago. So yeah, I mean it's definitely a period of change and I expected this from Hamilton. Again, if you're talking about this game in general, I mean, I expected Toronto to win and they did and they did just how I thought they would. Nothing really out of the ordinary there. But in the bigger picture, I mean Hamilton is definitely kind of looking at another sort of restructure and it sucks because they were so close. I mean, they went to back to back Great cups. I mean it was a great run and that was the best that they've had really in a long time. But if you can't get the job done, I mean, it's football, right? It's a winning business. And unfortunately if that aspect get completed, then you have to bring new people in to try and accomplish the same goal. So Yeah, moving forward here. Jason, wait, what do you want? I mean, you're the Thai cats fan here. What do you want? Oh, Jason, you're on mute. Sorry. Yeah, so I just want more from the guys they brought in this off season. Some guys they paid big money to that just have not made a big impact for this team this year. I think the line, they made a couple of big additions late last season. Guys like David Beard, who's a center, had several high snaps in this one that kind of threw off the timing. The interception was a high snap that kind of threw off the timing of that play. I think the offensive line has been a unit that's been very disappointing this year. They've had some injuries there, but I think overall, even when they've been healthy, they haven't played very well. I think that, again, the coaching is something I want to see more from. I want to see this team start games a lot better. I think a lot of the times they've really lost games in the first half of games. So I think if they come out and they're more competitive to begin games, I think they'll be in better shape. And I think they still can salvage this season. And I think the CFL season's very long, but they need to start winning soon because a lot of these games have come against Eastern opponents. And I think when you look at their four losses this season, they've been all very convincing losses, I think all of them by double digits. And it's been very disappointing to see just how the lack of competitiveness for this team this year. I thought that yeah, maybe they'd lose some close games and start slow this year, but I didn't think they'd lose games. This convincingly, Evan, we have here look at Elks are its own thing, and we'll get to that game before we get out of here. TCA's two and four, stamps, two and more stamp Peters feel like the better two and four team here. If you had to go with two of those kind of bottoms tier. Yeah, I would definitely take the stamp. Peters here. I just think they have a lot more momentum and a lot less questions. I mean, this team historically has been in the playoffs all the time. And Hamilton, again, I expected regression with Calgary. I mean, I had a lot of questions, but they're, I mean, I thought they'd be like at 500 by this point. They're right below. They can easily get back in the swing and it's week seven or whatever. But there's still, I mean, we're only a third of the way through the season, so again, plenty of time here to make amends and make things right. But the one thing I was going to point out a, and really it's between the Red Blacks and the tcat. So this is kind of a random thought that I had last night when I was going through my notes. You want to talk about teams? It sort of feels like, well now obviously it's a bit different with the Red Blacks having three wins and the Elks having none. But we had this discussion in the xfl last year between two of the bottom tier teams. It was Orlando and Vegas, and just kind of how those two vibes felt like both of those teams were struggling early on Winless, whatever. But with Vegas, it kind of just felt like, again, they were one step away. In Ottawas case, we keep saying, oh, the Dustin Crumb away, or whatever. And then with the Elks, it's kind of like Orlando the Guardians. It's like, well, this is such a complex issue. There's so many things wrong here, you know, kind of need to break it down and examine piece by piece, how to fix this organization really, or team or whatever you want to call it. So that's, I think you can apply that same sort of notion to a couple of the teams here in the cfl. For me, it was again, Vipers guardians to Red Blacks and Elks, obviously a bit different, two different leagues, two different times, whatever. I get it. But I think it's always kind of interesting to point out, there's teams that you watch and you're like, oh, if they just had this, they'd be fine. But then there's other teams, and I think Hamilton kind of falls into this category now too, that we're talking about it where it's not just one piece away. It's not just one thing. So many pieces. And I mean, that's all a football, I don't think there's ever one glaring thing that really causes a problem. There's always something deeper that maybe you don't know about if you're not within the organization. But ultimately with Hamilton, I think there's a lot of components there that are missing in order to win. Jason, anything else from you on this game? No, I think we beat the Dead Horse enough. Last game here. What? And I took my gamble. I said, Dan Gamble is in Winnipeg for the game. Just going to laser that Edmonton is not going to pull this one out in remarkable fashion here. The therapy session continues. Jason, we'll go to you first. What do you make of this? Oh and seven, don't talk about the BC thing here coming up, because I don't want BC to be the team that allows them to break, but what did you make of this one on the and the Winnipeg? Well, Edmonton was very competitive for a lot of this game, but again, they just don't have the consistency needed, especially at the quarterback position, but just on offense in general, to win games consistently in the cfl or even won one game at this point. It's just, it just a very frustrating team to watch. I have a very hard time watching this team week after week because it seems like they get in their own way. You could see they have some intriguing, interesting individual pieces. I thought that Leonard and Jake Rena made a big impact in this one. I thought they really kind of pushed around Winnipeg's offensive line for a lot of this game, but I think at the end of the day, this team can't close in the fourth quarter when the lights get brightest, they just kind of fall apart. So I mean, it's the same old story for the Elks. Evan, what do you make of this? Yeah, I mean the game was tied at half and for a while there it was like I saw, I forget who tweeted it, but there was something on Twitter. It was like, Edmonton's not going to do this. Come on guys, let's get real here. Yeah, I mean any kind of hope you had quickly slipped away in the third quarter. And I think Dave was saying on your show this week, how much of a struggle the second half specifically the third quarter has been for the Elks, and in this game, it might have been more the fourth quarter, but Winnipeg I think scored 15 points or something. Then the third. So that definitely, again, Elks kind of came out second half and it's almost like they regressed. You're supposed to make adjustments and get better at halftime. It feels like Edmonton constantly this season just goes backwards in the wrong direction, if anything. And it happened a bit too in the Hamilton game, even though that was kind of unraveling a bit before half. But yeah, ultimately Edmonton in this game again, they really weren't terrible. I like Taylor Cornelius, you take away the two picks. I mean, I thought he had an okay outing and again, was very efficient on the ground. Running the ball had that big play to Dylan Mitchell. It wasn't all bad. Again, there's strides to be made here and I know we've, I guess maybe said some things about Cornelius in the past that weren't the best. And again, I wish him the best. He's a great player. It's just sort of fit and time. And we're always talking about Trey Ford. Now look, I think Taylor Cornelius has made a bit of progress this season. It's just, again, how many times do I have to say it when your record or whatever going in a season like four and 26 or whatever, or maybe that's what it is now. Or at one point this season it was that with the losses that they've accumulated here in 2023, it's mean. Come on man. I know you want to have faith and you want to be confident, but you can only give a person so many shots before you have to make a change. And I feel like there's so many things here that are just overdue. And again, this was so expected. It's like, yeah, Edmonton had I think some confidence that they could win this game, but ultimately it fell apart as quickly as they built it up. And then Winnipeg, just given how stout they've been over the past couple years now obviously last week was a bit of an oddity for them, I guess you'd say, but it was back to normal for them this week. Now, yeah, first half was a bit different, but if you watch this game only in the second half, I mean, yeah, Winnipeg, it was that textbook, Zach Eros finding his receivers, Brady Vera kind of taking the rock with him and being extremely efficient. It was just back to normal. And yeah, I think that's, this game just felt very normal to me, given all the circumstances. Yeah, again, first half, maybe not, but second half. Yeah, I felt like it was just any other game. Winnipeg pulls away against their opponent. Edmonton can't get things together unfortunately. And just every week my heart sinks a bit more for all the Elks fans and people like Dave who spent so much time covering that team. Jason, how has Trey Ford not seen the field? You got me at this point. It's just he goes up with that big exclamation ex explanation that why he's not on the field. Oh, he is not playing that well in practice. But I mean, you see what's actually on the field and some guys, I mean they're just not that great in practice, but when the lights come on, you get 'em on field in the game. I mean, you know, even look at a guy like Tim Tebow that one year with the Broncos. I mean, anything could light a spark for your team when you're just down this badly. And I think at the end of the day, the Elks just with Cornelius, he just inspires no hope. And one hand you want to give the guy a lot of time to develop because we've seen the history of the CFL guys really don't hit their stride at quarterback for three or four years into their career. But I think at a certain point you got to look around the league and say, Dustin Crumb's already shown more than Taylor Cornelius has ever shown us. And I think Taylor Powell's looked better than Cornelius has ever looked already in his first career start. So at a certain point you need results and Owen seven just isn't going to cut it. Evan, I know you're going to pop off here early. Any last thoughts from you before you need to get out of here? Yeah, I mean really it was a pretty general, I'd say slated games this week. I mean that Ottawa Calgary game I think really made up for anything that happened before that. But honestly, a lot of the same narratives and a lot of things that were just expected. So I mean, maybe I sound a bit more negative in general this week because I was so excited about last week's slate of games and how refreshing that was after just really the past. I mean, couple years have been, let's be honest here, so maybe I sound a bit more critical this week, but ultimately, yeah, I mean I'm officially hit the third way through the season marker and I'm enjoying it so far. Ultimately, I mean, again, even if I have to say certain things about certain people and players, it's all out of love for the game. And I really hope that some of these teams here that we've talking about in a negative light that can really turn things around. Now Edmonton, I don't know, they've got a lot of changes to make there, but there's Hamilton, I think there's still a salvageable part here. And then Ottawa obviously is already, it went from their season was over to now. Oh my goodness, we're right back in the fold, possibly even playoffs here, which is crazy to think about just given where we were, about how low we were when Miss got hurt and everything. So I don't know, it's been a wild season already, but a lot of exciting storylines and there's still some things I hope would improve, but all around, look man, I can't complain. It's been fun. Awesome, Evan, safe travels. Good luck and thanks for getting your wifi hotspot on here, Jason, and I'll get out of here soon, but I do want to talk about this narrative here because I am scared about this BC at Edmonton this week talking to Edmonton. I could just see Dane plays va, we're going to rest Vernon. We have we're we're not coming in prepared, right? You this to me is like trap game here scenario. Yeah, I mean every team is kind of afraid of being the one that gives the Elks that first home win in forever. But I think that with bc, the comforting thing for me is the defense. And I think the defense gives them a certain floor each week. I really don't see any way that Ed Buton moves the ball in any efficient way against that BC defense. I think that the one scary thing is, like you mentioned, I think Dane Evans, if he plays in this one, he has been prone to some big high turnover games the last couple of years. So I think that could be one thing that potentially makes this game a little bit closer. But I mean, I don't really have too many concerns as an outsider to this game for the Lions. Okay, well that's good. That's good to hear. That's good to hear. We've talked Hamilton, Ottawa, Saskatchewan going in. I mean this could be a scary one too here, Saskatchewan, the Mason fine effect here, which we're on those defense. Are any fears here for our commander-in-chief there, Mason? Fine. Yeah. Well this should be interesting. This is the touchdown game of course. So this should be, oh, It's Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this should be interesting to see. I think this is the first time the game is actually going to be in the city of Halifax. So everybody that talks about that tent team, maybe this is just a look at what this could potentially look like down the road. But I think in terms of the game itself, I think that Toronto will obviously be heavy favorites, but I think Saskatchewan's defense can kind of maybe disrupt Chad Kelly A. Little bit more than he has the first five weeks of the season. But at the end of the day, I think Saskatchewan, they moved the ball. Okay, last game. They got a bunch of field goals. But I think if they can get into the end zone a couple of times, they may have a fighter's chance. Al let's here coming off thereby Calgary there. That's intriguing too. Want to see Calgary again? I was talking, we had Tim Capper on the show talking in the Arena football league, but Tim was chairing his thoughts and he's really happy with Cody and the Ettes and everything. Their thoughts on that one before we get out? Well, I think the both teams will probably be pretty desperate coming into this game because I think Calgary obviously they're two and four and I think if they fall to two and five, I mean I think they were two and five a couple of years ago and they were able to crawl back into it. But I think this would be a very devastating loss for Calgary if they're going to fall to two and five. And I think for Montreal, with Ottawa suddenly going on a run here to three and three, they would fall behind Ottawa with a loss and be right in the mix there with Hamilton. So I think at the end of the day, this is a very important game for the standings. And I think the two games with Montreal and Calgary and Ottawa and Hamilton, those are the two games that have the most consequence in terms of the standings next week. Yeah, it should be exciting. Like I said, on vacation this week. So we're going to, we're have the xfl combines going on, they're streaming that. Andy Murray's going to be with me. I think we're going to do 9:00 AM live episode on Friday. When I get back we'll do the xfl combine recap, and then we'll do a cfl week eight preview. So I think that's what we're going to do this week because for me trying to out here in the woods and scheduling guests and all that, I think we're going to do that. That'll be good. So look for the live episode Friday 9:00 AM coming off. I think I was just checking during the show last week was our record high for viewership for the stream, at least on our channel. I don't, I know we co-share that, but we're getting the word out. I think it's important to do this every week. Jason, any other thoughts from you about anything before we get out? No, just another week in the books and looking forward to next week. Yeah, it should be good. Winnipeg on the by here, coming off a dominant win on that. But yeah, I have that circled with bia. I don't want to see any traps on that. Last things on here. Oh yeah, Louis, I guess we had a comment. Do you think any of the games are going to be really high scoring or only Calgary Ottawa broke BC Elks game I don't think is going to be high scoring, especially with day in there. Maybe. Maybe Calgary, Montreal runs it up. I don't know. It could be an interesting slate. Yeah. James here hitting great show here at comments. I like to get to the hour mark here. We're 59 30, pat and the timeout here. And Coach Craig for Coach Craig Sport says Trey, forward season. They got to figure that out here. What if Trey forward comes in and just lights up the world against bc? Yeah, they're going to look so stupid if that happens too. Cause why did it take this long? Yeah, it's kind of a lose this point. Jason, thanks. God's speed, Evan, safe travels and everything else that we'll see you next time. Thanks.

Episode 154 - CFL QB Crisis: (Big) Deal or No (Big) Deal?

Coming up this week on the Markcast. Well, here we are. We've already done the price is right now. Just call me Howie Mandel. I'm O C d. Just like him today on the podcast, the cfl is having a quarterback crisis. Big deal or no big deal. Ladies, Please. Yes, we are leading with cfl content this week. What off season over here at the mark cast. Steve Simmons, cfl Hall of Fame reporter with the Toronto Sun coming on. We are talking cfl week seven as well as the impending already here. cfl quarterback crisis. I Think right now. Collectively this is the weakest crop of cfl Quarterbacks I can remember, which of course goes counter to the fact that we just had the greatest weekend anyone has ever seen And then you hear him doing color with a OU commentary for the Toronto Argon Nuts games as well as the exes and Argos podcast. Ben Grant coming back on getting Ben's thoughts on the Toronto at Hamilton game as well as what he makes of the cfl quarterback crisis. The league needs to kind of collectively rebuild that way, bring in a bunch of guys, half a dozen guys and see what sticks. And it might be a rocky road for a year, but I think for the long-term health of each organization and the league as a whole, that's going to do wonders. And it's a little bit of a therapy session here for Edmonton and the Edmonton Elks, Dave Campbell here on location in Winnipeg. We are checking in doing the welfare check on Dave as well as the Edmonton Alex football team. This is punishing teams who want to make a proper decision and we see it in sports where all the time, I mean if a coach or a manager is not filling the bill, then they can be let go and then they get their money paid out and that's it. But to put it on the cap is just, it's hurting the Elks right now. And I'm not saying right now to that Chris Jones should be fired, but I'm also saying the conversation would not even be, there wouldn't be a debate here though potentially that they could let him go, Right? And unless we forget our usfl content, we have Pat Rafino coming back on. We have our watch list, usfl to f L signings who signed so far, who should still be signed? Sleepers, who's the NFL sleeping on here in the S F L And then we are even talking arena football on the podcast this week. That's right. A long time follower of the Arena Football League. Tim Capper coming on, we are talking, the return of the AFL city announced Bakersfield, California. Lots of questionable decisions there. We will get Tim's takes on everything. She'll be a good show. Hope you guys enjoy it. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark cast Read here. Really eclectic show this week. I didn't really think I would do much this week. I've been working all week filming at Amazon and filming at University of Washington right now while you're listening to this most likely. But I ended up getting a lot of quality content coming on here. Steve Simmons had an article posted and that got me talk, thinking about talking with him. And then we had Ben Grant lined up already. I've been trying to get Dave on for a while talking at the Edmonton Elks, but should be a good show today. Really eclectic. Like I said, what off season here leading with cfl content with the cfl quarterback crisis. We talked with Dave Dayler about it. Was that a week or two ago? Time is kind of nebulous to me right now, but getting everyone's thoughts on that right? Biggest, greatest weekend of cfl football ever led by Dustin Rum of all people. But is that sustainable ride? Is this something that we should be happy and proud of? How are we attracting new quarterbacks up to the league and marketing them? And Jack Kelly can't save the cfl by himself. Kind of all of that stuff. And then hopefully it's not to Wendy out here at Pat Rafino coming back on that, we did our all usfl list and we've done Pat's time at the xfl St Louis showcase. Now we are talking usfl to F L signings. Who are we still sleeping on? Who should still be signed? We saw McGoo get picked up this week by the Packers. Congratulations to them. So should be a fruitful conversation with Pat and then not just known for his cfl and Montreal Ettes content. We have Tim Capper on here, long time covering the afl. We are getting Tim's thoughts on the arena Football league's return, all the cities, everything else. I'll check back at the end of the show. Getting a little windy out here on the deck. Hope you guys enjoy. Take care. Well here we are back. I don't know if we've had you on proper since the whole xfl cfl merger talks and all of that. We've certainly seen you a bunch up at the Gray Cups. We have Steve Simmons here getting football Hall of fame rider now with the Toronto stunt. Steve, how are you doing sir? Doing very well, thank you. So we talked about this Monday on the show. Obviously a tremendous weekend of cfl games. Feels hot right now. Do you feel like there's a buzz around the cfl? Well, I think it's one of those. Is there a buzz city to city to city place to place to place? There's a buzz coming off the weekend because I don't think we've ever seen a weekend like this. It it's the best weekend of cfl football. I can remember the finishes of three of the four games. They were exceptional and they were lots of fun and they were exciting and they came out of nowhere. And so there's all kinds of that going on at the same time. I live in Toronto where there's no buzz about the cfl almost at any time or about the Argos almost at any time. So it's a weird contradiction as always seems to be about the cfl. There's the horror show in Edmonton right now and there's problems in Toronto and problems in Montreal and problems in some Ottawa selling tickets the way maybe they should be selling tickets. But the game itself, which is really weird because this is a year where I really thought there was a huge quarterback shortage in the league and so they were having a quarterback shortage and great exciting football and so none of this makes any sense, which makes it perfect for the CFL because the CFL never makes any sense. Well I know we just had Dave nailer on last week and I have videos to post talking about the QB shortage and he's talking about getting rid of the neck list because it's know, protecting too many. You're getting these teams around, but here we have these backups and injuries and they just seems kind of remarkable storyline right now, especially when you look at Edmonton like you said. I mean they thought they would have some stability this year and then look how terrible that is. But then now we have Matthew Shilts going on the sixth game. I mean is this as fluid quarterback situation as you can remember? Well, it's not just fluid. If you started this season with just starting quarterbacks from every team, I could make the argument that it's the weakest crop of cfl quarterbacks I think I've ever seen. And then all of a sudden Chad Kelly is doing better than we expected Chad Kelly to do. And in some places some guys aren't doing as well and some guys have been hurt. And so we're discovering, as we did last week with the Ottawa red blocks, that guy named Crumb comes off the bench and all of a sudden he's running for first downs and he's making life exciting and in the end somehow, and I'll go to my grave trying to figure this one out, they beat Winnipeg. And that's the weirdest thing about this season is that there are these quarterbacks and a lot of them aren't that good and we're not quite sure what's going on with them or whether they'll have a future or whether some of them Kelly sure looks like if he wants to stick around, we'll be a guy that that's going to be interesting for a long time. But there aren't very many Chad Kelly's in the CFL right now. So on the one hand you've got a real quarterback shortage and on the other hand you've got some of the most exciting and fun football we've seen in I don't know how many years coming off last weekend In terms of the Chad Kelly to get your thoughts because obviously he's lightened it up right now and Argos look great and undefeated coming off and all of that. But Chad Kelly doesn't strike me as someone that's going to be happy being to the cfl for the next five, six years. I don't know if he has a greater vision for his life. Where do you think Chad goes after this year? Well, Chad Kelly already believes he's better than half the starting quarterbacks in the nfl. God, God bless him for that. Lots of people think that way. I don't know if he'll find any place better for him than right now. I think this may be the place, this may be the spot, this may be a place to put 10 years in and see where you go and build and a life and a career doing that. I'm not sure at his age and considering all the stuff that's happened in the past that a whole lot of NFL teams are going to be knocking on his door real quickly. You know what I do like about him, he has a certain toughness and I don't know if that's the name or know if it's the uncle having Jim Kelly as his uncle. I look at him and I see a lot of Matt Dunnigan and I see a guy who's got a big heart and maybe he can't quarterback in the way that you know, you'd want to see the NFLs drop back, be in the pocket kind of guy throwing. But what I like about him is he seems to understand I need to get a first down and I'm going to get a first down. And whether that it's me running the ball or whether that's me finding somebody or whether that's me improvising, I like that about him. He's got a lot of that old style cfl quarterback in him. And so yeah, whether he's going to be satisfied being in the cfl, I'm not certain whether he gets the opportunity and moves on and becomes terrific somewhere else that that's not for me to determine. But I'll say one thing about the nfl, if they think a guy's got half a chance, they're going to give him some training camp time and take a look at him and see what happens and go from there. And we're going to see that with Nathan Rourke I guess this year in Jacksonville's camp. See how that all works out. But Chad Kelly's been kicking around for a bit and he's got some baggage and there's all these things that surround him. And so whether he's able to overcome his past and all that's happening on the good side now and somehow get that to translate to him getting the shot in the NFL is one thing I can see him if he chooses to say this is where I want to be and this is where I want to play the rest of my career, I can see him being a cfl lifer and a real good one. Well that's the thing I just don't know. You said that they're his ity kind of coming into the season and talking and I don't know if I think that he could, it's the question of, I mean we cover the xfl and the US F l I mean there's plenty of guys that could make careers there and kind of play, but it's the way, do they have greater visions for that in terms of the dust and crumb effect? Is this a good thing? Was that a good thing that Winnipeg because obviously tremendous game, but now in a vacuum coming out of that, is that a good thing that he was able to run all over the field against Winnipeg's defense? Well I think what the good thing is that Ottawa has been looking for a quarterback for a long time and poor Jeremiah Mazzoli just can't stay healthy. And so their apparent starter is no longer there and then their next starter is gone. And when you're going sort of down the list in the cfl, unless it's the old days of Edmonton, going from Dunnigan to with Warren Moon and Dunnigan and all those guys to their third stringers were better than most starters back in the day. I don't think Ottawa is looking at their third stringer being better than every everyone else's starters. But what I liked about 'em was composure and composure, running the ball, composure, passing composure, coming back late in a game against a really good football team. And he looked to me, sometimes you can't tell until a guy plays what kind of player he is going to be. And what happens is you can practice with a guy and you can practice and he only shows so much in practice, but then the lights come on for real and then what happens? And here the lights came on for real and some of his guys made big plays after the receiver dropped a touchdown pass in the first half, which really would've changed the first half. But he just looking at from a composure point of view, and I think this is where you look around the league now and you've seen Hamilton with all the problems they've had at quarterback and you think, well none of them look very good. And people are saying, well, Schulz is out for the year or however long he's out for big deal, he can't play, he's not very good. And so then you see a guy like Crumb come in, is it one game? Is there more than one game? Can he come back? Very interesting to see what he does next week and the week after. And whether this is real, it's hard for a young guy to make it in the cfl. It's a different game for Americans to come up here and play and understand what it is. And that's what I like about Kelly because Kelly seems to really get it. And looking at Crumb, he certainly seemed to get it, watching that one game. One game does not in any way make a career, but I do like the fact that he showed composure and he showed the ability to run the football and the very fact that he could move the ball for an offense that really hasn't moved the ball very well and come back and win a win a game I thought was a phenomenal accomplishment. And I'm hoping for the league and for Ottawa and for everybody else that every time one of these guys show something, I'm hoping that this guy's for real and that this is going to be more than just a one week kind of thing. Well yeah, I, I am afraid that Dustin's kind of the one trick pony here of like, oh now then I'm just going, I'm going. And we saw that. But you know, talk about a game mean Jack Kelly had that doesn't take a lot to build this area here in the cfl around good performances, right? Well, I mean to me, before the season started, this is all new for Kelly in my mind. I don't care what happened in the Gray Cup, that's two or three plays. I don't care what happened while he was backing up McLeod, Bethel Thompson. Let's see, when you get the chance, when it's your turn and it's your time and here you are and you've got it and these are your receivers and this is the team you're building around. And I like when a quarterback comes in and he looks like he's in charge and he looks like this is how it's going to work. And he looks like when at second in three and he's got to make a play that he knows what he needs to do, not just what looking at his wristband and coming up with it. There's a certain in internal thing, quarterbacks in every league have it, the best ones. But I think it's different in the cfl because many of the Americans that come here are learning a new game and so they're not entirely sure as to what to do and how to do it and when to run and when not to run and all of those things. And some people are just naturally tremendous at it. I mean we saw Ricky Ray from the beginning, although he wasn't much of a runner, he just understood how to win football games and Warren Moon just understood how to win football games and we've seen it with Danny McManus and with other people over the years and now in Winnipeg when he wasn't that good before he got there, he got there and everything just seemed to work for him. And so there is it, and I think we talk about the NFL and quarterbacks and how quarterbacks are the difference makers in the game. I actually think the quarterback and the c l is more of a factor because of the three downs and because you've got to move things quickly and because they run a little bit more for the most part. And so it's a question sometimes of so much as composure and understanding and protecting the football, not turning the ball over. And if you can do that and you can protect the football, and one of the things I liked about the weekend, how many great catches did we see? How many guys went up for footballs that didn't look like they necessarily would get caught and got caught? And so when you have those kind of athletes at receiver and you have quarterbacks who can get them the ball, it just makes for a better game. So then I mean we started the conversation, does the CFO have a quarterback problem? And then we talk about these Dustin coming in and Tyree even before his injury and all these guys. Are we lucky not now is there a problem because it certainly seems like there could be, but for whatever circumstance that we're getting through it or I don't know. Well, there's an historical problem and I think guess if you've been around as long as I have and you've watched as much cfl football as I have for basically 50 some years, you remember when every team in the league had pretty much a quality quarterback or close to that. And if I had passing stats in front of me and I'm terrible with years and remembering who was what and what year, but if you go back to years where you've got Calvio and Burris and there's a whole group of guys at once, there's not enough, there's not enough right now. I mean you see it across the league. Calgary is struggling to score points and Edmonton can't score points and you just looking across Saskatchewan is just so, and how many guys right now would you say are great, maybe Ros? And it's funny, everyone says Claros is the best player in the cfl. And I look at that oddly because in no other generation would Ros be the best player in the cfl. You can look at whatever decade you want or whatever timeframe you want and say Damon Allen was better or Colle Kavio was better or go way back to Russ Jackson, Ron Lancaster were better. All these guys were better. But his one loss record is beyond ridiculous. So give him credit on that regard. But the quality, and I think this is one of the things that were found across the board is that the cfl can't attract the quarterback at once could attract because that guy can now be on the practice roster of an NFL team almost making more money than he'd be making as a backup quarterback in the cfl. And so why would he come? And once upon a time the athlete quarterback wasn't of interest to the nfl and so that kind of guy came to the Canadian Football league and he became great. And so it's harder and harder to find those guys. They're still out there. There's still a thousand college football teams, you can still find them. It's a question of doing your diligence and scouting and looking. And you look at Jim Barker who used to be with the Argos and now is on the panel for tsn, but if you do a count of the number of quarterbacks he's brought to the cfl, it's a phenomenal number and half the league or Jim Barker recruits, and so they're people out there that can find them. You just got to go out and do it. But I think right now, collectively this is the weakest crop of CFL quarterbacks I can remember, which of course goes counter to the fact that we just had the greatest weekend anyone has ever seen. And so as always, the CFL is impossible to explain. Is Mason fine a acceptable backup solution here for Trevor Harris going down? Because obviously if they were fine with Mason, they wouldn't have brought in Trevor Harris. I mean I get now we want to have a safe face there, but what do you make of Saskatchewan? It's impossible to know. Let's see him play. Let's see him play two or three Games. We saw him play last year. We saw him. No, but let's see him play now he's got to be the starter for how long now is he back for is the rest of the season. I don't know how it's going to work or who they get or who they pick up along the way, I can watched Fido as a backup. I watched Harris as a backup. I watched Calis as a backup. They all were around Toronto as backup quarterbacks. There was no way you knew if any of them were any good. They were just names and they were guys that took 10% of the snaps in practice. And so you never really got a sense of who a guy was or what he was. And even you take Trevor Harris, there have been moments in his career where he's looked like a really good starting quarterback and there's been moments in his career where he is looked like quite a lousy starting quarterback and now he's an injured starting quarterback. And so it's hard to know sometimes who is what, did anyone know Nathan Rourke last year was going to come in and light up the league the way he did? I mean that was just an incredible performance. And whether it's a one year stand or who knows how long it is, if he does come back, if the NFL doesn't want him, what do you have there? But you don't know. You have to get out and play. You have to get out on the field. Henry Bur was a third stringer in Calgary and then he got to start and then all of a sudden it was like this guy can play and this guy can be a difference maker. And so you don't know until they get out there. And we're so used to knowing who the first picks in the NFL draft are and knowing that this guy is the next somebody and this guy is the next. That doesn't work that way in the cfl because the guy's coming in from Idaho state or wherever it happens to be playing. And you never really saw him and he wasn't anybody's topic. And there is no draft number when it comes to that. Even Chad Kelly this year, no one knew he made a nice play in the gray cup. That's great. That's one play. And now he's a starter and now he looks like to me much better than the previous guy that started. I like his game a lot more than McLeod Bethel Thompson. But until you do it, I'll take my job for example, a lot of guys in the newspaper business want to be columnists and they think I'm a reporter. I'm going to be a pretty good columnist. I can be a pretty good columnist and they can do it for a week or a month or two months or whatever. But many of them can't. Many of 'em have to be what it is they are and they go back to being reporters or whatever. And some of us 40 years later are able to still carry it off. And I think playing quarterbacks no different. Being a starter is a lot different than being a backup. And coming off the bench is a lot different than running every play and knowing the offense and knowing how to do work with your coaches and how they're going to call the plays and whether they understand how to call the right place for you. There's so many factors involved. But man, for man, this, as I said, the strangest thing ever was, I don't remember a CFL weekend followed by an unbelievable Wimbledon. It was like one of these great sports weekends that you just saw. Sports doesn't get better than this on the weekend. And then you look back big picture you think, who are those guys? Who is Crumb? Who is he? Can he play? We don't know. Let's find out next week. The reason why I brought you on, you had your article up here and I got it pulled up. I try and oh, Steve's a big cfl hater, whatever because you're critical about things and that's the way it is. You have to be, do your job and everything else. But here, positive and cfl numbers growing. What do you make TV numbers here hitting highs this year compared to the last couple years? Well, I wasn't really comparing the numbers to other years. What I was trying to explain to people is that especially in a city like Toronto where everyone kind of shrugs about the Argos in the CFO, that they're doing 500 plus thousand a game, which is more than the MLS games do in the United States, which is more than NHL hockey games do in the United States. So here, here's a country 10 times the size of Canada and the CFL's doing more in some cases almost twice the audience soccer's doing. And everyone's talking about how the soccer franchises are worth this much money and MLS is growing and Messi's just signed in mls and what a thing's going on there. Well, the reality is that in a country 10 times the size, more people watch the cfl. I mean if you times that number by 10, that 500,000, you're talking five, I mean it's not going to be 5 million. But I'm just saying if you actually do the math and figure out size of country versus how many people watching, my point in what I was writing wasn't that these are great Canadian numbers for this year, although they're up 28% from the time the season started. The numbers have been pretty steady year after year after year with the league. They don't really go up a lot. They don't really go down a lot. But I was comparing it to the two American things and I was astounded when I did the research to find out that they're not even like the N H L on on ESPN and T N T isn't even close to what the CFL does in Canada, but You get this perception and people are poo-pooing, whatever. And I mean we entered all of this conversation with the xfl stuff and oh, the CFL's dying, all this stuff. But like you said, half a million watching and a lot of those Sunday games have be doing good. And I know it's kind of mixed bag with those Thursday, they're trying to experiment more with days of the week and with having it more solidified matchup. But what does it say that you get all this negativity surrounding it, but it's still pulling in half a million a week? Well pull, it tells you number one, there's a lot of old people in Canada, number 1 66 years old and the cfl has been dying for virtually all of my life. I used to call it the existential football league because it exists, but it never grows. And the thing about it that's amazing is that it exists and it more than exists if you're doing 500,000 people a game in spite the fact that the league is pretty poorly run and the league does not market players very well and the league does not understand still that people are trying to gamble on this sport, which means you need statistics, jury and games, which means their ability to get simple things done is astoundingly horrible. And people say, oh, you're a negative. Oh, first of all, I'm in the hall. I wouldn't be in the hall of fame if the people who voted me in thought I was negative. What I do do more than I think anyone else in the country is I show more than one side of the picture. And that's how you have to look at it. There are a lot of problems in the cfl, there are a lot of things that need to be fixed. And in this season one of the worst things is their inability to have gambling statistics available while the games are going on. And it's astounding to me that in this time where a guy can sit at home and he can bet on how many yards Kelly's going to pass for this week or whether he is going to run for a touchdown or whether coxie is going to catch a touchdown pass or whoever you're talking about, and you're going to bet on how many yards Sean's going to get for Winnipeg in a game and you can't get that while the game's going on your screen. That's embarrassing. And so yeah, there's all these things wrong about league. There always is, but all the way, what makes it right all the way is that historically, even in bad years, in down years, the football's always been somewhat decent. And so you know, don't may not know the players, you may not know their names, you may not know who they are each year and they don't stay in the cities long enough. And there's no commitment to most franchises outside of Winnipeg right now. But that said, the football is the one thing that sort of keeps it working all the time. And that's not a question of being positive or negative when you say, why can't we get stats during the game? That's not positive or negative, that's bad business. Why aren't the Argos doing more to sell tickets that that's not positive or negative, that's bad business. There's different ways you can look at it, but you have to explore all sides of the thing and someone is positive. I'll tell you one thing I was saying, I worked in Calgary in the early eighties and the St. Peters went bankrupt and I remember they decided to have a fundraiser for their bankruptcy to sell tickets. And well based me at the time was, and this was a good football town compared to most, what amazed me at the time was nobody cared in a place like that where they were going bankrupt, are you going to buy seats now? No. Well, why not? I don't want them. And so all of these things that you would've thought would've at the same time, the Saskatchewan, which is now the rich kids in on the block the same time they were going bankrupt and they had a telethon and remember to save the rough Ryders. And so you go, the CFL is cyclical. One time Hamilton is bankrupt, another time Toronto's bankrupt another time Montreal is bankrupt. Calgary's been bankrupt, Saskatchewan's been bankrupt, Ottawa's been bankrupt. So everybody's been almost outside of Edmonton and Winnipeg. I think pretty much everybody's been bankrupt at one time or another. And that's just the business of trying to keep football alive at. And it's getting more and more challenging as it's getting harder and harder to get players. But we still see a weekend we just saw and you say, well I can't wait for this week because I want to see how these guys play. So last thing from me here. So putting that all in, all of these problems are still dry, whatever, do you send CFL office, are they fine? Because hey, look what we're doing. Why put in this extra work if we're going to get whatever? Do you see them being complacent in that way? No. And this is the part that I don't understand. I really like Randy Abro, the commissioner and I have a great deal of regard for him. And one time, one time while I just want to shake them, what is going on here? Why aren't you guys getting smarter? Why aren't you getting better? Why aren't you doing more marketing? Why aren't you getting ethnic fans out to your games? Why aren't you fixing Toronto? The problems seem to never change. And even someone as smart as Randy is and as hopeful as he seems to be, you look at it and you say, there's so much more to be done here. Now they don't have a lot of money, they never do and they have to operate on lower budgets and things like that. But all that said, that doesn't give you an excuse to not have statistics available during game when professional gambling is, now I'm watching Wimbledon and in the fifth set they're flashing up FanDuel odds on what you can bet while the game is on, while the tennis championship is being played. You could be betting on who's going to win. And you can see that on C F, you see that on the screens and cfl. But if you're a props player and you're making a bet you can't even find out during the game whether you won or lost today's world, that's inexcusable. Well, we go on our post Monday live streams we go on and you can't always trust the stats that are even on the game sheets come when we're doing the recaps on Monday, it's like, well, did you really have five tackles there? Don't, it's not always even accurate day, day after, No. And again, in today's world, they signed that pretty large deal with that company genius. You could argue that the company may be inappropriately named. I don't know exactly why this isn't working, I don't know how it's supposed to work. I'm not technically inclined. So I can say, I'll walk in tomorrow and fix your problem, but I can sit with my phone on any night and look at, I use the score app, that's my go-to app. I can get a major league baseball score from every city I can get who's had hits and who hasn't, what the pitching stats are on any pitcher. Why can I do that on Major league baseball? Why can I do that? I can do hockey as it's happening on my phone. Who's had shots on goal, who's made saves, who's killed penalties, who's done all this stuff right on the phone? You can check on all kinds of things. Why can't I do that in the cfo? I don't understand. And one of, I don't know how many other problems you're going to add on top of each other. So what? Call me negative and call me the sky is falling. I think there's certain things that you should be able to do just to account for today's business world. And that's all it is as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, it's weird. I had my first interaction with the at CFL Twitter account this week. I've, Steve, I've been covered the leading now three years. I mean that's certainly not the 50 plus years that you've been on this thing. And my first interaction with them was them stealing some of my content and repurposing it as their own. And I thought, this is wild. But the first interaction I'm having, whoever runs that account is after podcasting about your league every week for three years is you stealing my content and then saying, oh, we got it from someone else that makes it any better. So it's interesting we keep doing this, like you said, it's a, it's it's wrap this up, pros and cons. One of the best weekends the CFO ever. Still a lot of work to be done. Anything else from you before we get out of here? I really appreciate it. No, I just want to go back to Chad Kelly. Okay. Because a league is only ever as good as its stars and you need stars to be able to carry on. If you're talking the nba, you always start with LeBron and Steph Curry and people now Nicola Yoki. And if you're talking hockey, you start with Mc David and at the CFL when the season began, I believe TS N had Zach Ros as the number one player in the league. That's a bit of a problem for me just because Zach, he's Zack Ros, and he's not the kind of guy that you're going to, you know's going to get you out of your seats. And so I'm hoping Chad Kelly is for real and I'm hoping that this is a long-term commitment because he might be one of these guys that can do it and can get you out of your seats and can run for a first down and can make a play that seems impossible. And I'm hoping that he's, and maybe, and this is the largest maybe of all, maybe he can get people in Toronto interested. I'm not sure that this can ever happen, but I'm saying maybe it could happen. Well yeah, but like you said before, you need not one Chad Kelly, you know, need seven or eight, right? I mean you need to have, but it's a start nonetheless on that. Well, I appreciate it, Steve, making the time today. Everything else here with, we'll see you up in Hamilton, maybe we'll get you on again this season. I really appreciate your time. All right. Be well. Enjoy. Well, I'm excited here. We have Ben Grant back on. I think we did. And now we're here at Toronto, Kings of the world. Embarrassing my BC Lions a few weeks ago here now we have Hamilton this week we're talking quarterbacks, everything else. It is. Ben, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on again. It's great to be back. It's good. And we were talking before, but obviously kudos on your broadcast work here for the Argos games. How's that going so far? That's exciting for you since last week's it spoke? Yeah, it's been awesome. It was always a dream of mine to get involved. I worked in radio years and years ago, but to be involved in a broadcast like that, that was a dream. And so to be able to do that with Mike Hogan as the play-by-play guy on T S N has been fantastic. So yeah, I've loved every second of it. Yeah, Mike's great. I obviously friend of the show as well, so I was excited when I saw that come out. I thought, oh good glad. And it's cool to see hardworking people and cool people get cool opportunities like that. And I think for the cfl, I think it's awesome and obviously you're the perfect person to do that, so really exciting to have that happen. Yeah, no thanks. Yeah, it's worked out beautifully and it's just a different way to watch the game too, so that's kind of been cool. Well it's interesting here, so we're here, we're week seven now, which is crazy here. Toronto had the buy, we've got two buys, all this stuff, but looking fantastic historically. How exceptional are the Argos playing right now? How good is this team? They're playing historically really well, they've already just even at four and oh, that's a mark that they haven't been at since the early eighties and it's pretty remarkable. That's not a streak I was aware of coming into this season as closely as I've followed the team. You just figure at some point in there with all the great Cup teams they've had over the years, you figure, well four and oh, it doesn't, it's not like 11 and oh or something. So you'd figure there'd be a team or two along the way, but it just hasn't seemed to work out that way. Maybe that's just the nature of playing in the East division and the rivalries that there are, I don't know. And the next mark, if they can find a way to beat Hamilton, go to five and oh, now we're going all the way back to 1960, which is really cool. The first year that McMahon Stadium came into existence, that's how long ago we're talking about. So that's a pretty cool, that would be a pretty cool mark to get to. What do you attribute that to? I mean obviously we have mutual friend Mike Mitchell and we talk a lot about team building and even going back to that, I think when you came on for the draft this year and well they're so deep, don't even, they're scouting guys or bringing in guys that they're so deep that maybe they don't even worry about. What do you attribute the Argos success to right now? It is mostly death, but they're also getting great quarterback play and that was a little bit of a wild card going in. I feel pretty good about it. Just having watched Chad Kelly in practice all last year and having watched him through a college too, I knew what he could do and it was just a question of will it all gel together? And I wasn't really worried about that because of the year that he spent in the system and he looked really good in practice last year. I still think it was the right move to go with Bethel Thompson the whole way through because just like we saw with Nathan Rourke, you have spent a whole year in that system and now you're ready to go and you can really show what you can do. And Chad Kelly's doing that this year. So by having Chad in and he's not a sort of break the bank quarterback, we've seen a lot of other teams have to employ. You can have depth everywhere else and we've seen it and you'll see it even more this week, the Argos are likely going to be down a few defensive linemen coming into this game against Hamilton. But it's okay because they've been, they've had Jared Brinkman and Shaman is healthy scratches on the defensive line. Hendrix, who might be the best defensive lineman of all of them, missed the opener. They haven't had all three of those guys together yet for a game this week. We'll have to see how that works out on the depth chart when it comes out. But yeah, the depth is unbelievable, but you can't build quality depth in the cfl if you're spending $600,000 on your quarterback. So that's helped too. Yeah, it's kind of the Nathan Rourke last year where, hey, we can resign lucky and bring in everyone and we're paying Nathan basically nothing and we're playing and being able to surround him with a bunch of quality talent, right? Yeah, that's the thing. And if you can make that work it, it's great. And BC's still in a good position because again, like Vernon Adams isn't making a million dollars, but he's a very capable quarterback and exciting deep, big play threat obviously. And with those, you look at those five BC receivers they've got, and I like the two running backs too in Maisel and shivers. There's pretty good excitement in BC's set up, but it's similar. They're very similarly constructed because they can afford to have that depth. Other teams can't have a five wide oats set like that. They just don't have the money for it. So that works out for teams like this. We've spoke at least in the last, this has probably been brought up for a long time, but at least on our show the last couple years I think Farhan was talking about as well, making some sort of quarterback that maybe we pay them differently or that have it so that you're able to do this because we're seeing now and we've got the Dustin Cru effect going on and we went all in on BO with Hamilton and now we're kind of struggling these teams where if you do have to pay your quarterback respectable money, then you're not able to build around them in that same way. Mean what do you think just historically here looking and moving forward for the c l? Yeah, I don't know what the answer is to that. Cause it's not just the cfl. The NFL's going to have that issue too. You're guys are getting paid 50 million a season in the N F L. That's a pretty large percentage of that cap too. So I don't know, I the answer to that because I'm not sure there are enough million dollar quarterbacks in the cfl where that's going to be a fair rule for everybody because what if you're one of the teams that doesn't get that? What if you're one of the teams in and the best guy you've got is maybe the value of a quarter of one of the other guys that's getting paid a lot. So that doesn't really help you in terms of the cap. I think right now the parody that exists in the league, and that's been a great thing for the league this season. Edmonton aside, one of the reasons for that is the cap because the teams that have spent on one player here or one player there, they've been able to, they haven't really been able to show up the depth, but other teams have depth and they're maybe running a Dustin Crumb out there or whatever you have and finding a way to make it work elsewhere. So I don't know that, I think it would be a risky thing for the CFL to do, set aside a different quarterback budget. It's interesting though. I love outside the box ideas. I love entertaining those and I think the CFL should be doing stuff like that, but this isn't one I feel like is worth jumping on. So then you, I make then, because this was wildly considered greatest C F O weekend in a long time, and even looking on paper, you're Winnipeg at Ottawa, I don't if that's going to be whatever. And Calgary and Saskatchewan, they always seem to kind of deliver, but it didn't on paper. It wasn't looking like this is going to be crazy to have this great weekend led by Dustin Crumb and Mason fine and everything else. It's a good thing for the league, but long term not going to have, I don't know if you're going to have that sustainable play every weekend with these backup quarterbacks. Yeah, it is an issue and I think we'll get a better picture as to what, who Dustin Rum actually is over the next couple of weeks. If you look back at the Winnipeg game, I don't think rum actually played that well for most of it. He had a really nice fourth quarter, a pretty good second half, and obviously had those highlight runs to end regulation and then to win it in overtime. Those were unquestionably highlight superstar moments. But you look back through the rest of the game, he's still a little bit jumpy in the pocket. He runs a little too early I think. And now that there's more film on him, teams are going to start adjusting to that. I think Calgary's going to dominate the game against Ottawa this week because I think just having that extra film, it's going to force him to a, as all great quarterbacks are forced to at some point prove to us that you can do this. We've seen you do this, but what do you do when we make you do the thing you're worse at? How good are you now? And some guys are able to excel and still succeed. We'll see what Dustin Crem is. I think he's going to have trouble this week. And that's not saying that he can't go forward as a great quarterback in this league, but I think this is the week he'll find some of those stumbling blocks and have to find a way to overcome those. Well yeah, you always get that backup quarterback bump when you come in and oh, they don't have the tape or what's going on and we're preparing all week for whatever. And then you come in and it was just interesting to me because I think Hodge had a tweet where it's like the Winnipeg's defense wasn't prepared. They didn't, he's doing the same thing he did last week. It is kind of this unscheduled scrambling and running and he looks very good at that. But in the first half I had written down, Crum is crummy. I don't really know how we feel about this, but in terms of Chad Kelly, like you said, coming in living a year here under McCaw, doing that here, obviously Dustin not doing that, and Taylor coming in for Hamilton and not doing, we have these guys now in terms of getting these new quarterbacks up to speed. Cause I keep hearing you. It's a two, three year learning curve process for the cfo. Like what do you do for these guys that aren't able to do Chad, Chad Kelly didn't kind of live through it for a year And I don't know, it's a really tough position. We'll see what Powell can produce for Hamilton this week, but it's a lot to ask of a guy. That was sort of a borderline roster piece with going back to preseason. No one was coming into this season thinking, well, Hamilton's going to have to rely heavily on Taylor Powell. That's just, I think even most Tigercat fans probably had no idea who that was. And a guy like that, he may again just crumb, he may turn into something, but we don't know. I just, even preparing for that game this week, I didn't was like, where do I find I even start watching film on this guy? And so I went back and watched some, was it Eastern Michigan and some Troy games and just to try and get a feel for who this guy is and how do you integrate that into the system. And I know Coach Di when he talked about going back to watch some pre-season tape, and that was sort of, I guess, and also going back to last year when they had had to put in other quarterbacks into this, a similar situation. And that's how they're kind of preparing for this game. It will give those guys a little bit of that boost, like you said, but it doesn't last long. That magic wears off after a game or two. And then yeah, you're stuck without that. Without that, you're in the system. Without that, you're in the league, an extra defender out there and all the stuff that you've been doing since you're six years old doesn't make sense because suddenly there's another DB standing in the standing there and you're cover six and you don't know don't where to throw the football. So there's no shortcut around that. And so what we're left with, if the league has to go forward with a lot of guys like Powell and Rum and whoever else were starting around the league, there may be some, there're going to be some games where they're just not pretty. And last week was fantastic. I know ratings were great, the games were super exciting, every single one of them down to the wire. But yeah, they need a little bit more stability because even guys like Jake Mayer in Calgary who looked really good at times last season hasn't really, I don't know if we can definitely say, well, he's a quarterback of the future in this league either. Because sometimes after what happens instead is you're year in the system or you're year starting instead of that giving you a boost and sort of saying, well now I've had time and now I've arrived. It also gives defensive coordinators a year's worth of film. And if they can take away all the stuff that you're good at, then yeah, you're going to have some games that don't look so great either. So yeah, I don't know. I don't think there's a quick fix for this, but it is a problem. I think the thing is, when you don't have that sort of quarterback depth in the league, you just have to find a way to keep quarterbacks healthy. And that hasn't happened at all in the c l this year. It seems like every starting quarterback almost has gone down at some point. So that's something they're keeping their fingers crossed with because you just can't afford to lose any more quarterbacks in this football league. I'm so glad it was Taylor Powell. It's been a really long week. I'm like, okay. I'm like, what was that kid's name? Taylor Powell, I'm trying to remember, I think earlier here on the West Coast, because mayor looked like he was, looked like the prince that was promised. I mean, he came in and we talked to him preseason, I guess last year. And I said, I want to put my hitch wagon to your ride. And he's looked kind of mediocre. What do you attribute, because we'll do more here at Hamilton Toronto, I promise, but what do you attribute Cals kind of stumblings right now? Is it just mayor or is it kind of the injuries there for the receivers? Well, certainly injuries don't help, but they've had a lot of turnover on that team too, and every single season over the last five years, it's like, well, Calgary's lost a lot of pieces. I don't know how they're going to be. And they've been fine pretty much every year. But there is a point where you've just lost too many pieces now. And I'm not saying that's happened to Calgary because they look pretty good last week and I think they're probably going to win again this week and they'll be back in the mix before you know it. But yeah, it's dangerous when you start losing pieces and have injuries on top of that. And the receiving core, I don't think is exactly what we thought it would be. And then you look at where they're getting success from. It just feels to me, when I watch Calgary on offense, I feel like I'm watching a lot of slants. That's just a lot of the same short passes. And it's tough as, again, someone that's covered the Argos for the last few years. I know what it's like watching a team have to matriculate their way down the football field. It's hard in three down football because one mistake and suddenly there goes our plan for this drive. And obviously that's changed this year in Toronto with a lot more deep balls and stuff. But yeah, Calgary's going through an offensive game plan every week that requires them to complete a high percentage of passes and to have success in the run game. And if any of those falters or you get a holding penalty, that's it for the drive. And I don't think mayor has shown enough consistency in the sort of middle levels and deeper levels of the field. Not to rely on, but just to stretch the defense out. Because what you're seeing when guys play against Calgary now, everyone's creeping right in. You're not getting huge cushions on the outside. And so it's making the problem an even more serious one. Yeah, it's not good there. It's interesting. Yeah, I think Ottawa coming in there, I don't know. I have a feeling that, like you said, that they're probably going to have a little bounce back here in terms of just to round out the quarterback here, Trevor going down, Oli going down. I don't know if Trevor ever takes another snap. I mean it's 37. I couldn't imagine coming back and playing professional football again a year later of doing that. Oli and all, we're in for a really big awakening here next year, depending how everything pans out. Obviously this is next season, but looking forward here, it could be a big turnover across the league. And I mean, God knows what Bo ends up doing. Yeah, I know. And it could be, and you're right. And who will the stars be? Who are people going to tie their team to and tie their hopes to. I think what you're going to see in a few different situations next season is something like what we just talked about off the top with Toronto and with BC where you've got, at least with a lesser known quarterback and a less experienced quarterback, at least you can stockpile everywhere else. You at least you can build depth and that hadn't, it doesn't always work. Look at Edmonton, they didn't invest a ton of money in quarterback and tried to make up for it elsewhere. And that has, obviously that's failed colossally for a number of different reasons, but that may be what it is. Now I will say I'd really, really strongly expect to see Trevor Harris back again next season. I really think we'll see one more when that injury happened. I thought the same as you. Like this is, that might be it. But I guess there were some positive news in terms of the surgery and how it went and the extent of the injury. We're not talking about all ligaments blown out or anything like that. And also Trevor Harris, he's not a normal human being. He is, he's a machine. I don't know if you've seen any of his workout regiments. I seem to remember watching him pulling a bus at some point as part of a training program. So this is not a normal human being. He will be back. But you're right, I don't know about Jeremiah Soli. There is going to be some turnover. I wouldn't be surprised to see Chad Kelly in an N F L camp. So there's going to be a lot of new faces probably next year and the league's going to have to figure out what that means for them In terms of Chad and yeah, it Naer came on and said we had this article most important player in the cfl right now, and I was Steve Simmons on the show as well talking Chad's been great for the league. We need more than just one Chad Kelly to be able to build a market. I don't what does c L 2023 look like? If Chad Kelly, isn't it Toronto, whether, I don't even know what the storylines are, the season that we're tracking, va, VA and BC it, it's been so overwhelming the Nathan O'Rourke effect here. This is the new prince, we're got to pump him up. What do you make of that? If we remove Chad Kelly from the situation? Well I think what they're going to have to do, so let's suppose everything goes really well for Toronto this season. Chad Kelly gets at the very least a camp invite and he's down in the nfl and I really do think his skillset like Chad is, I know people often roll their eyes at me when I say I think Chad Kelly will be in the NFL next year. Because I think as a league and as media covering the league, we've said that about a lot of people that we feel like, I still feel right now there's a third of the players in the league that if had they had different situations would be in the nfl. But it's just how it worked out. But Chad is different. Like his skillset, you just watch him fire the football because he's here for different reasons than a lot of the other guys end up here. It was with Chad, it was never not being able to read a defense. It was never not being able to throw the football. It was never not being an athlete, it was other stuff. It was off the field issues that he had. And he's sorted that out. He's demonstrated a maturity that I think a lot of NFL execs were wondering if he had within him. And he's proven over the last year plus that he does and he's dedicated himself and he stayed in Toronto and worked at quarterback camps and improved his game. I expect him to be elsewhere next year. And so what the cfl needs to do then they can't fall back on, okay, well let's just bring in all the old guys that we've got around and nothing against Dane Evans, but if your answer is well, we'll get Dane Evans and start a quarterback, that's not, that's not the long term solution that that's a bandaid. And what they need to do instead is you've got to start digging and the scouting department's got to go and find guys that we can rely on. Now let's bring in six or seven guys from Sunbelt and Whack and the old conferences that produce some cfl stars and let's see what we've got here. Because there's some great talent guys that never really, for whatever reason, they're missing one measurable and that's going to take them away from really ever being an N F L star doesn't mean you can't be hugely successful. Look at most of the quarterbacks that have been successful in the cfl, they're not guys that were highly touted out of college. They're guys from all over the place. And so the league needs to collectively rebuild that way, bring in a bunch of guys, half a dozen guys and see what sticks. And it might be a rocky road for a year, but I think for the long-term health of each organization and the league as a whole, that's going to do wonders. And you got these two other pesky spring leagues here now and they're gobbling up players. I mean it's true but Well I remember it was last year and it was we kata and pre and Naer was saying, yeah it is, it's almost proud them to cfl R. Well it takes two, three years for guys to come in here and really learn our game and then you're excelling, which is awesome. But then you need to preplan or get these guys in because like you said, you can't like, I don't know what Dustin Crumb's going to look like the rest of the season here. Maybe he is the next coming of God and it's it's going to take over the country. But I don't think that that's probably going to be the case. Yeah, the cfl game is different and I think Canadians do see it as a point of pride that it's a difficult game to master, but it is really just because it's a different game and I don't think it's the size of the ball necessarily. There haven't been that many quarterbacks. I know the only one I've heard speak about that was Zack Taylor, head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals. He was the backup in Winnipeg behind Ryan Denwitty and others. And he talked about the first time he grabbed a cfl football, the very first practice he said right away he immediately knew, he was like Can't, I'm not going to make it in this league. Because he had small hands and just that little bit bigger that the ball was too much for him. But it's pretty rare to hear something like that for most of the guys. The reason it takes so long as a quarterback is the width of the field and the 12th defender and those two things go against you. You try and equate it to other things. It it's really hard to come up with a comparable analysis. To me, the most accurate thing I've found is imagine you've lived in the same place for 20 years and suddenly there's an extra stare on your stairs and you're running down the stairs in the morning late for work, you're going to fall on your face a lot because for years you've been running down those stairs and it's been the exact same number. And you're trying to do that without thinking. Cause you can't think about it when you're back there in the pocket can't, there's no time to think, right? It's just instinct. You're like, oh this guy's here, that means this, but it doesn't anymore. And so it takes time and like you said, back to how you fix that, no shortcut. So some teams are going to have to just sort of bite the bullet for a season at least while they try and find a long-term solution. But that can be exciting too though. I get excited about that bringing guys like Nick Tiano was a guy I was really excited about last year, not because I thought he was going to get on the field, but I watched his Chattanooga film and I'm like, this guy can play football now. It didn't work for him in the cfl and I'm not sure it worked for him in any other league to this point either. But that's an exciting process. Just because it didn't work didn't mean it's not exciting to watch guys like that come in and play because these are anyone that's playing quarterback in D one or D two football. These are great athletes, these are exceptional quarterbacks. It's really, there's like six guys in the world who are actually really good at it. So it's tough to find who those guys are sometimes. I can't remember who it was here in the last week or so we were talking, I can't remember who. I wish I could credit that the xfl, they've got Jordan Palmer coming in right here and okay, we're working, we're bringing in all these guys do something in the cfl. With that, let's bring in, and I know it's different because xfl and it's single entity and we're trying to league build right now versus obviously these teams are competing, but like you said, bring a half a dozen guys that have someone work with them here. Let's kind of get going on these rules and the differences and all that. Yeah, I don't know if that's any even reasonable solution but at least it's no ideas and bad ideas in brainstorming. But let's try to cultivate some of this versus protection of no, our league is so much more challenging. That's interesting. Yeah, and I think I'm a few steps ahead here, but I'm thinking about you make that into a show or whatever else and follow those guys week to week. Like Jordan Palmer's a great personality for that. He could see that Jordan Palmer's career wasn't great in the N F L, but he was just one of those guys that sort of understood I think in working as a backup over a few seasons, all of the little details that do go into being great. And he is such a great personality too cause he got to lead that UTEP team years and years ago and just developed into the perfect host for someone like that. And he's worked with guys like Joe Burrow and a ton of other quarterbacks. But you get find a personality like that, like the cfl equivalent of whoever that is, but they need to be, I think you need to have them be sort of a personality too, not just a quarterback whisperer. And you can really make that into something and bring up a bunch of guys who are excited to work with this individual and have some sort of cfl I know camp style thing, integration. I don't know, I'm, I'm thinking I'm excited by these ideas. I love this stuff. I don't know how to make it work. I don't know if there's any money to make something like that work. Well know there isn't. And so I don't know how that happens but yeah, there's thinking outside the box is a great first step in solving a potential problem that we've identified for next season. Well it was Randy Chevy or whatever we kept, they got the quarterback show here on Netflix right now. It's like how do we do the CFO equivalent to that? Well here you go have bring in the Pamela, have Donegan yell at 'em and have whoever yell maybe did when witty can be a part of it in the off season, whatever before we get out this game coming up. Toronto did not make Vernon Adams look particularly good with his six interceptions here. I I'm scared for Hamilton here coming in with Toronto. What do you make of the actual matchup this weekend? I think Hamilton is going to be hard pressed to score points. Anything can happen. We've seen games at Tim Horton's field and Iver Wayne before that where Toronto Hamilton sometimes doesn't matter who the better team is because there's just a different, it's like any rivalry, it doesn't matter how someone sees and is going U N C Duke, it's just going to be fireworks. That's just how it's going to be. Michigan, Ohio State, you never know. But don't, when I'm trying to envision how each drive is going to go for the Tigercat, I can't see how they're going to put up a lot of points. And so I think it's going to take an astonishingly good defensive performance from Hamilton to be able to make this a ballgame because I really don't see the TCATs getting more than a touchdown or so offensively and so can they with a touchdown and a couple of field goals pull at a win. It's possible, but the don't Toronto's of offenses look so good that they're still leading the league in rushing before we even get to the Chad Kelly part of that. And of course Chad Kelly contributes to that lead in rushing, not for his own legs necessarily, but because teams are having to legitimately back way off and linebackers kind of have to stay pinned too because he's a little bit of a threat to run. And so that just opens things up even further and it as good as Hamilton's defense is, and I do, I really like their defense. I just don't know that they're going to be able to hold Toronto to 14 points and I think that's what they're going to need to do in order to win this game. So I see it as a blowout, but I've been made to look foolish many times, many times before including last week. So yeah, we'll see. Well I mean What is it, they have the stat Argos, it's like 35 whatever points per game here. I mean they can certainly score right now there's no lack of that. I mean even in the BC game with all that BC and that was still a very high scoring game, both sides of the ball there. But yeah, I mean Toronto can lock it down and also they can run it up on you right now and I do, I see Chad going in there and having a little big gusto energy kind of taking over. Yeah, no, he could. And he loves to get into that kind of environment too. The Tiger Kat's rivalry is not lost on him. He understands the significance of this and I think they, what's kind of cool about Coach DI's philosophy is, and it's one thing to say it, but to actually see the players buy into it, the one and oh philosophy, they had one and o written on their great cup rings last year because that was the philosophy each week because we're going to go one and O this week and everything else is put aside and we have tunnel vision on this week's game. And so every game of the season, if you actually legitimately buy into that, it's not easy to do. But if you do as a team, then suddenly this game coming up, no matter who it's against is the more most important thing in the world and you're treating it like the Great Cup. And so that's, you're going to get that from Chad Kelly. He's going to be fired up coming out of the tunnel looking to play didn't in the preseason game in Hamilton. He was supposed to play, didn't get into that game. So he hasn't had a chance to go out in front of that crowd. And that's a really interesting one for Argo's players to get out in front because it's like no other in the cfl there's this that rivalry. Hatred. So I think he'll be pretty fired up. Yeah, it's interesting having, because I don't know the dynamics of all these cities till we go and we were lucky enough to go to the Hamilton break up two years ago and it's very much the kind of Seattle Tacoma or whatever we have here where it's the second city, Hamilton's a lot bigger than Tacoma, but you're always kind of in the shadow there. We got Toronto and we're kind of the industrial, so it's interesting. I like it and I like you. There was good tailgates there we got to hang out at, but it was cool once you're there you kind of get it and why you have a little bit of that rivalry and so it makes sense now from geographical and economic and socially and everything else, even along with the football. So Everything about it and it's in the middle of a neighborhood, which I love. I think that's the coolest thing. You know, you're parking in people's driveways and for five or 10 bucks and feel it's got a sort of American college feel that way, you know, drive, you go to the big house in Michigan, you're paying 10 bucks to park in someone's driveway. It's just kind of how it is. But there's not a lot of CFL stadiums like that where they're right in the middle of a neighborhood that way and you're sitting there and you're looking over and you see the factories and the smokestacks and everything else and Toronto obviously has a very different vibe to it. So yeah, that rivalry is, it's in so many different things from the clashing colors schemes to the argument as to who's the oldest team in the cfl or whatever it is to having played against each other seven times a season over the last several decades. It's perfect for it. So everything from the proximity to the league set up to the style of cities that they are and who they represent, it's a perfect rivalry. It, it's got to be one of the best rivalries in professional sports. It just doesn't get the spotlight that some of the big American ones do. Well Ben, I appreciate it. I appreciate you making the time this week. I know you're busy running out of town here for the weekend and so I appreciate that we can get this going and I've, my work schedule's been all over the place so I'm glad we can make it work talking to Argos and good luck with everything else you have going on this season. Thanks so much for having me on. I love doing this with you. Well Dave, when your first pre cfl preseason game of the year got delayed by three hours because of wildfire smoke, did you ever think this might not be my season? I was just thinking about that. Maybe I should have. I don't know. That's crazy. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that this was unexpected. I never thought this team was going to be a juggernaut. I didn't think they were going to be where the bombers were the last three seasons. I thought they were good enough to be an eight nine win team perhaps. Maybe that was a little bit inflated projection. Maybe seven to eight was more realistic. But I figured, oh, why not? I mean you look at the receiving core year two with Chris Jones as the man running the defense, they got to be better and it certainly hasn't turned out that way. It's been rather shocking. So maybe I was a bad Oman there on May 22nd in Calgary with the smoke delay and stuff. So yeah, it's been wild. I listened to because I had, that was the first c l preseason the plus and I watched all that Mark Stevens and you came over because you know were filming on his show and then I think someone came over and filled on your show and I lived through all that. I thought it was riveting, but no, I mean I watched some of these games and so the preface, we're recording this Thursday now there may be a world where the Elks have a miraculous win tonight. Maybe the Elks sure in Winnipeg. Dave's in Winnipeg for the game. I have to work all day. So Dave's been very kind to come on now, even if they win, and I preface this last week because it seems like the Elks always play on Thursdays right now. That doesn't change if you have a miraculous win that doesn't change the long term. So that's more what we're focusing on. What's it been like this season? Just what is the vibe check here in Edson? Well obviously in training camp, everyone's optimistic, everyone's excited, everyone in the league is oh one. Oh, right. So you look at the moves of the Elks man in the off season with Eugene Lewis coming over and Steven Dunbar and Kyron Moore and even on defense Leche Bifo and AC Leonard and just the core that they brought back as well led by Taylor Cornelius and an offensive line that they trying to grow with and with some key starters back on defense with Nas Morgan and Jamon Pelley and Jake Sarna and Adam Konar and those type of players. And hopefully Aaron Grimes was coming back healthy and Ed Gainey's here for some veteran presence. And game one was, I mean it was great to see 32,000 at Commonwealth. It was almost to the point, I don't want to sound sappy here, but it was almost brought a tear to my eye because it's been a rough, it was a rough year in 22 and a rough year in 21 and then they can't score three times from the one and then they lose the game against the riders late in the fourth quarter. So that, that's kind of been a bad setup for the rest of the season so far. And now their injury issues to those key veterans are rearing their ugly head. It's a team that is not very confident when they play and when a negative play happens, they have a hard time getting over it and flushing it and moving on. They've had some good moments, but they have some good players but they're not a team. They're far from a team right now. A team that I do believe though that during the week they put in the work, they are enthusiastic and energetic. Maybe that's what you get with a young football team, but then on game day, boy, it doesn't transfer over. And the coaching staff led by Chris Jones have not done a good enough job, I think in game situations and they're not far from being coached well enough as well. So there's some reasons for that. I think as well, it's been tough. The noise is loud around the team. Of course they want to get rid of Chris Jones and everyone else and you can't because of the football operations cap, which we could maybe get into, it feels like it's another get through year or ride it out year, which is unfortunate. And you look at the stands and it's not, it's sad, it's, it's very sad to see, but there's a lot of frustrated people in Edmonton and I can't blame them. I can't blame them for being frustrated and angry that this season looks like it's very much lost and we're only six games in It just, and obviously I'm as far on the outside as you can be here, especially being you however many thousand miles in Seattle, but we had the Elizondo stuff and that we got to get rid and now we're bringing in Jones and we got to change the culture and all of that and Chris Jones and winning culture and all of that. Why hasn't this translated here? Because that everyone says, well you got to give him time and now, I mean we've gone through time now That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. I think the quarterback issue is a big one. If you don't have a quality quarterback, you're going to struggle. And sadly, for Taylor Cornelius, who I really like as a person, I like his story. He's got the skillset that makes you salivate and unfortunately he just cannot put a solid stretch of games consistently together. And that's been unfortunate. And you know, look at the last couple years they've gone to Nick Arbuckle to start and they've gone to Trey Ford who sadly got hurt and now he's not getting the opportunity. Jared Dey and there's been Kyle Oxley for a little bit and they go back to Taylor Cornelius because I think in a lot of ways they have to because they basically guaranteed him a roster spot for next season because they guaranteed half of his contract for year two. That's been tough. I think last year it was just a carousel, just a spinning wheel of new players in and out. And I think that's because Chris Jones and Roy Simon didn't have time to really evaluate the roster properly. So now they had a full off season. Now they're trying to stick with a group, they're going with continuity instead and can't make anyone happy when you lose because oh, why is he changing so much? And it's like why isn't he making more changes so you can't win there? And when I talk about how poorly coached they are at times, and I had a former Edmonton football team player tell me who used to play for Jones and knows the situation very well that says, look, he's stretched thin. He is stretched so thin because of the cap, he's $500,000 under budget compared to other teams in the league because they still have Jamie Elizondo and Brock Sunderland and a little bit of Jason Moss's contract, which was spread over five years when he was let go. So this former player said to me, Dave, quite frankly, he is deferring to his assistant coaches because he has to, and there are coaches on the staff that honestly should not even be here. So we'll see what happens. I mean, in 24 they get freed up a lot for as far as money is concerned. So I think the only contract that they'll have is a little bit of Jason Mosses and that's not going to be a lot. So maybe he can hire the coaches he wants, maybe he can hire another one in player personnel and football ops. I do think a lot of this has to do with a very much stretched thin Chris Jones who will never admit to that because that's just Chris Jones. I do think that that's been a big issue And I want to talk the cap here as well in a minute, but I, Chris came on, it wasn't part of the media day. I think they made, I think he called in afterwards because he was in such a hot button there for the cfl Media day back in February, but right. Yeah, I'm a fan of him and I think he's great. What infuriates me is the comments this week because we have been pounding Trey Ford and then he came on preseason, obviously he played last year and the preseason this year and him saying, well he didn't come in playing well, that's why he's not, but we've seen Cornelius, I can't imagine that Trey is demonstrably worse or at least put Trey in. So just at least shut other people up at this point. I just don't understand this stubbornness or it feels stubborn at this point, I guess for lack of a better word. Because when those comments played, and by the way, that's been our most downloaded piece of audio on six 30 che.com on the Elks page this year I think. Well cause people want to know. Yeah, I mean this is like Yeah, exactly. I mean you have you a quarterback who's struggling in Cornelius and they like Jarret Dague a lot and there's a lot to about Jarret Dague, but we've only seen him twice in garbage time and he did look pretty decent and had a struggling, had struggle in Ottawa with a start. Trey Ford came in with a lot of fanfare. They traded an asset for him to pick him eighth overall in the 2022 draft, won his first game, wasn't great and then made a great play. If you remember the following week at home against Calgary where he was almost sacked, spun out and threw a 45 yard pass to Kyle Oxley. And that was like, that's Trey Ford. That's excitement right there that he gets hurt. We don't see him for two months. He backs up Taylor Cornelius who was starting to progress a bit. And then Trey Ford plays the final game of the season when Cornelius has that ruptured spleen. And so Ford came into training camp I thought in the first week he was really good. He was right behind Taylor and then didn't get into the first preseason game, got into the second one, wasn't too bad. But then it's funny because everyone's play kind of dropped off after the second preseason game, including Treys. And then since then it's been interesting because Ford lost his job, his backup role to Kai Loxley. Then Kai Loxley got released and then Jared Dey started, now he's the backup. And Chris Jones made the comment, well he's not playing as well. But I think there's something deeper to this if you listen to the comments, and I have heard that there have been opportunities or the conversation with Trey to say, look, we can get on the field, we can get you on the field, but Trey really wants to be a quarterback. So that's created kind of a bit of a, I don't know if rift is the right word, but let's just say it's the waters aren't calm and I think perhaps Chris Jones is looking at Trey Ford and going, I don't think you have the right attitude that I'm looking for right now because I think he's talked about that the concentration of practice come coming in with the right attitude. And he says lately starting to see more progress. But Trey Ford is an enticing option and I hope we can see it, but I don't know, I think there's responsibility perhaps on both sides if there's a chance to get on the field, get on the field, just get on the field. I mean Kyle Oxley did it last year and he wanted to be a quarterback too, so I don't know. It's uncomfortable to see this happening because I think there's a talent on the bench that could help this team, but they don't see him as an option. And Trey Ford wants to be a quarterback only and I think that hurts him as well. And Chris Jones has talked about, we have a rule in the league where you can have two quarterbacks on the field and I think that's a big reason why he drafted Trey Ford because he said he was the best in space player he's seen in 20 years. So I don't know, I don't want to see this end badly. I don't want to see this with Trey Ford asking for a trade. I would love to see Trey Ford get an opportunity at some point. So I hope they can iron out because it does look like to me there's a big disagreement here between coach and quarterback on how he should be utilized. Yeah, well when that came out this week, I tweeted, I said, we're going to hashtag free tray four here. If you're not gone, you're not going to use them. Like spoiler alert day, there's other c l teams right now, but I think it probably the Cornelius thing, it was last year and this was when the losing streak wasn't even nearly 20 and it was still bad. And they gave him that contract extension and I guess they were worried because of the C F F or because of the xfl or whatever, or I don't know why you guaranteed this money. And then he came in and threw, it was a red zone interception, whatever end the game at that point. How deflating was that Thursday night, last week after the loss, the 20th, the time loss? Oh boy, that was tough. That was a tough one. We've seen a lot of losses with this team since the middle of 2019. I believe they're nine and 38 since that point. They were six and three in midway point in 19 and one of the better teams in the league. And then Trevor Harris gets hurt and the rest is history. It was deflating. And when you look at that game, Taylor Cornelius wasn't terrible for all of the game. He actually was pretty effective. When they get him in the R P O game and he starts rolling out, it really freaks defenses out. It's like, oh my gosh, is he going to take off or is he going to throw? And it's been working. Now the problem is when you look from a play calling perspective, if you're going to that well too much, then maybe you become easier to defend. That being said, it was, it's been working for two games and we know we've seen in other leagues the R P O game really be effective. I look at three plays that really hurt the Elks. The first play was when Cornelius overthrew Marie's French on the first drive on the out to the end zone, they score who knows what happens. And this is a team that, I mean I think they've only scored nine points in the first half in the whole season. I think that it's ridiculous. Second one was the drive after the TCAT scored their first points of the game, which was a touchdown from James Butler. The offense came out led by Cornelius, and they looked good. I mean they look good. They drove down the field and then he throws the interception in the red zone and Mrs. Steven Dunbar, who has to reach back and guess he got two hands on the ball. And I know the rule for receiver, you got to got your hands on the ball, you better catch it. But that was a tough, that's tough. He's running at full speed and has to break hard and reach back and that just wasn't a good throw. And then the third and final, which was the absolute killer for this team, was the throwing with the left hand as he was trying to avoid a sack from to Garrett Davis. And then Stavos Casa returns it for a cutdown. Then after that it was a spiral. And I think that's the issue with Taylor Cornelius right now is he's got to just stay within himself. And Chris Jones talked about it on Sunday and day one and said, he is just, it's simple, it's just got to make the proper read, get the ball where it's supposed to go and execute. That's it. But we've seen Taylor Cornelius at times do too much. There's times when you have to avoid a sack and there's times when you have to take a sack and if you're just throwing in desperation with your left hand, that tells me that you're not processing the game enough and it's a hope and a prayer, you know, can't make these crazy hope plays and think they're going to work out. But the problem is the contract for sure, I feel like they're in a rock and a hard place, Reid, because on one hand they go, how can we not plan 'em? We gave them guaranteed money in 24, so if we don't play, like we just threw money away. And on the second hand it's like, how do we play this guy? How do we go back to Taylor Cornelius right now, which is what I said on Thursday after the game. I'm like, I don't know how you go back to him. He's 4 21, that's a 16% winning percentage hasn't won at home. It's not all his fault, it never is. All the quarterback's fault. They get too much credit and way too much blame for losses. But it's this place like that. You don't want to see from your quarterback. The quarterback cannot do anything in a game that is just going to kill the momentum and kill the confidence of his group. And I think sadly, that's what we saw on Thursday last week after that crazy left-handed attempt to throw that turned into a big six That, yeah, the call from Dustin there is I'm think an all time, that's an all time, or at least from this season. Yeah, I mean that was say was trending in not even non c ffl things that I follow online. It's weird because even when you get the contracts and all that, cause I'm a Washington Commanders fan, I'm like, we had the whole thing last year where when got hurt and Heiney was playing good and the team kind of rallied behind him, but it's like, well, Wence is back. God, we we're paying him, I think it was like 28 million or we got like, dude, we got to play him. And that ended up kind of costing us, our playoff run was they ended up putting Wence back in because you do have all these dynamics in terms of, I even saw Gary Stern tried to solve the Edmonton thing this week. I don't know if you track all that on Twitter. Can we buy mean, what do you do here? We're locked into Jones for another two years and he has hamstrung. What do you want to see here with Cap and the contract and everything else? Well, I would like to see the contracts not count. If you let it, there's got to be a better way of doing this. Maybe it counts. I don't know. I'm trying to think of a formula here. And part of this has been the Yolks made a decision after 21 to let go Brock Sunderland and Jamie Elizondo, who had two years left on their deal. It was a cultural decision more than anything. But prior to that, I mean they let Jason Moss go and that was contract obviously was spread out over five years. And then no, th was on their coaching staff because he was the defensive coordinator. So they had that money to deal with. I mean the ops cap came in because there was concerns, and it was kind of a Chris Jones issue when he was with the riders that he would hire personnel and they would basically be in football operations and they weren't technically in football operations. So I don't know. So it was Len Rhodes, the former Edmonton football team president and Craig Reynolds, the riders president who said, we got to find a way to control spending, which I'm okay with, but this is punishing teams who want to make a proper decision. And we see it in sports where all the time, I mean if a coach or a manager is not filling the bill, then they can be let go and then they get their money paid out and that's it. But to put it on the cap is just, it's hurting the Elks right now. And I'm not saying right now to that Chris Jones should be fired, but I'm also saying the conversation would not even be, there wouldn't be a debate here though potentially that they could let him go. But Victor Que has stood by him, the President and CEO of the Elks, and I almost think this is last year was year one, but this is the first year that Chris Jones has with the roster that that's been his right. So maybe we overlooked that fact and 23 was going to be harder than we thought. I didn't think it was going to be this hard though. And I think that's the issue I'm struggling with right now is why has it been this hard? But yeah, we'll see. I mean, he'll get more money to deal with football ops and coaching, we'll see what happens. But he's got to find a way to relieve the pressure off of himself and get better people in there. And I like Gary Stearns idea. I don't think it'll ever happen though because that's precedent setting. And then other teams should go, Hey, save my butt too. So I mean, if the riders didn't have the ops cap to deal with, I don't think Jeremy O'Day and Craig Dickinson and Craig Dickinson for sure wouldn't be the head coach today, right? Of the Saskatchewan Rough riders. But I struggle with this cap. I mean, I get it, I get the spirit of it, but it's punishing teams that if they want to make a change and need to make a change, they can't. So we'll see what happens. The they'll be freed up more next year and maybe that helps. But I don't think the debate about this cap is going to go away because I do think it's problematic. And just for the checking, because Dorothy, you'll be asking right now, so what is this? Well, right, cut a player, it frees it up. You cut the coaching it, it's held against you. And so it's a weird thing where you're not able to, and I mean we see this, saw this in the NFL with Cliff Kingsbury got paid off and he went off to Thailand, but that it wasn't hamstring, the Cardinals. I mean if they want to pay more money to bring in someone else, it didn't. It didn't prevent them from doing it. It still punishes your bad decisions if you want to make bad decisions with money and hiring, but it doesn't hamstring you here for 2, 3, 4 years down the road. Sure, absolutely. Yeah. And I got to remember too that the Elks, their community owned team as well, which is good in one respect, but in the other respect, they don't have a single owner that is got deep pockets, that sort of thing. I mean, they had to dip in 4 million with their stabilization fund. And now that is not as big as it once was. And some people go, well just spend the whole thing. It's like, well if you spend the whole thing, you have years like this one or the one previous or the one previous to that, you have no money. So they may have to dip into that fund again. So yeah, it's tough. And I think one thing the ops cap does is it makes you find internal solutions more compared to what some teams do. It didn't work for 'em, right? So you got to find solutions internally. But I mean you look at the 21 season, there was no way they could bring back Jimmy Elizondo and Brock Sunderland. There was, there's no way. And I think we're still seeing a lot of effects from that year. Well, I thought it would change. I thought it would change. And I think I thought it would change too. You thought it would change and it hasn't yet. And I don't know why. But I think the biggest problem right now is again, they're quarterback play. Yes. And they're not playing well defensively, not really playing well in any area. But the headman is stretched way too thin here and has a staff that needs upgrades. No question. Last question from me today. Appreciate it Victor here coming in and similar situation to Amar, Hey, we're revamping all this, we've got all these ideas and I mean, how much pressure is it on him? Because we can do all these things and do all this outreach and run all these promotions, but if the team's not winning it, it's really hard to incentivize people to come out and spend the money there. What pressure on, I mean, not like he's going to whatever, but how do you sense that he and the pressure that he's undergoing here? Well, he was pretty much an open book after the game against the Tigercat and he was downstairs, which he's not normally downstairs on field level, but then media found him. I think it was quite easy to find him. But he spoke well, I'll admit that. And he was very honest and he said, how can you sell this to a casual fan right now? It's hard. And from what I have heard, and I don't pay attention to this nearest near as closely as anyone who's in, anyone else who's in the stadium that is a fan. But I've heard the in game experience is better. There are fans that feel that they're more valued than they were. There's some fans that are angry, there's some fans that are going, why is my seats going up and you're offering $15 tickets to other fans? It's a quandary right now when you're in this situation because no one is happy. No one is happy. And Victor qui isn't happy. It's hard. How do you sell this team next Saturday when it's country night? Which is going to be a fun night. I mean, their promotions have been great so far. And the theme nights have been great. Those are easy to attach to. But you're hoping for a nice night and you're hoping that fans will look at you as an option for entertainment and hopefully a good night of football. I mean, it hasn't been good night there for 20 straight games. And I think Victor understands that this is hard. But again, I'm saying this about an oh one 16, it's early, it's only 12. They got 12 games left. Let's see what happens kind of thing, right? I mean, if the Ottawa Red Blacks prove one thing, and again, it's only one game, but wow, they shock the world and they upset the bombers. That might be their great cup. Maybe they'll be better. But it just shows you that it can happen. It can happen. Eventually this team is going to start winning. The Elks will start winning at home. They'll start winning. But the problem is, when is that going to happen? We can't know. No crystal ball exists for that, Reid. So if you're Victor que it's, you're almost in a tough situation where I got to sell this team apart from the result on the field. And when people hear that, they go, Victor Que doesn't care about winning. No, he does care about winning. It's number one. But it's all, there's other things around the game that you have to sell, right? Because it's not automatic. The CFL is not automatic in most centers in the CFL except probably Regina. And they're having trouble with attendance too. The only place that's not having trouble really is the one I'm in right now is Winnipeg, but it's the cfl. You're more of an entertainment option than a sporting option. But you got to have, find a way to have the tube go like this. But it's a tough road. It's a tough road for Victor Creek because this looks like a very tough year. Again, this looks like another massive loss financially, but Chris Jones has said it's got to keep chopping wood. And that's what Victor Kku has to do as well, Dave, sometimes I do wish I could, I'm watching these games. I wish I could just reach out a hug here. Thanks. Thanks buddy. But I appreciate, I will tell you, and I do hope the losing streak ends at some point here at home. Not next week when America cfl team, the BC Alliance comes in. But other way, any other weekend is fine. I just don't want to be the one that helps you break the curse. We'll agree to disagree. Okay, Dave, safe travels. Good luck at the game. Hopefully you are elated tomorrow when this episode goes live. And the Alex have 45 to three shut out here of Winnipeg and Cornelius throw 'em for 400 yards and everything else. But otherwise, I really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming On. Thanks Reid. Always good to see you, buddy. Well, here we are. Pat, is there any champagne left in St. Louis after you popping all of them for Alex McGoo signing with the Green Bay Packers this week? Oh man, there's, there's champagne, but it's a different type of champagne if you get what I'm saying. This is exciting. I mean, we've had a little bit of a lu. We had X FFL signing as well this week. Was this four usfl the NFL signings out? Yeah, so it's four. But then we have these two crypted tweets, one from Frank Inda and the other from Cam Eccles Looper, which they're pretty much like, I've been waiting three years for this or I think Inda was like, I've waited my whole, been waiting a while for these opportunities. So you have to think, I don't think he's talking about buying a house. GDAs made a little bit of money in the NFL and all these leagues. Plus I think he's a real estate agent. And then the same with Cam. I don't think that they're excited about buying a house right now despite the market. So that'll put into six. How are you feeling? I mean, timeline wise it's hard to judge. And it's interesting how the US F L has been a much less boisterous this year with the signings obviously xfl rolling in and taking a lot of the spots ahead of time. How do you feel so far with these good guys getting in? I mean, it makes sense because even last year, I think Christian Sam, who was the first signing last year was kind of late in the game as well. And then I know we've talked about a decent amount. We're seeing the workouts come in right now. I know we had a big influx of workouts last year in the beginning of August. And something we've talked about on the show is that there might be an undrafted free agent, there might be an xfl guy, and then there's a usfl guy that the giants are looking at, for example. And then they want to get a full look at all three of these guys before they make that final step in signing. The big thing we're seeing now is a lot of P U P physically unable able to perform designations and we're going to see a lot of these guys garner opportunities for camp and whatnot. And we'll probably see the next wave of xfl guys and usfl guys come out in of the woodwork, so to speak. Any guys you were surprised got signed? He read in Aubrey that was, he's kind of had two years to get his stuff figured out. Any surprises of the site you so far? Not really. Aubrey kind of seemed pretty standard. St. Louis were born in St. Louis, played some foot some soccer in Dallas, Texas, I believe, if not Dallas, Austin. And went to the MLS and then came to the stallions, knew the football, so performed pretty well last year. I think he was the all usfl kicker if I'm not mistaken. And then you want to see him do it again. So he put together another strong season, puts that on the, puts the map for these N F L coaches. Okay, now we have two years of film content, tape, all that goofy stuff. And he goes to the Dallas Cowboys, which Tristan just kind nothing to get too worked up about with that guy. And it's a team that's already signed three usfl players in the past. Two of them they've had on their roster with, obviously we all know that Turpen guy, but Tucker added him, came in battled with Matt Overton, who's a pro bowl long snapper and also got his start in the United Football League in 2009 or 2010. And then they obviously went with Overton, who's been around the league and whatnot. But Tucker Addington, they got an eye for TA talent, ended up taking Joe Cardona's job in New England and he's going into 2024 as a team's long snapper. And that all started in the usfl with the gamblers last year. Any guys you're surprised hasn't gotten picked up yet? Cause I think that's focused half a recap, kind of what's happened thus far, but then kind of guys that you're surprised haven't got looks yet. There's a couple, there's some guys who I'm that when we get more into this conversation that I might surprise you, biggest one I'm surprised about is Corey Coleman, he's one of those guys obviously got out of the league, had some issues, but he's got the first round pedigree Baylor University as well, I believe. And you kind of look at a guy like that and the talents there. But let me see you do it real quick. And I've talked about this with a lot of guys. Let me see that you can do this. So we know that you're going to be a good workout warrior. Let me see you, how you look in the game. Okay, cool. I don't want to use the term drug deal kind of, but go, we'll sign you, but go to the usfl, go the xfl, prove that you're capable, prove that you can stay healthy. Okay? You're still that guy we thought you were two years ago. Come on down, Jack. I call those the rentals a lot of times, like I viewed Philip Lindsay as a rental, obviously he didn't get signed, but a guy like Philip Lindsay in my mind isn't going to make or break his NFL career playing in the xfl or usfl. He's just going to guarantee himself some more money. And I feel like Corey Coleman would've been a shortlist guy for a lot of teams, but instead of getting that one year $700,000 contract, Corey's getting maybe a two year, 1.8 or something like that with a guarantee in there. Just to circle back, because I was thinking interesting with Magoo going to the Packers, does that surprise you there? Mean obviously you got the love of it all and then I don't even know who loves backup is, but I mean I can see Magoo getting a second there pretty quick. Yeah, so it doesn't surprise me when the initial report comes out. Alex Magoo is working out for NFL teams. Everyone goes to Tampa Bay because he's got the connection with the coordinator, Dan Als. But when I started looking through these NFL rosters, what's the first thing I look at? I look at what teams have three quarterbacks, okay. I break those into a little blurb. And then when I look at those three quarterbacks, who are those three quarterbacks, it's a lot different to going to camp. And I'll give an example of a Sam Darn and give the 49ers an example. A Sam darn Trey Lance and Brock Purdy. Granted they have Brandon Allen and I think another guy, but at the time they were set with those guys for a hot second. It's a lot different to go into training camp. And while I don't think Sam darn is a world beater by any means, you get a guy like Kyle Shanahan, he can throw some fairy dust in there and make some magic. And next thing you know, Sam darn throws 20 touchdowns to seven interceptions. And you're like, oh, this Sam Darnell guy. It's different to go to camp with those guys, all of whom have either the potential or have played. And when you got a guy like Lance Ferry athletic can make some plays versus I'm going into camp with Jordan, love Danny at Lang and Sean Clifford. I don't know if Sam darn gets me to the playoffs, but I do know he can get me to seven and nine. I don't know what Danny Etling can do. I don't know what Shawn, Sean Clifford can do to an extent. We don't know what Alex McGoo can do in the N F L, but we have enough of a sample size, even going back to 2022. And with these preseason games he's played in to understand that this man is capable enough to do something and keep the team involved. And granted those defensive ends don't run the same four six that they do in the NFL and the usfl. Maybe he's not getting a 20 yard gain, but maybe he gets a seven yard gain. And I always talk about this read, we're not looking at second and 17, we're looking at second and three or sec, even second and 10 from an incomplete pass. And that's a big thing feel, because it's might not always be about scoring points. It's about controlling the field, get them in a better position to punt. You can manipulate the field a little bit, guys get nervous. And when you're in the back, half of the inside of the 20 Magoo keeps you in a good spot. The jitters get Lambos a loud field. Next thing you know there's a fumble. And while Magoo didn't score the touchdown, he didn't do the bad things. That led to a short field on the back half. Do you think his tape is translatable enough? I think his athleticism is, I think sometimes he kind of deuce some throws, but I think that there's going to be some growing pains, but I think that he's definitely probably better than etling and I think that Clifford is going to have a hard time with some of the speed. And they had some dogs in the usfl on the defensive line and linebackers flying around and whatnot, and he handled them pretty nicely. Curious to see about the complexities of the blitzes and whatnot to see what the coaching, how he's going to be coached up. But a lot of people have talked really highly about his coachability despite what we've seen on the sidelines and whatnot. And I think because he's a second chance guy, this means a little bit more versus Jordan Love who's kind of just been doing his thing. Jordan Love couldn't beat out Tim Boyle in 2020. Tim Boyle is not a good NFL quarterback. I don't know if he'd be a good usfl or xfl quarterback, so you got a guy McGoo, so athletic. We talk about his workout regimen who was scorned from the NFL and now is coming back. These are the stories that we talk about when we want to talk. When we write movies, Love comes out and really just craps all over it. I don't know. I mean the Packers could be, this isn't a long term, I don't buy it as a long, we're in Jordan Love long term here. I think it's got you kind of got to go or get off here. I mean, it's in a really weird spot And I don't blame Green Bay for getting rid of Aaron Rogers. I think it was the right move. I think at some point you have to do it. And do you find Alex oo to be your franchise quarterback? Probably not, but I think can you find Alex Magoo, that light a spark, this long-haired guy from Florida coming up in the cold of Green Bay. They're four and six. Jordan love's been playing ineffective. He's been nagged by a hamstring injury and the kid from Florida just comes in, runs some read option, makes some nice screen passes to Christian Watson. They pull out a 2117 to a Kirk Cousins blunder. The Lions, in my opinion, are the team that are the team that beat in the north right now. I love Kirk Cousins. I haven't seen the Netflix series, but in the end, I mean it's the Lion's Division to lose just because of history tells us about the Vikings. And so why not throw some Magoon in there? It gets, it'll get real fun. Other guys you're looking for waiting to see when their names come up here for the N F L. So when you asked me to come from the show, I bro, I broke it down team by team. I'll try to make it a little bit more condensed because I could stay here for hours and do this for all 16 Alt Lee rosters and even getting into Canada. EJ Perry is a guy I'm pretty high on. I've talked about him a little bit, not because of his amazing plague or whatnot, but because he's a recency bias guy and once the injury hits maybe in Jacksonville, staff is pretty similar there, he might get a call. Tre Quinn put together showed that he can play on the outside and the inside, which is real big deal, big deal versatility. And he's a guy who's played special teams in the past. Breland Speaks, Frank nda, Lavante Taylor gave up a lot of yards, but a real big bend don't break type of guy that pretty much rounds out the Panthers for me. You can argue about Kai Makua. I think he's a shortlist guy for a lot of teams. I think he was recently with the Jets was his last team in 2022, so we could always see a possibility of him coming into the fold. And then something we don't talk about enough is the connection with these players to the coaches. And if my guy gets hurt and I know he's out three weeks, who's the guy? Am I going to sign? Is that like a Josh Love? Is that a Brian Laki who he was at the Patriots. Joe Judge is back with the Patriots. Okay, you got a couple guys hurt. Do you sign Laki for three weeks? You know, don't need him to play, but you need them to understand how to run a scout team. That's my take with the Panthers going down to the generals. I really want to see what they do with Chris or still young. All U S L selection. He's the one that kind of pops in my mind. Brock Miller with the Generals as well. Toby Johnson I think is still or is a little too old. I think he's 31 years old right now, five years. Five years ago. I think he could have made it, made a team. But Hercules Ma FFAs there, Schlom. Ani got hurt I believe during this season. So he kind of tailed off 2022. I was all in this year. If I'm a scout or personnel, I'm not really sure what I want to do with him going to the Stars. Case Cookes number one guy on that team after Corey, and then you go Corey Coleman, Devin Gray, versatile guy, plays outside, plays inside, also returned kicks and whatnot. Last year they had Maurice Alexander translate up there, so we saw that possibly a gentleman as well that I was looking at was Joey Al Fury, kind of a madman all over the board. Amani Dennis had some, I believe if he wasn't all U F L team, the usfl Twitter verse, very highly of him factoring Louis a Luis Aguilar because of the sheer volume of opportunities he had and performed pretty well. Keeping going down. We go to the Mallers, really that receiving core take or pick between Billy Gaither, Isaiah Heney ish, Hyman, whichever one Ruben Foster big deal over there. Guy who Didn't, didn't Bailey get, didn't he get looks last year too after the season. So Bailey was, Bailey went viral. He went to the Ravens toasted Kyle Hamilton got hurt, waved on an injury designation, goes back to the Ravens and then did another week with the Giants then. So I think he probably made about 20 grand from the NFL last year, but he was one of the 60 or so players that got signed. Yeah, Ruben Foster, Tino, big names Mark Gilbert. He was getting N F L interest. All usfl guy. Very curious about them. You can go into the stallions. I'd like to say CJ Maribel very versatile, but it seems like CJ's doing a lot of things, making some money on the side, doing a lot of scouting and coaching. So I'm kind of curious to see what he wants to do if he wants to air quote, do that grind and whatnot. Davion Davis comes to mind. Of course, tha Jay Sternberger another guy, and then there's one of their defensive backs, I believe Brian Allen is, yeah, Brian Allen's who I got on my list. He's a guy that a little bit older has been bounced around the NFL a decent amount, but he's a long, lanky, quarter cornerback that could garner interest. My sleeper for the stallions by the way, is Kyle Slugger, the infamous Kyle Slugger who's making his rounds. And the reason being he's been around so many teams, he could be a guy, someone just signs to brings some just continuity to that quarterback room and apparently he's a proven leader. So I don't know if you know that I had so many people reach out to see if we could do stuff on that this week, and I said it was such just kind of a trivial Twitter conversation. I can't imagine that having, could you imagine? I don't know. I kind of wanted to put that to bed that seemed like it was kind of immediately laid to rest even by his other coaches and teammates. And I asked Jake if he would moderate a debate between TJ Barnes and Kyle Slather and he responded to the initial thing and then he did not respond after that. So I mean, Kyle two rings, that's what I'll call. And it's like in baseball you get a ring if you were on the team for a little bit, so maybe Arlington got 'em a ring, it'd be nice. I don't know. I don't know. You lost 60 million, lose another five grand getting someone on the ring, so it'll be all right. I'll pay for it myself. But if Kyle watches this man, I will fly you out to St. Louis and I will put you up in the hotel and I will interview you for two hours. And I don't care how many views it gets, it's above the pick. Kyle Slaughter's mind, even before all this, the only thing I asked is I want a pair of shorts from your time with the Cardinals. Kyle had that. Yeah, I that was some delusion on that. I didn't even get that deep into the interview, but I don't know. I love all these, hasn't watched a snap of ffo. You're like, oh, let's talk about this. Let's see what's going on here. Who else do you have that were watching? So we're going down to the gamblers. There was a gentleman other than Mark Thompson, TJ Pledger got hurt, so I would've loved to see him give a full sample size. But Mark Thompson, 28 years old I believe. Kind of a last shot for him, man. I saw he was working out with the Giants, he worked out with the Packers and I want to say he worked out with the Dolphins last year. I know he had two N F L workouts, would love to see him get that opportunity. Get to the N F L, Isaiah's Zuber guy, fringe NFL guy. Came back middle of the season, was on the Raiders for the whole team last year. Would love to see him. Rohe Bigham, I thought he was pretty good. He was one of their outside linebackers, I believe he went to Princeton. I saw him making a couple plays and then Jeremiah Tyler kind of filling in that linebacker room that was left vacant by Donald Payne and Reggie Northrop. I think that defense, obviously they went from three seven to five and five team improved, way more competitive. So I'd like to see them never, there was one more gentleman, I think it was Brandon, one of their offensive linemen. I felt graded out pretty well at times. It seemed like he was a little bit overmatched. But overall just decent size and sometimes I just want to see a little bit more from this guy. I believe it was Brandon Hitler, that was his second year on the team. I think he's a guy, if he can fine tune the weight room and a bunch of that stuff, I think in 2024, he could be a guy that we see transitioned to the N F L, but sometimes it was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I saw some great stuff from him and then I saw, I had to do a double take to see if that was the same guy I just watched. So he's the guy I really want to keep an eye on for next year. And then there's a defensive lineman named Reggie Walker who's had, once again, a cup of tea in the NFL guy. Do we see this guy make the transition? Do we see him make the jump? Does he latch on because of injuries? The coaching staff and injuries dictate a lot of this. Moving to the showboats. Two more teams, guys, I know we're grinding on this big, big guys. I wanted to see transition to that next level. Kyrie Woods really high ranked defensive back. I believe he was the highest ranked player in the usfl, kind of came out of nowhere, really loved what he was doing. And then Derrick Dillon, the versatility and special teams, a pretty good receiver, really want to see that. There's also Alex Collins, one of their running backs. He did get hurt, but they're a guy f l experience a little long in the tooth, but we'll see. Do they want to take that risk, bring him in and whatnot. It just depends on the coaching staff, in my opinion. Final team, new Orleans Breakers. He's not technically on the team anymore, but what can we talk about McLeod, Bethel Thompson, if anything, let's get him on that roster for a pension. You know what I mean? We could start, we got this rider strike right now if we're talking about workers' rights, get Mc McLeod in there and all that goofy stuff. We'd really like to see that. Vonte Diggs, a versatile linebacker set Third hill his second year in the league. A lot of athletic plays, plays that tweener kind of between the strong safety and the linebacker. Much like Dionne Buchanan from years ago. Sage Surat, Jonathan Adams and Johnny Dixon along with West Hills, their core of offensive weapons all could possibly translate to the nfl. Love to see 'em on that. Another gentleman as well, Kirk, Kirk Kelly, one of their guards graded really well via Pff, could possibly see him transition as well. So we'll see. There's always guys that you just look back on and you're like, man, I had no idea about this dude. Yeah, the thing with McLeod, I don't know mean this was the whole long, this was the long game to get to this, but to get to this position now and he believes in himself and wants to bet on himself. I don't know mean it would be. Do you feel, how long of a shot do you feel like it would be right now? Man, I think, I hate to say it, but I think it just comes down to injuries, man. We're I think four or five more teams with three quarterbacks on the roster and with this new year, it just depends on, do you want to put a roster spot? Now here, and we've talked about this a little bit in nauseum, but when do I want to sign McLeod? When do I want to sign AJ mcc? Do I want to sign him to stay on my bench or do I want to sign him to actually playing the game? And that's kind of where GMs need to ask is, is this better that It's kind of like Jay Cutler a couple years ago when he was on Miami, he went through training camp. Brian Tannehill gets hurt and then he's just thrust into the starting role within a week or whatever. That's kind of where I see this happening. That's kind of where I see these guys actually getting these opportunities. Certain guys like that. There are other guys like case cookies, you can bring him in, be a camp body to fight for a third string, whatever. It's a little different. But a guy like McLeod, he's not trying to do that. AJ's not trying to do that. So it's like when I bring these quarterbacks in, do I want to, even if I keep a guy like McLeod on the practice roster, I have to pay him more. Is it better to just have Clavin tune on the practice roster guy out of Houston or Aiden? I think he's on the Raiders now on my practice squad who I know isn't as good as McLeod, but if I'm going down to my third quarterback, there are issues rather than bring him in and then actually put him in the game and see what he can do. Yeah, I just wonder, this goes through the xfl as well next year you come back in, we've seen you. I don't think Case played demonstrably better this year than last year. People that looks at him last year, I think he played better because he had less to work with. Well yeah, I think because I think his stat line doesn't show how much better he was, if that makes sense. Because he was constantly under pressure on the run, more injuries in the receiving court. So while he did look and he played hurt and depends on the GM they're going to like the grittiness and all that goofy stuff versus maybe what he put on tape. There are times he was favoring his body, he wasn't finishing his throws. He had a bad film game where both him and Josh loved because of the weather was so bad, they were double clutching the ball a lot, so weren't hitting their targets. Their timing was all off just like, but in the same time, you got to respect the grit and you got to understand, I think he's only 27 years old as well. So while there's maybe not much more development for him to be an All star or a pro bowler, there's definitely enough wherewithal in understanding of the game of football that this guy could come in and I go back to the 2021 Giants could put together better film than Mike Glennon, Anything else before we could. And somehow we found a way to keep talking about you as of a football here. Now I think we're three or four weeks postseason because we hate it so much. But anything else from you today? I got to keep this show ballooning in front of me when I thought this was going to be an easy week and then we ended up having a lot of stuff. Not really. I'm excited to see what happens with gda. I like the fact that they're announcing these resigns pretty early. I think that's pretty awesome. I think then the people who write articles are doing a great job of keeping up to date and whatnot and giving us a little backgrounds on everything from the three or four sites that really follow this consistently and whatnot. I like the usfl tweets are back the X Team, the Y N F L team. So those are always nice little cover photos they use for the articles and it's personally, I think it's pretty rad continuing to move forward into the off season Right now, the last thing I counted yesterday, there were 17 spots available on NFL rosters, but today on Aaron Wilson's page, and I was looking it up before we got on the show, it was like, I think I count 15 players got put on P U P, which is giving open. So now that could number could be in the late twenties or early thirties so we could see that next walks as well. I mean we saw probably about 10 usfl guys get workouts. I mean Cam ecs, Looper, he's making some cryptic tweets and whatnot. So we'll see. I think I said I had him going to, I don't remember what team I said, but he did like my tweet when I said it because of his boy park Frazier there. I don't know if he want to read into that too much. Maybe I will just because it's an ego boost on my end. But regardless guys are going to get opportunities. We saw about 60 players get opportunities last year from the usfl. We're at 31 with the X ffl, we're at four with the usfl. We're at 35 players, 32 spots. And then we haven't even talked about the injuries that will happen throughout the season. At the end of the day, we could be seeing the alt leagues provide 80 plus players. I mean I think 80 is realistic between the two leagues. And you can call me a naysayer or crazy, but in the end, 80 guys getting a shot. Last year I did the math, they accumulated over 8 million, almost 9 million of income for the guys who stuck around whether it be one week or 17. So I mean that's what it's about. And it all trickles down because Reid, my biggest fear right now with these leagues is we might be seeing some old old guys playing. And I don't know if that's the best thing, man, that's a big fear of mine. Not for this year, maybe not for next year, but for 2025 Or you been guys there that are trying to kind of stick around 2026. Yeah, man, I'm a little nervous about that, man. I don't think that's getting talked about. I'm thinking about two years, man. I don't cer certain guys are fine, but there's guys that might be clogging that roster at that 33 34 and TJ Barnes is a great story and you got to sign a guy like TJ Barnes in year one, kind of bring some continuity, especially these coaching staffs of these alt leagues all know each other. But is that going to be the crowd pleaser? And I love TJ Barnes. Please don't take that as an offense If you're watching this, man, I'd love to have you on my show and whatnot. But I mean that's kind of what I was thinking about. It was like, man, you got Luis Perez who I want to put in the final football Hall of fame at some point in his own section. But it's like, do you know, are people going to be cool with that in 2026? Like Luis Perez playing nine years of all football? I don't know. That's a question. Well, pat, I appreciate it. Everyone keep following Pat. Keep us surprised on all this stuff. But no, it's good. I mean, like you said, it's with ever league, it's opportunities and that opens up more in one or the other and kind of bounce around. So I think it's great. We'll continue tracking this, pat, really appreciate your time today. Always, man. Cheers. Yeah, cheers. With our water. We drank all our champagne with Magoo Magoo. Excited. Yeah. Well, we're back here today. We did actually lead the show with cfl News today, which I always try to cover cfl, but it doesn't always get the lead block here. But now we're back and not talking cfl, but talking arena football. We have Tim Capper here, Montreal Alette Flight Deck podcast and arena fan.com. Tim, how are you? Hey, I'm doing good, man. Glad to be back. Do you want to give your 2 cents? Is the CFL suffering from a quarterback crisis? You know what, considering I would say players in general. I mean, look at all the free, major free agents that have gone down. But yeah, we need to have more quarterbacks that are better than what they actually are. I mean, the guys in Edmonton, it's tough. I'm actually happy with how the ettes are so far. I'm happy with my three. Yeah, but you know what, it's funny you brought me on for the show today for the AFL of talking about quarterbacks, is that where's the league going to get 32 more quarterback? The AFL going to get 32 quarterbacks. You talk about having a potential identity crisis. Well, I mean we talked about that even when fan control football who now is on hi hiatus, I guess they, they're delaying, but that it was going to be whatever and then it was going to be May and then, I mean we said the same thing there. I mean they had what? They had eight teams and so you still got, I mean, 16 there. Yeah. Where are you going to find these guys that can actually play? I mean, yes, there's talent everywhere, but at some point there has to be watchable football that people want to enjoy. Exactly. No, you think about it, 32 in the afl, if all the teams go through, you have obviously, well minimum 16 C ffl with the NFL obviously, and then the usfl and xfl. It's a good time to be a fan for football, but you want it to be good football. That's the thing. It does make me laugh now when all this started, I would post X ffl stuff in the CFL groups and people, oh, I did. I'm like, see, it's all, it's, it's a circle of life here. We're all part of the same. So now we're here afl, we have arena football back. I don't know how heavily we will be covering this, but I thought it was good to at least stop down today. Can you, because I know nothing and our people know nothing like this was around and now it's come back. I hear it's funded by crypto cryptocurrency. What's going on with the afl? Okay, well, as some people may know that I guess the last incarnation of the AFL folded in late 2019 and this group bought it out of bankruptcy, which includes an owner. Part of the money is coming from an owner in Toronto. He is, I think it's called F1 Sports and Entertainment. I think, if I'm not mistaken, and we're not talking, obviously we're not talking racing, but what it's called, there's also seems to be another silent partner, which happens to be, what I'm understanding is quite a bit of money, but it's an unnamed angel investor. So cryptocurrency, I mean, I guess you're talking about the whole announcement recently with the company. That's going to be, I guess Canary blue I think if it's called Not. But is this solvent? I mean, is this real? Yeah, I mean how confident do you feel about AFL returning here? Everything's announced. We have announced city's everything, but how good do you feel about it? I've, I've always been cautiously optimistic, but I've had a chance to talk with the commissioner Lee Hutton, and I've been able to speak with the deputy commissioner just the other day, Trell Gaines. I'm more excited than what I actually am because yes, people were wondering, we're waiting four, five months for these announcement of these 16 locations. We finally got them. But obviously, I mean, you're going to have your naysayers though read. I mean, again, I'm still going to be cautiously optimistic, but I am more so I'm way above more than 50% than what I was a couple months ago. So I'm pretty happy You talking about my naysayers. I covered the XFL fl. I Know far than well that, so yeah. So the news, we have the news, we have the cities announced and all of that locations. Any other, like the commissioner, anything else we need to know about this before we get into the cities? Do we feel like the football staff, are we in good hands? It's a lot of people that I'm only really getting to know. I do know that the entire organization, entire ownership group of the AFL wants to bring in as many people that have had AFL experience in the past. One of the most important things that they need to do, because we've seen coaches who have, that have never coached in the league before. And I'll use Montreal as an example. We brought in coaches that had never had a lick of experience in the cfl. Some have done well, some have haven't. Mark Trustman, it is what you want the coach to be. Same thing with the afl. It's not the same as a hundred as Gridiron football. It's 50 yards. You got the waggle, so to speak, like you do in the cfl. But I'm really happy with it. I mean it's send, again, more information seems to be coming out every day as I'm been perusing all the different stories that have been in the local papers. And then they will still be compe, I mean competing, but existing alongside. There's the I Ffl, right? We know them because the xfl has a partnership with them for their scouting and then the N A L, right? So how do, are all three of these going to fit in the calendar cycle The way that it's going right now with West Texas and Orlando, actually they're jumping ship and they're moving to the A F L. It was, it's been officially announced on their socials. So doesn't that leave three teams left in the N A L? Yeah, yeah, something like that. So I do not know if the N A L will survive. I I watched from afar when the Albany Empire were there, but I don't know if they'll survive. I mean, you've had some other of the alphabet leagues pop up or re come back again. But I F L I think is a mainstay. They have a totally different game. They're not going to be using the nets, et cetera. It's their own. And they seem to be really entrenched in a lot of these cities. And they're by Air, air Arizona, Rattlers, former AFL team in itself. They haven't left. They're not jumping. So at least as of right now. So I think the IFL will be around. I think ifl a ffl I think will be the two that you'll be really hearing about come next spring. And the IFL plays spring. Yeah, they do. They've started as early as February and they're still going so Well, it's arena I guess. There you go, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm just saying it be another type of spring football that people will have to watch. And I guess you'll have to decide whether it's going to be xfl U S, ffl, I, ffl afl. It's going to be toughy. I mean for where's the money going to be spent? That's the thing. And it goes to your point, goes to point earlier about quarterbacks, you want good play. You don't want garbage football play. Well, and I mean you have a show here on Netflix just talking about three N F L quarterbacks. It probably has garnered more viewers and all of these leagues combined. And it is the middle of July. We are so very far away from the NFL season. So in terms of, and then the Albany Empire was that, that was the whole Antonio Brown thing, right? That was the N a l. And that's all. They're flushed out and kicked In. They're gone. But they did originally start, they were reborn in the old a l and they won the title in 2019. So they were the last champion in that version of the Arena Football League. So of The Arena Football League fall from Grace there, fall from Grace. So we have controversy here. So the team's renounced this week, and I'll pull it up. Ari's tweeting this out and the Arena Football League retweeted this. So this is about this whatever in the press because they had a big fancy video of all this stuff. But then this other, the TMZ article came out, what is this? Arena fan.com. I mean, this is listing cities. We've got Bakersfield and you're saying there's controversy Here? There is. Because right now, from what I have heard and from the brass that I've spoken with, it is the official list. And yes, I understand that we, that's before we put it out, before we had confirmation, because it seemed to be the right list, but the official list comes from the AFL's socials only. So yes, there are some cities that are attached to the TMZ article, but right now it is either a city or a state. So that list that we have is technically wrong. So the one you had prior is the correct one, But these are still the Correct, it is the parenthesis, right? We don't Its not confirmed Bakersfield, California. It's not Confirmed. Correct, correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whether it be a city or, yeah, example, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Louisiana, Ohio, Oregon, San Antonio was wrong. Actually, that was actually St. Louis, which is going to be at that be interesting head to head with the xfl, Tennessee, Washington state. So yeah, those are correct. But the cities in parentheses, no, those aren't specifically correct. So what do we make of this? What are they trying to do? I mean, you said you've talked to the commissioner, the deputy commissioner, what are they trying to, what was their thought process here? Well mean they were looking at obviously some legacy markets, which there are there. St. Louis, Philadelphia, Orlando, Minnesota, wherever the team will be. Technically that there was only one team in the history of Minnesota for the AFL Colorado too. Chicago Austin had a little bit of a history to it. So it's trying to get a mixture. But the thing is, they're also trying to make sure that they get the right ownership groups. That I think, to me, that's the main thing. Even though that they are going to be the owner of the league itself, the league is trying to push for some local ownership. As an example, before I came on with you today in the Philadelphia Inquirer, it was said that yes, there will be a new ownership group for the Philadelphia Soul, but also Ron Jaworski will be involved in some way. So Ron Jaws goes all the way back to the beginning of the Philadelphia Soul, the him and John Bon Jovi, et cetera, et cetera. So with Jaws being involved, that's a huge coup for the afl. It's just weird. I don't know. And the S F L is dealing with this as well, the xfl, at least they still, they're obviously going to want to get these teams bought out as well. But the US F L is like, we are an infomercial. Please purchase our leagues. And it's so hard to me because we're naming these cities we're putting, but they don't know if we're ever going to get any, is anyone in New Orleans ever going to want to do the Breakers? And so I don't know how, you know, name cities, you think you have people or maybe you're hoping you have people and then you know, rebrand Tampa Bay and then we move to Memphis. Now maybe we have someone there. I don't know a cleaner way to do it, but so they're putting this out. They're hoping to find, but I don't know, is anyone in Bakersfield, California? If that is the city, I mean, I lived there for two years of my life. I don't think anyone in Bakersfield ever want want to purchased in the Arena Football League. Well, they had an old two team back in the day. So, which was the minor league of the AFL that ran from 2000 to 2009. So it's same thing with Austin, same thing with Boise. Boise. He had a cup of coffee in the know football. Same thing with Washington State. Same thing with Tallahassee. Same with Tennessee and Tallahassee. So I, I understand what you're getting at, man. I really do. I do know that the naming of the States was done specifically and it was done on purpose. What is that going to lead to? Unfortunately, at the moment, I'm not privy to it, but I do know that something is coming and they do have a plan. And as I said, whether it's a contract issue, I don't know whether it's deciding on who the ownership, final ship ownership group is, whether it's dotting the I's and crossing the Ts before they announce it. I'm sure you can understand that. They don't want to announce anything before everything is finalized. And then they can peer give different announcements, et cetera, et cetera. They're talking about Minnesota too. Minnesota's ownership group, by the way, they're, they're going to have a be a female ownership group and more information for that team is supposed to be announced by the end of the summer. So including location, what actual city nickname? I'm hoping for Fighting Pike again and then uniform. So they're working behind the scenes and everything has been released yet. And I think that's frustrating AFL fans, but I love you AFL fans. But I mean it's learned myself. You don't always know what's behind the curtain until they actually pull the curtain back. Yeah, I covered news in Bakersfield for two years. They should just call it the Bakersfield Homicides or something. I mean, Lord something. Yeah, go into the old xfl extreme stuff. The Washington, because, so the list here, right, this unofficial list, you Everett, that makes 80. I mean otherwise, is it Spokane? I mean, is it Tacoma where I don't know where mean not many places in Washington? No, no. And there are three cities, trail gains. When I spoke with him the other night, he actually did state, he actually did say this on social media, the cities of Jacksonville, which was named originally Albany, which we were talking about earlier. And Spokane, they wanted them to be in the league, but there were certain circumstances that are not allowing them to be in the AFL in 2024. So again, whatever the reasonings were, they did try, obviously they had a pedigree in the afl, but I mean it, at least he's been, the league is al already being transparent. That's the thing that I've always preached Reid, and I'm sure you've seen that too when it comes to the other outdoor leagues. As long as you can have s transparency from the brass, I'm happy with it. Just tell us it is that. That's all I want to find out. And so far Commissioner Hutton's been the same way. So again, that's another reason what goes to why I'm so impressed and why I'm so excited about the league coming back In terms of attracting talent we quarterbacks otherwise. I mean do you so far out, but what do you expect, I mean here in terms of them being able to recruit guys? Well, On an early interview that I had with Commissioner Hutton, he actually did state that the salary cap was going to be $700,000 per team. And that's only for a 10 week regular season schedule. So Allah, the usfl and the xfl, which are both, they're both 10 game schedules, right? Reed? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, with playoffs, yeah. Yeah. So the AFL will be 10 regular season games plus three week postseason, which leads up to Arena Bowl. So at $700,000, if that is the case, the actual cap for the players itself, I'm sure they will easily be able to bring in some talent. Well, I'm curious to know if there's going to be any poaching or clauses put in the xfl or the usfl contracts now knowing that that amount of money is being offered to some of these players. How many guys go on typically you're on in the arena roster With them wanting to go Iron Man, I think it's going to be a max. I think it's between 14 and 17 per roster. So with them playing with them playing both ways, less the quarterback and the defensive specialist or the kicker? Sorry? The kicker. Kicker and the quarterback. Yeah, 16. I think it's between maximum I think if I'm not mistaken, is what it was back in the old days, but I think it's between 14 and 16 per roster. What does playing Ironman mean? Literally you play both ways. You go out there and you play off the offensive line or you play a wide receiver, you come back and you play a DB or an offensive or an offensive lineman, kickers and quarterbacks don't do it unless they bring back another position, which was the offensive specialist or the defensive specialist. But again, that hasn't been fully released yet. But they've already said that they're going to be playing Ironman rules and they will be playing with the rebound nets that they have been, they did forever from 87 on until 2019. Yeah, I mean 700,000 divided by when I do 16, 43,000, seven 50. Do quarterbacks typically make more in the league? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, yeah. I mean you figure what you do a hundred thousand for the quarterback and then maybe 600,000 divided out. Is that crazy? It's Possible, yeah. It would be interesting to see the league return back to a six figure salary. The AFL has not paid six figure salaries since 2008, so that's folded into 2009. Didn't play in 2009, came back in 2010. But anyways, that's again, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what the salary structure will be for the players. Because like you said, in terms of length of schedule, conditions, traveling, whatever, because they're going to be playing in their home markets. I mean there's a lot of things like xfl they'll pay up, you know what I mean? They paid up with the Huntley with the Vipers where the US avail famously did not with Macca, Bussel Thompson. I mean he got the same salary as anyone going in. And so you wonder, yeah, even if it's it, it's right now it's going up to Canada. This Charlotte, if I can make, well, Just good analogy. I was just about to say that too, is that if I don't think that they'll be paying on the lines of Vernon Adams getting close to a million dollars for a three year contract. I don't think it'll be that close. I don't think it'll be that close. But if they're able to pay a quarterback anywhere between, we'll use the six figures at 300,000 us. It's very possible some of these guys will come over, come and play in the afl. Interesting. I'll be curious to see, I mean even with all these and just with the CFL in general, where I think it was, I can't remember if it was Farhan on, we were talking and some of it is like, I just want to live here. I just want to go, yeah, maybe I can make 10 more grand and go play in Winnipeg, but maybe I just want to be in Birmingham and we did a whole video where we broke down all the, you know, okay, you get 500 more here and 200 more here. We kind of like, yeah, maybe I, I don't know. Well it's like Macbeth in New Orleans. He left a great kept champion to go play in New Orleans for six figures rather than seven, which is what he was getting at. Sorry, for five figures rather than Six. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Anything else with the AFL today? We need to know Any other news forthcoming? I haven't heard anything yet. Obviously with just the announcement of the cities coming out, I mean, I can say the fans go with the lists currently. I understand that a lot of cities have been coming out and saying that we have not heard anything about the afl. We don't know what they're talking about based off of the list that was on tmz, go with the list and continue with saying with the list with what the league announced. But I do know more stuff is coming. I don't, don't know when once the ball drops, when it comes to if they start announcing arenas or they start announcing actual team names or ownership groups. I think once the Minnesota ownership group is announced, the same thing with Philadelphia, you'll see a lot more news coming out from the afl. Well Tim, I appreciate it. Didn't know, you know, swing both ways. We can go CFL on here and the or we can do that. We got to come back on because I want to do a deep dive. I want to talk, I think, I feel like Cody's more SW this year. I think it's like SW for Jar. He feels thick, he looks happy. I mean it's sad to see him off and I bet the rider kind of wish, maybe they wish they would've poor. And it's not the Trevor Harris too. I mean, oh my God. I had to look up what type of break that he had that he had had. And I don't wish that upon anybody. But just seeing the replay itself kind of reminded me of the Fiman break. Oh, way back when. So Well, we'll do that. We'll do a deep dive, maybe we'll get you on or Cliffy, we can do a whole thing. But I appreciate it. Check out Tim, for all the AFL stuff. Maybe we'll get do this again and then obviously for the outlet stuff. So Tim, I appreciate your time today. Hey, I love being here buddy. Special thanks to all of our guests. Really appreciate Steve Simmons taking the time to come on as well as Ben Grant and Dave Campbell really appreciate leading with the cfl, who would've thought, but it's a, it's big times here. We're getting into week seven. We're having a lot of excitement with Hussie on the Monday recaps with Evan over there. Hope you guys are enjoying that. But I thought let's give the c l a little shine today a deal or no deal there or a deal or no big deal. I guess still working on the thumbnail as I record this and then I really appreciate, obviously Pat Rafino always making time. And Tim Capper my work schedule was not easy this week to try to correspond to kind of correlate with everybody. So I appreciate everyone making great strides and efforts to come on the podcast and work with my schedule. That should do it for me today. I am on vacation next week. I know the xfl is live streaming the combines, trying to figure out what I'm going to do. Might do a Thursday maybe live show when I get back in town something Friday. We'll try to figure that out. But stay tuned. We'll be back on Monday for the cfl recap and then look for something next week and I'll keep you guys up to date. Just not quite sure how or what that will look like yet again, no days off here, no off season. We're at four corporate days in a road this week filming and heading out of town. But wanted to get you guys a great episode. So thanks as always for watching, like and subscribe, get us up to 3,500 subscribers. Get a free ticket to the xfl or the usfl kickoff game next year. Take care guys.

CFL 2023 Week 6 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 6, What Did We Learn?

Well happy Monday morning here everyone. Welcome to the mark cast crazy cfl weekend here. I have lots of thoughts on it. I have a new feud with the at CFL account on Twitter. We can get into later as well if you're interested in those shenanigans. But I think my timeline was full of cfl people this weekend. I thought like, God, if you were one of these like X F L or U S F L homers that support leagues but don't watch the cfl, you were probably missing out. We'll get lots of thoughts here. Have Jason and Evan guys this had to have been the best weekend so far, right? Without question. Absolutely. This is what people talk about when they talk about the CFL being great and we finally got to see that this week. Evan, how are you doing this morning? Yeah, I'm doing great. It was a great weekend of games. Like Jason said, probably the best weekend of games I can remember in a long time at least I think since the cfl came back after Covid from that 21 season and probably even before that I really started following the league in probably 2019, started covering it in 2021 but I really don't remember a slate of games that was this good. I mean that was really impressive. Well and then was it good to me at least on paper, not all of these looked to that. I don't think Winnipeg had, Ottawa had marquee matchup kind of on it and we can get into that and I was thought we left to go to the Mariner game and I sit back, I go, what the hell is going on here? But got people checking in here Chris saying we learned the CFL's exciting. We have comments here. Shane coming in amazing weekend prayers to Trevor Harrison and his family a hundred percent and I think especially with Trevor, just his life time in the cfl and all the different teams and kind of everything else, I think that is a big felt kind of across the board. Any initial thoughts on that Jason? Just about Trevor Harris, anything you want to say off the top? Yeah, obviously it's a devastating injury. They haven't quite ruled him out for the season, which is I guess a good sign. But honestly I think that it's sad because he is up there in age. I think he's like 37 years old so I mean at this point you got to start considering if this is maybe it for him in the cfl. I don't think it is personally, but anytime you suffer a major injury, just like we were talking about with Oli last week, it could be the Enro and the cfl. So sad to see that. Yeah, 38 olis up there. I think what olis 35, I mean you to the don't only having the back to back injuries might be different in that regard. But yeah Evan, I mean did we see Trevor Harris take his last snap here on, what was that Saturday night? Yeah, I don't know. You definitely have to ask the question and I mean the severity of this injury, I think really we will determine that if he does come back the season or if he doesn't, is he prepared to play another year? I think the bigger question here is, and I had this written down, it kind of feels like the end of an era because in the event that, I mean you could possibly have three guys who have been in the cfl for a long time retire. You need Trevor Harris, Jeremiah Ulli, Bo, Levi Mitchell, all those guys came in the league like 20 11, 20 12, 20 13 I'm pretty sure. So yeah, I mean we'll see what happens. Personally, I don't know, I couldn't see all three of those guys going. I definitely think maybe has the best chance to stay. Trevor, I still think has some in the tank. I don't know about Missy, we already talked about that so much last week. But yeah, it's just so heartbreaking really to see all these quarterback injuries and not just to the older guys, but I mean Matthew Schultz went down in the Hamilton game and we're kind of entering this state and this cfl where you're going to have a lot of backups come in and we talked about last week about just how thin the quarterback depth is at some of these teams and the development of certain quarterbacks. So it's going to be really interesting to see how teams piece things together with all these injuries happening. There we go. I was muted for the wind. Yeah, just terrible and like I said, mean you just saw it on all the faces there. I I think that speaks and they had shots in the crowd and just here and you bring in Trevor and you they're off to a decent start. They were what, three and one or whatever. I mean the riders looking good here. We'll see any initial, we'll get into the game but any initial thoughts on Mason? Fine here Jason. I mean he had obviously that Hail Mary crazy, I mean he's got an arm and they at least felt fine last season going with him with Cody Fido and kind of all of that mess. Any initial thoughts on arm Man Mason? Yeah, my initial thoughts from rewatching this game on Sunday because I didn't get to see it live was that Mason fine has the athleticism to move around back there. So I think that gives you a chance, especially with the state of a lot of offensive lines in the cfl, it's pretty much a necessity unless you're a guy that can read the defense super quickly, get the ball to your hands quickly like a Trevor Harris. So I think fine having that ability to run around back there will give him a little bit of a chance. Yeah, James said the sex my bombers loss, I'm very happy for the Red Blacks and the bombers will make people just checking in here. Denzel talking about RU price, it does seem like we're getting more voices here checking in. At least on my Twitter people kind of invested in the C ffo which I think is good as well. We can get into the first game. I have notes, we'll kind of go back, we'll go in reverse here. I lots to talk on the Edmonton game as well, I'm sure we'll get to. But this Calgary, Saskatchewan, we were at the Mariner game so I knew the ending to this one before and then watching it and replay and it was funny because came downstairs to see that the Hail Mary, she's like, oh my god, that's crazy. I said, well you just got to wait. I mean there's only still a minute left or whatever. Evan should tevin there have slid, should he have gone down, saved some time and then get the PD or however that final with Saskatchewan that final interaction went him? Yeah, I mean he could have done that but I mean appreciated the way that the game ended in my notes, I just pretty much said red a pertti is clutch and he's been in the cfl now for over a decade. I mean that game was in interesting because I stopped watching with about two minutes left in the fourth quarter and I went back and watched the end there the little bit that I missed. Cause I noticed the score went into the thirties without being into overtime and I thought, oh geez, how did that happen? So I ended up seeing the Mason, kind of the crazy touchdown of Tevin Jones where he kind of babbled it and with all the defenders and I don't know that that was really interesting to see. But yeah, I mean Calgary really needed this win. I talked about it last week when we were pre previewing this week, just given the state of the West. I think this was a must win game for Calgary and part of the reason, if you want to talk about Jake Mayer here, he kind of returned to his old form for really the first time this season finally looked like again he was worthy of that starting job worthy of being the franchise quarterback in Calgary. And I think it finally made fans St. Peter's fans not have to worry about that as much because for this first month of the season or whatever, it really wasn't looking good to be honest. There wasn't much to take away from Jake Mayer's campaign and finally here he is doing things, he's on the right track finding multiple receivers even though his receiving core might not be the strongest and just really all around. I think he had a great game. Yeah, this Luther hack of, I can't even say this last name, 81, he really busted onto the scene here. Jason, you have your Calgary shirt on. How did everybody mayor do today or this weekend? Yeah, I think I agree with Evan, he had his best game of the season by far in this one. I think what was really encouraging for me is that the Ruff riders took away the St Peters run game, yet they were still able to move the ball and I think that was really encouraging because I think they really relied on the run game to pick up first downs in the first few games of the season here, weren't really able to move the ball with the passing game, which they were able to do in this one. So I think that was very encouraging. I think the best team won in this game. I think that Saskatchewan having two punt return touchdowns they had didn't really do much on offense throughout the course of the game other than that Miracle play and a couple of other plays throughout the game. But I think yeah, the better team won and Calgary almost let it slip away at the end, but ultimately a huge win for them and we'll talk about it later, but I think with the injury to Trevor Harris, I think it's pretty likely that Calgary will ultimately end up hopping Saskatchewan in the standings as we go throughout the season. Yeah, it was crazy because they hadn't until it was like that Hail Mary Saskatchewan hadn't had an offensive touchdown there. You had the two of Mario Alfred and it's crazy because they always show for whatever that grocery giveaway is in the cfl where they're like, oh Sally, if you get the punt return or whatever, oh Sally, you know, win a hundred dollars and I thought it used to be a million if there was two in the game or something like it was whatever the giveaway and then today or whatever because he had it, I think it was like 50,000 in grocery points or whatever. Jason, are they rigging this now? Are we taking away the million? Well I don't understand how this giveaway works. Yeah, well I'm not too invested in it because Save On Foods is not even a Canada wide company so it's not even available in Ontario where I live so I can't really get too invested on it and I'm pretty sure that it's based on kick return touchdowns, not pun return touchdowns if I'm not mistaken, which kick return touchdowns are pretty rare in the cfl. Yeah, no, but he was good though because you know always see that. I will say no. I had a quick note here, the Shea Paterson of it all, we lived through him. He was the first round pick for the U S F L came in and he's like their short yardage guy but they're like, well they want to give him some different looks, right? So the defense isn't always expecting him whatever. And Shay took, it was after I think, I don't know if Trevor got down there, but Shay took one snap and looked very frazzled and threw the ball office. He was getting sacked in the backfield like that. Okay. I don't know if he still needs some seasoning on that. Evan, we lived through the Shane pa Shea paler. Are you surprised here with him in Saskatchewan? No, I mean he had short yardage experience in the cfl I think before he came to the U S F L. I'm perfectly happy with Mason fine having that job. He's one of these guys we always talk about year three in the cfl being the year for a jump in quarterbacks and Mason Fine is in his third year and he's spent all three years now with Saskatchewan. So he's had time to develop in that system behind Cody Fudo and now Trevor Harris who's gone down. I would like to see Shea Patterson maybe a bit. I think his time in the U S F L really didn't go as he expected or maybe as any of us expected. I mean he got benched in favor of Paxton Lynch who at one point was also with Saskatchewan. I kind of find that funny but yeah, I mean I do think Shea Patterson still has potential as a passer, but there's a reason he was the shorty yardage quarterback now and he was a shorty yardage quarterback before because they have more trust in guys like Mason fine and personally I think that's the right decision. I'm not saying Shea Patterson couldn't start a game here, but I just like Mason fine. I think a bit more again, would it hurt to have Shea Patterson work then? No, I would honestly like to see it at some point just because I feel like it would make things more diverse. But you want to talk to me, I think Mason fine is the best option here. What did thoughts here Jason? I mean Trevor was just getting beat up even before the injury. There was a couple big on him and hi him trying to scramble it didn't feel like, I don't know, knowing that he got injured in the fourth, I'm like seeing these hits earlier in the game and I'm paying attention to that. Any other thoughts on them being able to keep him protected or not? Yeah, I think their offensive line issues have started to resurface a little bit over the past couple weeks. I think Trevor's masked a lot of those issues by getting the ball out quickly the first handful of weeks of the season. But I think ultimately some of those problems are still there and especially when they play against Calgary, I think Mike Rose, their defensive tackle who I had rated as the 11th best player on my top 50 players list going into the season. He is dominant defensive tackle pass rusher and I think that he always plays his best against Saskatchewan and he did in this one. He had a sack right before that Hail Mary played by Mason. Fine, that looked like it was going to end the game, but I think that the issues for Saskatchewan on the offensive lineup resurfaced the last couple of weeks, which is not a great sign for Mason. Fine going forward We have this Tommy Lee Lewis as well here. I had the tweet saved him in on the necklace coming in for Calgary. We've talked about Calgary having all these injuries and lack of weapons for mayor. What did you make here of a Tommy Lee Lewis here at Evan? I mean he had one catch and it was for a touchdown. He, he's going to get worked into the offense more and more I think to be honest, him and Mark and Michelle on paper are probably the two top options now. I was more focused on just how cool of a story it was. I mean we've talked or Nailers talked and other people have talked about their opinions on the list and is it really beneficial for the cfl? But in this case it was kind of cool where Calgary a team who had been looking at this guy for seven years and he was still doing fine things in the NFL seven years ago or even, I don't even know when he was drafted or under, I don't know, I'd have to look back at that. I mean I remember Tommy Lee Lewis when he was with the Saints and everything, but I think it was just cool to see they waited seven years to get him and he actually came after all that time, once his N F L career had kind of faded out and then in his first game he has a touchdown, first catch even in the cfl. So that was pretty fun. I would hope to see him again worked more into that offense as time goes on, him and Mark and Michelle. But yeah, I mean great story there. I thought that was fun. Anything else, Jason Calgary or Saskatchewan, anything else you wanted to touch on? Yeah, so Tommy Lee Lewis also had a pun return touchdown that was called back. It was quite incredible as well. Yeah, so we also did that in the game. I think that one thing with Calgary is yes we talked about this receiver position for them and how it's been an issue at the beginning of the season here, but I think that you're starting to see the pieces, if they can just play a little bit more with this same lineup, I think that they have enough pieces there to potentially get back to those expectations we had before the season. I think once Michelle gets more comfortable, once they get Tommy Lee Lewis more incorporated into the offense, ton's having a great season, it's great to see that from him after a down year from him. So I think Hook Hakuna Banu is how you say that name. He's played very well to start the season as well. Had a big breakthrough game in this one. So you're starting to see the pieces come together a little bit for the stamp Peters and it's good to see. Yeah, it feels like they were trying to get Beton in earlier in the season. I think he had a couple of big drops if I remember finally kind of picking up there. Yeah, you talked about that, the kick return. Yeah, that was one of those, you get these and I and they showed and it was like an illegal block or whatever. I mean they go back and show but you knows so exciting and he's in the end zone and you're like, oh yeah, 80 yards back here, whatever. Kind of negates the whole thing. And there was a couple places this weekend like that and I know that Glen Su was always trying to point out, well no, you're not supposed to be that upset, this is whatever. But Evan, any other thoughts on anything on this game? Yeah, I mean again, yeah Luther Nnu, he was someone, I think I talked about Trey Odom's Dukes last week or the week before. Again one of these guys that kind of Calgary is a good depth piece that has an opportunity to step up and Luther did that in this game. I've been waiting for that from him for a long time and I would expect him to do similar things for the rest of the season. I do believe he has a pretty high ceiling. Yeah, I mean we kind of talk about Calgary's receiving core as not necessarily lost but just maybe a room that could have a bit more depth. But honestly at this point it kind of seems like every week they have a different leading receiver, so seems like a pretty diverse group there. And then yeah, I think Reggie Beton is still like the number one guy in that room, even though he didn't have, I mean they had a pretty decent game this time around. And then the other thing, James Vos, Julian Hauser and then Mike Rose, who Jason already talked about all had two sacks each, which I thought was pretty impressive. And again, unfortunately probably a reason why Trevor Harris ended up going down because there was just so much pressure upfront. But yeah, I mean Calgary's defense, that's not the first time they've done stuff like this. I think they have a lot of good linemen upfront even outside of Mike Rose. Just a really impressive unit all around and again it, it's such a shame to see Trevor Harris go down. I think we sit here and we talk about this game and all the cool stuff that happened in the back and forth, but that injury really lingers just like last week with the Jeremiah Maso injury, which you could argue is worse because that's officially season ending. It's his second major injury in two years, but you get the point, right? It's just sad to see things like that happen and I'm glad that we got around to talking about that. It looked really bad too. I saw, I had seen the replay on Twitter before I had watched the game and I'm like, oh my God, it's just one of those you can see. I just wanted to shout, well Deontay Williams had that crazy pick where it was. It was the contested ball and it bounced off whatever someone's helmet and he scooped it up for Saskatchewan. Kind of good defensive there. Anything else Jason, we can get on to the next one? Just a brief note on Saskatchewan, I think they really miss Roland Milligan in the secondary. I think he's been a really strong presence for them over the past couple years and I think that Calgary was able to find a lot of open receivers in this one and I think yeah, his presence was missed. All right, well let's go here over to, this was the funny one. I'm sitting here, I'm watching the game Dorothy, we're working out getting ready, we're going to the Mariner game and it was 18 three and a half and I'm like, this is, I'm getting in the shower, this is terrible. And then to see, I guess Dustin Crumb kind of willed this team back, whatever to come and the time and the overtime and I'm sitting there at the bar watching the overtime before we go to the game. Jason, how improbable was this comeback? Well, I actually, I went out to the Forge FC game, which is the Hamilton soccer team, so I actually missed the last part of this game. So I left when it was, I believe it was 25 to nine for the B blue bombers with about seven minutes left in the fourth quarter. And then I turn on my phone and it's like, what the hell? They won in overtime and it's very, very improbable. Had to watch it the next day in full and it was just crazy and probable comeback just, it was just like I imagined it would be when I saw that final score. I mean you got to give a lot of props to Dustin Crumb for sticking in there. He had a rough first half, only 20 yards passing in the first half, but he was able to restructure the game plan. The Red Blacks were able to restructure the game plan and put 'em on the path to success, put 'em on the path to success for the second half. And honestly I think it was just super impressive and really happy for Red Blacks fans. They've suffered a lot over the past couple of years. Well, I mean, yeah, there was a point in the first half where it was 12 first downs to Winnipeg to zero for, I mean they hadn't did not have a first down until I think about three minutes left in the first half there. Evan, what did you make? Because I was in the chat, I'm like, crumb is crummy, we're moving on, we're getting on the ship here and then to come back, do you just him scrambling his tenacity, I mean what do you credit this victory to? Yeah, definitely his ability to run the football. I think there was a lot to be left desired sort of in the passing department. And look, it's his first cfl start, so I'm not going to rip on the guy. I mean last week I kind of said the same thing. I'm like, his legs are an extremely important asset and this time it won them the game. And I think it's really interesting how we're looking at this scenario where Justin Crumb scores a late touchdown guess the two point conversion wins in overtime when he was so close to doing all of that last week in Hamilton, he was one yard short from the end zone and it could have happened then. And I remember Jason saying he could have been the hero for Ottawa in that game and look what happened this time around. I mean I think he was more than a hero. They were the commentators on T S N or it might have been the panel they were saying Ottawa has needed a win, this they've waited so long and again, they had a really long home losing streak for a while too, so it is just great to see this happen. I think just the game as a whole, we'll get more into the Winnipeg side in a bit, but I think it was just, so we talked about it last week and this was the game where you're like, okay, you just hope Ottawa hangs around. And for the first three and a half quarters of this game, it went just as I imagined it was the more experienced Winnipeg team pulling in front Ottawa, just not really knowing what to do. They were kind of lost. They didn't even have a first down until there was three minutes left or something in the second quarter, which is just unbelievable. But then suddenly mean it was 25 to nine and it was like, okay, you have to make something happen now. And I think the moment that really changed the energy was the Brandon Dridge pick six officer, Zach Ros. I think without that they would not have done this at all. I mean again, it's pretty impressive that they did that even with that late pick six. But I think ultimately what really made or what caused Winnipeg to lose this game rather than Ottawa winning was their lack of a run game. I think they were really trying to, well they weren't forcing runs because they threw a late pick six, but they're rushing attack in this game was pretty much non-existent on Winnipeg's end. And I think when you're trying to burn clock late and you don't have a run game, that's usually a sign that you're going to give up some late points and that's exactly what happened. I mean it was just so one of those games where you're sitting there and you're just constantly kind of pinching yourself, this isn't happening, this isn't happening. I love this clip here. I love this woman just so happy. I'm like, you're beating Ottawa, it's over. Jason, I want to talk to this final play and then we'll again want to get your thoughts on this overall, but we have this tweet John Hodge here after all this. How on earth do Winnipeg's defense leave the middle of the field open, poor play, calling poor tackling lose, checking in Winnipeg, didn't know crumb's tendencies. I'm like, we saw this exact same thing last week. What do you mean they didn't know his tendencies. Crumb had many, many, many down the field runs. What did you make of just how wide open he was on that final play? Well, I was watching Darren bombing and the bonfire sports guys talk about this and they were saying how blitz heavy the Winnipeg defense was throughout this game. They just kept throwing blitz after blitz after them and eventually Dustin Rum figured them out and once they figured out where they were blitzing from left, a lot of vulnerable areas right up the middle of that defense. It really confused me given how limited Ottawa's passing game was that Winnipeg didn't put a spy in the middle of the defense. He was Big Hill as a spying linebacker there, but I think instead they went blitz heavy and they kind of got burned throughout the end of this game. Was Darren I didn't watch, was Darren just in shambles? Actually, I think Zach was more beaten up about it actually. I think it was like his birthday too or his birthday was this week and I think as well, so that was probably a devil, but Darren's like because he is a reporter, but I mean Darren's like a little of a he go, that's his fanboy in there a little bit. I bet he was in shambles. Jason, do you look at this more as Winnipeg collapse or Ottawa winning the game? I think just because of the bizarre circumstances, I think I take more from Winnipeg losing the game. I think that it's just a sharp stark contrast from how they were able to close out that game last week against Calgary when they had that nice 10 11 minute drive running the football. As Evan said, they could not get the ground game going in this one. And I think that was just a major factor why they couldn't close this one out. I think on the second to last possession for Winnipeg or the last one in regulation, they actually got a first down that would've allowed them to kill a lot more clock, but then it got called back due to a penalty and then they were had to punt the ball away to Ottawa and that was pretty much the rest is history. I had this shot here and we'll talk more about this for later, but I said, do you believe in miracles here at Red Blacks? Evan, what do you make here? We've talked now Winnipeg having two bad losses. We had the BC game and then this game, Evan, what do you make of Winnipeg? Yeah, well I mean this loss was just an embarrassment for that team given their experience, their depth, their reputation. I don't know how you lose a game like that. And this is kind of proving a point that I've been thinking about now for a while and it's that maybe BC really is pulling ahead in the west. Again, you can't speak too early, but I mean this is just an unacceptable loss. I mean if you are losing games like this, I mean you can't even really be talking about playoffs and Great Cup quite yet again, even though this team has been in the past three great cups and won two of them, I just think it was a complete meltdown. And this is definitely the low point in the bomber season, I would imagine this is probably the lowest it gets for them. I don't think they'll let this happen again. But yeah, I mean the win you're snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I love to say that and I, I'll say the same thing for Edmonton a bit later, even though that was a bit of a different circumstance. But yeah, I mean you can't let things like that happen and it really makes me wonder what's going to happen down the line because this just doesn't seem normal for this team. There's been so many years of just pure dominance and again, they still are one of the more experienced teams. I'm not saying they're collapsing or whatever, but it, it's a bit different now. I mean this is not something that I think any of us expected and I agree with Jason, it's more of Winnipeg losing the game than Ottawa winning the game. But I will say again, we want to go back to the Ottawa side here for a minute. That stadium got really loud and it was almost like a college atmosphere at the end where you had the players and coaches kind of storming the field and rightfully so. I just can't tell you how much the cfl has needed that I think mean just the whole weekend of games was great obviously. I mean we haven't even gotten to the Toronto Montreal game yet, which might have been my favorite, but this was just so needed I feel like just comeback a lot of back and forth shootouts, especially Ottawa getting away. I said this win was for Jeremiah Maoli just given everything that's happened and it was just so much fun that there's a lot of people that are missing out. I think I'll leave it at that. Yeah, Jason, I mean it was very dead in there for that first bit when it was, was a very terrible first half of Ottawa. What do you make of this in Winnipeg? I was looking here, they got Elks next week at home, so maybe you know, would presume that's a bounce back for Winnipeg, but what do you make here? Because it was just a weird day for them. I still think that they'll bounce back, but I think the key thing here is they already take, pick up their second loss of the season already in week six. I mean, how long did it take them to pick up their second loss last season? I think it was all the way probably until week 13 or something like that. So that's kind of concerning for the blue bombers, given that they've already lost to bc. If BC wins next week, regardless of what happens with Win Winnipeg, BC's effectively two games up on the bombers because they lead the season series there. So I think it's a very important game in terms of the standings, but I think overall Winnipeg probably is still one of the best teams in the league going forward. I think that the collapse notwithstanding, I think they'll be okay Looking here. I mean we talk in Dustin Rum and the big game winner or whatever, I mean 26 and 42 interception. I mean he had a rough day. Are we the Elks going to figure him out next week, like this elusive, scrambling man. I mean, because there's a lot more work that needs to be done here even though Ottawa won the game, right Jason? Yeah, it'll be interesting because they're actually playing Calgary next week. So I think that'll be an interesting matchup because both teams coming off big emotional last minute victory. So I think it's going to be interesting to see what team comes out flat. We often see that in those situations. So I think it'll be interesting to see how Crumb moves the ball passing wise because I think at some point teams are going to start to take away his legs a little bit. I mean he's such a dynamic runner, you see him, he's basically what we want Cornelius to be in terms of a runner, but he does it more effectively and knows exactly when to run. And so I think it's going to be very interesting to see how he plays throughout the weeks as teams get more film on him. And I'm interested to see how that game goes next week against Calgary. It was an interesting note here and they were talking about Prue cop with Winnipeg and where he got resigned from the U S F L and maybe if he had waited and he could have been the Red Blacks quarterback or because he signed so early and now all this opened up. I mean Evan's like sliding doors here. I mean Prue cop's taking short yardage for Winnipeg. Is there a world where he's a better option for Ottawa or do you think they're going to be good with Dustin here? Yeah, I think Dustin Krum was the right choice. I mean look, Prue cop's familiar with Winnipeg and he's like a short yardage guy there. Dustin Crumb side with Ottawa again late last season. He's been with their program for a bit now and I think after this win and the way he kind of put the team on his back, I mean, how do you not root for that guy? How do you not say he's the best option? I mean that was just about the best thing you could have and it finally gives Ottawa fans that level of confidence. So yeah, Prue Cup, I mean, I don't know, even in the U S F L, he wasn't an extremely impressive passer. Not that he really had a big role, but I think Winnipeg made the most sense for him just given the familiarity. And I think Ottawa already had their eyes on, again, a couple guys they just brought in Tyrell Piro, Jake Dunaway. So guys that they were kind of familiar with mean, well Piro was the guy in Winnipeg who Preco replaced, which is I guess kind of our ironic considering we're talking about this whole thing. But no, ultimately I think Dustin Crumb is the guy. Alawa still had some really bad penalties. They had that misconduct penalty that gave Winnipeg that touchdown early on. There was a bench penalty as well that Paul call back one of the returns, I don't know, still need to kind of clean that up. What do you make here now, Jason going in here with Bob Dice everything else and any other thoughts you want on this game? Yeah, it certainly wasn't a perfect performance. There was also, each team also had a drop deep ball in this one. Ottawa had won just before the half with a chance to make it a one square game. I believe it was Savon Scarborough that dropped the ball. I was a beautiful pass from Cru that really could have gotten going in the first half of that game. So I mean it wasn't a perfect game by any stretch. Again, like you said, the penalties that extended drives for Winnipeg, I think there was one near the goal line that led directly to the touchdown, the next play. So I mean some things that need to be cleaned up for Ottawa, but in terms of where they were at before this game, they were looking at one in four right in the face and they were able to get the win here. So that's a good thing. Yeah, I had a note. I had a couple new ads. I had a cfl, like a new hat ad. I don't know if you've seen, have you seen this commercial with all the people standing in the stairwell and they had all the different hats in there. We had a couple different ads. No, we had that and then there was a flyover, I don't know if we're trying to do some new marketing on there. I did have a joke. We talk about the CFL demos and the music and the country music. The CFL plus during the commercial breaks has trap rap instrumental music plays. So I don't know if who's ever programming the c l plus at least knows about their demographics on here. Pat's checking in. Prue Cop was a nice pickup, wouldn't say. Great. Evan, any other thoughts on this one? We'll move on to the shootout game. Not really. I mean I just think Cop knows his role at this point. He's not mean. Would you start him if Ros went down? Sure. Again, familiar with the system, whatever. But yeah, I agree with Pat. Nice pickup. Not anything that blows your socks off or whatever. All right, let's get out of here. So Jason, we had, this was the big, was it Toronto at Montreal coming down? What did you make of this one? Cause this was the game of the weekend and then the rest of the weekend happened. You know what I mean? Yeah, it was a relatively clean played game. I think both quarterbacks played pretty well. I think Chad Kelly just continues his trajectory towards becoming a cfl star here in his first year as a starter. He made a couple of amazing plays where he kind of broke out of the pocket and rolled out to his left and found guys in the end zone. So I think he's looked really good. The Toronto receivers were really good in this one. I think Montreal looked good offensively at times in this one as well, but just couldn't make enough plays at the end. And I think that if this game was at the point this game was played, I was like, oh, this is the best game in the cfl so far this season. But then we had Saturday's games that both kind of overshadowed them in my opinion. So I think these are the three best games we've seen so far this season. All happen this week. So I think, yeah, this game was very entertaining. M Mack and I, you're incorrectly reporting that Toronto is America's cfl team like that, but Chad's looking good here, 21 of 25 3 1 big star. I have a couple highlights here I can pull up, but Evan, what did you make of this and then the further ascension of Chad Kelly? Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about the game first, then we'll get into Chad Kelly. I mean, I think the most impressive part of this game personally, I think Montreal should have won. I mean this was one of their more complete games, but Toronto just kept having these answers and they had an answer at the very end of the game, which ultimately ended up being the game winner. But yeah, I mean Chad Kelly at this point, I don't know how you have any doubt in the guy. I don't feel any doubt in saying that he's a top quarterback in this league and we've talked about that already. Just saying how poised he is and how confident he is. And I mean, he really, I think is just so prepared and so I could say so many good things about him. And this game was really, I mean, it shows why he deserves all this praise and high hype. I think there was some people who were questioning, oh, why are we giving Chad Kelly so much praise when he is only started X many games? You have to remember Chad Kelly wasn't really talked about until he came in. Like I've said it before in that great cup last year when after M B T got hurt and now here he is becoming a superstar within a couple of games. So it's a pretty quick ascension, but I don't have any doubt and I have full confidence and belief in him moving forward. Just some other notes. David Uner, who used to play for the TCATs, having a pretty good game here. He had two touchdowns, I believe he had the last touchdown too. One of his two is the one that ultimately won it for Toronto. So good to see him get worked into the offense. And then, I mean, Demonte Cosy, if you want to pull up that catch, that might have been one of the better catches I've seen ever in the cfl. I mean, that was just textbook. I think you've already been showing it. I just haven't been paying attention. But yeah, great catch by Coochy for sure. And again, just goes to show, yeah, I mean we can talk about Chad Kelly a lot, but his receivers have been pretty good too. I mean, he's got Cam Phillips, Devore Daniels who had a nice game, et cetera, et cetera. And then on the defensive side for Toronto, Wynton McManus and Dwayne Hendrix were pretty impressive. Dwayne Hendrix had a two sat game, so good for them. But yeah, ultimately, I mean, I think this was Toronto's offense that really won. It was just such a complete offensive clinic, you would say. Jason, I'll be curious what happens next season, because I think that this is good right now, and this is good for Toronto and this is good for, I don't know if Chad Kelly is a five six year C F O quarterback, but what did you make of this game? I think, I just think that the story is Chad Kelly so far this season for the Toronto Argonauts, I think mean that was really the only question I had about this team going into the year. I thought that they retained so many pieces of that Great Cup team last year, except for the quarterback. And I think that Chad Kelly has even maybe even upgraded from a cloud Bethel Thompson based on what we've seen so far this season. I mean that offense is just a well-oiled machine. I think Ryan Dwin does not get enough credit for the game plans that he puts together, and he's done a masterful job of bringing Kelly along, making sure he doesn't make too many mistakes early on in his cfl career as a starter. So I think that it's been really impressive to see Toronto roll so far this season. And I think defensively it wasn't their best game on the whole, but I think that overall they played very well this season tops in the league, I think in takeaways and stuff like that. So I think that going forward, Toronto looks like the team to beat in the cfl. Unfortunately for me as a Tigercat fan, I had a highlight here that they were showing with one forward with Cody here, kind of faking out how Jason, how are we making of Cody here continuing in Montreal. I think he's done a really good job in terms of showing that he is healthy this year. I think that it's just the biggest thing I've said that week after week on this show. But I think that the biggest thing is that he can escape pressure. He wasn't able to do that as much last week, or sorry, last year in Saskatchewan, and I think that is a huge difference for him. You saw that one improvisation touchdown, that the play looked dead in the water, but he was able to spin out of it, make a play for the touchdown. So I've been pretty impressed by Pajaro so far this season. Some of the receivers are really stepping up. I think a couple of the guys that they have injured will be back probably in the next few weeks here. Hopefully Greg Ellingson is one of those guys because he is very much a difference making cfl receiver when healthy. But yeah, I think Fidos look pretty well pretty good so far this season. It looks like a good crowd here too. I mean just from that shot, like I said, I only saw this game on the highlights, but I mean it looks pretty phenomenal. Evan, I had this stat here at the share at the c l news, how many, they've had two bias here now going into six weeks, but 32 points, 43, 45, 35, this team can score how it feels. I'm tired. I like these rouge games and the 11 to 12 or whatever, but having some of these shootouts certainly helps. When we talked about the excitement this weekend and everything else, what do you make about this Toronto? Just being able to put points on the board? Yeah, well, I mean, like I said before, well-rounded team, you've got one of the best quarterbacks in the cfl. You've got an up and coming running back, an AJ Ette who also had a nice game against Montreal, and then just a diverse receiving core. I mean, BC's been scoring a decent amount too, and I mean, look at their receivers. The more guys you can spread the ball around to, I think the more points you're going to be able to score because someone is always going to step up if you're not just relying on a number one receiver all the time, even though that's probably a nice thing to have. But yeah, I mean, I'm not shocked that Toronto is scoring this many points. I mean, they probably could have scored more in this one just with the way it was going, all that back and forth. It just feels, and I don't know if it's just because we're doing these recaps every week and my Twitter timeline right now, it does feel like the cfl has a little something going right now. I have an article saved. I got to look Steve Simmons posted of talking ratings up this year, and I've seen some controversy with that. So I want to look into that. Maybe reach out to Steve as well to come on because he's from on before. But do you feel that Jason, is there a little bit of a kind of buzz going maybe that's not normally here? Yeah, I think it's hard to tell because I mean, I think with the TD ratings, a lot of it depends on matchups. I think that certain teams definitely draw better on television and certain matchups definitely draw better on television. So it's good that we've seen an upward trend, but I think we need to see it over the course of the season and continue to build throughout that. So I think I'm not taking too much away from it yet, especially now that they're including the RDS ratings as part of that number so far this season. So yeah. Pat wants your thoughts, Jason, on the quarterback shortage here and running out of options. We've talked injuries and stuff, but what do you make just overall kind of the state of the cfl with the quarterback's issue right now? Yeah, so this kind of reminds me of the 2019 season where I believe it was seven of the nine starting quarterbacks missed most of the season. I think that's when you had Cody Geral break onto the scene. Dave Evans broke onto the scene with Hamilton. So you do see some good come out of it. Hopefully you see guys like Dustin Crumb Mason fine take that mantle and run with it. But I think at the end of the day, you're not likely to see that on a large scale. I think that going forward that you need the guys to be experienced in the cfl. This is really the only way you get experienced by having situations like this, but never a good sign with half the league is dealing with quarterback injuries that I just think that the depth in the quarterback position is pretty thin right now around the league, as you guys have been saying. But yeah, those are just my thoughts on it. Evan, anything on this to add? Yeah, I mean, I put out a tweet saying this is the time where the cfl really needs to be pushing proper quarterback development. And what I mean by that is maybe taking away from some of the short yardage guys, because now in the cfl, it's like the short yardage quarterback is a completely separate position, but you're so focused on those guys just rushing the ball for a couple yards. You're not actually working, I mean, I'm not there for cfl practices obviously, but it kind of seems like these guys might not be as prepared to just start throwing the ball when needed. So I think you look at what the X F L is doing with Jordan Palmer bringing a guy in that to just sort of assist with the quarterbacks, develop them. Then maybe you see more guys either come in or just the existing guys perform better. I mean, I will admit it is hard to find quarterbacks in any league, but I don't think you can just blame all this on, oh, well, the X F L and the US U S F L exists now and didn't used to when the cfl was trying to find guys. Has it made it harder? Yes. I'm not trying to steer away from that, but if you're going to put all the blame on that, I mean, come on man. There's still plenty of options out there that you can work to get guys up to speed and everything. So it's a tough issue. And to find guys that right now are just ready to start, it's very hard. I mean, Dustin Crumb, we weren't really sure about him. Now clearly he's got some traction Mason fine. I feel better about, again, just because he is a year three guy. He's been in Saskatchewan system for a while now, so I think he's ready to make the jump to a starter. Yeah, I mean we, we'll see what happens in Hamilton. I mean we're, we're going to talk about that here in a minute. We'll see what happens with Matthew Schultz and Taylor Powell, the guy behind him. But yeah, I mean not, there definitely is a shortage. You can't deny that. Yeah, I thought Naer was, had a really good spot on the show this week, and if you guys even, it's previewing week six, but it's more just kind of naer talking if you guys haven't seen that yet. But yeah, talking, I think that Evan, that's what kind of spurred our conversation about that, where he is you, yeah, you don't have that traditional quarterback too, where you're working out where you used to have ROS and spent years being the backup and learning from that, or Michael Riley or whatever that other stuff. The other interesting thing with the enabler thing was he was talking about Shilts and oh, he takes a lot of hits, and then of course we see Shilts kind of do all that. But if you guys haven't seen that, I will say, Evan, I agree with the Palmer thing where they, they're like, Hey, we're wanting to bring in all these X F L quarterbacks, right? We're starting from scratch where there is a little b d e with the C ffl sometimes where it's like, well, it takes four years to, you got to learn our stuff. And you're like, yeah, maybe if you guided some of these guys along as opposed to trying to make training camp and living hell for people and well, this is our sport and you need to figure it out. I think maybe you could help develop that as well. Jason, any other thoughts on the game or this, we'll get to the Hamilton stuff In terms of, I think it was a really good point that Dave made about the short yardage specialist. I do think there's certain situations. You look at the league, it's like if that starter went down, is the so-and-so backup actually going to be the guy that's given the chance to start? I look at Calgary, Jake, Margo down, are they really going to start Tommy Stevens? Because I don't think he is very good as a pass from what I have seen in the preseason and other times that he's thrown the ball. So I think that he is the definition of the, that Dave is talking about. So yeah, I definitely think it's a point, but I think going forward, I think that most teams, with the three quarterbacks dressing now that we didn't have a couple of years ago when we came back from the canceled 2020 season, I think that's huge for the development of quarterbacks in the league, getting more quarterbacks in the pipeline and playing time. So I think at the end of the day, I think it's not as dire as people may out to be. I think that mostly, sorry, it's mostly just the quarterback injuries, I think that are the biggest concern at this point. How do we keep these guys healthy? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, because even look, Winnipeg like PR cop, that is not a suitable replacement if it's that claros at this point. Coming to the last game here, and I've got Dave Campbell scheduled to come on this week, and Alex's going to be back on the road. He's going to be on the road in Winnipeg. We're going to schedule head dark days here in Edmonton. I think it was Farhan, it was already reporting yesterday. Taylor or Cornelius taking first whatever, snaps again, starting snaps. Evan, what is the definition of insanity here? What are we doing in Edmonton? Yeah, I mean, I can only talk about it so much. I think every week it's like, what happened to Trey Ford? What? What's going on? How often can we put Cornelius in? And yeah, I mean Cornelius again kind of came back to earth in this game. I think last week he had a decent performance. Again, nothing that was amazing, but again, finally looked like maybe he could hold the starting position. Unfortunately, that went away again this week. Yeah, I mean that play that you're showing right there kind of explains why just to this game I really do think was winnable for Edmonton and there was so much talk going in this week about Edmonton's finally going to do it. They're finally going to break the streak. They're going to win it home. It's going to be a big deal. And it didn't happen. I mean, in the second quarter, I think it was end of the second quarter, beginning of the third, that's when you could see the momentum shift. Yeah, I mean, after that, Hamilton just completely took over and it was the James Butler show. From there you had Taylor Powell coming in for Matthew Schultz and throwing a touchdown on his first pass as a pro quarterback, which I love hearing things like that. I was so excited when that happened. Cause I was watching, I watched that full game. But yeah, I mean, just kind of a disaster for Edmonton. I mean, again, how many times can you use that word? But just so at this point it's almost expected, unfortunately, it's just this team constantly shoots themself in the foot and how many times is this going to happen before changes are made? I know there was an interview that went up with que and he was very honest talking about the situation with Chris Jones and what the contract looks like. How do you move on from that in the event that you keep losing? But unfortunately, I think we can all agree, and maybe we talked about this week or last week, maybe we didn't, but either way, this game was kind of the last one that just looked like it was in Edmonton's Reach because if you look at the schedule after this, I mean, I think Mike was saying they've got a clear path to oh and nine at this point, which is, I mean, hell that's halfway through the season without a win. And I don't know mean, maybe someone can tell me that has a bit more history with him, but I don't remember the last time that happened where a team started. Oh and nine. I don't want to, I do not want BC to be the team that gives Elks their personal victory. That's my fear at this point is like how is that going to come? Jason, what do you make of this? I mean, obviously as a TCATs fan you're though you're take the win here, but this was a luck for Edmonton. Yeah, I mean with Evan I'm like, what else can you even say at this point? I'm actually going to take a video behind me. Here is all, they're losing the losses in the losing streak. So all 20 of them are up there. I'm going to go over how it started and how when it may might end. But yeah, going forward, I don't know what they do. I feel like they've really confused everybody with how they've handled the quarterback position. I mean, I don't know how much better JR Daggy would do at this point. Like I said, I would start Trey forward. I mean even if they lose more games, who cares because at least he's a guy that probably will bring some excitement to your fan base at this point. I think that going forward, I don't really think there's a bright spot on this team. I mean maybe I think Steven Dunbar had a pretty good game against his former team in this one. Kevin Brown running back's pretty good player as well. But I think going forward, I just don't think that this is a very cohesive team at all. And it's sad because we saw Ottawa get off the snide a couple of times with a couple of wins at home, but Edmonton's still stuck at oh and six. Everybody else in the league at least has two wins now. Yeah, I tweeted out because we were out and I came back and ended up watching this one as well, kind of on demand. And I love c Taylor, Cornelius here, love the man for career cfl wins. I thought Dustin Nielsen had a night. I was trying to get him back on the show he was on before. I don't know if he lives in his dms anymore, but Dustin was his, why does he die? Why does he die? I mean, I really, really enjoy that. I think that that's great and it also helps if I'm trying to fast forward just a little bit to kind of catch up on the games here and it's like I just got to wait for Dustin kind of just start screaming about something. I know it's a big take. Yeah, I don't know. I had tweeted that yesterday. I'm going to share. Evan and I are starting that free tray forward. I want him off the Elks. If they're not going to use them, let's get him on the team that's going to take advantage of him. Evan here, Hamilton Schultz went down. You were talking with him. He should be fine getting tests. What's the latest on Schultz? Yeah, honestly, I don't know. I mean I send him a text and send him best wishes and everything. At the time he didn't know what his injury was and I'm sure he probably knows now. I would expect it to come out probably today, soon sometime. Yeah, I mean scary moment and again, how many quarterback injuries can you have? It's really starting to look like some of these teams again. I mean we just had this whole conversation before about quarterback development and depth and things like that, but teams are really starting look, it's looking like they're going to need to access that more. And fortunately Taylor Powell looked good in limited action. A lot of the backups I think this week, again, Taylor Powell Mason, fine, they all kind of stepped up in limited action, keep in mind, not the full game and did all right. Taylor Powell, his first pass was a touchdown, but he only completed two passes in the entire game. So still a lot to figure out there, but just from Hamilton's perspective as a whole, again, like I said, Taylor Powell looked good and limited action. We'll see what happened to Shilts. I think even if Shilts hasn't been winning games for Hamilton a ton, I mean obviously they won this one. He was in for a good chunk of the game. I think he still showed enough to where you can bring up the question. Maybe you keep him as the starter even when Bowl Levi's healthy because in my opinion, he has done enough to hold that job again, even if the team isn't winning all the time. But that's kind of a separate discussion. I think the real talking point here is James Butler, he kind of had his, I guess you'd say breakout game. I mean there was a lot of question. The commentators on T S N brought this up about how such a good year in BC and then he came over to Hamilton and it's been a bit of a slow start. But this time, I mean this was about the best game you could have asked for from him. And I know James pretty well. He was one of the first people I ever interviewed back in the day three years ago before he even came to the cfl really. So I have full belief that he can keep doing this and definitely needed, I think for that offense, especially given how the receiving corps has been. But another bright spot on the team this time around was Target McAllister. I know we talked about him last week. He's someone that's kind of blossoming into a larger role, someone that I think a lot of teams are starting to look out for both on offense and special teams as a returner. So good stuff from him and I hope he keeps that up. And yeah, I think that's about it on Hamilton's side. I mean, again, this was just one where kind of a slow back and forth at the beginning, but a couple plays that they took advantage of mistakes on Edmonton's end. They capitalized and pulled away pretty quickly in the second half. Yeah, I had the tweet here. Shilts not practicing today that we'll get after the practice. Do. Jason, how are you feeling here at TCATs your welfare check? I just hope they don't rush one of these quarterbacks back. I feel like if you have to start Powell for a game or two, do it because you can't get into a situation where you rush a guy back like Bo maybe comes off the six game injured list and plays this week, and if he's not a hundred percent healthy and re-injure out for the season, I think that would be an even worse outcome. So I'm really afraid of that happening. But I think, yeah, I like what I saw from Powell, very limited sample size. But yeah, about Shilts, I agree with Evan. I think I was ready to say that this is his team going forward. I think he played well for three weeks in a row and I think that unfortunately this is the story with his career. He gets a few starts here and there and then he gets injured. And I think that's the unfortunate fact. You can't be surprised by it. I don't think the TCATs are surprised that he got injured just being kind of a thinner bodied quarterback there. But yeah, just hopefully one of these two guys, Beau or Shilts is ready to go for some point in the near future because it's going to be very hard to win with third string quarterback and Taylor Powell. I mean it'll be interesting to see a Hamilton Ottawa match between Powell and Dustin. I believe that's who the TCATs play after the Elks. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see how they navigate this quarterback room going forward. And yeah, again, Tyre McAllister's played really well for this team. I think he's the exact player that this team has needed, has bought a lot of speed to this offense. They don't have a lot of that outside of Tim White, so I think McAllister's going to get even more work in the offense going forward. He had an another dynamic kick return in this one and I believe it was called back, probably one of the best you'll see all season, but unfortunately, like I said called back. But yeah, the TCATs played pretty well on this one. It's good to get a couple wins on the board, but I don't take too much from it because it was the Elks. Yeah, I mean to me and Evan talked and them getting Butler back into it, this looks like a more normal stat line here. 10 of 17, they had Crumb was like 26 of 42 or something. I mean you need to give these guys, you can't expect Crumb to throw that many times to play yet. Get Butler moving here. They're talking that they came off the bike a couple weeks ago. Now we're trying to, we're getting away maybe from the old June Jones style of all this stuff. The other thing I just with Cornelius and the Alex, I just don't know how you can be benched here, like consecutive weeks like this and continue to play. Taylor isn't pulled for injury here, it's pulled DE's in and the announcers are like, well if Dey succeeds, he immediately almost threw the interception coming in I had here as well. Yeah, if Dey succeeds, he immediately takes a sack. I had the house call here by McCallister, called back for the penalty flag. And then I guess my last thing was there's all this made of the Chris Jones contract and it's been reported it's like four consecutive years or it's one contract over four years. I mean Jason, it's so weird how hamstrung I saw even Gary Stern trying to talk about, well maybe the teams could buy out this and we could, they could pay off the penalty over years trying to figure out how to get out of this contract with Chris Jones. It's really weird. The whole football operations cap is just a real hindrance to that team right now. It's limited to the amount of coaches that they can have on staff, which is obviously a huge disadvantage. I think the TCATs, I believe have the biggest staff in the league versus what the Elks are throwing out there. I think Jones does the defensive coordinating duties, obviously head coach and GM as well. So that's a lot of responsibility, a lot of hours to be asking to put in for a guy that's with three very important positions. So I mean I think that has definitely been a factor that's contributed to their demise here. And I think that in terms of the quarterback position, like I said, I don't know what they do. I would start Tray Ford, but my thoughts on that. Yeah. Evan, anything else on this game here? I have my little ramp before we get out of here. Yeah, I mean start Tre forward. Start the chant. I think that's what I'm going to leave it on. What do you got here, Jason? You've got Argos coming in. How are you feeling here? Argos at home? I think it depends on the quarterback position. I think that the tie Catts have beaten the Argos in the past couple years, a couple of times at home. I mean, I did a video a couple weeks ago about how the Argos have generally dominated the TCATs over the past three, four years here. But in general they usually, when they win, it's usually at home against the Argos. So I wouldn't be too surprised. Shilts was actually the only quarterback to beat the Argos last season. So if he's able to go, that would be huge. But again, don't want to rush anybody back from the injuries. Not overly concerned about one game, especially in terms of the greater context of the cfl. But it's going to be interesting now with the playoff race kind of tightening up every team at two and three. Ottawa picking up that unexpected victory. Montreal. Oh, Jason looks like he's got a connection. Oh, there you go. Jason, are you back? Oh, There you go. You hear me? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I'm not too overly concerned about Friday's game. I think that the Argos will be favorites obviously, but I think the TCATs probably give them a game and it's going to probably come down to whether or not one of those quarterbacks is healthy for them. Well here we go. Well this is good. This is fun. I have my little rant here. We'll get that. We have our little football talk. Evan likes knowing the feuds of the mark cashier. We've had the Marshall Fergusons and the Codys. All this was just bizarre to me. Like I said, I'm sitting at, we were going to the marine game Saturday night. I pull up CFL plus I pull up the game and I'm watching, I just tweet out, do you believe in miracles here? Whatever. We're get tweet out, go into the Mariner game and the next day I wake up and c l has tweeted out this, repurpose this. And again, this is like, I don't care. This is tsm broadcast, whatever, do whatever you want. But they took the screenshot that I had cropped off of my phone and they tweeted this out and goodnight and it's, I mean it's a screenshot. And I said, what is going on here? And I DM them. I'm like, Hey, what is this year? They're like, oh someone, because this is a common, the point is this is a common trend I've heard like cfl and they don't like to give content creators credit or we're shutting down YouTube channels and kids can't show the recaps, all this stuff. And I said, I put what? I just get confused. Oh no, we didn't know that was yours. Someone else sent that to us. And I'm like, so then someone else said it to you and you didn't get what is happening here. And so we kind of went back and forth and I just said, I don't understand this lack of, we're the cfl, we don't want, we're all in this together, but we don't want to acknowledge people. I've never had any interactions with the cfl Twitter account. I've been covering this league for three years. We're on here every week. I know Jason. Does that just seem like the, am I out on left field here? I just woke up. I was so surprised. It's just bizarre that they use the exact same screenshot that you took. But yeah, it's kind of weird to me. I don't know why the cfl doesn't embrace the people that are giving them free promotion really for the most part. And I think, yeah, nobody's really making too much money off of this. It's really just doing it out of the goodness of their heart. And the league can't even embrace the people that are really trying to help grow the league going forward. So yeah, that's the issue I take for it. I think I totally understand your point, Evan. I, I know Evan is going to negative. Have they told me, they said, what was the word they said? Oh, I have the, because I have the dm. They said we are, we're our content creator strategy more to come. We hear you. So that's what they told me. So I don't know if that means we're going to start an embracing, like Jason said, we, I don't understand that. I woke up very bizarre. So I officially, we are at war with the at CFL Twitter account. Evan, anything else from you? You don't need to comment on this if you don't want to. Anything else from me before we get out? No, I don't think so. But it, it's great to hear about all your feuds as usual. I love that. Well, we can't rest. We can have no rest in our heart on here. But no, I mean Jason, this is, I am not the best or most consistent or smart say ever. I will be the loudest when there's things that I feel passionate about and I do feel passionate about leagues like the X F L and the U US F L and the cfl. We are not the nfl. Like we need to embrace people. Like you said, we were spending hours every week and I'm like, I'm sitting there yesterday, Sunday morning, I'm rewatching the game. I'm taking notes on my phone as I'm running on the treadmill here, a fewing with the cfl on Twitter. So this is done for the love. And I would just appreciate a little bit of like, Hey, we appreciate good job. We appreciate that. Yeah, even the X F L does that. Like, hey, we appreciate you. Thank you. So I don't know. Anyway, that's it from me. Evan, you working on anything coming out or Jason, anything you want to plug before we get out? Not too much. I'm doing that Edmonton Elks losing streak video as you you'll see it'll probably be out either tomorrow or later today. So be sure to check that out on my channel. Having anything else, I've probably got a couple XFL related articles coming up, but nothing too, nothing too serious or extreme. Well, yeah, I'm the rest of the week. I think I have a good show put together. I think Campbell's coming on. And then we got Ben Grant coming on to talk Argos and then I'm working on a special, I don't know if it's going to work out, trying to get a cool XFL interview. We'll see if that works out. If you missed our chat with rest, I thought that was really great last week. He's the director of player administration over at the XFL talking all their stuff. So good episode. Busy summer. Didn't do as well as I would've liked. So if you missed that one, go check that out. We'll see you guys next time. Appreciate everyone and we'll get out of here. Thanks.

Episode 153 - XFL Off-Season For Dummies

Coming up this week on the markcast. Well per Wikipedia, the For Dummies books are a series of instructional reference books which are intended to present non-intimidating guides for readers. New YouTube various topics covered well today on the mark cast, we are talking the xfl off season for dummies. Look at this here talking actual football in the xfl off season. Big show for you today. I've been working on this one for a long time. We have Rush Gilio coming on, senior Director of player administration and officiating operations for the xfl. We are doing a deep dive into the xfl 2024 player acquisition process and what that means for you. By and large, most of the players that we wanted that we thought were the best available signed with us to be frank. And I think part of it is really just, it's not U S F L versus xfl as far as I all things equal. It's our schedule I think is more attractive. And I'm not breaking any news by saying that. I think if you ask most agents and players, they'd prefer our schedule, which obviously is a huge advantage to us in recruiting if that's, you know, what you want to call what we do as part of our job. And then speaking of those showcases we have Pat Rafino, longtime friend coming back on Pat, was fortunate enough to be in St. Louis talking with Russ Brandon, president of football operations for the xfl, getting Pat's thoughts, what did he see at the combine? What are we expecting from the talent coming out of St. Louis? They did it at Missouri Baptist University, which is an N A I A college there. And so many of these Missouri Baptist kids got be a part of this. C A J. See Eric, see Dan, see Mike and all the coaches and PR staff that were there. And for a smaller school to do that for this community out outreach in Missouri. It doesn't get much better than that for me. And then don't think we forgot CFL fans out there. We have Dave Naer TSM Zone coming back on the program. Dave, we are talking everything cfl. Week six. Crazy time here is Macau, Bethel Thompson coming back up north. What is going on in Ottawa? What is going on in Toronto? Big games this weekend should be excited. There's A real issue with the depth of talent at quarterback across this league. The likes of which we may never have seen before. Teams just don't have the margin to turn to the next guy because the next guy is usually unproven or nowhere near as talented as the guy you lost. And then speaking of the Ottawa Red Blacks quarterback controversy here, not really controversy, but more of a dilemma. We have Tim baes, Ottawa Sun coming on, getting all of Tim's thoughts on the Red Blacks and future pivot situation. Should be a good one, like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the mark cast Reed here. Really proud of my Photoshopping skills this week for the thumbnail of the episode. Hope you enjoy that. If you're watching on YouTube, I don't know if anyone remembers those complete idiots guides or such and such for dummies, but I thought that was great. Today we have expert, we're talking with Russ Julio here, everything involved in the xfl player acquisition process and administration. All of the things under Russ's purview here on the show. It should be a good one. I wanted it to be a little evergreen talking. What is the XL looking for here coming into the off season, going into next year, what is Russ looking forward to And the showcases and the combine, kind of everything else. Hope you guys enjoy. Like I said, been working on that one for a long time, since the showcases last year. So hope you guys enjoy my lengthy conversation with Russ. And then like I said, pat Rafino. Pat was at the St. Louis Showcase last Friday talking with Russ Brandon and AJ McCarran was there and Anthony backed in all of that. So kind of getting firsthand accounts from Pat Rafino, everything with the xfl, St. Louis showcase and kind of all of the kind of summer showcase combines everything xfl off season on here and they really appreciate Dave Naer coming on, making time, Dave busy schedule talking about the streak and Edmonton we'll be making fun of. I can't believe Dave Nadler were talking about the Edmonton Elks home losing streak and not talk about Bill Goldberg's 173 match winning streak in W C W back in the nineties. Disappointed with Dave about that but we'll be excited to get his thoughts. Everything cfl. Hey guys, future read here. I just wanted to give an extended plug here. I recorded my normal intro before chatting with Dave Naor. You do not want to miss this. Today we get into the cfl quarterback issues, Dave wants to get rid of the NE list and then we even get an in-office kind of studio tour of Dave Naylor's whole it, it's a whole situation here. Don't want to miss it. Just wanted to make sure I gave proper, proper excitement and plug here for this interview coming up. So hope you enjoy. And then longtime friend Tim Bas here if we're not partying in, we were partying last year, Regina. Now we'll be in Hamilton hopefully for the breakup this year. But talking everything, red Blacks quarterback pivot situation, they call it the pivot up there North, the quarterback position, everything with Tim. Hope you guys enjoy the show. Should be a good one next week. I got to figure out what we're doing. I have a heavy work schedule, we'll figure out what's going on. But for now, please like and subscribe. Get us up to 3,500 subscribers and we'll see at the end next. Well I'm excited and I can tell from the interests I've gotten on social media this week after posting this. People are very excited. We tried to do this last year but there was a lot of league building and everything else. But we're here now. We're in the xfl off season. We have breast gilio here. How are you doing sir? Doing well. Thanks for having me Reid. And I'm surprised people are excited because I'm supposed to be the guy behind the scenes that nobody nobody's ever heard of, which I'm fine in that role. Yeah, well no, people are excited and what I am honestly really excited about is talking to actual football here in the off season because there's a lot of, we do this 365 and obviously we have cfl and everything right now. Exciting times. But I'm enjoying this at your full title here, xfl, senior director, player administration and officiating operations. Quiet everything going on there. But a busy guy like I said, wanted to do this last year. What did you make going through we, we've completed the first year and you've been a part of these AAF and xfl and everything else back in the day. How do you feel like xfl 2023 went? I think it went really well in my area and I hope to stay in my lane as best as I can in this interview is our group, meaning myself, Doug Whaley at the league office, Mark Ross and then the DPPs at the team. And to some extent the head coaches we're to identify the best players in the country or the world who weren't playing in the NFL and attract them to want to play in the xfl. And I think we have metrics to show. I mean I could tell you we did a good job at that but I think the numbers beared out too that we got really good players and I think we put on good football games and that's our goal in my area. And then on the business side, I can't really speak to that but I think having been part of three of these leagues now that it's the best league by far I've been a part of for, if you want to call it spring football, developmental football, startup football. So Yeah, it's interesting. And we've talked and I've, we were at the Arizona showcase and kind of last season and down at the Choctaw what was at the hub, like the Arlington hub announcement, whatever. And I've always said I had no concerns of any kind about the football that was going to be put on the field for the xfl last year this year kind of whatever. It's some of the other things and out outside of your purview that was my concern. I mean we saw the talent that you brought in, like you said DPPs and you guys and running the showcases and doing all that. That was never a concern. And so it did bear out. I think that the xfl, it was a high quality. You feel as though the highest quality of any league you've been a part of thus far. And I don't want to bore the hell out of your audience just throwing numbers at you, but the one I think that sticks out to me the most, again I haven't been through the A f and the xfl 2020 is we signed about 45 I think the number is practice 2022 N F L practice squad put the guys who were on an N F L practice squad in 2022 signed with us 45 of them. And I think in the AAF may have had in the teens like 15 and xfl 2020, we thought we'd get more because the AAF proved that it's for that type of player, the next best guy in the country of the world. It's a place to go to play good football. We didn't get as many as we wanted in 2020. And then this past season in 20 23 45 is a pretty impressive number. And I think we'll just keep growing. We'll grow on that next season. So Yeah, heading into next year goals here, looking into 2024, what are you guys trying to do from a football perspective Side? And another thing we did that it's new, I mean season two a bunch of us have worked in some other leagues and season two is new to us. I mean we planned for it a bit in XFL 2020 and then it never happened and now we're here And the first thing we did as you know and you covered it, was the rookie draft which we want to make part of our yearly cycle, which we plan to be here a long time and every year we want to have that rookie draft after the season of the best players who didn't latch onto an NFL team after many camps and so on. And I think I have to give credit to our DPPs because in short order we finished the season, they have work to do during the season. They had to evaluate probably upwards of 500 rookies in about a month and how these guy old, they're not old but the scout scouts are about being meticulous about film study and everything. So I think they did a great job on identifying those players. And part of it for us too is where we have to recruit them. I mean we're drafting them but we also have to get them excited about signing on and that they have a roster spot and managing the rosters. And I'm sure we'll talk about that in later in the interview. But that rookie draft I thought was pretty exciting for us to get new players who younger players to be frank. Although if you look at our rosters, we don't discriminate. We have longtime vets and rookies and really we had draft eligible players 2023 draft eligible players on rosters this year too. So Well and what I like in, we had the inside the lead call and doing things like that with you and Doug doing obviously this interview, what I like about it is the transparency of being able to see why you guys are doing things the way that you are and you set on the call, we wanted to do the rookie draft now kind of give people a sense, hey we're coming into the summer and if you're not on a camp, what am I going to do with my time? And I think fans of the league and obviously players want to be a part of that, just really appreciate that transparency, which I do not think we get the same level of that from the U S F L. So I will say I like credit to you and Doug and everyone, whatever came about making those decisions to do that, I would just give kudos cause I think that that helps let people know what's Going on. Are you baiting me to say something about, Well no I have a question about, no, I have a question about it but no, I do feel, have you gotten good feedback of that we're being a little bit more transparent with our process and why we want to do Things? Yeah, I mean I think there's just a lot of players that want to play football and there the opportunities and our competitor and us, we are providing those players and it's just a matter of attracting them, recruiting them and giving them a good job to be frank, a good job. I mean we're there if you want to look at it as development to get to the next level, but it's also while they're there, it's a good football, it's a good league and it's a good job for these guys And that's in what we do in operations. That's that's part of our charge. So The one I do have one U S F L question on here and then we'll get into all the f l kind of numbers and combines and everything, the comments at the end of the season from your good friend here, I assume Darryl Moose Johnson talking about hey we're baffled and radians and all of that. But the interesting note about it was there was no real critique of the xfl or the U S F L from a football standpoint. All of moose's comments were like, well our production value's better and we have Joel Klatt so that makes it better. Obviously you, you're peeking over the curtain here over the fence in the yard. What did you think of the US L'S product or how they're handling things versus how you guys are Well I'll start with say, I mean he's one of the best guys I know and I've worked with Tim in the AAF and the XFL and he's as good of a guy as he seems on camera. I love moose. Yeah, I mean I don't know much about production and I don't know how that moves the needle. I mean our partner is ESPN as when I turn on the tv I watch sports, baseball, basketball, football and I go to ESPN and go from there on my dial. So I don't know if that's a knock on espn, I can't comment on that. But about the players, again, like I said in the beginning, our job was to identify the best players and to recruit them and attract them to the league. And I think by and large most of the players that we wanted that we thought were the best available signed with us to be frank. And I think part of it is really just, it's not U S F L versus xfl as far as all things equal. It's our schedule I think is more attractive. And I'm not breaking any news by saying that I think if you ask most agents and players, they'd prefer our schedule, which obviously is a huge advantage to us in recruiting if that's what you want to call what we do as part of our job. So I mean that it, it's still up for debate now even as we're going through and obviously the second season of the US F L here in what is the better time of year. And I think when it came out in the U S F L at U, we were kind of reading into all that last year and yeah, we're going to go right into camps and kind of all that and then we saw the reality of that and I think having this breathing room coming out from April and being able to get into the camps earlier and latch on, I do think is a benefit for the xfl now having lived through the calendar cycle. Amen. There you go. So coming into this season, are any updates to player contracts, anything in terms of if any pay benefits, any changes has? Yeah, Well we're still working through as you you know may have covered it and we talked about it inside the league, our rosters have been increased to 90 and that's really, I mean we have players under contract that finished the season last year on the active list in Ninja Reserve who are under contract for the rest of the calendar year. And then the new players who we add are technically the rights to those players. The team we're seeing the laity league, so the players will sign with the league and their rights will be assigned to a team so to speak. And so right now we're just in the process. Our teams more so than me of managing those roster spots and how many players, we brought 70, 75 or so players to camp last year. And so it's just a matter of managing the players that are going to come back from the 2023 season to camp in 2024, the rookies that we added to rosters and then combine players and then the NFL players who were released after Labor day. So right now I think we're in roster management mode, the teams and the coaches and from the league level we asked about the contracts we're working, we're finalizing those now and we'll probably start signing players sooner. I'm not going to give you an exact date but sooner than later. So Do you expect any changes to benefits or pay or anything like that? No, I think there's pretty much been established for spring football and so we'll be competitive in the marketplace and I think the decision to play where you're going to play, whether it be and haven't talked about the CFL and I have a lot of respect for them up there as well. So how players make that decision. I think in these leagues it's probably not so much about the financials, it's probably other when all things being equal. So In terms of the teams we're signing players over the summer, managing those rosters and then obviously with the upcoming the supplemental drafts and all of that in the fall, how are teams doing in terms of managing that? Is there going to be enough space for these teams to be able to bring Yeah, that's on the team, that's the teams having to manage it, them team by team and I mentioned our yearly cycle and I think we start now again this is year two is new to us but the rookie draft which we'll do every year and then we go into our showcases and combine and I think that's how we differ from the, the NFL obviously has a rookie draft. The access to our league is different and probably for our competitors too is where it's a little bit more accessible and opportunities and they're not quite open tryouts but we're players and there's a ton of, I mean like we said last year there were 1800 players on a waiting list to go to a showcase. This year every showcase is full to capacity and so that we'll evaluate those players and then into the NFL camps we'll evaluate the players on the bottom of rosters in the NFL that don't make a practice squad after labor day. So, oh sorry, I'll finish. So we'll have a draft. Unlike last year we had a big draft if you want to call it, when we drafted 60 some players and then had a supplemental draft, we had the rookie draft now we we're going to have an NFL plus combine participant draft in early October and then we'll have a supplemental draft in December right before we go to training camp for players that weren't available then. So, and that I think is pretty much, it makes sense for us to do that on a yearly basis where people in the football world our calendar and how we're adding players to rosters. In terms of this, it came out I think last week this IFL combine with the XFL any, do you have any details about that or how many players? It's in August I guess. I Don't know. I talked to their commissioner a week or two ago. It's around their championship game in Vegas in August I believe. And it's going to be, I'd imagine their top players from their league that can make it to Vegas and will work out for some xfl personnel. So has that, depending on who you ask or it's been varying like oh this is the IFL partnership and all that. Has that proved dividends so far in your mind this ifl? Yeah, I mean again it's opportunities. So we brought like I said, 75 players to training camp and we cut down to 51 and that's 24 guys per team or more that were out of football and some of them landed in other leagues including the I F L. So I think helping them to identify some of our better players to maybe attract them to that league and then it works both ways so the better players they had in their league will work out and we'll have access to that workout. So I'm sure it could grow from there but it's the early stages of a partnership. How many spots are left for the combine here coming up? The one in the Big combine, is it pretty full now? Because I know there was a lot of, I guess St Louis had a lot of invites being sent out. Like I said, we had Pat on the show talking about that And DC too. I hadn't go to the DC combine but people, again, we've been, people like me who've been in the AAF and xfl have been to a lot of showcases over the years and they said it's the best talent that DC showcase was the best talent they've ever seen in one of these leagues. So I think we're getting pretty close to the, there'll be 200 players at the Arlington combine a hundred on offense and a hundred on defense. So That's interesting. What do you attribute that to the DC one show? I mean I know you weren't there but is it just location or now that people I Don't know. Yeah, I mean a lot of times, yeah I, there's know if it's one thing you can attribute to a lot of times location, you know go to hotbeds of football whether it's in places in Texas, Florida, the DC area. So it's probably part of that, partly that it's maybe players think that it gives 'em a legit opportunity to make an xfl roster and so it's worth, they have to put some skin in the game to go to a showcase and they're willing to do that. So Do you think having made it through season one now, is it something as well kind of the U S F L was talking about we got to get through, do you think that that's attributing now, hey okay now we've made it, you know guys have made it, we're going into the year two. Is that increasing I guess from players? Yeah, I like I mentioned earlier that 45 number of practice squad players from 2022, I mean those are players who are an injury away from dressing in an N F L game and they maybe turned down a future deal to come play because of the opportunity to talk about it on a macro level. Each one is a case by case. Some players it's better option for to go and play in spring football in between practice squads and some of it's better just stay with the team. Yeah and the other one I mentioned earlier that I think is going to be something we could build on in 2024 is draft eligible players. So we had Willie Taylor, I don't want to mention too many players by name cause I don't want to leave people out but Willie Taylor was a draft eligible player in the 2023 N F L draft and he signed with the xfl, he played at Washington State up your way and then he played his graduate school year at Eastern Kentucky and then signed in the xfl and then signed with the Jaguars right after the championship game. And we had one other player like that, Harrison Frost, the quarterback from West Georgia and he hasn't signed in the NFL but he went to the Saints mini camp and so I think we could identify more of those players that it makes, again, it's make sense for every college player to finish their season and go to the X ffl but hopefully for more and more of them it does and we find the ones who can do it, I mean that are are football players that it's not too much wear and tear on their body and so on and so forth. So In terms of the combine, are those the attendees list, are those going to be made public or is it going to be, because I know last year going into the draft and stuff we didn't want to put out all the different stuff we've seen kind of people posting about getting signed to the Yeah, I don't think same as last year. I think I mentioned to you, I mean if we put out certain lists in our draft to some extent as a list of the players who we think are the best and why would we give lists when we don't have to our competition, although the draft is an exception because I think we want, part of it is we want the players to feel like they're part of the team. So In terms of quarterbacks here, quarterbacks being drafted in the rookie draft, are we going to be assigning any more quarterbacks or is it kind of free market now? No, from Here on out we will be drafting quarterbacks whether it be in the rookie draft, the NFL draft or the supplemental draft. That's interesting on the, Can I say that with the caveat? I mean the nice thing about working in spring football and I worked most of my career in the NFL where you have a constitution and bylaws and I mean we're more flexible so depending on circumstances that may change, but how we see it is that quarterbacks would just be included in drafts going forward. On the ITL call I brought up a little bit about the alumni academy. Any updates on that or is it still kind of T B D? Yeah, I think it's T B D, I mean they're their own entity and we partnered with them I think as far as we would sign graduates of their program, so I guess it's T B D, if they have a program, we'll talk to them about the players that they have there. To me it feels like, and you don't need to comment or it feels like maybe last year we weren't sure how much interest there was going to be. We're going to cast in net where maybe now you guys know, okay, we have interest from all these different facets and maybe we don't need to have direct partnerships with anything like that. I don't know if that makes sense at all. Yeah, I mean no comment. I guess that's fair. I haven't even thought about real. I mean we're inundated I guess and you want to give everybody the attention that they deserve but I mean you can't imagine how many players there are out there that want to play and that's that I think as a football person that's been in football my whole career and I love football that I think that's good for the game. Any updates about breakaway data using any of their help coming forward into the showcases this year? I don't know enough about that part. That's our tech side. I'm not sure about that. I know we have some innovative, innovative, innovative things going on at the combine with through Sean Hayes is our director of, I'm going to say stretch the head stretch and conditioning. I think he has a bigger title than that but he has some innovative testing that he'll be doing at the combine. Intro we just saw Anthony Blevins being brought in here as the Vipers coach. Thoughts on that? What kind of stands out to you about him? I think it's a great hire. I mean that you have a sitting NFL coach that's willing to leave to come and coach in spring football says a lot about maybe the stability in our league and the opportunity that obviously, I mean that's the obvious thing is opportunity and I hear and there was a lot of interest in that job, which I think also speaks well for our league. I don't really know and I'm not part of the coaching search process, but I've only heard good things and it's exciting. Well there's been a lot of that came out last week when I was working I think I was at a wedding and there there's been a lot of positive, I even have here an athletic article talking about that as well where Yep, I'll say sorry, I thought so Again, I don't want to harken back too much to my aaf but with aaf where you would never have a Heady CO or a coach in the NFL leave his job to coach and the aaf, I think we did a good job in standing up the league from a football side and playing the game. But that was, and who doesn't love Steve Spurrier and Rick New Heel and coaches like that, but that was our market is like let's find guys who've been a few years out that are not going to are semi-retired to now we have active f l coaches leaving their job to coach in the xfl says a lot about our league. So It does talking here and we've had Coach Buck on a couple times on the show. I call him a friend of the podcast now. He mentioned at the end of the season he didn't realize kind of a balance between building a roster to be competitive as also being developmental, right? It's the xfl. We're always kind of balancing that and their team kind of struggled a little bit if I want to say a little bit, but have you seen growth from him or Heinz War kind of any of these first year coaches in terms of trying to get new players in different roles now I guess, if that makes sense. I don't know enough about, that's also not my area. I think they're exciting that to see how they run a team. I've been around football forever, how serious they take their job and the craft and that they're leaders of men and they're obviously learning to be head coaches and this is a great spot for them to do it. I think they have what it takes, that intangible thing that takes to lead profession. These are to lead men like I said. So I think they have that. I think they're learning and there's an administrative, the head coaches part of it, they're not the GMs per se, but they're involved in the football operations and player personnel. So they have a lot on their plate and that think they both did a really good job of managing all that. So How do you just personally view, because it's this constant thing if we want to have a place for guys to get that step to the xfl or to the nfl, right and all of that, but also this needs to be good football and kind of stand on its own. I mean it can't just be recycling. How do you view that? I've thought about that and I love going to minor league baseball, especially AAA baseball. I've been to three or four different stadiums this past year and it's just what we're doing is just different. I mean you want in stadium experience is great at those places and I think we have some of that where it's an event, it's a fun, it's a family thing, but I, these people are, and I think they're trying to win in minor league baseball to some extent, but I mean in the xfl, they're trying to win games and the coaches, it's the cliche, they're coaching for their life and their career and the players they want to get to the NFL and develop. But football is just a different, and I grew up, my dad's a longtime high school baseball coach. I played college baseball, I grew up in a dugout, but it's just a different game. I mean there's 10 foot in our league, there's 10 games a year and they're important and it's when they kick off the ball, they're not thinking about development, they're thinking about winning the game and I think that makes it a different product to put on tv. And again, I, that's outside of my scope, but that's more just my opinion on what our league is about. So In terms of back in 2020, the team nine, having that be able to be able to cycle through with injuries or at least be able to increase the number of active roster spots. We had Jonathan Heimbach on kind of talking, Hey, what's your wishlist going into the next year? Any consideration about team nine or more active? Yeah, I mean I think we'd all, it's a beneficial thing but we're a business here so I think, again, I'll go back to AAF and other experiences in startup football. I think we have a good relationship and dialogue from finance between the finance side and the football side of what do we need to make this a good product and we'd love to have a team nine or something like that. But there's some things we just realistically from a business standpoint we can't do and in the pecking order that just wasn't high enough to keep it. So In terms of Jordan Palmer coming in and maybe more limited interaction last year, any chance of increasing that or what are players going to get? Any of the quarterbacks working with him this year? Yeah, I'm not sure about the Doug Whaley manages that relationship and partnership. I'm not sure, I think he is back this year, but I don't know the details of that program. Did you take away anything from that worthwhile beneficial? Again, I don't want to that, what's the old adage? I'm not a doctor, I just play one on t. I don't even play a scout on tv, so I don't know, I, I'm sure it was beneficial. I mean guys working out in the off season with a guy with Palmer who works with the top quarterbacks in the nfl, it couldn't have hurt but I wasn't there, I didn't go out there for the program and I'm not a scout so I couldn't speak to the specifics of it. That's okay. In terms of training camp this year when they kind of had the great Texas ice storm and everything last year, that kind of invaded part of that. How's training camp going to look heading into the season? I think it'll be similar. I mean having gone through it a year and we're all, we're right now in planning process with different departments around the league, so I think having a year under our cap will help, but it'll probably be pretty, I mean foot training, football training camps are pretty similar anywhere behold them. So I know it's probably outside of your purview, but local training camps and in cities who I think would be beneficial in terms of a public PR spectacle as well. So just something to keep in mind. That's fine. We've talked at great length and I think this was on the TL call as well, about the bye week and what are we doing with the bye week and we've talked about do we do a March Madness bye week or rolling by thoughts on the bye going into this year from a football standpoint, I think that is, that's a broadcasting decision and an ownership decision. I'm sure it's on the table. So that's all I know about. Would you prefer to see at a different time than pre championship game, Whatever makes the most sense for our business? Again, you probably know more about that part of football as far as broadcasting and ratings and things, so I'm sure they'll make the best decision that In terms of anything about kind of injury reports, anything, are you able to speak on that in terms of being able to get those sent out for more of the people doing fantasy sports betting, anything like that? Yeah, I mean as far as, I don't know what the criticism, I mean those were supposed to be avail available. Were they hard to find? I Think the feedback was having the team post them individually as opposed to emailing them out to a select few and then having them be propagated that way through Social media. I think that's an easy fix and we would do whatever it was mean. Injury reports, I mean I've been at the nfl obviously they're important, they're important in football and if there's gambling on football, they're critical and there's nothing to hide there from us. So I think whatever is the most efficient way to do it, do it. Yeah, because it's the same with the depth charts. And I know that some weeks are, maybe there were some inaccuracies or we had maybe more copy and paste and we're seeing, okay, this guy's listed but he's on the injury report and this goes for all the leagues, it's not just an X L thing, U S F L and cfl. It seems like everyone knows that we need to embrace sports betting or fantasy or whatever, but then well what does that mean? And having Andrew report sent out having accurate depth charts and things, again, I know this is outside of your, but passing along messages here. I think in terms of, but I will say from all of the fantasy people I've interviewed on the show feel like transparency for the xfl was better between the two. If that's any Solid, that's good to hear. And I mean there's not really trying to hide anything, so I'm sure it's more of a process thing than a transparency issue. In terms of if anyone, and we'll wrap up here soon, I appreciate it. I know, I promise you this time here won't keep you too long. If any other players, agents, people wanted to get involved in this, wanted to have their info sent out, wanted a place to go, what are you guys telling people to do right now? Yeah, we've all, I mean the easiest way for us to manage that is they send their information to fbo@xfl.com F football operations f Frank boy Oliver, and we have people aggregating the player information. So we have a database that here's players that are interested in their information and I mean again, we have scouting departments of one per team and we try to help them more from the league office side on managing data on players. But like I said earlier, we want to give everyone the opportunity to make the league. I mean it's different than the NFL in that regard where you could go to a showcase or send your information in and we'll take a look and we want to turn over every stone and find, I'll, let me think of a few more cliches, find diamonds in the rough and things like that. From just a personal standpoint here, having lived through all these other things, did you ever think you'd be at the point here, we're talking spring league season two, going in off season player acquisitions here? I always believed in it and I start, when I started at the N F L was right around when N F L Europe, it was still going, but it was toward the end of that program. And the football people always lamented that we lost something with N F L Europe and obviously it was a business decision and there was that void there for years and between the AF was probably the first one to seriously fill it. I know there were some other leagues and then so yeah, to answer your question, I've always believed in it and this is just like I said at the beginning of the three that I've been a part of the best because of the ownership group, the experience we have in all areas of football business and the player. I mean players and co, the game is about players and coaches and I think we keep getting better players as we prove that a good, like I said, it's a good job, it's a good opportunity for players and coaches and officials for that matter since that's part of my title. Well Russ, I hope you didn't feel like I grilled you too hard today. I thought we got through some good stuff. Anything else from you before we get out of here? No, I appreciate what you do. I think that your objective and you know, have journalistic integrity, but obviously you're a fan too. So I think you give us good coverage and you keep us honest and call you it. You see it when you don't, don't agree with what we're doing so Well. I appreciate it. Like I said, the league and everyone else for working this out in the off season talking real football here at Russ. Julio, really appreciate your time coming on this week and everything else. Good luck with the showcases. I know like you said, you're going to Arizona and everything else, so we're no off season here for the Mark has and no off season for the xfl, so I think that that's good. That's right. All right, thanks ez. Well I put on my best. This isn't the Flo, it's kind of floral, it's like a tiger and flowers on there so I can match my guest Today we have Rafino back on here, founder of Creative Arts. Pat, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I think next time I have these mannequins and I'm going to casting couch behind me all the mannequins with my flamboyant shirts. That's good. That's good. I like it. So Pat's here, we've had Russ on, we're talking kind of off season scouting, what's the XL doing? We're in showcase season combines at the end of the month. Pat was lucky enough to go to the St. Louis showcase there and talk with Russ, Brandon and kind of everybody else. AJ McCarran popping around. So Pat, what do you have going on Busy week for you last week? Yeah, I mean I'm still pushing out videos on my phone that I took and all that goofy stuff. Doing a lot of editing right now. But in the end some of the guys from the xfl that I did talk to were AJ McCarran, Eric Magwood, Anthony Beck, Russ Brandon and Steven Austin as well. And if you don't know who Steven Austin is, he's kind of a background guy, but he runs the A N C combines and he works in collaboration with the xfl, but he's also done the spring league, he did the aaf, he's done stuff for the cfl and he was integral in the U U S F L of the 1980s getting a lot of those guys back to work after the league folded because the combines have been ar, his involvement in the combines have been around since about, I think he said 87 or 88. And he was also the guy who started the regional combines. So he's kind of an unsung hero in this and I was really lucky I got to talk with him as well. Well it's interesting. So we're going through, right, we lived through the U S F L off season last year. What are they doing now? We're in the U S F L and the xfl off season. Interesting. It feels like the xfl trying to be a little bit more, hey we're in the spotlight a little bit. We had our, what was it? The rookie draft? Yeah. That were having these showcases. I thought it was great that Russ was at the showcase, talked with you. Max and I were going back and forth. It's good that it's good that Russ is at this. It's good that he's, we're kind of making these be a thing. I've been getting a lot of media alerts for the showcase. Are you liking how the X FFLs approaching their off season? Yeah, I mean for me it was a great experience on both fronts. So it wasn't open to the public, but they had a tailgate there and Dirty was out there from the ex fan show. He was his thing. And it was great to see a lot of people with family members there as well coming out to support them. And the xfl was like, well it wasn't open to the public, but if some guy's bringing his girlfriend here, what are we going to do? Tell her to weigh in the car. So they let them stay in the stands. A couple of xfl players were there as well. Dan Williams of the Orlando Guardians was there. He was with Mike Glass formerly of the cfl Montreal Ette. So you had guys who were in the professional space from St. Louis coming out, the support, a prominent St. Louis agent from Harold Lewis was there checking in on his guys, looking for possibly new guy guys coming out there. And overall just the vibe of positivity for a lot of these hopefuls. And I think 16 is the number that got brought in to this. Now we have 16 more guys who are getting an opportunity to be a part of this combine that's happening I believe on the 25th or 26th. So we have here, we had the H B C U one, so these went back kind of mid-June right after the rookie. Yeah, the rookie draft, the Atlanta, we had St. Louis on the seventh, DC on the ninth. And then this weekend we're going to have the Houston one and the Arizona one. And then you have the combine back down at Chatta you said. So 16 of the showcase went in. Who are, what was your vibe of who these are specifically targeted for? Because there's been a lot of confusion and we've talked with Russ as well about this, but we have the rookie draft that's for guys that are, we're draft eligible are on the team, but then you have guys like, hey, well I graduated two years ago or maybe I've been a free agent for a while or I was in the U S F L or so who is this showcase for? So for the second PA part of what you said, interesting enough, we did have some guys there who were recently with Canadian teams or contracts didn't work out. There was two guys, I forget one of the gentleman's name, but the other one was Bernard McCall. He was there, they were in camp, but the defenders, I'm pretty sure they were with, I know McCall was with the Defenders. I think the other gentleman was as well. We had some guys from the class of 22 that were there. Johnson was there, he was a Mizzou guy, finished up at Valdo State. And then there were smaller school, a lot of smaller school prospects there. One gentleman, his name was, I think his name is Luke Hoffman, he went to KU finished at West Texas a and m. He ended up getting an invite and then another name was, he was from Missouri State or something like a real one of those Northwest Missouri State University of our lady type places. He got an invite. And this gentleman, man, he was a man amongst boys, I think he's two years removed, but from a smaller school he was about nine, 305 pounds. And Dave Bowler, who was also there, was all over this guy wanted to see him and talk with him and whatnot. So it was a lot of these guys who maybe had some movement in their colleges and whatnot. A lot of guys who were serious players. And then there was some guys that were saw it on TV and thought, Hey man, let me give this a try. One guy I wanted to give a shout out to, and I don't believe he got a combine invite, was a guy named Luke Drone. Luke Drone is 38 years old. He played with the bills in 2008 and then from 2009 to 2013 played in the afl, the Arena Football League won. And he came out there, he's coaching high school football in western Illinois. I think it's El Paso, Illinois. And I mean mechanically he looked good. He just, you're 38 years old throwing this football. It's things if P and Manning had a drop off, so would Luke drone. And it was cool that he just gave it that shot. And he's a great story. Not the most polarizing guy, but there were some players out there man that got overlooked. And there's some guys who are fresh off Canadian roster or Canadian training camp that were there. And then there's some guys who are kind of like, hey man, what's going on here? But overall 200 and almost 7,260, I think the number was between that range getting an opportunity. And the most important thing in my opinion was that they did it at Missouri Baptist University, which is an N A I A college there. And so many of these Missouri Baptist kids got be a part of this c aj, see Eric, see Dan, see Mike and all the coaches and PR staff that were there. And for a smaller school to do that for this community outreach in Missouri, it doesn't get much better than that for me. And it's also with the coaches were also there as well being a part of this. And they did have some game days staff working as well. Well, I'll say this and Andy and I had our big, like what should the xfl do? You know, charting the course for the off season I think is what we called it. And we were talking about some of this stuff and here I've seen a lot of content be posted on social media. We're doing the jerseys that are for sale. I mean take or leave that, but we're U S F L. It does feel like, and we're two weeks removed from the championship game now really drops off. And obviously you're never going to be full steam with these spring leagues in the summer, right? I mean N F L has enough money to churn and burn and they're even have talent N F NFL network, like the panels are, hey, we got the main guys are off right now, we've got the backups or whatever. But doing these events and doing the rookie draft when they did it not in February, we criticized the college draft of the U S F L, doing these showcases, having the combine. I just think you're giving these guys that maybe don't have, what am I doing right now? It gives you a sense of purpose of like, all right, I can look forward to this. I can build to this kind of throughout the summer because next thing you know it here we're going into the drafts and it's December, we're in the xfl, like official preseason where U S F L, you're going to ramp back up in March and you're going to say, Hey, we signed some people in the off season. I feel like it makes it more transparent than just seeing transaction notes on Twitter from the U S F L. Hey, U S F L general signed a release to whoever or McCaw, Bethel Thompson is released from the Breakers. I dunno if that makes sense. I would like to see the U S F L do something similar and therefore and their four hubs. I think you could that and I think after probably the second week on a Saturday, maybe in Memphis, in Detroit, in Birmingham, I would probably do it on a Friday now that I think about it because you have college football going on. But I would do that, I would do a similar showcase in those cities in September as after NFL camp because then the chips are kind of lying and you don't even have to do 'em. Like how the XFL is doing 'em back to one on this Friday in September to October. It's still good enough weather to be outside, especially in the south. And if I'm St. Louis Guy, if it's in Memphis, I'll go, you give me, you don't do it the day before. Would you give me a week to move around? I'll go to Memphis and go to this. It was such a great experience for media to be there and be a part of it. And I know the U S F L was working with the hub and the hub's been discontinued and now it's these grid camps and everything like that. But just having in Memphis make fun of it all the time. But Brady White being there, you know what I mean? He's going to be there. He is coaching and whatnot. That would be pretty cool. And there's a couple other Memphis guys around having a couple of the Detroit guys like around and whatnot. They, Michigan Panthers have a couple Detroit, they have Brian Luki there, he's a Michigan, I think he's from Ohio. But having any of these guys there, plus the coaches and staff, you can pick up a lot of talent because now you're getting all these CUSP guys from the xfl combine who are maybe didn't get signed. Now they're going there too. And now you're creating more of this football wars and whatnot for talent because there's guys who went to this combine or who are going to this combine that even if they're not drafted or signed, they will have an opportunity at some point with either one of these leagues. Yeah, I wasn't it last year, there was the rumors, Hey, they were going to do some, I don't know if it was a combine or OTAs, they were going to do 'em in the cities to get the people. None of that came to fruition with the U S F L, right? I mean it really was radio silence until ramp up period. And we're going into the third season, the 2024 season, they're talking and about this, the walk, the crawl walk, run, let's get walk. I would love to see that. And maybe they're doing that. Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse and I'd love to, and I'd love, like I said, if they did something in Memphis, I'd love to be a part of it. It's a decent drive for me, but it's worth it because you're going to be around a lot of these people and a lot of these players who are living their dream. And to do that takes, as agent McCarran said, a lot of courage to go out there. Are you finding, because this podcast has existed in this with the Spring league and fan of football and all this stuff, the post covid and there was this surplus of guys that we, we've had the seven year seniors and all this stuff coming in. Are we getting to the point now where we are going to have to deep dive to find new guys? There was such a surplus there for a while, Man. I mean think that depends on who you are. The GM is, right? I look at the battle hawks specifically, and you look at their roster and there was a lot of AAF retread. There was a lot of guys who retreaded from even the U S F L and whatnot. Like Dave Bowler was, Dave Bowler was an AAF guy. Anthony Beck was the tight ends coach for the fleet, Andy's fleet. And when you're starting these leagues, in my opinion, and I've talked to a couple us of L coaches about this last year, why would you not sign a guy who might he? Yeah, maybe he's older, but I know who he is, I know what his deal is because I can go sign maybe someone who has more potential, but potential is great. I need someone who was in camp at the Cowboys. I need someone who played in the AAF or the X FFL in 2020 at that time in the Spring league who might not be as good, but I know he could show up to meetings. I know he could learn the playbook. So when we have these off seasons, I think it's going to expand our, it could expand our catch, so to speak, of players that you might want to take a little bit more of a look at. Especially with roster expansion as well going into training camp. It's just going to be interesting to see how you're going to, you got to have gaps to fill in no matter what it is where guys decide, Hey, I'm done. Or guys go up to Canada or guys go to the NFL or guys go to the US F l. There's so much churn that you're going to live with in these spring leagues. And so it's this balance of do these seams even resemble what they do? I mean I felt like the U S F L, it felt like there was continuity, right? I mean you feel like then they either lived up to it or not. But I felt like we went into season two at least knowing what those U S F L teams were going to look like. And how do people feel about that? I like that. I like knowing that You have to, it's a ity. Yeah. And I like knowing that the stallions were going to be good because it feels real to me. It feels like we're making progress that, for example, Scooby Wright got hurt. Well we can bring in Brady Buck or Quinn polling could fill in and we're not missing a guy who might not be as good as Scooby, but we know the playbook. I know next year, right now for our receiving court, well we lost four guys with the Battle Hawks, right? Well I know Austin Pearls there still. I know Stevie Mitchell is still there. They've had guys that they released that they can bring in as well. Maybe have Chad Hansen or Puka or Pukas on another team, but Chad Hanson could come in the camp and kind of bridge the gap if we don't have these guys coming back right now. And I love that because now it also, and Reid, me, I'm really in the stats and everything like that and yesterday when West Saxton of the generals got reigned, he's coming in for his fifth alt football season, like five years of this man playing football after an N F L Cups of tea in the F nfl. I think he's playing two games in the N F nfl. Luis Perez is going into his sixth alt football season and Jamar summers number five and it's like, this is cool, this is cool that they are part of these leagues and we're going to trickle in some new guys. And I'm sure there's plenty of one and done guys and I mean that's what's going to happen. But the fact that continuity is there, so when you do get these new guys that come in, they can lean on Austin Parole, they can lean on Brian Hill, they can lean on AJ and be like, Hey, this is how we do things in St. Louis or even Jamar in Birmingham because I'm sure he's going to be back next year or I'm not sure. And then you can be, I was the guy here for two C. I've been a part of this team for two seasons. Let me tell you how we do things here. I think that, well, you got I, yeah, that's for, that's what football is like such an, and you can get new coaches, but as long as you have the players that are still there, the haves and the have nots as far as knowing what's going on is going to be a little bit different. Well, because it's this fear and we get people that comment all the time and these teams and leagues and you have to have identities and the cfl deals with that as well. I mean just in their cba they pass last season getting some more guaranteed money and longer contracts as you get in. I think once you're in the year three on that, there's a lot of movement in the cfl as well, not just the quarterback. I mean you get the receivers kind of every year. It's kind of this feeding frenzy of free agency. So it's not just the U S F L or an xfl issue. I mean it's any of these leagues aren't the N F L, but yet you need to have some identities with that. In terms of the showcase, Russ was there, I know you guys talked and you posted the video on your analyze and educate channel thoughts on Russ and what he had to say. I mean the biggest thing he took was the championship game. He's like, first off, one of the things I asked him was now we have the monkey off our back. Now we, we've proven that we can do this and didn't really get into the financials of it. I don't expect them to. It's a hundred degrees out on a football field that's probably going to make it a little bit hotter for that. But it's building up, it's building where it's typical business stuff, man. It's like, okay, we have this, have our baselines. How do we get better? How do we continue to build the day before they did a meeting greet with certain season ticket holders and possible sponsorships as well. That from what I was told, really going out in the community and whatnot and talking with people who are going to be invested in this. Talked a little bit about the championship game, still undecided. I think they should do it in San Antonio personally. I think it's safer. I think there's more fan friendly stuff to do and whatnot. St. Louis would be great only if the battle hawks are in there, but there's really, the city isn't the best city. They'll go walking around. Especially if you want to go from a place like Ballpark Village all the way up to where the dome is. It might not be the best thing, but if the Battle hawks are in there, I could see that being a pretty wild time. Russ talked a lot a bit about how St. Louis is the staple of the xfl and I don't think many people disagree with that. I talk with people about it all the time and we talked offline a little bit about it is with St. Louis, there's so much hurt here from the Rams and Croy, there's so much hurt here from even 2020, which people don't blame the league. They just are like, well this thing's not coming back. I'll watch it on tv. I live part-time in the Ozarks sometimes, which is two hours away. And I had people tell me that they're not going to a game in 2023 because the Ozarks vacation spot. These people live in St. Louis area, but if they come back in 2024, I'm all in because I can't get my heart broken again by another football team. And Russ touched on that a little bit as well. The championship, they have a lot of venues already booked, but they still haven't decided, which makes sense because right now every team is o and o and they could all be winning a, they can all be winning their division and hosting a playoff playoff game in their home city. You mean it's not confirmed for St. Louis yet? I read wild, wild rumors, But no. Well, I mean I don't want to deep dive too much about the championship game here, but I imagine the plan was Choctaw and they had the rugby stuff and whatever going on, and I imagine San Antonio was, to me it makes sense. Just that's where our infrastructure headquarters kind of is. Like you said, San Antonio is the best in terms of you stay at the Riverwalk, you walk over there, there's plenty of hotels, restaurants, bars, eateries, that whole kind of thing. It's built out that way in terms of just, and this is of course Rus Brandon, we're talking about not rest Julio that was on the show. Cause two, Russ is both of high prominence on here. But I hope having Russ at this thing, doing the showcases, having my interactions this week with the league trying to set up all this stuff, I, I'm really excited for this off season because it felt like last year it's like it's such triage and we're just trying to figure out what's going on and we have 18,000 different xfl podcasts that all want to talk and all these news outlets and we're trying to, we're hiring people and it's just kind of chaos I think now maybe. Okay, we really saw what worked, we really saw what didn't. I know a lot was made of the 60 million loss with the Rock and Danny and Forbes and all that, but if nothing else to me it's, hey, they're admitting we made mistakes and there's things we're learning now and the U S F L with moose coming out and being baffled, I think both of these leagues realizing things that could be done better. I think that's promising for both sets of fan bases. Well, I mean if you don't constantly critique yourself and constantly try to get better and reevaluate your business model, you're not going to have a business for very long talking to a guy who's got two failed LLCs. Just because I make an extra $6,000 in month one and month two, I don't make that amount and I only make $1,500 or something arbitrarily like that. If you're not looking at your analytics and you're not wondering, okay, why did I make more in month one? Okay, it's Christmas month, I have a merchandise thing. Or maybe in February I'm not doing as much Valentine's Day stuff. That's why I'm not making that money. If you're not constantly reevaluating, reevaluating and looking at your numbers, your engagements and whatnot, you're not going to be a league for very long. And as long as these two leagues understand that, in my opinion, that it's, and I think know they do. I definitely know Fox does Fox. Fox has been around for God knows how many years. They have plenty of people who are looking at the books and figuring out what works. And I think there's less of a learning curve for them while the xfl is like we don't really know what works and what doesn't because who's there from 2001, the 2020 season that Covid curve ball, no one you know have incomplete data. So they were going probably off a lot of their 2020 stuff, okay, this is what's working, this is what's not. But once you get the year two and three and four and five and six, you could start figuring out what's the best formula. And I think right now these showcases, especially because last year I don't think they did a showcase in St. Louis. Big thing about St. Louis to me is obviously yes, the battle hawks are here. Not a bad shake, but what's around St. Louis compared to these other places? You get your Chicago kids, you get your kids from Illinois or Illinois or Ohio, you get your Kentucky, your Memphis kids, you get kids from Iowa that has a lot of football. Some Michigan guys came down. You have all these different states and cities where football players have put out good products and good films and now you're bringing it here. Everyone knows about it. Atlanta, Leni close to Florida, the d m DMV in DC has put out good products and whatnot for football. A lot of DMV guys. Plus you get your East Coast guys coming down to New York, Texas is Texas and Arizona is, you can pick up all your Cali kids. We didn't see that last year. Now they have St. Louis. They can tap into all these extra people, man. If not, you can go meet AJ McCarran. Everyone knows who AJ McCarran is and he can shake your hand and tell you, Hey man, you did a good thing. That goes a long way with people. It also, it feels like, yeah, we're we, last year they had the Hawaii one and I don't know how much of that was specifically targeted demos over there and I know the rock and everything. That to me felt like a little bit more of a PR thing. Although I know that they said that they were very pleased with the talent they got out of that. Right, obviously. But I don't know. It feels like were learning. I really enjoyed the call that Russ and Russ, Julio and Doug did talking about the rookie draft and everything. I just think hearing these guys and obviously Russ on the show here, hearing how these guys talk and think we're trying to figure this out together. We don't have all the answers, but we're trying to cast away this net leave no stone that turn kind of all those cliches. But it does feel like doing these advertising. I mean they all look like they're sold out. If you get signed, you get your money back. We're trying to give people an opportunity here. And I do think while you did get good guys from Hawaii, it's a pretty small island. So I mean everyone who thought they had potential in Hawaii probably came out last time. So it's like, and their numbers are there. So if you had someone who was under the red line and you're like, oh, I wonder what this John Smith from the U of H is doing. Well, he performed this way, call his agent, they have all the info. Is he still working out this football thing? Could we have him come to California? Can he send me tape? Tape? Doesn't look good. Okay, we don't need to go out to Hawaii. It's a small island. It's, I don't want to use the word fixed population, but it's, in my opinion, you're going to have a lot of the guys who came last year plus or minus a couple guys that if you really wanted them on the team, you'd know who they were. So while I think Hawaii was cool, I'm glad they didn't do it because we got St. Louis, we had, did we get Atlanta last year? I'm trying to remember. They had the, oh, I had 'em listed on here. We had Arizona, we had the whole, I could run down the whole list here, but probably not the most exciting podcasting. Yeah, we had the Dallas one, we had the Arizona one, we had the H B C U one. Where was that one at? That was in North Carolina. And then we had, yeah, so I mean it was good this now I think they had six last year and then they had the Nick, Nick Novak, Nick Novak one on that. So AJ, was there anything from them before we get out of here and like how invested is Beck in the off season because it's different? Yeah, I feel like it's different them coming to this kind stuff than the US F L. We're making some roster moves here in the off season. I Mean he was there, he's in St. Louis, fresh off vacation, had a nice tan going out there and he was looking, he was up in these not, I don't want to say up in guys' faces, but when people caught his eye, he walked over there hands on knees, had the clipboard out. He was pretty active. Dave Buller looking at these offensive linemen. AJ was, AJ was there. A lot of memories were made when I talked to some of these showcase guys, they're like, man, I don't know how well I did, but you're 15 inches away from a national champion, an N F L guy. Everyone knows who AJ McCarran is. The biggest thing with AJ was are you coming back? Are you coming back? Are you coming back? I didn't ask that question because I'm sure he is been asked 15 and a half times. And when my personal interactions were very casual, we talked more about life than life than that. I mean, I don't know if you know this Reid, but these guys are human beings and sometimes they don't want to talk football all the time. Just like I don't want to talk football all the time. So as crazy as that sounds. But big thing to take away from AJ is that no November per what he said. And you can check out my video Reid, I don't know if you want to link him or not. November looks like his timeframe as far as that NFL interest has been had people have reached out to him. Coach Beck was asked about AJ as well, made it very clear he got a guy like AJ McCarran training CAM probably isn't the most necessary thing and you have to look for him. What does he want to do? He can go be a backup. Definitely had offers last year and whatnot. He can go back up, hold the clipboard, make 1.21 2.5, that chase Daniel, that chase Daniel money. But AJ likes playing football. AJ has made a lot of money playing football. If you don't know who his wife is, she's probably made a decent amount of money doing what she did. Let this guy enjoy the off season with his kids. They're full on in baseball right now and around November they'll reevaluate And they got a couple good quarterbacks on that roster. Manny Wilkins and Nick Tiano. Two good guys. And then we'll see what happens after training camp. I think the last time I looked at their roster, it was around either 58 or 66, I can't remember because I don't think I added the guys from the undrafted free agents yet. But training camp comes around in the nfl, good guys are going to get cut. Maybe they rather go to the xfl than play the practice squad game. And we saw a good showing from Nick Tiano last year. So helicoptering and he's healthy, he's training. AJ's talked with him. Manny Wilkins is still there as well. A Dave bowler guy from asu. And worst case we see Vinny Tess Worthy Jr. The son of a New York legend and xfl 2020 alum. So there's options there at the QB position. Well good. Well Pat, I'm glad. Thanks for coming on sharing. I appreciate getting the people on kind of firsthand that are covering this and not just using your work and kind of coming on talking through it. But I appreciate it. I'm glad that they're doing these from a talent finding perspective, from a media perspective and then obviously from you guys being able to go in and kind of talk and rub shoulders and all that stuff as well. So I appreciate anything else from you. It's been a week. We didn't have our U S F L we off at U S FM L here. Yeah, I mean it's been a heavy week for me content wise. I'm just doing a lot of editing. But I mean man, it's always good to come on the mark has and chat it up and talk whichever league we want to talk about. And I don't know man, I'm, I'm really geared up for this CFL season, not watching as heavily, but when I do, it's nice to just casually watch the game and not really be analytical about it. To be honest, I was talking to Dorothy, we were at dinner the other night and I can't remember how it came up. We were talking, oh, because I had booked Russ, right? We were talking, I'm like, oh I'm really excited Russ is going to come on the show and everything. And I'm like, not all these other podcasts really have to do all that. And if the S F L podcast wants to take time off or we've got the XFL and she's like, yeah, you really do do it all year. There's a lot off season. I'm they, yes, we just are all coming about this. But no off season here on the mark as for Pat and I appreciate it. But yeah, xfl keep the content going here. This is good for the summer. Yeah, and like I said, man, you guys do something for the SFL in Memphis. I'll be there You go With a week in advance. Do it tomorrow. And then people will say, why did it go Well? It is your fault if you don't go. That's what I've learned. It's only your fault. It's never anyone else's fault if you don't go. Yep. Well time J jumps here. I was recording with Tim and then we move inside, then we have Dave on Jack hammering my neighbor's patio. We're back on the first time since we had you on the big cfl pre-game show here at Dave Naer. How are you doing? Very well. Very well. Yeah, keeping busy. It's getting to that interesting part of the season where there are pressure points on teams and because teams are starting to see their season slip away, the first third of it in the Canadian Football League, everybody can make a recovery in the second and third parts of the season. But if your troubles follow you to the midpoint, it gets different. And I think good illustration in the Hamilton Edmonton game tonight that Edmonton the streak, the win to start the season, the pressure that's on that organization in Hamilton, which got off the snide last week, losing to Edmonton for them would be a real setback. So it is one of those ones I think where both teams kind of look at it and say, oh my goodness if we don't win this week. And neither of them want to say that publicly, but I think privately that's probably the sentiment. Well I'm all in right now. Very excited. I mean we lived through the xfl and the U S F L. No, Dorothy was saying the other day, she's like, wow, you really are like all year now. Yeah, there's no off season on this, but well this will obviously Air Friday after the game tonight. But I think we can still talk about, because even if the Elks Elks win, I don't think that that gets the monkey off their back. No, but how did you talk about famous sports streaks and not include Bill Goldberg's 173 match winning streak in W C W? I want to know. Well That is wrestling. That is wrestling, right? Sports entertainment, yes. And sports entertainment. That would be the answer to when the results are prescribed. And I'm not a wrestling guy, I'm not a wrestling hater. It's just kind of beyond me a little bit in terms of the appeal. So yeah, I think we're talking about sports where the results are in depth. So there you go. Yeah. So no, yeah, Dave had this big, I watched today, the big streak. Yeah, I mean I guess we can start there on that TCATs really kind of hot mess here. It felt very much like we're going to bring in Aaron Rods, like the jets we're going mar and what have you made with Shilts and everything there? Well, I thought Matthew Shilts looked pretty good, certainly throwing the ball down the field vertically different than Bo Levi Mitchell did. It was interesting, the first one in Mitchell starts, he didn't do it very well and in the second one he hardly did it at all. And again, I think this has reignited the conversation about what is b Levi Mitchell at this stage of his career. And I always say there's two types of injuries in football. There's the type that you recover from and you're back and you're a hundred percent and the type that you never recover from. And it's not always one. Sometimes it's the accumulation. And I think that's the issue with Bole by Mitchell with the number of surgeries, the number of times that he got hit, is he ever going to be able to throw the ball the way he was? And since this has happened in conversations that I've had with people, there's been kind of a look, John Huff Nagel and Dave Dickinson, we're going to put this guy on the curb at 32 if he was still capable of doing what he's doing. I think that's look certainly, did that go off in my head? Yeah, it did. I think the cats took a lot probably off his late game of his late season appearance last year. And you could look back at a Henry Burris who they did a similar thing to and Henry Burris went on and through 40 touchdowns for the TCATs and then ended up winning a great cup for Ottawa. And I think some different circumstances around that one than there really wasn't any concern about Henry's physical status at that time. I think it was more just maybe he worn out his welcome. There was some feelings there that they wanted to move on from him. It was actually, people forget it wasn't moving from Henry to Bo Levi Mitchell. It was from Henry to Drew Tate and Drew Tate, if you look at it statistically, he did some really good things. He just couldn't stay healthy. He is just one of those guys who was four games and down and three games and down and two games and down and just destabilizes a team to such a degree. So yeah, it did feel like that. And look, I think when you look at the way the TCATs tried to build around him, they go and get James Butler from BC and all around back, a team that really hasn't had a feature back in a few years. They get Duke Williams, they resigned Tim White, they did a lot of things to try to give him the targets that they wanted. I like what I've seen in Matthew Shilts. The thing that always, it's a compliment to Matthew Schultz, but it scares me if I was the tie cats is man, he will stand in there and take a licking and I mean he's a tall guy, but he is a bit of a wry guy. He's not really solidly built and his history would suggest that taking those kinds of hits is not sustainable. He's a guy who's played in a relief role two or three games at a time and he's had injuries and things like that. So the first game he started, I was watching that and I'm like, holy smokes. He is getting the ball down the field, but he is paying a price to do it. And as we all have become aware, and Farhan lsi and I taped some stuff on this earlier today, there's a real issue with the depth of talent at quarterback across this league, the likes of which we may never have seen before. Teams just don't have the margin to turn to the next guy because the next guy is usually unproven or nowhere near as talented as the guy you lost. What do you attribute that to? I think there's multiple factors to it. And we actually, it's funny because some of them are obvious, and I'll mention some of the obvious ones, but there's some others that are maybe not so obvious. And look, the two other leagues, right, 50 quarterbacks off the market, that has to have an effect. Even if CFL teams will often say, oh, the guys in those league we wouldn't want. And things like that. That's something you kind of often hear in a refrain. You got the National Football League that has expanded rosters, expanded practice rosters, and most importantly, no limit on the amount of time a guy can stay on the practice rosters. So that takes some other guys out. And that will even keep guys away from the cfl because they know that they've got an eligibility to get onto an N F NFL practice roster, even though they may have veteran status. A couple of it that maybe aren't as off. Look, I think the year the cfl only dressed two quarterbacks, I don't think that helped. And I think getting rid of the, what we kind of called OTA season, the cfl, which was really passing camps. They used to get the offenses together, guys got into the playbook, got their timing down. I was talking to a GM this week who said, look, I'd rather have that than the rookie camps. Give me that a month in advance. Because when guys went away and had that month before they came to main camp, they dive into the playbook, they have some time to digest what they've done. Think about it, communicate with coaches. It was a much better run up to the season in terms of getting your timing down on offense than it is right now where everybody shows up at rookie camp and banger in main camp. And so Farhan and I kind of actually had our favorite kind of, not favorite. We used to pick a kind of an issue that we picked, and Farhan picked a really interesting one. It's the development of the third yard of the short yardage quarterback. Okay? It's almost its own position now. So you used to have your starter and two guys you were developing behind him when Ricky Ray was in Toronto, you had Zach Ro and Trevor Harris behind him. Those were the next two in the hopper. But you look at the BC Lions, their number three is a 33 year old guy who nobody thinks is a starting quarterback or ever going to be Tom Davis. You look at what Winnipeg just signed, Dakota prca. Why? Because he is going to run third down. And it's two things there. It's that. And then also the cfl is running so many more short yardage plays than they ever have because the analytics have come in and told coaches, once you get to second and four, second and three, you don't want the ball moving backwards, just fall forward twice. And Marshall Ferguson did some digging on this late last year when he actually counted the number of short yard as plays in the cfl game. It's way up. It's not an entertaining play. And it's funny that we've got this league where eight of the top 10 touchdown leaders are, or backup quarterbacks. And I poured through the statistics when we had them last year and historically and found that the first three quarterbacks who kind of crop up on that are Drew Tate in Calgary, Alex Brink in Winnipeg, and Adrian McPherson in Montreal around like 10, 11, 12. You start seeing these backup quarterbacks creeping into the leading touchdown leaders. And now it's ubiquitous. And it's funny, it's a trend that hasn't taken hold in the nfl. You know, they still will roll their 40 million guy off tackle on a one yard plunge and maybe someday we'll see it. But right now it has really taken hold in the cfl. And I think that has hurt development of quarterback because you're just not developing necessarily the two guys behind them. You're developing maybe one and the other guy, he's got a role, like a separate position. Here's one of my things. I was actually, I'm going to write a column on this. I may not get it done this week. It may be next week cause I got a bunch of things going on. But the necklace, the average cfl team has between 10 and 12 quarterbacks on their negotiation list. So that's basically a hundred in the league. If you're a team that needs a quarterback, there's 90 quarterbacks that you can't talk to. Now some of them are in the xfl and can't come anywhere. U s FFLs, a lot of them are in college. But you'd still be talking about dozens of quarterbacks that are not accessible to a team with quarterback needs. So the greatest competition for quarterbacks right now is other cfl teams. And I had a GM say to me this week, this GM has an established quarterback who said, look, agents aren't crazy. They're not going to send me a guy who thinks he's capable of playing in this league and being the star because they know who our starter is and they know where we are, where we're at. Whereas Ottawa might be able to use that guy, but he can't because he is on somebody else's list. Honestly, I really of the belief that the list needs to go in its entirety. I think it certainly needs to go when it comes to quarterbacks and people, it's funny because people will think, well why don't we allow teams to add more quarterbacks to their list? These aren't the things that allow you to sign quarterbacks. You can sign quarterbacks without a ne list. These are the things that present other teams from signing quarterbacks. And that's not good for the league. So I would put a restriction and say, Hey, you could protect two guys, but not 12. It doesn't make sense. And I, it goes across the league right now, and again, historically I was looking this up. The NES came in 1957, okay? When the cfl was incorporated as the Canadian Football League, bang, the NES comes in. But in that era there were 12 teams. The National Football League, that's it. That was the competition. If you weren't on one of the 12 teams in the N F L and in those days the salaries between the leagues would've been comparable. So a list was just really a way to prioritize a short list of guys that you wanted to be able to have, but teams could certainly explore beyond that. Now the NE list is 45 players and somebody made the argument to me, the list was also to keep salaries down so you wouldn't get into bidding wars for players when they were coming into the cfl. But we have a salary cap now. And what the CFL did when the salary cap was like in, and we've had a theoretical salary cap for a long time, but we really owned a real salary cap for about a decade. When the real salary cap came in, one of the things the CFL did was expanded the list from 35 to 45. So we've got 360 players, 400 players that are whose rights are protected by other cfl teams. And I think that's an issue in general for players. I think it's an issue for quarterbacks especially. But I think another issue is the league is talk like quarterbacks when you're attracting them, especially going up against these other leagues, need to know that if you hit in the cfl, you can be making between four and $600,000 very quickly. Like what's Chad Kelly going to get paid next year, right? A lot. Yeah, he's going to be a half million dollar guy. So I think there's also an education that the leagues need to do with the colleges, with the college coaches, with all of that. So the guys are aware that this, yeah, it can be a springboard to the National Football League and that's what these other leagues are all promoting. But the cfl, you can actually have a legit career and make some money. I mean, making a half meal playing football for five months a year is not a bad compromise. If your goal was to someday star in the National Football League, I think they got to promote that a little more as well. But I, look I, I'll tell you this, I was talking to somebody at the league office about this week and he said, look, when we had our league meetings and Canada ask us in January, we talked about all these things. We all are aware of it. We're not blind to it, we're not in denial. We talked about a whole lot of solutions and every one of them was either shot down because they didn't like it or because it was going to cost money. And he said, I guarantee you we will go back at this off season and everybody's going to have to be prepared that there are no solutions that don't require investment. There's going to be some commitment. You've talked about minimum salaries for quarterbacks, cap exempt salaries for quarterbacks, tiering for quarter, something like that. And not to make the game all about quarterbacks. Cause I actually hate that kind of analysis of football. I think it's oversimplified and things like that. However, as somebody who sits in the panel off air, if you see the energy on our panel when we're watching even a game like the Vernon Adams, Chad Kelly game, and I know Vernon threw six picks, but he also threw three tds and threw for 3 83. It was a weirdest six pick game in the history of football. Just the excitement of us off air watching a game with dynamic quarterbacks versus the excitement of us watching a game insert some of the games we've had to sit through this year that didn't have dynamic quarterbacks. Just the entertainment value among the four of us is so different. I can only multiply that among the hundreds of thousands that are watching and figure they're reacting the same way I did to be fair. And the Rouge game that was out this week that I was taking Dorothy out for her birthday there Thursday night because her birthday was Friday, I had a wedding. I did go back and watch that whole game on demand. So just so you know, I did do my homework there with all of that, but I thought that was pretty entertaining. A couple quick things. I'm realizing that over your left shoulder, is that your famous brick wall and bookshelf? Yes, that Is that your famous Yes. That and I got to show you something here. You got a moment? Yes, Your, it's your segment. Okay. So I have taken heat sometime from fans for the fact that The Israeli on right now Bookshelf has a national football league helmet. And in fact, I took so much heat that I turned it around. So it's just like a generic helmet. And the truth is, I've been trying to get the Canadian Football League to provide a helmet with me that would kind of counter it. It could put both up and such. So Here you go. Walk into my house yesterday, big box, open it up, another box. Here we go. And the crown. There you go. Dave's rocking it. That looks good. Got it, got it. So we got a new element for the Backdrop there. So yeah, very happy to have the CFL helmet. There we go. I Love it. I love it. This is good. We get a little background. This is good. Yeah. Dave, do we have time? This is your segment you're on here. I will say just in, not that the fantasy sports betting is the biggest issue with quarterbacks, but you're also talking to short yardage that affects fantasy and all of that. If we're trying to grow the game, we're trying to do all that. Having Dakota PR winning with three touchdowns or whatever isn't. My last point on that was you're talking about, hey, there's people in the xfl or the U S F L and cfl teams like, oh, we wouldn't want them. It's like, yeah, because Dustin Crumb was really on the top of the people's wishlist. I don't want Alex McGoo like, we really want Dustin Crumb. He's really the guy that we want to, to put our money behind. Well, there's still a little bit of, I think sometimes superiority complex among some people in the cfl with regards to these other leagues for sure. Yeah, no question In terms of, just to wind out, we go, did Hamilton make a mistake with Bo? Is it too early to tell? I mean, I have my flights booked for Hamilton. So I mean, look, I think the early look, first of all, it depends when he comes back that I think it's too early to say that right now. And when they put him on the sixth game, I was kind of led to believe it was one of those precautionary things, right? Because if an injury lingers, you don't want to look back and say, oh, we should have put him on sixth game and such. And of course, the one thing you can't practice when you're on sixth game, which is why Jeremiah Mazzoli never was at the start of season because he needed to practice to get up to speed. I think the jury's still out. I'm not willing to write off Levi Mitchell at this stage of the season. I know that when they looked at Bo in camp, they thought he was throwing, well, Scott Milanovich who came in and has been sort of an offensive consultant with the TCATs, thought he was throwing the ball well enough that to be able to win with the T tie cats this year. But it, I got to be honest, it's it the first two games were not encouraging and now he's been down. So if he doesn't play better than that, if he's gone for eight weeks, it is hard to see this as a positive move. But I think what this brings up, Reed is kind of like, okay, we could criticize that decision and say going all in on Boli, Levi Mitchell was too risky and it's blowing up in their face. We're come back to the, well, what's the option here? And this is again, brings us back to the quarterback depth issue in the league. Boli. Levi Mitchell got benched last year and got a raise. Trevor Harris was good last year. Not great but good. He started the year as a backup and got a fivefold salary increase by the end of the season. Now he's back to be a half million dollar quarterback last year. And I credit for Trevor for taking the backup role, taking a much more team friendly salary and just kind of resetting his career. I think it was a real lesson in what Trevor Harris did. And look, what's Dane Evans going to be worth next year if after a year in bc all it would take is a few appearances for Dane Evans to come on into a role in a meaningful part of a game during a season look good. And what's he worth next year. I talked to a GM this week who said to me, is Matthew Schultz going to get paid next year? Because to his credit, I think he's looked pretty good early in the year, but he's not somebody that every anybody ever saw as a quarterback who was going to be making Marque's salary in this league. So I think every time you examine a situation like Bo, you've got to say, okay, what were the alternatives? Right? Bring Dane Evans back. I don't think he could do that. Just the way last year went. I think that would've been a really hard sell, especially in a great cup year for Hamilton. They were so were you going to go, Cody? He was available, right? You start to get down to these options. And I think where people are drawing these comparisons is it's not to go back to the seventies or eighties. Let's go back to a dozen years. Every team had a frontline starter. Three or four of the starters. Ricky Ray, Anthony Calvio, Henry Burris Dickinson was kind of newly, was just retired. Look, these guys were Hall of Famers. And then you had guys in the hopper who were the next guys, whether it was the Bo Levi Mitchells and the Drew Tates or the Trevor Harrison and the Zack Eros. That's what people, you'd show me the backup right now that you would say, I'm going to go get that guy making my starter next year, like Hamilton did when they went after Zach Ro, right? Or Edmonton did when they went after Mike Riley. The only guy in the league that I thought kind of fit that bill was Chad Kelly. And I said it on radio during Great Cup week and set off a firestorm. When asked radio in Saskatchewan, I said, if I was Saskatchewan, I'd call the Argos this off season and say, what do you want for Chad Keller? That was before it's great Cup heroics and all that. But I think the Argonauts were, I don't want to say they were happy with McLeod, Bethel Thompson moving on, but I think they were okay with it because they knew they couldn't keep Chad as a backup forever. He's not wired that way. He's a one year backup. And God bless him that they got to him and said, you need to be patient for a year. This is how this league works. If Johnny Menzel had been on the Chad Kelly plan, what's he in year number two instead? Different kind of thing. Again, we can talk about how the list screwed that all up as well as at the time by forcing him into the hands of a team that already had a quarterback, which didn't make really that much sense. And as well, but my point is that other than Chad Kelly, Chad Kelly was that guy, right? You could see it last year. And again, his pedigree is there. Everyone knows the history, but there aren't those guys in backup roles across the league. And when Ottawa would lose its quarterback at any point over the last couple seasons and you see Caleb Evans come in, you're like, yeah, I can get through a game, get you through a few games. But did Caleb Evans scream future starting quarterback in the cfl? No. Right? And there's just, I think a lot of guys of that kind of ilk right now. And it was enough so mean, this whole quarterback thing, I think three down was last week had the big article, Ambrose talking about all of that with this and just the streak and everything. And Edmonton and whoever comes out of this, right? They're Cornelius, everything else going on there. And Jared Degi everything. Even if Edmonton wins, if we wake up Friday and they won tonight, that doesn't solve their issues, right? Yeah. They still have whatever. I mean, what do you, this Chris Jones and Cornelius. I just can't figure out what to make of it. It's really weird. And I mean it even predates Chris Jones in Edmondson, right? Because let's go back to 2021. And I was incredulous about this when they sat down Trevor Harris, I was like, are you kidding me? He'd thrown for 400 yards in Labor Day or something. Yeah, but he playing the best football of his life. No, but when you have an experienced proven cfl quarterback whose health is fine and you decide to go on to the next guy is, and then they trade him. They trade him. And I mean Taylor Cornelius early in his career did look like a guy who might be able to develop into something because of the arm and the long stride and the run. And I would put him in the category of guys that you could see as developing into a future. But did he look like the guy who gave you the better chance over Trevor Harris to win next week? No way. And that's what was always curious. And what all went down between Trevor Harris and Jamie Elizondo and how Brock Sunderland fit in? I don't really know. I, I've never heard a full disclosure about what happened there, but it never made sense to me. And I think it shows you the caution that if you're going to move on from a guy in this league, you better know what you have behind him. Because I mean, Trevor Harris is still playing. He's playing at a pretty level. And I did, I dunno if you saw the tweet I did because Ottawa kind of did a similar thing with Trevor, right? They lost him in free agency and whether he walked or they let him go, whatever. But I did it with the combined records of the Elks and the Red Blacks since they moved on from Trevor Harris and I think it was 15 and 64, which is like astoundingly bad. And then Jones goes into last year, and Taylor Cornelius goes from fourth string to starter, like all of a sudden he becomes the guy. Then they make the commitment to him, then they pull away from him early in this season to go to a guy who's come off the practice roster. Kai Loxley do a good job running the short yardage, and he pouted on the sidelines. He's gone. Trey Ford seems to have fallen out of the mix. There seems to be, I think there must be some sense that maybe he didn't completely recover from what he had last year because why is he getting those opportunities last year as a rookie right out of eSport? Feel free to look up the history of cfl rookie quarterbacks from eSport and now as a sophomore with an obvious need. He's not getting that opportunity. And people will say, oh, American Jones doesn't like, look, I stood beside Chris Jones at Trey Ford's workout at the University of Buffalo in April of 2022. Okay. Chris Jones loved him. Who drafted him? Chris Jones. Okay. So if something's turned there, it's not like Chris Jones was always sour on Trey Ford never liked him, got forced to take him. No, that is not the case. He was a huge Trey Ford guy. And so something there is does isn't adding up as well. I thought the Jared Dague thing in our panel was incredulous on that one. When they moved on from him at halftime or after halftime of the Argo game, it was perplexing. Cause I thought Taylor Cornelius made some strides in that game the week before when they'd been shut out. It was the BC Lions as defense was performing at a historic pace. And it's funny, sometimes I have to take games. I don't devote every moment of my life to lie cfl watching. And one of the interesting things, I usually want to know what happened rather than do the fan experience be in suspension because it allows me to know what I want to focus on in this game. So when I watched that game, I said, I want to watch Taylor Cornelius and his decision making and his throws on, I didn't think he was horrible in that game. The shutout game, the offense was terrible, all the punts, but play by play. When you broke it down, it wasn't like Taylor Cornelius was missing open guys all over the field necessarily at all. So when he comes off of that a decent first half in Toronto, it, it's really curious. And look, Jones is a defensive guy, but he is a football guy. Just because he coached defense doesn't mean you don't understand the offensive side of the field. He's had Steve McAdoo with him in Saskatchewan, he's got him again in Edmonton. He's a guy who's sometimes not popular with the fans. And I think part of it is Steve McAdoo doesn't speak publicly very often. He's not a guy who comes out and defends himself. He's a very sort of low key guy and that kind of thing, and makes himself maybe an easy target because he's not out explaining himself or his philosophies or things like that. But boy, I think this has been a big disappointment for the Elks because I think we all thought when they went out and got those receivers, and when does it click for cfl quarterbacks? Somewhere between year two and three usually. So you had Cornelius who's got the big arm. The other thing that was curious about it is he was the leading rusher among quarterbacks last year in the league. And when, I think he's the only quarterback in the top 6, 8, 10, whatever it was. I remember writing about this, again, I can't check the historical stats, but I believe I remember this from last season. And yet the first three or four games this year, they didn't run he, and he's a deceptive runner, right? Because he is not the typical runner we see in the c l kind of a compact body of Nantucket. Oh, He's huge. He's in Huge and he's a long strider, but it was obviously effective. I'm glad they saw they brought that back a little bit into the last game. But it's again, we're going to bring the conversation full circle here. What's their option right now? And that's the trouble. And again, that's why I think having quarterbacks that you're developing, I'll tell you a great example. The difference between a developed quarterback and a guy who's not had an opportunity to develop was the head-to-head matchup between Tyree Adams and Jarre Day two guys making their first start. But Tyree Adams had been there for a year. He'd done two training camps. And then that's just a massive difference between taking a guy off the PR in his rookie year and saying, go. And I assume Jared de, he's a much, much better player than he showed in the limited action. But this league has made a lot of decent quarterbacks who don't have the proper background or experience to handle the job look pretty ordinary or bad. The fact that last week they're Cornelius with four wins in his, I'm like, this isn't insane that he has four wins in his cfl career, got paid the way that he did with that. Again, that's the market, right? And what did they think? What did Chris Jones think was going to happen at the end of last year if they didn't sign them and Gar, and by the way, guarantee money for next season as well. He's been playing in the league that he came from the xfl. Yeah, I would be curious if there was a market, what the market for him was going to be in the xfl. Just, I mean, who was it? I can't remember who the D P P was or the I, I'd be curious to see what the market there was for that. Cause yeah, You would know better than me on that. Yeah. Well, because Elli know I Was in the Elk's heads when they signed. Yes, Yes, yes. A couple more things mean we could go forever. I don't want to keep you forever the Calgary mayor, everything. It seems to be a little bit of duty season right now. What do you make of Calgary here? Because they're very quickly falling out of their way in the west. And the stamps have been so good at plug and play when there've been injuries. I mean, this is sometimes one of the things about Winnipeg's Dynasty or their great run is man, they've been really good on injuries. They have not had a ton of important players out of their lineup. And that's a big, big part of it. Calgary historically has dealt with injuries and there's been kind of the John Huff Nagel Magic formula next man up, and they've always got a guy and developing guys in the practice roster, but they've been decimated at receiver that has really, I mean, Kamar Jordan's injury, Reggie Beton out, Malik Henry gone, they Brock back, mark and Michelle, who's a very good player. And once he gets up to speed, I think he can certainly help them. But even among their Canadian receivers, they're very inexperienced at that. And even that two of their Canadians guys who've never played three down football, they get two rookie Canadians whose entire lives, one of them from the States, the other one grew up in BC and played at Simon Fraser being introduced to. So the one thing that a lot of times what people look at, maybe it's receiver, might be one position that it's easier to transition out of eSport to the cfl than the NCAA because of the waggle and just understanding the angles on the field and all those kinds of things. So that's usually one of the advantages you get with your Canadian receivers. And the stamps don't even have that. I mean, rice and John in the game the other night had one catch in garbage time. I mean, he's a huge guy who stuck around in the NFL for a while. He's six seven. And again, he may turn into something, but the lack of experience as has really hurt them. And Jake Mayer looks ordinary right now for a guy what threw for 300 yards in each of his first three starts in the cfl. And that's a small sample size. That's pretty impressive. I don't know that anybody's ever done it even, I think he may have been the first quarterback ever to open his career with 300 yard games, but man, I think he'd kill for one of those right now That it was like him versus Vernon and Montreal. I'm trying to remember that debut game. Was it two years ago when he came? It Was 2021, yeah. Yeah, I was trying to remember that last thing here. I mean, we kind of hit on the Argos. Cody is, Cody got his groove back here in Montreal. We've been talking about that a little bit one this week and we are looking at the sack, the sack figures, which is he's leading the league in Sacs getting sacked. He led the league in getting sacked last year. He led the league in getting sacked in 21 and the year that he was the M O P nominee from the West Division, he was third in the league in Gates Act. So there's some compelling evidence that, and now look it, look, and let me be firstly say this is not what I do. I don't break down film and tell people who's responsible on what place, but there's a consistency there. And when you go from one of the weakest offensive lines in the league to one of the best and the Sac numbers are still there, that becomes an issue. Now all that said, I think Ottawa, BC and Winnipeg have the best pass rushes in the league, and that's three of the four opponents that Montreal has had. You got to be careful always with small sample size and who your opponent is early in the schedule trying to project stuff. So there's that. The receivers, I've been down, Reggie White been down, Phil Pott down. And I think the other factor that's been huge there is the run game. You would expect that with that offensive line and William Steinbeck and Jess and entry, that that's going to take some of the pressure off Cody, Cody Fajardo because the defenses aren't going to just be able to pin their ears back and line up and go after him. They haven't really been able to get the run game rolling. But I look, I think Fager, I think Jido has the fun thing is the two things that people used to say about Gerardo in Edmonton was he gets Sack or in Saskatchewan was he gets sacked too often and he can't throw the ball down the field. Well, he's addressed the second one. He doesn't throw the ball down the field really well. That and that I'm sure is something that he, he's put some thought and some work into the sack thing is harder to solve and God bless him for the number of times Cody Fija has been sack. I got his career sack number the other day, 154 over the last two years, 83, and the second player on that list is 53. He has been sacked 30 times more over the last season and a half or a season and a third. Then the next guy, now again, not my area of expertise but that I, I'll tell you, I'll give 'em some marks for they're guys in this league that every time they get sacked you wonder if they're going on six game or stop. Yeah, I'm exaggerated. But we know there's quarterbacks that when you see them get hit you're kind of like, oh boy. Right. That's just the nature of something. 154 sacks in his career. How many games Cody Gerardo missed? My God, not a lot. I'm struggling to think of, there was a game last year I think he didn't play but one. So hey, if you're going to get taken down that often, at least it's not a turnover, at least you're not getting your quarterback hurt. But I think they know they're playing with fire and I think Jason Moss is certainly under some pressure to try and correct that for him. Someone posted the video where it was him, Cody from the last game doing the spin move where it's a totally perfect pocket and he's running back into this move. You're like, that's not a good look to have to be become kind of unnecessary scrambles. Last thing here, lions on the buy this week. I've been happy with our performances thus far except obviously the six picks. What do you just quick thoughts on BC before we get out. Well, I'll use the Argo game. That was the way that game got away from BC and what the score eventually became was not indicative. If you BC and Toronto were playing again next week and I was asked to make the point spread, I, I'd basically make it a pick them game, which sounds weird given the way Toronto played, but I mean I joked earlier I said it was the greatest six pick performance in the history of quarterbacking. I mean it really was. And the weird thing is it is that a good part of those picks were awful. It wasn't like he had contested balls that were taken, they were passes to the other team. And so you try and reconcile that with what he does on the other 30 throws. It was a very, very unusual quarterback performance. And look, you got to break the next week against Montreal because the clause picked six was a pick six. I mean I think the league is conceded. That was a wrong call and James, it wasn't challenged by Montreal's staff and it should have been and who knows if he throws a pick six in the first quarter of that game, Then he gets all in. Yeah, he gets all in his head. Sure, yeah, that changed it. But no, and Farhan has made this point about, I'm going to borrow one of his points about the lion's defense and one of the challenges in the cfl sometimes is unlike the N F L, it's harder to have time to develop. Now the N NFL has gotten very short and getting rid of coaches as well, but there's still time that when you're investing in draft picks and you can see the talent blossoming and the investment you have, you'll get sometimes a couple of seasons to make that happen. In the C F O we don't very often it is a win now league, every team at the start of the year expects to be in the playoffs, expects to be in the hunt for the Great Cup and we don't see that investment where teams will say, Hey, we're going to live with these guys because we know that in a year or two these are going to be our guys. That's what the lions did with their defense. If you go back to two years, they're all no-name guys and you look at the talent and that's secondary. They've added some pieces from other teams that I think that's probably the best secondary in the league. Maybe Toronto along with that as well. What they've been able to do overall I think is kind of a bit of a model for what teams should be able to do and credit. I thought it was funny, Farhan was really bullish on Vernon Adams at the start of the year, almost like one day a sports center. He said, I was like, wow. And then Vernon Adams went out that first game and just played and I texted far Adam and said, your sports center's looking better and better. But he watched 'em through camp and he's knows 'em a little bit. He's known him for a long time thought sort of settling on the west coast. I like what they've been able to do. I mean they've got a couple of running backs. He should always be able to backfill a running back and they looked like they've done that with a couple of guys and the receivers there. I mean that was one of the things I think when you were looking at who Vernon Adams is throwing to, I think that's probably the best receiving unit in the league right now. And that's saying something, given that you pulled Brian Burnham off that unit from last year and that it's still as good as it is. Yeah, I would, I'm trying to remember, is there a Toronto BC matchup rematch on the schedule this year? I'm not sure there is. I feel like someone I'm looking here. No, we don't always have the guaranteed home at home every year now since they changed some stuff after the pandemic. But it wouldn't shock me at all to see BC Toronto in the Great Cup and that is certainly a matchup. I would welcome. Yeah, I'm not seeing that on here. I did laugh when they had Nathan Roarke, they were showing him on and it was like, see, we still hear Nathan, he's still it. It's like when you're, the kid goes back to high school and he's like the megastar look, see still. But I did like that because Nathan has basically said I was glad with my time in the CFL and I'm glad it's done. So yeah, no, it's going to be down on August 12th at his first preseason game in Dallas. Oh yeah. I think there's a lot of interest in his foray over the summer. We'll see if he settles into a number three role, the story will go quiet until he gets a chance to play. But over the summer while he's playing in preseason, we're going to be pretty engaged in watching his story. Yeah, I'm skip, I don't see Itron on there anyway. Well Dave, I appreciate it extended we'll, like I said, we're being Hamilton, we got all that figured out so hopefully we'll It's got to the point where it wouldn't be the great cup without you. Yes, I said that. That's good. I appreciate the Spring lead guy what we got to have. That's good. Well we'll be there. I appreciate we'll try to get you on here again maybe midway through the season, but I certainly appreciate extended time today, so thank you. Awesome man. Have a good day. Well we are done Tim, I guess I had to flee practice for the Red Blacks, thunderstorms, everything else here. Thunderstorms metaphorically kind of circling as well around the Red Blacks shooter, Tim Baes, Ottawa Sun. Has there ever been more interest in the Ottawa Red Blacks quarterback situation than this week? Well, let's trying to think back to the dark, the speaking of stormy clouds and all that. Matt Nichols, I mean it's been a string of quarterback issues going back to I guess Trevor Harris in 2018. Of course that didn't involve two starting quarterbacks having season ending injuries within two weeks. So it is certainly been interesting and a team that really has been very poor on the football field for the past three years and in the midst of trying to turn that around has to do it again with a lot of adversity. It's crazy. I was working, I watched the game on I had, because we can record the CCBs Sports Network ones, we can record and watch 'em in the States. So I had a wedding on Saturday and I'm getting the text and oh Mols M's. Legs after what's going on. And I'm thinking, oh, maybe he came out and didn't look right, came out and maybe whatever. And then no, they said no, he went down again. And I'm watching the broadcast and crazy experience mean, what was it just kind of living through it and thoughts on everything going on? Well, I mean it was a non-contact play. So when you think of injury, you think of, okay, late hit got low happened a year ago, but he tried to pivot a little bit and the leg collapsed. And without even thinking left or right leg, you're thinking, oh no, same injury. And as it turns out it's the Achilles and then it's in the other leg. And it's one of those things that happens. And it again, not really related to previous injuries, but you could hear a pin drop. Of course Jeremiah was a great quarterback in Hamilton for a number of years. And so a lot of them was an appreciation for him there. But when he went down and he tried to get back up and immediately went back down again and had to be helped off mean there was just silence. And I think you could feel certainly there's an empathy for a quarterback, a much beloved quarterback for a number of years with the Ticos It, it's crazy because even, and I was watching the pre-pa and it's like Jesus is coming back. I mean it was like, but not to make a light of it, but this team. And he's like, he's such a leader. And I can't remember if it was whoever was on, whoever's on the Dunnigan talking and trying to give his perspective and this guy's coming to come back and ride the ship and then two quarters in it's like disaster again. And I don't know if the Red Blacks looked great that if he was going to solve everything, but it certainly wasn't going to hurt. I mean, what did we do now? Dustin Rum in there, which is probably the worst name for us, backup quarterback I can think of to come in. I mean he looked good, he liked athletic, but was that kind of the backup quarterback bump is always what I think, right? Oh, this guy comes in, we weren't game plan and for him and it's kind of chaos, how do you think he actually looked? I thought he looked really good and he addressed, he made three really bad mistakes, two interceptions really that maybe weren't thrown to the proper place and a fumble. Those were costly, just costly mistakes. And Dustin Crum addressed that the other day and he talked about really having to play clean football and about how games aren't won as much as they're lost. Now when you interviewed Dustin Crumb, you have to know that Dustin Crumb is a rocket scientist, literally rocket scientists that graduated in a whatever the degree is aeronautic space engineering and built rockets. So Dustin Rum is a very, very smart guy. So I got to think digesting and understanding a playbook is probably something he's pretty good at. So he will certainly have a very good knowledge of the playbook. And I think every one of the quarterbacks would tell you anyway, they treat each week, they're the starter because especially if you're an Ottawa red black, you never know. I mean, I was warming up my arm today just in case. You never know. Is there a need for a 64 year old guy who really was never a quarterback even in high school or college? Probably not. If I keep putting on more weight, I'd probably have a better chance of being an offensive lineman. Well, What was the theca like when they brought in Dustin? Because how long was he part of the roster before this? No, he was brought in last year. I think the team thought it would be basically getting him a second training camp where he wasn't at last year's training camp, but they brought him in and a learn, just stay off to the side, listen and learn. There was no chance he was going to be that guy last year. But so by the time he gets into camp this year, it's almost like it's his second training camp and he looked, especially in their preseason, one of their preseason games, he looked really good. The thing that he brings to the table, I don't know that he's the fastest guy in the football field, but again, he's able to use, he, he's smart and he's able to use his legs. He's not afraid he, he's patient enough. I think that he'll stay in the pocket and look, but he's able to use his legs pretty effectively. And I think the, that's his dating back to college is that he can run with the football, which in the Canadian game is a pretty good asset to have that you're, you're able to bounce out of the pocket. You want the quarter your quarterback to have patience. You don't want him jumping out too early, but if need be, he can be that guy If you're second and nine and it's not there that he can get those nine yards for you with his legs. I just am always curious, was there this big scouting report like, oh, we got this guy here and just by this time or is it really by process of elimination and by default he gets the spot there in the game last weekend? Yeah, I think it's always really, especially with quarterbacks, it's a bit of a guessing game. I mean there's a reason why these guys aren't in N F L camps and some of them are getting N F L looks, but it is a bit of a guessing game and you're trying to project a quarterback really to play almost a new game, certainly with different rules and different nuances. So how do you project that? So again, I think you scout the guy, you'll look at different intangibles and the tangibles and you think, does he have a chance? Does he have a chance? I don't think when you look at him you're thinking, well he is going to be our starter next year, but that's what they're in right now. And certainly the Red Blacks exhausted. I think possibilities of maybe bringing back a guy with more experience. There was contact with the agent for McLeod, Bethel Thompson. I'm sure they reached out to a couple other teams in the league to maybe check on the availability of some of the guys, maybe some backups. But ultimately a guy like Bethel McLeod Thompson is not willing, at least at this time to come north. So when you cross that one off the list, you go down the list and we have two new more quarterbacks. One of them who was in training camp Jake Dunaway with the Red Blocks and another who made it through training camp with the Winnipeg BLS before being cut. So we've got two new faces here and Nick Arbuckle who started the year who was our starter, is a backup right now. So it is just weird how things have changed so much where through the first few games it was like, oh well yeah, but Jeremiah could be back next week. Jeremiah could be back next week. And there was that anticipation and you talked about the taking you to the promised land, it didn't matter what their record was, Jeremiah was coming back and that's unfortunately that ended less really fairly early in his first game back. Yeah, the McCall thing's weird because obviously this week it came out, he's been officially released from the Breakers and I think that's a formality to, so he can at least entertain kind of N F L and I think he's three games away from earning his pension there, which I think is probably a driving force for all of that. So if he doesn't come in right now we have Cru and then who is the other one? Tyrell, who is the other quarterback, signed the two on there. Is there enough here to get this going? Well, I think they'd like to develop Peggy as they call him. They'd like to develop him probably as a short yardage quarterback because of his ability to run. And I mean with Jake Dunaway, again, I think a guy they liked in training camp, there was no room with four quarterbacks on the roster to keep him and a guy that they bring back, knowing that he knows the playbook of it. He was here for a couple of months, maybe a month and a half. But it's a lot of inexperience on the roster and the one guy they have with experience, they're not willing, again, they're willing to go with a guy who's never started a game in the cfl ahead of him. So let that speak volumes Is there. We had just kind of solved the home losing curse for motor. We still have going on the Elks one. And then it was amazing to me as well that said Saskatchewan had a seven game home losing streak. I'm like, what is with all, how do you have three home losing streaks in the nine team league? But Ottawa wins with Tyrell or Tyree, sorry with Tyree and then we're getting a little bit of momentum now, Mazzo all this, I mean can they afford to just march this out and kind of wait if McLeod comes, I mean how does Ottawa keep the faith here with the fan base? Well win football games. I mean the thing in my mind, they were going into the win against Edmonton and home a couple of weeks ago. They had lost 24 of 26 games at home. I don't know how that's possible as bad a football team as you. I could, I assemble a bunch of guy, bring a of guys in and put them a defensive decent offensive line and give 'em a quarterback and at least maybe win a game or two. I don't understand how it could happen. So they beat Edmonton, they lost 24, they lost 27 at home. It's not good. They play at home Saturday against the Winnipeg Blue Armers three times they've been in the last three great cops, not easy, they've got some tough games coming up and if they can get through this stretch, they play the Thai Cats. Again, if you're going to win games, you really got to win against your division opponents cause that they've proven back when they won the Gray Cup in 2016 they had an eight, nine and one record. In the regular season you just have to make the playoffs and be playing your best football and you have a chance. So can they win with Dustin Crumb? Sure, I mean they've got the special teams unit is well coached and they're good. The defense has been playing much better and they're getting back some key players in the next couple of weeks coming off the six game injury list. So if they can stay, they don't want to lose anybody else in the next game or two, but they've got some key players coming back soon. Do you think long term McLeod is the plan here? Whether it's hey, let's get through Labor Day and then kind of figure it out? Well I think they'd like to see Dustin Crumb succeed seed, certainly there'll be savings, pretty big savings with Jeremiah being lost for the right rest of the season mean. So the salary cap, there's a lot of salary cap relief there. Would they like to see McLeod Bethel Thompson? Sure, but I don't think they want him, I don't think they're going to wait until mid-September, really October to get him because we're talking about a guy coming in, learning a new system, developing, kind of getting in sync with his receivers. So that ship is going to pass at some point soon. And it doesn't seem like he's too willing to come up for a variety of reasons and that's fine. But I think right now they've got to hope that Dustin Cross can go out there and as I think it's been said about other quarterbacks, just manage the game, don't make mistakes, let your playmakers make plays and you need really, really good defense to make that all work. I just wonder, and I know that there was the reports when you left the Argos and okay they were going to go with Jack Kelly and everyone was shirt up at that point because even right Ottawa had Neil know Mazzoli and everything else and he got paid 55,000. I think they'd do the playoff win bonuses in the U S F L, but if he lost in the playoff game and not a good game, I don't know how much of the U S F L you covered, but I mean they got their asses beat there going into the playoffs and it wasn't particularly close against Birmingham. And I don't know in retrospect if, do I take six months off and just spend time with my wife and kid and not play football on the U S F L and I don't know if this works out him going to the NFL or do I just sit and then I get a call here and pick up the phone and take the money Now I don't know if the US l was worth, if the NFL doesn't pan out, does McLeod just take the year off and wait for this call? I don't know if it was worth him getting beat up for 11, 12 weeks to get to this point. I don't know. Yeah, Well I mean let's remember as well, it's not like McLeod is the second coming. He was a pretty good quarterback, but you know what, I think he almost lost his job in Toronto last year. Is he better than what they have? Well he, he's got more experience. He had a lot of passing yards and I think he is a pretty good, he's a bit of a guns slinging quarterback takes risks. But he has a lot of success doing that. I'm just saying. Yeah, he's, he's certainly not the best quarterback in the cfl. And is he Ottawa's best option right now? Sure he would be. But you know what, again, yeah he is a pretty good quarterback. I'm just not sure that maybe he's the guy you would want to say, well he's the Messiah, he's going to lead us. He's the guy. Yeah, we'll see That's hot takes, I like that. Well Now if he signs here and he listens to this, he's going to be like, I heard what you said about me. Hey, He's afraid he's been on the show. He is friend of podcast. I think he's a good quarterback. My point is, I don't know whether expectations should be, well look, we signed him all of a sudden from being maybe a decent team to being a really, really good team. I don't know that he can bring that team to another level. Maybe he can. Again, I think he's played pretty well if he's listening. McLeod, I love you. I mean he's known Nick Arbuckle. I mean he is not, I mean remember I remember two years ago when we were getting into all this coverage, oh, Nick Arbuckle got traded. That was the big story. It's like, oh Arbuckle's on the move or he is going that. But then in terms of Bob dies here first, he's his came in last year and all that and he came on to our show during all the media day stuff and kind of the off season. How do you gauge him here being able to manage, weigh this ship through all this? Well, I mean it's not easy when you're losing football games, but again, there're one in three, certainly if they look at the four games, it's always, I think a lot in the c l it's often, it often turns on one or two plays and certainly of all their four football games, probably all winnable. It's not like they were blown out. So it could be much different than one and three they lost to Hamilton last week. He was very winnable. So I think Bob Deis is a very fiery emotional coach and I think as the players have said, they would go through a wall for the guy. So I think he's got his guys fired up and part of that emotion I think is built off here. We've got more adversity, let's go show everybody what we can do. And it's certainly a tough test when the Winnipeg glue bombers are lining up opposite you and your next game. But they've got to respond and they've got to come out on Saturday with some emotion and in front of your home fans. You've got to do something early. You've got to put some points up, get your fans engaged, get them into the game. Cause you've got fans hanging their heads right now probably going, oh no, we, we've lost Jeremiah, we have no chance. So give them hope. That's what you want to do when you're playing it at home is give your fans hope. If you think about it, Ottawa on the road lost, they're starting quarterback in horrific fashion. I mean just, you know, see this go down. And they were two yards away from at least tying the game there. At the end of the game, I, you can't write, and I was telling, I showed Dorothy because I was watching the game, like I said, I'm on rerecord whatever, and I said, you got to come watch this because I said in the Rudy version of this movie, he gets the touchdown, he gets tackled and flies into the end zone and then they tie the game or win the game. And it's obviously not real life, it's sports, but to think that they came that close, even with everything in that game to being two yards away from winning or from tying the game is pretty remarkable. Well I mean you see the field y you're watch, you watch from up above and you can see everything opening up and you can see this, this, there's a lot of opening in front of him. He makes a decision to run and I don't know if he had receivers open or not, but he makes a decision to run and you see him nearing the end zone and you're thinking he's going to make it and you're right. What an ending. You still got to score the two points and then the game maybe goes into overtime, but wow, Dustin Cru who'd already scored a touchdown earlier in all of a sudden if he makes that runs into the end zone somehow they tie the game and then win it. We're a different scenario. We're talking about Dustin Crumb being the next great thing because all of a sudden he's done what he did, we can and then you'll put the three turnovers behind you and say, man, this guy's, he's going to be great. I think he could be good. But it's it, you don't often see quarterbacks emerge that quickly and ascent to that next level. It takes knowledge, it takes experience, especially when you're coming into a game where you've got the waggle and the wider field and the longer field and you've got a 12th defensive player. There are a lot of things to adjust to and we'll see him and I hope Dustin, as I said, he is a smart guy so we'll see what happens. Saturday, I'm meeting my mic here, my neighbor has decided to, I guess jackhammer his back patio or something here. We'll see how that comes in before I get out of here. You know, talked to Winnipeg, hope I understand that at home coming out strong, but this is a pretty heavy burden that Ottawa has here this coming weekend And I never want to downplay what Winnipeg has done it. They've been the best team in the cfl for now for three years. They've gotten well where they lost the Great Cup last year. So I guess theoretically you could say Toronto was the best team, but Winnipeg has been a really, really good football team and there's still a really good football team, but they haven't looked, I think especially offensively they haven't looked in 2023 like the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the past couple years. And maybe that's, that's something that they're working out some kinks there. But a lot of their key players are a year older and in general when guys get into their thirties and they get a year older, the level of performance, the arrow isn't necessarily pointing up. And I think a lot of their players are still playing at an extremely high level. But you got to wonder, again, a lot of their key performers on the other side of 30. So at some point point, these guys are going to, I'm not going to say they're going to lose it, but maybe you'll lose a bit of an edge and other players catch up to you. Again, it's hard to argue with the success that football team has had over a sustained period of time. It, it's been phenomenal, but all of a sudden you're seeing other teams like the BC Lions showing that maybe it's time for a change at the top. I like that. We just got to wait for him to get old and die and then we'll beat him. Can't beat one. Yeah. Yeah, you might have to wait for that. Yeah. Last thing from me here. Like I said that this jackhammer is horrendous. I got to move inside here for my next interview in terms of, you were talking about the Dustin crime and it could be whatever here we've seen Jake Mayer kind of be presumed to be the guy in Calgary and he's been in the system and had years and now he comes in this year and he's kind of poo poo right now. I think at least if you want to talk to the round Ryan Valentine's of the world not doing great. So I don't know. I mean there's a lot of pressure with Dustin and it's a really steep learning curve to come in here, especially now, like you said in basically a second year, which was supposed to be a glorified training camp. It is tough, it's, it is tough for a guy who's been in the league for four or five years when you're asked to be the guy, when you're asked to take the starting reps and really you put the team on your offensive hopes at least on your shoulders. And sometimes it's not even just the technique and all that technical stuff, it's the weight of being the guy. And when I say that these guys have been the guy and probably in high school and at college, but NFL too it you to be the guy. You're not holding the clipboard anymore to be the guy. There are special people that can do it and the cfl is in the nfl. These are guys that for whatever reason are not in the NFL right now. So coming up and learning again, they're learning a new game. So you look around the league where, who's the next great young thing? I don't know mean. It's not like a few years ago when we had Mike Riley and Bo and Zach, ROS and Jeremiah, but they got to develop somewhere, they got to develop somewhere and somehow, so we'll see, maybe a guy like Jake Mayer, maybe Taylor Cornelius finds it, maybe Dustin Cru finds it, Dustin Crumb the next great cfl quarterback and in 30 years, let me talking. Well you heard, remember you heard it here first, right? I'm giving you this scoop. Yes is guy. Hey, I tried to get mayor, I had laster, I said I want to get mayor on because I want to hitch my wagon to that hitch, my ride to that wagon and now it's, see, well Tim, I appreciate it. Hopefully we'll try to get you on again this season here, but it's quite a time to be a beat rider for the auto world. I mean there's a lot of excitement going on. Whether is good or Bad. Well, there's not a lot of lack of things to write about. Would you like me to call the cops and have the guy with the jackhammer taken away? Well I, it's, and because it's so quiet in this yard, I mean that's why I can sit that here all day and record. But literally it's like one, not my next door neighbor, but it's the one behind, I don't know them as well so I might scream at them here. So well hopefully he is not bringing the jack hammer over and starting to put it into your house or anything. That's good. Tim Vans, Ottawa son, appreciate it. Good luck with everything. Busy times there. Stay Safe. Thanks. Good catching up. Take care. Huge special thanks to all four of our guests coming on today. I really appreciate rest Julio's time. Really appreciate Val League offices for working to make that interview happen means a lot. We were trying to, wanted to do showcase talk last year and I know there was a lot of league building happening, so really appreciate making the time now talking to xfl off season and kind of what's going on. I appreciate the transparency. Like I told Russ on the interview with the xfl, with him and Doug Whaley talking, what is our thought process here? Why are we doing things the way that we are? I think that that is refreshing for fans of certain spring football leagues. So really appreciate Russ coming on special. Thanks again to Pat Rafino coming on firsthand accounts, sharing his time in St. Louis. Dave Naer as always for making the time. I really appreciate that. As busy as he is, I'm making videos about the Edmonton Elks and covering everything cfl running crazy if he's not on the panels. Everything else Dave's doing. Busy guy. And then Tim Bayes, longtime friend of the show. Really appreciate Tim taking the time. That will do it for me today. Like I said, off the top busy week next week and then we're going into vacation so we will figure it out. Not quite sure the plan yet. Probably talking cfl, Jason Hussey and I'll be back on Mondays as normal doing the cfl, cfl weekly recaps, but everything else kind of D T B D but I will figure it out. Keep you guys posted, like I said, like and subscribe. Appreciate all your guys' support. We'll see you next time. Thanks.

CFL 2023 Week 5 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 5, What Did We Learn?

Well, happy Monday morning everyone happy Markcast day here. Back normal. Now back on Mondays, I think for the duration of the season, we'll figure out if Jason or Evan have things going on. My schedule's pretty easy during the summer here, coming off three weddings and five days I think. Still watch the games here, driving on my phone, everything. The only one, the Winnipeg Calgary game have limited notes on that, but hopefully Jason and Evan will hop on a little bit on that. But crazy weekend here, we'll bring in the crew. It, it's really starting to feel real here. I don't know if that is any difference here with all the stakes and kind of horrific weekend for Ottawa and Mazzoli and kind of all that stuff, but it feels a little bit grander than even the X Fellow, the US full stuff that we kind of cover. Evan. Does that make sense? Yeah, definitely. I mean this is what, week five now? So we've done a month of the season. I definitely think things are starting to formulate, I guess, and we talked about the cream of the crop rising. The teams are really starting to separate themselves and of course there's still a lot of time left. I keep saying 18 game season, 21 weeks. It's a really long time, so can't, not at a point where we can say everything is finalized. But yeah, I mean this weekend slate of games definitely I think gave us a better idea of where some teams are at. Jason, you were there. We'll start, normally we kind of go reverse chronological order, but obviously I think the biggest game of the weekend here was the Ottawa Hamilton game. You were there. I'll kind of give it to you first and foremost, thoughts and obviously James checking in here already. Thoughts from Zo Ottawa, what do you have to say? You can start with the weekend, you can start with the game. How are you at? Yeah, so I was there in attendance. It was just such a heart wrenching moment, just the silence that was in the stadium. Obviously he has a Olli himself has a very special relationship with Tiger Katz fans. He was there for a long time, not just as a starter, but he was there for a number of years as a backup. So he was really viewed as one of our own. And to see him go down, even as a player playing for the other team, it was just completely heart wrenching. I mean I was there when he got hurt in 2019 as well. That was completely devastating because that looked like the year he could have won cfl M O P and then last year was just, we all know what happened last year with the Marino stuff. So I mean to see it happen again, third career season ending injury. So I mean it's going to be very hard for him to bounce back from that. I mean at the end of the day, I don't think that we know exactly what the injury is at this point, if he's out for the season for sure. But it did not look good and especially when the team rules him out as quickly as they did, it's not a good sign. Yeah, I was setting up, we had a wedding on Saturday and I was setting up and Andy Murray sent in the group chat when he was picking up Andy Murray sent in the group chat and said, MA's legs looked, leg looks f and I thought, oh, maybe he came back slow or because we've kind of delayed him coming on. And then I said, wait, oh is this new? He goes, oh no, he just went down again and I obviously went back and watched the game yesterday and it was really weird watching it. Okay, when's it, you kind of know what's going to happen. Okay, what's going on here? Yeah, we have notes just coming in cfl on Crumb's going to start and we can talk about rum and all of that. The extent his injuries, like Jason said, still unknown here. Evan, thoughts on this because you guys kind of lived through it real time and then I kind of went back and kind of lived through this all on delay again yesterday. Yeah, I mean I'm glad we're addressing the elephant in the room first. It was extremely unfortunate to see Jeremiah Soli get injured on what should have been a very special day, a very happy day, him coming back literally a year or two the day since his last injury, which I think just makes this even more cursed and terrible. It's really hard to believe. And again, we don't really know the extent of his injury yet. The fact that he was ruled out right after he went down in the game was extremely alarming. And I'm at a point now where this to me at least seems, I mean he's going to go on the six game injured list, at least minimum I think. And to me, if a lot of people were saying it was his Achilles, and if that's true, obviously that's going to be a season ending injury. So at this point he turns 35 in August and that means if he plays another C Ffl season after this, he'll be 36 next year at the end of next season. So you're really starting to look at a possibly career ending situation. And there's a very real chance that we might have just seen Jeremiah Maso play his last snaps in the Canadian football league. So that's pretty devastating to say and especially for me, Jeremiah Mis was one of the first guys that I really knew in the cfl because he was with Hamilton for such a long time and just such a great guy, great player, but of course even better man. And he went through so much mental hardship I think through this past injury that he had dealt with this year and had some surgeries. And I think there have been a setback of some sort. Reminded me a lot of Alex Smith on the commanders and I know obviously this wasn't as extreme and he wasn't going to lose a leg or anything like that. But again, there was a lot of discussion around the mental aspect and the video went up on the Red Blacks social media stuff and you know could see Jeremiah, he was visibly emotional talking to the team before he went back to that game. Especially going back to Hamilton again. There was just so much there to unpack. So yeah, mean bottom line here is the injury was incredibly unfortunate and wasn't fair at all. It, it's just so heartbreaking really is the bottom line. Yeah, I sent out, like I said, I was working, I did send out my tweet, I said Gary Marino here, if anyone sent him the double bird salute for me because he is obviously blocked at me and I don't think it's a non-zero where you rehab one leg the entire season, come off not playing everything, come back into the game and then have an injury in your other leg. I, that's that. And there was discussions that wouldn't into that below here, but I do attribute that and being out for the season and that was a dirty hit last year and obviously we've seen that this year with Rena and everything else and there there's certain, I think there was a certain attitude that came along with the Marino one, I think that rub people more the wrong way than just the dirty hit. It was kind of the flippant kind of WWE e attitude of trying to get heel heat on that. But I do, I attribute these two together and I don't think that if that happens last year, I don't think that clearly this isn't happening now. But anything else on the actual injury, Jason? I mean we can talk the game and everything else in crime, but anything else on Azole? Well, I will say that I think it was more, almost a non-contact kind of injury. Kind of just slipped there and that's the scary part about it. When that kind of happens, it's usually a pretty serious injury. Yeah, no really bad is obviously the worst. It was like that, what was it a couple years ago and the rough riders when they came back from the delayed start and then everyone was popping their Achilles heel and that when it was that one practice camera, the three riders above thees, it's like, okay, let's stop this. So we have the game here. I guess we can start with that at 1321. Kind of a weird game Crumb comes in, I think he kind of gets the backup quarterback kind of bump, right, okay, this guy comes into the game play good. Scrambled. Oh, I did want to mention too, I was texting with Dwayne Ford who was on the show, obviously the Friday show kind of preview and all this and Dwayne echoed kind of Jason what you said as well, this really scary moment and probably one of the emotional that he's seen taking part in that. But Crumb comes in here, plays decently. Evan, I know that you were high on his performance. Like I said, I feel like it might be a little bit more of it was like when BJ Daniels came into that X F L's dragons game when Silvers got pulled like okay, we're not expecting this, he's kind of running around the field, but what did you make of Crumb? Yeah, I was impressed by Crumb. I think if you take away the two interceptions, he had a very great performance, especially in his first cfl game where he really saw action like that where he could control the offense and especially on the ground too. I think he had six carries for 91 yards and unfortunately he wasn't able to run it into the end zone at the very end when it mattered most. But again, I thought it was pretty impressive and he still managed a rushing touchdown and that's good because it was just announced this morning that he was going to start next week. And I think if you want talk about Ottawa's current quarterback situation in general, I think we're pretty much out on our buckle at this point just given his performances prior to Tyree Adams coming in my personal opinion, I think you just have Crumb as the guy from now on. I think he showed enough potential in this game and maybe I'm sure they're going to bring in someone behind that. I think the two top options right now, three down, put out an article this morning or last night sometime recently. The two top options, at least in my opinion, and both of them were in this article. Jake Dunaway, the quarterback from Sacramento State who I interviewed last year. He was someone that was in training camp with the Red Blacks, played a bit in the preseason and then Tyrell Grom who was with Winnipeg for a couple games earlier in the season who got released because of the Dakota PR cop situation. I think he could come in and both of those guys could be a backup to Dustin Crumb down the stretch. Assuming Crumb performs well and can sort of maintain a starting job, I think what's most impressive about his performance is he was signed September of last season, somewhat late. And the fact that he's coming in and doing this at the beginning of year two, he doesn't even really have a full sort of cfl season under his belt because he came in at the end of last year. So to see him come in and really put on a show and make things close at the end, I thought that was great. If you're a Red Blacks fan, I think that's all you can really ask for at this point. Just given how much hardship your team has had and just seeing all the struggles continue, you have to find positives and I really do think Dustin Crumb was one of them. Well that's the thing is we just had the Tyre Adams injury here where you're worst case, okay was always this is horrific and least at least we can go back. And obviously I think it was the EZ and the hit that kind of took him out. Jason, what do you make of this? Because I think there's a lot of different ways, I mean obviously that we could go here in terms of the quarterback situation. So I mean I think it's going to be kind of a wait and see thing with the quarterback position in Ottawa. I think they're probably going to give Cru a couple of weeks to see if he can follow up that pretty strong performance from how he played in Hamilton. I thought the first thing I noticed about him is, man, this guy's got some wheels. And I think that it really presented a lot of challenges to the Tigercat defense. Now was that the Crumb playing well or was that the Tiger Cat's defense continuing to struggle? They have so far this season will have to wait and see, but I think Crumb did very well placed in a very difficult position to come in cold off the bench like that. But he didn't expect to see any action in this game other than maybe short yardage. So at the end of the day I think he played well. I agree with Evan. Yeah, it was crazy because obviously it's one of those things where he's coming in and I you's almost like a war. You come in, you're like, okay, I just got to go, we got to get ball downfield. He had the run and the touchdown at the end of the first half or I think it put them up by one after, which was insane after everything. To think that they could come back and do that. And then obviously trying to have this run at the end and it's just so poetic how, you know, imagine in his mind as he's running, it's like I'm going to be the hero here, I'm going to save the day. And they had just cut to the shot of Ola here on the sidelines and just how close it could have been and it's so poetic and obviously you can't, if this was the movie version, he makes that touchdown and wins the game and gets carried off and it's the hero but it's not and it's real life and I just thought it was really crazy that it came down to this very similar, like I said, play where he got the touchdown, the first half here you're two yards short and then it's kind off for not, but really incredible and I think a lot of courage should go to him. Anything else from him? I have some more notes on the game. Anything else on Dustin here, Evan? Evan or Jason? No, I think we've pretty much discussed, I mean again, I'm more interested to see what happens behind Dustin Crumb, but like Jason said, I do think they're going to give him a couple weeks at this point you're kind of just in this experimental phase. I think now it really shows just how much of a shame it is that they lost Tyrie Adams to that injury on that shot from Jake Sarna. And it's a shame, I never really talked about that play much, but I'm a pretty big jig Sarna fan, but too many times now we've seen these injuries to quarterbacks on low hits and things like that and it's a real shame. It's what ended Missy's season last year and now it's ended Tyree Adams season who was much less proven than Maoli but was still showing a lot of promise there for Ottawa after our buckle. So I think that's where we're at with that. Yeah, I feel bad Jake, I think I said last week he was on the show last year when they were honoring, I believe it was his father or some with his family, they were doing an event with the Elks. So here we get on the W side here, Jason, with your Thai cats. I have thoughts but I want to hear from you because obviously you were there. It certainly seems like we're kind of doing a different offense now. We're actually running the ball. We signed one of the greatest running backs right now with James Butler utilizing him. What'd you make of Shilts and the rest of the team? Well, for Shilts, I think he has definitely been an improvement over what we've seen from those first couple games of the season, so I think that's an improvement from that perspective. I think they're still having a lot of problems in the red zone. I mean the one touchdown that they had was kind of a long catch and run, so I think they still need to execute better down there. But I mean still baby steps for this team. It's almost like Dejavu last year they got their first win over Ottawa by the skin of their teeth. I think it was a missed field goal on the last play, otherwise Ottawa would've won. So at the end of the day, just another win at the gun against Ottawa for their first win of the season. And I think going forward for the Tigercat, I think there's still some positive signs you could build on, but I'm not too overly optimistic about this team still going forward because I'm still seeing some of those issues and if they had lost this game it would've been pretty embarrassing I think given the situation Ottawa was going through. I mean you look at both sides of that where it would've been this heroic rise for Dustin crime here running in. But yeah, you look from Hamilton's head, like our team lost their starting quarterback to this horrific, could be career ending injury here and they're able to rally and come back. I mean we beat it by a touchdown. Hamilton, I had notes on here. Yeah, reevaluating the offense I think. So we're finally moving away from the June Jones and all of that and getting, they said that they're okay, we're using the bi week, we're figuring all this out. I don't know why we didn't come into the season. I guess they thought Bo was going to throw a lot more on that penalties. Penalties from Hamilton on special teams. Is that a reinbold issue? Is that a player issue? Jason, what do you make of that? Because they had two different time count on kick and field goals or punts, whatever. And I think they also got one on offense on a second and short. So I think penalties in general have been a pretty big problem for the Tigercat to begin this season. I believe they're one of, if not the most penalized team in the CFL so far this season. So that's a great point. But at the end of the day, I don't think that it's that big of a deal. I think they're sort those things out. I think Jeff Reinbold specifically when you talk about special teams, I think Ryan Bull does a really good job with that unit, has a great track record, so I'm not too overly concerned with that. But the penalties in general, yeah, it's pretty bad. Well and even with Hamilton, because I'm watching the game and when they, Ottawa had the, because it was a minute, it was 15, whoever left, I'm like, how the hell does Ottawa even get the ball back here? It's like Hamilton's so ineffective of even keeping the ball to give to me. That shouldn't even happen. It's like BC gets the ball back against Montreal. We put the game on ice. You should be able to do that. Yes. Scott's checking it. Could MBT be an option for Ottawa? Talked about it. I mean, I don't know. I had a lot of tweets about it and okay, what's the U S F L contract situation, all that kind of stuff. I mean MBT just played 11 weeks of professional football here. I mean Evan, do you think that's a realistic expectation or a probability? Can't rule it out. I don't think you can rule it out because M B T had great success in cfl and I'm not like, to be honest, I'm not sure how he feels about the U S F L. I never really heard much from him on that end or about it, but I don't see why you could leave the door open, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Personally, I don't see it. I think he's going to stay in the us. I mean he moved there to be with his family and everything like that, so it would be hard for me to picture him coming back to a team like Ottawa where they're rebuilding. I understand you can get some money, you can get some reps. It's a long season, but I don't know. I mean he's 34 going on 35 or whatever. He might be at a point where he is just ready to settle down. So again, personally I don't see it, but you can never rule anything out. I mean I'm sure they've probably reached out to him, I assume so Why wasn't it? Mike Mitchell was saying in our group chat, he feels like those communications have started and McLeod's close with Mazzoli and Sean Burke wants to be kind of aggressive in all this. Like I said, I get these messages a lot of, okay, well can this guy, well why didn't they get to go back to the C ffo? Why I'm, I would like to normalize treating football players as humans and we call it just imagine just getting done plenty of professional football season. Oh yeah, let's just, okay, move back up to Canada. Maybe he can do it later in the season. Maybe you kind of see contesting, can we keep the ship afloat here? How Vernon did with BC last year? Can we keep it afloat? And then maybe McLeod comes in after Labor Day, kind of take the month of August off. I could see that where okay, maybe we don't need you the whole season. And they say that the CFL season doesn't really matter till Labor Day anyway, which I would think is an odd marketing point, but maybe you bring him in after Labor Day, maybe he gets to take the summer with his family in Atlanta and then come up after that. Evan or Jason, anything else? TCATs, red Blacks. I'm looking here. They got Winnipeg, they're at home against Winnipeg. I don't know if they're going to keep that winning streak alive here. Anything else, Jason on the TCATs? Yeah, I wanted to mention that Tyreek McAllister playing in his first career cfl game had that provided a really big spark for the team both on the return game and then obviously he had that long catch and run. So I think he's a guy that's going to be featured in that offense going forward. Brings a lot of speed to the table. So yeah, I was pretty impressed by him. And one other guy I wanted to mention is Mark Leggo. He's off to a pretty good start for the Tigercat kicking the ball. I think he made all of his field goals so far except for that one extra point. Doesn't really count as a field goal, but I think Leggo has had a pretty strong start for being a pretty maligned player with his time with the bombers. We will have lots of kicking to talk about here when we get to the Edmonton game. I think we'll be funny. It is crazy to me though, you know got Mark Legge, we've got the faithful guy, we've got Chris Blut over in the US F l, we have a lot of really weird, we got a really weird kicker names Mark Legge is certainly one of the one. Yeah, I love that. All right, so let's move on here. I guess we can, if we're winning, we'll go all through this. I watched most of this game on mute. We were top golfing with my brother for his 30th birthday. We wanted to keep an eye on my boy Vernon here against Cody at home at BC Place. I know there was a lot of issues about the attendance and I saw my baker tweeting that out, but 20,000 in change attendance there at BC place, Evan Bounce back Vernon, only the one interception didn't throw six, so obviously better than last week. What did you make of Vernon here? Evan? Yeah, I thought this was a great sort of bounced back from his sixth interception game in Toronto. Although I will say I think it might have been the second or third play of the game, he had a pick six that was called back and I really wonder had not been called back what the outcome of that game would've looked like because to be honest, I didn't really see the need for the penalty there. I forget specifically what it was, but I don't know that one could have gone either way. So he might have got bailed out there. Again, all love for Vernon, but it was interesting how the commentators were like, oh he's shaking it all off from last week and then third play of the game. It's like, oh there's another one going back again. Fortunately it didn't count, but other than that, I mean, yeah, he had a very solid performance. And I will say just staying on the top of BC's offense as a whole for a minute, Sean shivers the running back. I thought him in place of Taquan Mazel was extremely impressive, especially in his first real cfl game. So what that tells me is that BC has extremely good running back depth despite losing James Butler to Hamilton, which was considered a really big loss for that team offensively and for good reason. And then looking at the receiving department, again, we've talked at nauseum just about how diverse this receiving core is. Personally, I think Keon Hatcher is making a case now to be the most valuable receiver on this team next to Dominic Rhimes personally, Dominic is probably my favorite. And then I'd say the other guy there too. What Lucky Whitehead. I'd say honestly Keon might've taken over Lucky Whitehead in terms of value. And I know Whitehead was the guy that was talked a lot about last year. I had an opportunity to see him. He was sort of a breakout player. But this year I feel like there's just so many receivers now and you have guys like Justin McInnis coming and Jovanka Toy and whatever. There's just so many targets that it's kind of hard to, there's no real number one receiver and that's why I say, yeah, this guy might be the best, but it's next to this guy and slightly ahead of this guy, you know what I mean? But overall, again, another great performance from bc. They're right on right back on track four and one. That's probably the best start you could ask for, especially with all the questions that they had going into this season BC And I've said before, piggybacking off what Evan said with this, you know have this whole cast of wide receivers and I just think when BC is running, they just feel so cool to me right now. And I don't know if it's like the ex f l thing with a lot of these guys, but a toys going into the end zone and he's, it feels, I like that energy. It feels very marketable to me and cool just in the way when BC's rolling and if they're putting up points. And I know last week, but when we had what, 45 against whoever what week before last when we're rolling against Winnipeg when they're rolling, it feels very cool. Jason, thoughts on BC's offense here or anything else with bc? Yeah, so I had the same point as Evan. I was going to say it just, you can't really slow this offense down because they have so many playmakers. I mean if somebody has an off game then there's somebody else to step up and has take his place. I mean Jevon Katoi was huge in this game. I mean they said it on the broadcast, but he's the closest thing in the cfl that we have to a tight end type body and I think that's very accurate and I think he presents a lot of matchup nightmares. I think they said he's caught every single target. He's been thrown his way so far this season, which is pretty remarkable here in week five. So I mean this offense is just so dynamic. I mean Adams doesn't have to play perfect with the way that these receivers are playing. I think that specifically with this game, there's a couple of plays that really swung this game in BC's favor. Obviously that interception that you alluded to Evan on the first play of the game, first series of the game that was called back, but also a blocked field goal that when it was a one possession game BC blocks the field goal returns of her touchdown. That really blew the game wide open and I think that's what BC was able to come away with the victory here. Well yeah, because you had the trading where you had the blocked, it was the blocked punt to go in and then the BC and you'd be able to run it back for the pick six. Even if we do make that mistake, we're good enough here that we can go back. I thought it was funny too, the Sean Shivers, which I was, there was an old computer game if anyone ever played a shivers that was an old computer, like a mist kind of. Did you ever play any of that where you were going through the haunted museum or whatever? It was kind of like mist back in the day. But he had that fumble even that like, okay, we fumble at the way at the one yard line, Montreal's running it back and they had the quote here, I just had it pulled up but he said my mom is going to be mad. I thought that was funny, him talking to a Farhan about that. But he was good just getting elevated with Zel going down. But like Evan said, kind of the depth on that. I wanted to say Evan had his while we're bringing that famous people tweeting here. Evan, hi on Rado here. 11. Perfect at half Evan. Thoughts on your boy Cody Jido here as we are in the Sa de Cody? Yeah, I mean look, this was not a great game if you're Montreal. They haven't had much success playing in BC for a long time. But yeah, Cody Jido again, I still thought he played a nice game, didn't throw any interceptions, nearly threw for 300 yards, was effective on the ground averaging 7.1 yards per carry. So I thought that was worth pointing out. And then just as set that whole I offense as a whole, how many times have we mentioned Austin Mack in the past five weeks he's continued to shine. And then there were a couple new guys in that receiving core that stepped up this week, specifically Tyler Snead and Courtney Davis who I believe played at Texas a and m. He's in his first year in the cfl and he had a really big impressive catch kind of down the sideline over one of the BC defenders. So good to see him get some work in. And then there's one player that I've never properly given a shout out to in Montreal but just wanted to take a minute to say about Chandler worthy, we a lot about sort of cfl returners and Jane and Grant from Winnipeg always comes up. But personally I think Chandler worthy is someone where it's like every time I'm looking at him on the tv, I can't look away every time Montreal is about to return and he's there. He had some explosive runs in this game, didn't run any back for touchdowns, but he is done that plenty of times before. I think he had two in one game last season, so just wanted to take a minute to say thanks to him for his efforts and everything. Not that I'm a Ally Wetz fan, but just super fun player to watch and it makes the league more dynamic I think. Thoughts on the ettes and then I have a follow up question for you Jason. Yeah, so I'm glad you brought up Chandler worthy because I wanted to talk about the ette special teams. They had so many penalties on special teams in this game. I thought that was really crucial for them and they had a couple of big returns by Worthy that were wiped out. So Worthy actually had a much better game than the stats show. But I mean at the end of the day, if you're just taking holding penalties on every pump return, that's going to set you back because as Paul Lap lease actually pointed out on the halftime for T S N, if you're taking a penalty there, you're not just losing the yards that you gained but you're losing those yards plus you're losing 10 from where you caught the ball. So I mean the really crucial penalties in the cfl game field position just so crucial. And then the other thing I wanted to talk about was know when it comes to Cody Fajardo, I think the biggest thing is that he looks very healthy right now and I think at the end of the day mobility is a big part of his game and it's good to see him healthy because he has a completely different quarterback when he has his legs available to him. Well that was going to be my follow up question here in watching because, and I love Cody, I love the Al Wets, that's my team of the east. I'm sorry for the Hamilton TCATs here, but seeing him play here now four we or five what, five weeks now going in I compared to Trevor Harris too and they always say, okay, Trevor Harris is the most accurate and he's a quick thinker, whatever. I think Cody is maybe not as you accurate as good of a passer, but his legs and mobility where it was such a terrible situation last year for him in Regina, would you take Cody over Harris if he had more protection and more time? It feels like Cody's a better quarterback ride than right now than Trevor Harris, even though obviously Saskatchewan has a better record. Like Jason, who would you take there? I would still take Trevor. I think he has more of a track record. I mean maybe he doesn't have as high as a ceiling as Cody did it back in 20 19 1 West o West m o p. But at the end of the day I do trust Trevor Harris more going forward still. Evan, thoughts on that? Would you take Trevor or Cody? Yeah, that's a difficult question. I'm glad you brought that up. That's a fun one. I'm going to go Cody Jido here. Going to go against the grain. I agree with Jason though. I think Trevor is like the proven vet someone you can count on. I just think Cody again, when he is healthy and when he's in the right situation with the right people, I think he really can produce. And I'm not saying that necessarily happened this game because there were a couple things I thought he could have done better and I could probably say that about the previous four weeks too. But I still have belief in Montreal and a lot of that is from Cody Jido. A lot of it too, again is from their receiving core. We've talked about that already. But if we're just looking at Cody Jido specifically, I think he does bring a lot to this team and it definitely gives them sort of a refreshed look. And what I think mean by that is I feel like Cody will last longer in Montreal than Trevor will in Saskatchewan. Maybe I'll be wrong, maybe I'll be proven. I'm sure now that I've said that, of course it won't happen. But that that's just my take on it. I like both. I just think Cody has a tiny bit more upside, but ultimately they are both very, I'd say upper tier quarterbacks above average. They're not Vernon Adams or Chad Kelly, but they can guide a team to win when needed. I know I like Cody. I think, like I said before, he feels a little more full this year. It feels like when Colby came back on Survivor and it was a little more a little older, little more swollen on here talking Vernon, just the kind of getting back to obviously not throwing six interceptions is going to do better anytime, but it scrambling more, running more like Vernon is not that pocket passer. And I think that last game against Argos trying to do that and kind of dice down the field there with the ball, I obviously, I don't know if it's his mental whatever or kind of reading everything, but him running more is going to I think improve that quality of that. Jason, I felt watching the game this time, it felt like they were trying to rely more on his legs. Did I imagine that or are we getting back to that? No, I think the big thing is it's not necessarily running to run. It's running around in order to make a big pass down the field. He does that so well and I think that's something that he needs to utilize in his game. It's one of the best players in the cfl at doing that. Yeah, I don't know. It feels to me in entirely different situations, but we brought Russell Wilson into the Broncos and okay, we're going to have him stand in the pocket of pencil. That's not Russell Wilson. That was never, if you watched him in Seattle, that's not his gameplay. I don't know why we were trying to do that. And it feels the same here. Let's see, we have Vernon, he's athletic, let's let him run around. Evan, any other thoughts on that? And then I had Matthew bets as well continuing. I think he's broken his own personal record last year of sax in five games right now. Really looking crazy on that. Anything else about the lions here Evan? Yeah, I was going to touch on their defense a bit too, obviously. Yeah, Matthew Bets was someone, they talked about ad nauseum kind of on the broadcast just because of how dominant he's been this season. I believe he had seven sacks and 18 games last year and now he's up to eight through five games, which I mean at this rate it looks like he's going to be the cfl sack leader. I don't have the stats in front of me to see who else is coming close because I do typically look at more offense than defense. That's just who I am. But the other guy too, Jaylen Edwards Cooper, although he made his big play on special teams, he had six tackles for loss thought that stood out. And a fun fact about him, I noticed he played at Texas a and m Commerce, which was a division two school and that's also where Cater Kahu the Miami Dolphins played, who was one of the top undrafted free agents last season, had a really good rookie year with them. So I thought that was kind of just an interesting connection to see those guys doing cool things in two different leagues. So yeah, shout out to Joe and Edwards Cooper. That was a very electric play. I think we can all agree on that. When he returned the block field goal for the touchdown and definitely put BC I think again sort of in that position to take over in the second half. Cause that was, I think there was only about three minutes left in the second quarter when that happened. Jason, anything else on this one then I have a funny comment before we move on to the next game. Nothing more for me really. I think we got our bases covered with this one. I thought it was funny, I saw a couple of videos. So we had the Warkin family here coming back and they're like, see Nathan still loves us. We were an unexpected detour. He didn't want to be here, but Nathan still loves us so I did love that they posted us lots of videos and Nathan tweeted out, you cropped out his wife. So Nathan was there with Miss Roarke here getting ready for that. But I did think that was funny. The hometown kid, whatever, returning back to college. See we still matter. Nathan's here watching again, but that was good. I'm glad. Let's get on, we'll do all that. We'll get to the next game here. Like I said, this was the one that was not available on CBS Sports Network. So unfortunately my coverage of this was slightly limited. Jason, do you want to start with this Calgary at Winnipeg here. Winnipeg continuing to go. Yeah, so the story with this game is that Calgary came out, punched Winnipeg in the mouth in the first half. I believe they were up 11 to one at one point, but at the end of the day Winnipeg just responded in the second half with a really dominant performance. Really put the clamps down defensively. There was a big clock killing drive when Winnipeg had the lead in the fourth quarter. I believe it was like 10 minutes or so. So that really just illustrated that Winnipeg just has the physicality and the mental fortitude to win these games against Calgary. I think they've won 10 in a row against Calgary or something crazy that Calgary usually comes close, they play Winnipeg well, but at the end of the day they just can't close in these matchups. Yeah, mayor here, I wanted to shout out, so Ryan Ballantine, friend of the show here came on and he tags me and all this kind of stuff and he had his article up and three down talking about mayor continuing to struggle. We, we've haven't really figured out is it trying to come into place, but what do you make here, Jason? Is it, hey, I saw comments on it. Is it about play calling? Is it mayor? What do you attribute that to? Well I do think the play calling has declined in Calgary ever since Ryan did what he went over to take the head coaching job in Toronto. So I do think that's worth mentioning, but at the end of the day, Jake Mayer just has to play better. I think there's just nothing that is down the field with this passing game. It's very dink and dunk and even then he's missing some really easy throws. I mean there were a couple throws in this game where you're like, okay, this is what the stamp Peters saw in Jake Mayer the last couple of years he threw with anticipation just was under a lot of pressure in this game. But at the end of the day, I think that mayor did not play well overall. And I think it's very hard to win the cfl. Obviously you guys know if you cannot pick up first downs passing the ball, I think Calgary is great running the ball. We saw that in the first half, but at certain point at team is going to take that away from you and you're going to have to throw for it. And I don't think Calgary has been able to prove that so far this season. Yeah, I mean 14 to 25 here, not setting the world on fire. Deidre Mills had a day here, 14 carriers for 97 yards. That was good Evan thoughts. I mean it's just so weird. We really kind of annoyed that Jake is the air apparent here, even was it two seasons ago kind of coming into relief and then last year taking over, what do you make of Calgary? And I don't know what they do here. So I'll start with the Calgary side of the ball before we get into Winnipeg and just sort of the whole flow of the game. I had in my notes, I said another slow outing for Jake Mayer. And at this point, if you're a Calgary fan, I think you do have a right to be concerned about his play and what the future looks like. The next steps. Am I saying they're going to make a quarterback switch? No, I don't think this is a situation where they need to do that quite yet. But after this game the reality is like this was a winnable game for Calgary. If they had kept on that trajectory sort of from the first half and they didn't let Winnipeg pull away, it was very much in their grasp. And for a minute there I really thought they were going to pull it out. But obviously that hope went away very quickly as well. So yeah, Deedrick Mills, another guy had that you brought up Reed easily the best player for Calgary offense made this game I think really exciting if you eliminate him from this offense. I think to be honest, it would've just been a snooze fest. There's no other real term for it. There was a couple guys though in the receiving department, Trey Odom's Dukes is someone I was really happy to see get involved and I sort of think he's one of these more underrated secret weapons, especially given the state of Calgary's receiving core. But it was good to see Reggie Beton back in the fold. I think he had been out for a couple games injured, so he came back there and had a couple catches. And then one thing that is really worth pointing out that was sort of an underrated storyline that I didn't really hear anyone else talking about was the return of Mark and Michelle to the receiving core after four years away in the N F L. Obviously he had been there in 2018 and a couple years before that. It was a pretty quiet day for him. He had one catch for 11 yards on six targets. Again, got a lot of looks but didn't really capitalize on a lot of them. Makes sense, your first game back in this cfl, but I think I said it was quiet but still wholesome. And another player that will hopefully be able to help mayor down the line. And this morning there was just news that Calgary signed up, Billingsley too that tied in from Texas who had played at Alabama and he's going to switch over to receiver, hopefully help them out. He was an X F L draft pick. So again, they're really trying to boost this receiving core. I think in hopes that mayor will sort of open up. And I do agree with Jason, the play calling isn't perfect, right? I can't sit here and put all this on mayor. I still think he is a very good quarterback with a lot of upside despite the slower start to the season. But yeah, I mean something's got to change soon. I mean this team, I wouldn't say they're in a dire position, but just given their history. I mean there's a lot kind of riding on the line here. Yeah, one in three here. Second to last in the west after the Alex, Jason, any other thoughts and then we can transition to Winnipeg. Any other thoughts on Calgary here? Yeah, so I agree with Evan. It's the St. Peters have kind of lost prominence in the West division over the past couple years. I remember a few years ago this was a team that was looked at every single year as the best team in the West Division and it's just simply not the case anymore. They've been passed over by obviously Winnipeg but also bc Saskatchewan's got their stuff together so far this year. So at the end of the day, I mean the St. Peters, it's kind of a troubling situation for them. I don't think that they're completely out of it yet. Obviously this is the cfl we're talking about. They're still very much alive for if not a third place seed in the west, crossover position in the East division. But I mean it's not looking good for them so far. I think the biggest thing, like you said Evan, is that the St. Peters need to get healthy in the receiving core, get a lot more playing time with those guys, get Mark and Michelle back in the fold. I think that will help them a lot. Maybe play some easier opponents might help them a little bit as well. But at the end of the day, I think the St. Peters could be in trouble here and I made a video about that this week. Go check it out on my channel. Yeah, Jason, I love kind of the previous stuff and the reaction stuff Jason does over there. Great stuff to check out during the week as well. I think it's good because I get, this is all I can bear. We this do our Friday show. Jason A. Little bit more flexible with that. I appreciate it. Switching here cause I want to make sure we talk about the Rouge game before we get out, but Winnipeg, ROS 20 something of 20 something, throwing 200 plus yards, two TD looked like a very kind of typical karos, a clean game here, stat line. Evan, thoughts on Winnipeg continuing to kind of roll here? Yeah, just going back to my notes. I mean, I just said another well-rounded kind of textbook performance from Winnipeg. You really know what to expect from 'em at this point. The only thing I would really point out is that they maybe haven't been scoring as many points still as I would've hoped. And they definitely had a slow start, but again, they got the job done. Ros had his typical, like you said, completing 2020 something passes for 200 something yards, two touchdowns, just a typical normal day. Brady Olivera carrying the rock, only averaging 4.9 yards per carry, which is decent in't score. But I think we've talked before about how he's kind of a workhorse in a way. And then on defense for them, the one guy that was nice to see that had a pretty impressive game was Dietrich Nichols, the former Houston Roughneck, obviously from the X F L, someone that I'll never forget. And then along with Malik Clements too, I think had a really nice outing there as well. So yeah, I mean again, not much on the Winnipeg side at this point. You just know once they're on, they're on I was it a perfect game for them? No. Was it still their standard? Probably not. But they won by what, 13 points, so that's all right for me. And you have famously U S F L, former U S F L generals, quarterback Dakota Proff returning back up to the north. I know. Did he play last week or was this his first game back after the tradey at Evan? Or not the trade, but you know him coming back. I don't know. I read something that said Tyrell Piro played in or was active for three games. So I assume Dakota was active last week, but I could be wrong. I have a feeling this is the first action that he's got because I didn't notice him last week, but again, I could be wrong. Jason, anything else here? Winnipeg? Yeah, so I just think the Winnipeg, it was just a classic. They could beat you so many different ways. They don't have to play the perfect game. A lot of teams have to win games. So I think at the end of the day they play excellent complimentary football. The defense is kind of making me eat Crow over what I said a couple of weeks ago that they were kind of declining a little bit back there, but the first last couple of weeks they played very well. So I think at the end of the day, things are going pretty well in Balmer land and it's interesting to see what happens going forward with this first place race with the lions. Yeah, Winnipeg's, the kind of team where you have to play perfect to beat them. We saw BC really dismantled them a couple weeks ago. But yeah, they can be afforded a few mistakes here. I think BC is in that position we talked about where hey, we can have the one yard, one yard line fling kind of all that. You kind of rally a little bit. Obviously we can't throw six interceptions, but Winnipeg, we we're allowed a little bit of, okay, you came out hard. Okay, well we can turn this around. Last note I had with the three down article on here was what are we thinking about this comparison away? The away Calgary jerseys looking like a box of popcorn. I think they're hot. I think they're really hot jerseys, Jason, because I know Evan doesn't partake in any uniforms between the can. So Jason, any thoughts on the popcorn? Yeah, so I think that I don't really critique the away uniforms c L has harshly or in any sport because there's not so much you could do with the white uniforms I feel like. So I think I award a little bit of creativity here by the stamp Peters. So I mean, I like the jerseys. All right, so now we are finally here to the Famous Rouge game. Now I'm going to say this. So I was out Thursday night, my wife's birthday was Friday. I had weddings to work both Friday and Saturday. So I took my wife out Thursday night, I'm getting the score as this is going on. I'm like, okay. It's like it's one zero, okay, it's two zero. And I was sitting there and I'm like, this is a U S F L game. I might just have Pat. I might just let Pat. Okay, you can talk about this game. When we come to the recap, I went back on demand. I watched this entire game driving to and from my wedding Friday and Saturday. So I did watch and it was actually, we'll get anyway, but I thought it was an actually really entertaining game because the score and we're going in and Aash is tweeting and this is the definition of excellence. Like Aash is just going crazy about all this healing on this l I didn't think this was that terrible of a game. I mean, the ending came down. Jason, am I out on a limb here? I mean, I thought this was actually pretty exciting for 11 to 12 on a Thursday night. Yeah, I had fun enough time watching it. I feel like the fact that it was close definitely helped and just the dramatic finish made this game one of the more memorable games so far this season. Evan, did you catch any of this game on the Thursday? I did, yeah. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched the first half, so I didn't see the blunder at the end until I, well, I obviously went back, watched the highlights. I saw it all over Twitter and all that conversation. We'll get into that in a couple minutes here. I do want to talk about just the game itself first, aside from the rouges and everything else that made it so interesting and really so close. I think my first note here, we'll talk about the Elks Taylor Cornelius. To me, this was really the first game where he looked like a starting quarterback. Maybe that's being a bit harsh, but to be honest, I mean prior to this, every performance he's had was, I mean, you can only say so many good things and I really hope Taylor can continue this. I'm not trying to sit here and just say bad things about him, rip on him all the time, but really this game stood out. I was like, okay, it's finally looking like after a little over a month, maybe they can have something here. And again, especially, it really came into play on the ground. Taylor, people talk about him having this big frame and to see him be so mobile in this game, score average over five yards, a carried multiple times, had 11 carries. To see him do that I think should at least give Edmonton fans some confidence. Now, keep in mind, this could all go on a landslide next week. Who knows, right? There's been so much inconsistency, but I really did what I saw from Taylor Cornelius this week. Still had an interception, still wasn't perfect, could have gone a couple more completions, I think, but ultimately better stuff from him than what it's been. And I mean, there really wasn't much before that. Couple other things, this was definitely a revenge game for some of the players on the Elks, Kyron Moore, who used to play for Saskatchewan on offense. And then AC Leonard obviously who played for Saskatchewan on defense. Both of them are now with the Elks and both of them had, I would say, pretty noteworthy games this time around, especially AC Leonard. Again, one of those guys that I've known, one of the first names that I was familiar with in the cfl going back a couple years. So that was good. And then the run game too, I think was the last thing I was going to point out. But besides the whole CJ Simms business, I think it was Kevin Brown again, him and Cornelius kind of really combined and don't, from what I remember, Edmonton hasn't had much of a run game up until this point. They've just been trying to force feed to Gino Lewis and a couple other guys. They didn't have Gino Lewis in this game by the way. But ultimately there was improvement from Edmonton. Did they win? No. Could they have won? Yes. Another heartbreak or, yeah, I wa the main takeaway for me from this game, and I know I haven't talked about Saskatchewan yet or what happened at the end, but I'll wait for that. I think my main takeaway from this game was there was so much heartbreak I thought it couldn't get any worse. And then we saw that Hamilton Ottawa game where Masol went down and it just kind of put a whole kind of sombering blanket of sorts on the weekend. It was still, I'd say a good slate. I enjoyed the BC Montreal game and even the Winnipeg Calgary game, even though it was pretty clear by the third quarter Winnipeg was going to pull it out. But again, it was these things like this where those are the more sad storylines that you kind of just have to discuss unfortunately and accept if you're a fan of one of those teams especially. All right, Jason, go to you and then I got some notes here. So I mean I echo your sentiment Evan, that Cornelius played better in this game, but I think at the end of the day, I mean even if he played better, it still wasn't good enough. At the end of the day, you put 11 points on the board, it's not going to win you very many games. And I mean it could have won you this game very close to winning you this game, but at the end of the day, just not good enough. I think what was huge in this game were the missed field goals by their kicker. Dean Faithful, again, very controversial decision to go with him as their field goal kicker this season, given that he's a 36 year rookie that had never kicked in a college or a pro game before. I think so. I mean those are just missed points on the board. Those were enough to win the game right there. And I think he got three rouges from three field goals. So at the end of the day it was just a very disappointing effort from the Elks even though they came close to winning. I think that there's still so much to work on here that I can't be too encouraged by the performance. And I mean I think that a couple of guys, like you said AC Leonard had a really good game and this one Lu has Puro is another former Saskatchewan rough rider that played pretty well for them in this game, has been playing pretty well for the Elk so far this season. But at the end of the day it's the same issues. They can't move the ball consistently on offense, they can't stop the run. Saskatchewan was really attacking that in this game even though they didn't come away with a ton of points. So I think the elk still have so much to work on. Yeah, it was crazy. So I just got a couple notes, we'll get to the Rouge thing here because I have a bunch of funny tweets about that. But so first off, Taylor Cornelius only has four wins in the cfl. I thought that was remarkable. And I know because we talked and it's only been a couple years, I'm like to give the bag to this guy last year and I love Taylor. We fought, we watched him in the X L and all that, but they only have four wins. Shout out Trevor Harris a hundred career starts. So that's pretty remarkable. Also, the fact that the riders had seven losses in the row at home before this and I can't figure out how in the nine team league we could have Ottawa who now thankfully is one, but we had Ottawa, Edmonton and Saskatchewan all with home losing streaks. I don't really understand how that's possible here with nine teams. A couple other things we're back to country. We had Fallout, boy introing the shows last week and I said for all people saying that the cfl has demographic problems, we're playing. 2006 is the sugar we're going down, we're back to country here. And my other note I had, and then we'll get to the Rouge unless anyone else has anything, we even had a penalty on Chris Jones this week where it's like the Elks just, we we're, we're like, how else can we lose this game? Jones is on the white line, the ref throwing the flag and then they show him the next play and he's still on the line. It's like, how do you not, we're done penalizing ourselves here, we're penalizing the coach Evan, or we will go Evan, any other thoughts on this? Cause I want to get to the rears before we get out of here. Yeah, so two things. One I just wanted to clarify is that score for the cause I think it said Edmonton had two touchdowns, but that can't be right, can it? No. Yeah, there's mistakes all over this. Yeah, that's what I thought I was going to say. I, I've been very weary trusting this the past couple weeks cause I looked and I'm like there's no way Steven Dunbar and Taylor Cornel is both scored in this game. Do you know which one it was? Who scored? I'm trying to think. Cornelius, I can't remember This is it was Dunbar had the Dunbar had Dunbar the tv. Okay, so Taylor didn't score rushing touchdown. I mean still an impressive game rushing, but yeah, that makes me wonder too, cause I said Joe Edwards Cooper and BC had six tackles for loss. That seems like a lot. And they had another player, it might have been on Saskatchewan, said he had eight tackles for loss. I, I'd have to, I don't know. Again, this is the best thing I have. So I'm going off this because I only watch chunks of all the games. So for forgive me and I think that speaks for all of us. It's a shame. I mean you want to talk about the whole cfl stats that that's a whole nother debate. But I will talk about Saskatchewan here for a minute. Even if the stats might not be exactly up to date or accurate. Not saying they've been in other weeks either. Let's see. Yeah, I didn't have too many notes here. Just yeah, Trevor Harris had a pretty nice game, still had a turnover but nearly through for 300 yards. Averaged 10 yards per attempt, which I thought was pretty good. And then Mitchell Pickton and Tevin Jones, the stood out at in the receiving core Tevin Jones especially I thought was interesting. He's had two separate stints with Saskatchewan. He came in and 2021 and then signed with the Jaguars and then came back last year. Don't really know what his stats looked like from last year or even this year, but this was the first time where I was like, oh, Tevin Jones. Good to see him. He was kind of a N F L veteran. Spent a couple years with the Steelers and I think he's 30 going on 31 now, something like that. So older guy, he's kind of still riding out in Saskatchewan. And then Nick Marshall is someone who keeps impressing me, kind of had the interception at the end to seal the wind for Saskatchewan. That's always a name I've been hearing about for so long. It feels like ever since I think he joined the Rough Riders in 2018. Feel like ever since I started watching the cfl around that time, I've been hearing his name. I will never get over the fact that he played quarterback at Auburn instead of corner and he was the quarterback for Auburn in that game in the Iron Bowl where they had that kick return. So always find that fascinating how I remember who Nick Marshall is. All right, so let's get here to the Rouge. I got a couple tweets here to set this up and then we can talk about it. We had Dave Campbell here talking L score four four Rouge this night. It's SA Rouge that sinks him. In the end, CJ Sims with Ahor horrific gaff at the end of the game. I can't believe this. The team finds new lays to lose Farhan hopping on this the Elks record. Notwithstanding when something that ridiculous happens to determine the game, it makes the entire league look bad. That type of mental error shouldn't simply, shouldn't happen at any level. The last thing, well a couple other Chad Ochocinco checking in watching the game, what an ending to the Edmonton SAS game. So I will play the replay here on the video and I will toss to Jason and then Jason, you're the Canadian guy here. What do we make of this? I just don't think there's any excuse. I just think it's really silly to end a game like this. So like I hate seeing this. I think BC in Toronto had a game in 2019 that ended with a guy accidentally stepping on the back of the end zone on a missed field goal to give up the one point to win the game. But this was even more bizarre than that. I mean it makes me feel a little bit better about the TCATs giving up that one point in the gray cup a couple of years ago to Winnipeg that would've potentially won them the game with the field goal. But I think that there's really no excuse for this happening. I blame the coaches for this more than anything. I think there should have been explicit discussions. There's no way that you let this ball go into the end zone under any circumstances or you absolutely try to get it out of the end zone if it gets that far. So I mean I just don't think there's any excuse for it, but it's really encapsulation of what the Elks have become over these past couple of years. We have a comments here across the pond just talking and he pointed out it was the Cornelius one yard rushing touchdown because it was the Dunbar one got called back for holding I think as that was my, again, this was Thursday. I've had 22 hours for of wedding filming since Thursday. But yeah, it was the dumb Dunbar one I believe got called back for holding. It was the Cornelius one that stood, we had the comment, R Ryan is a Calgary person here, a longtime friend of the show. He says Edmonton just made the entire cfl looked bad by allowed the team to win on the long field goal. Kick Edmonton is football is amateur hour. Evan, does this make the c l look bad because I see both sides. Well see this. This is why because we had the Winnipeg had the run back where they got it was like ran back to the 30 yard line or whatever, kind of off the missed field goal. Does this make so because I get both sides like, oh this is the best thing about the C F O or this is the worst thing. Yeah, well it's definitely a unique thing. We can start with that. I have had so much difficulty trying to explain the Rouge to people who I know here in the United States who don't watch the cfl. They think it's the weirdest thing. I personally like it somewhat because it's another scoring opportunity on special teams. And I think special teams is a super kind of important facet of football regardless of league. But there's been so many times where you just see these players who aren't trained and they come in from the United States and I'm so glad you brought up the Gray Cup, Jason. Cause that's the first thing I thought about when I saw that play. I said, why does this look so familiar? I feel like someone blundered like this before and a much more important setting. And then I was like, oh, that's right. Hamilton did it in the gray cup. And then yeah, yeah, I've watched highlights of that BC Toronto game where they pretty much lost on the rouge and it's such a weird way to lose or win a game. I like to say it's very anti climactic. I mean you look at that whole game, there were so many rouges, so many weird plays. It was such a weird night and it just ends like that. And in the nfl, that's nothing. That's like a touchback. So you look at that and it's like, okay, it's so weird. Even though I've watched the cfl now for a handful of years, every time I see something like that to think that a team essentially wins a game because of that is, I don't know what to say really. It's just such a unique complex issue. I've heard so much debate between whether or not the rouge is a good thing or if it's just too complicated or it makes the cfl Canadian. I don't know so many different takes on it. But yeah, I was just stunned honestly, that happened. And again, the it's if you're Edmonton, it's just, it's how many things can go wrong mean this is just so embarrassing is the bottom line. And I think CJ Sims, the guy who had that play or let that play happen, admitted he said the same thing. He's like, yeah, I was embarrassed. Can't like our team is the only winless team in the CFL now that Hamilton got a win and obviously Ottawa got on the board against them. So yeah, now Edmonton's still looking up and it's like we've had a couple of these opportunities where if we just did these simple things it wouldn't be a problem. But obviously that's in the past now and I don't know, just it's, it's so weird to me. The whole thing is just so bizarre. Well, but if this doesn't happen, we're not talking about this game in the same vein here. I think it's a pretty no pretty piss four game. Jason, thoughts on this? Anything else? So I think it's not necessarily a reflection on the league. It doesn't necessarily make the league look bad. I think it just makes the elks look bad. And again, I think it's just an encapsulation of what they've become over the past couple years, specifically how badly they've begun this season. Just the little things that they're not doing. In terms of the rouge itself, I think that I like it depending on the situation. I think the thing is, I hate when it goes through the back of the end zone and you get a point on a short missed field goal. I think that is stupid. I think it should be a returnable ball. I think that is an amend amendment that the type cfl can make to make the rouge a little bit more better. But I think situations like this, I think it's completely fine. I just think it was a bone boneheaded mistake. All right, we'll start to wrap up here. We'll get out of here soon. I don't want to hammer down on CJ Sims anymore, but he was kind of the standout all season. We said, man, God, the Alex at least returner per and everything else there going in here. Argo's on the, they're back. Oh yeah. BC's on the buy this week. That's right. Okay. Argo's on the buy BC here. Hamilton at Edmonton. We'll see. I don't, I don't know. Is she enough? Is Edmonton going to write that or we got Toronto here at Montreal. I think that's a good game here. Friday, Friday night, Winnipeg and Ottawa. That's a little scary. Calgary at Saskatchewan. That might be exciting here. I dunno, this is an interesting week here. Evan, what game are you looking at? And then we'll go to Jason. We'll get out of here. Yeah, definitely looking at that Saturday finale Calgary at Saskatchewan. I think this is a must win game for Calgary at point, especially given the standings. Saskatchewan is there at third in the west and Calgary really needs to kind of start climbing up soon if they want to be in playoff contention. So getting a win over Saskatchewan who is currently in that third spot, I think is extremely beneficial for them. Jason, what game are you I in that here? And I would like to know your thoughts also if it's not this game about the Hamilton game. Yeah, so I'll start with that. I am genuinely terrified as a tie Catts fan that we're going to be the team that gives the Elks their first home victory in, what was it, four years. So I mean it kind of scared from that perspective, but I don't think that's the number one game this week as you guys pointed out. I'm two looking forward to Calgary, Saskatchewan. I think those two teams always play really good games when they play together. Obviously an overtime game in week three. So I think that's going to be an excellent game. It's going to be interesting to see if Montreal can give Toronto that first L on Friday night, but I think this is a pretty good slate. Looking forward to next week. Yeah, don't have to worry about BC here. Losing it. Say my internet connection's unstable here, so hopefully I'm coming through All right. The same position as every week, but I'm getting the air me. There we go, g. Going the way, getting the air messages here. We'll wrap this up. Yeah, I'm excited for that. I think the Toronto game will be good. This is scary. This Ottawa, you're on the ropes. You got Dustin Crumb. I don't know if you know Winnipeg Defense is maybe the best thing you want for your start coming off the bench, not coming off the bench. You want your first official start, but it is interesting that that is his last name is Crumb and kind of like, oh, crumb here we are back. But should be good. This was exciting. Like I said, trying to get out of the way here to watch these games as much as possible. So I appreciate everyone checking to that. I appreciate Evan every week for coming on as this schedule allows means a lot. We're excited to do the Gray Cup and everything else. And then obviously Jason here every week and then doing all his other content and stuff on there. Anything else from other of you guys before we get out of here? We're good. All right guys, and subscribe. This was a fun one. I think we're going to have, he was supposed to come on last week. I think Nailer is coming on this week. We're going to talk with nails on Friday. And then I want to get welfare check with Tim Baines as well. And then I have some emails to write to the XFL office today as well. So hopefully it should be a good show on Friday. I like it. Subscribe and obviously Jason's channel as well. Where's my thing? All right, we'll get out of here. Thanks you guys. See ya.

Episode 152 - Football Feud

Coming up this week on the cast. Well welcome everyone. This week on the Mar Cast. It is time to play the Feud. Well welcome to Family Feud everybody. I'm your man, Steve Harvey. I am your host Re Johnson. We are talking who won the alt football feud this year, xfl or usfl. Stay tuned. Name a number that most men exaggerate A hundred 169. Really exciting show this week. First and foremost, Andrew ols back on the program from awful announcing we are breaking down the usfl championship ratings, comparing them to last year, comparing them to the xfl. Lots of spreadsheets, lots of numbers should be fun. To Me, the big thing just with the usfl at the moment is it, it's the classic field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Well, from my perspective, they've built it but the audiences haven't come Yet. And then as always, I have to bring back the professor, Andrew Murray, who won the football field this year. The xfl or the usfl. What should the usfl be doing in its off season? Who has the more challenging off season, the xfl or the usfl wide ranging conversation? Hope you enjoy. I think it was a proof of concept that even though you have a lot of ambitions to save money and try to improve the longevity of your product, the end of the day, you still need to put something out there that's going to draw people in. If you're talking about the level of football and the level of competition, maybe it was a little bit better this year, although the same team ended up winning anyways and ended up being Crown Champion at the end of the season. So you can argue about how much parody there really was in this league, but as far as what was presented and what was expected to attract more people, I mean it kind of flatlined honestly. And Then from C F L on T S N, Dwayne Ford, C F l legend coming on the program, we are previewing everything. CFL week five. You don't want to miss it. Hope you guys enjoy it. Like and subscribe. Hey guys, welcome to the Mark Cast. Read here. Interesting episode this week. Coming off your holiday week here. We had Canada today, the long weekend for our Canadian folk. We've had the 4th of July. Lots of weddings, everything else I've been filming in the interim. So we are here loaded show for you this week. Hope you enjoy it. Like I said, off the top kind of the football feud this week we finally wrapped xfl wrapped it season obviously usfl. Now we're kind of comparing the two. How did the usfl do? What do they need to do moving forward the next year? A very humble Darryl Moose Johnston in comparison to kind of the bombastic Fox sports kind of approach they have for usfl marketing. Very interesting dichotomy there. We'll get into all that today. Like I said, Andrew Buck, it's coming back on a longtime promise here. Once the usfl kind of took over the AL football TV ratings, kind of comparing that the declines year over year, what does Andrew he attribute that to? What does he think the usfl should be doing moving forward these acceptable ratings? Lots of different things. Like I said that spreadsheets, numbers galore. Appreciate Jacob, one of our listeners kind of compiling the list we use for all of that today. But what do we do next year? usfl, I wouldn't say ascended into the end of season two. I think that they kind of maybe flatlined, you can look maybe a little down. So how do we do that moving forward? Lots of interesting conversations with Andrew And then like I said, Andy Murray coming back on the professor, A long ranging conversation talking, I still maintain usfl, keeping the cities unnamed, awarding the franchises to their teams is different than whatever hodgepodge model we're doing right now of relocating to revamping teams. But what does the usfl need to be doing moving into 2024, great conversation with Andy. And then like I said Dwayne Ford, really appreciate it. Making my life easy on a holiday weekend here where I have lots of work coming on, long conversation, talking through all of the games. The Edmonton Elks Saskatchewan game will be done by the time we're listening to this. We talk about the Elks, kind of how they're looking at the quarterback dilemmas and obviously Saskatchewan and everything else. Tyree Adams injured or the injured notes released shortly after our conversation. So do keep that in mind talking with Dwayne. But obviously we expect Moli to get the start this weekend for the AWA red black. So I really appreciate Dwayne taking the time to come on. That should do it for me today. We'll figure out everything next week. We are now in the xfl and usfl off season so stay tuned. Should be good coming forward. Well we have back here today, I think we had promised this kind of mid-season and now I think it makes more sense. Postseason recap here we have Andrew Buckles with awful announcing, needless to say, a quiet day today on the Twitter University all football and not really the US L championship ratings coming out today. Andrew, how are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me back. I'm good. So we're going to probably address this a lot. We have our spreadsheet here, Jacob A is a listener, kind of a tab tabulated all this. I know Greg Parks over at xfl board kind of has his as well. I know Jacob just had put in a lot of work, give him some credit line here. Kind of us of L championship ratings came out today 1.157 nbc, it says it's 1.2 when you attribute in kind of the peacock and streaming numbers. So we can get into that down with the TV down 23.8% here, 1.52 on Fox last year, 1.57. And then we have the usfl ratings as a whole down 8.9% including the playoffs year over year. And I have the xfl stuff on there as well. Andrew, initial thoughts here, what do you make of all this? Yeah, so I think it's certainly disappointing for the usfl that they weren't really able to build on season one. I think a lot of the talk that they've had about this from the FOX executives who run it in particular has been this is a slow build but we're building, we're building every year. It's going to look make sense five years down the road when we sell these teams to local people and whatever. And so I think it's very disappointing for them to see a notable drop from the first year in the championship game ratings. And that also just falls the trend we've seen all season long of the ratings have not been what they were last year. Some of that's about xfl competition, some of that's about some other factors that have gone on. But I don't think this season went the way the usfl was hoping. And I think an interesting thing there too is even you look at their comments on, you look at Darryl Johnston talking about this before the championship game and how he's surprised that the ratings have been so bad. So that suggests to me that this wasn't expected internally at all. Well, and we'll get into that because I do want to do a deep dive in and Ben Fisher, I reached out to him and he basically just said he thought the article spoke for himself. He just didn't have anything to add. Cause I certainly invited Ben on as well just to kind of share his thoughts if he had any other added insights, we'll get into that. But that's kind of what killed me going into this championship game because Darrell came out, they were doing the big media day, we were doing just our regular pre-game stream last Friday. Obviously Ben's article comes out, Darryl and all of that. And I got a lot of like, well why are you guys pushing the narrative right now? I'm like, this is any, I mean these is the storyline. I don't think I would want that to be my storyline going into the championship game, but we'll get into that overall. And just to point out, so this season average usfl ratings per game 631,232 xfl was 634,000 on average. If you do it across all the things, basically a dead heat and you'll see outlets put that out, finish it, whatever xfl eight network games over the air compared to the US F L'S 26 plus you obviously NBC and Fox, Superbowl ads, real football ads, not Hollywood knockoff ads. What do you make with the changes that the usfl made this season to basically break dead even with the xfl and kind of their first outing? Yeah, I, so I think that the usfl was more impacted by the xfl than they thought they were going to be. And it's interesting because these two leagues don't really go head to head that much. They have different seasons, they've got a little bit of overlap, but they're largely playing at different times. I think what's sort of interesting to hear is you mentioned the greater network broadcast games Advantage, the U SS F L had and they still are in this dead heat with the X ffl and the X ffl in particular. We talked about last time I was here, but they had the real bad vein of having a lot of their games on fx, which has okay distribution, but it's where no one, one who is a sports fan is just going to fx. So I think the usfl has a lot of advantages. In particular, they have actual ownership by a broadcaster, they're owned by Fox Sports who is so much more skin in the game than Disney does with the xfl. And there's all these things, they're seemingly in their favor. They're in year two, they're building on this property. They even sorted out the fame in the off season about the trademarks to other teams and so on. So there's a lot that seemed to be looking up for them. And yet year two seems like a step back on TV front to me from a ratings perspective, not from a quality of the broadcast perspective. To be fair, yes, I thought usfl this year we had much more parody in the team, the teams and we have lots of jokes about the losing records making it into the playoffs. We had a lot of that with the f l. On the side note here, obviously ESPN going through continuing layoffs here, I just wanted to get your thoughts because obviously I've seen comments, oh my gosh, espn, the world's falling, they're trying to shed all this. Do you think that has any effect mean, are these different sections in the same pot of cash or any impact you think at all of their investment in other properties moving forward? I don't think so, and I think especially because this isn't something they'd actually invested in. If this was similar to the Fox usfl situation, I think you'd get a lot of commentary on that and people are going to make the links regardless. This week alone we had stories on people complaining at Pat McCaffey, people complaining at Stephen A. Smith about other people being laid off and that's not really what's going on. It's not that the money assigned to them is what's causing the layoffs with other people, it's content decisions. But that gets even further afield when you go from studio and on air personality salaries to game rights and game broadcasting. There isn't rea, I don't think there's really a thing, a connection there at all. I think the only thing to keep in mind there is that this is not a free spending era of ESPN and Disney anymore. And in particular with ESPN now being out into its own division, they have a lot more incentive than before to make sure everything they do either is profitable or has the hope of being profitable in future. So that's the thing for them to consider going forward, but I don't think these particular layoffs impact their xfl business whatsoever. Another question and then we'll keep going. These are just popping up. We had on the stream last week and John Vogel and I talked a lot and if people missed our pre-game usfl stream, you could check that out, but kind of NBC here, are they going to exercise being in the third year with Fox? Is this exciting enough? Obviously they held the championship game this year, it's kind of ping ponging back and forth. Any thoughts if you're NBC here, because we obviously talk a lot from Fox because they have the ownership, but NBC is paying, I think the quote was a significant rights fee. I think when the deal came out, I think they had quoted, I can't remember if that was Ben Fisher, one of our other analysts, but the significant fee, any thoughts for your NBC here moving forward in the year three? Yeah, I think to me that's maybe the most interesting part of all of this going forward and and NBC in some ways they're sort of representing a middle approach between what Fox is doing and what ESPN is doing. ESPN is there saying, okay, we're broadcasting the X ffl, we're doing this across our networks, that's fine. Fox is saying we own this league, we own the usfl, we're going to build it into a thing. And then NBC has been, yeah, okay we'll work with Fox. We don't own this league but we think it's loud enough to broadcast. And so to me the most interesting thing that came out after year one of the usfl was the quotes of Ben Fisher who you talked about earlier, the quotes he got from John Miller of NBC last June and there Miller was talking about, was quite happy with it saying, Vince, it did what we hoped it would do. We're excited to game plan to talk about 2023. So I'm interested to see if that tone from NBC changes at all after this year. Like I said earlier, I think this year is a step back for the u s Ffl. Certainly on the ratings front I think it's a very clear indication that this is just not, not just unchecked upward momentum. It's not just this league that's going to keep growing and keep growing and become a thing with no opposition, no setbacks, whatever it could perhaps take off and turn into a much bigger thing. But I think this season shows that that's not preordained, that there's a lot of ways in which that doesn't happen. And so I'm very curious how NBC is going to feel about that after this season. And that goes for both leagues because we as fans sit here a lot and go, okay, well if xfl, if they marketed more and they spent more time in their markets than they did events and if the Rock was doing more things and if maybe we had Russ Brandon and making more and that there, there's things that people say with the usfl, well all they got to do is once they get to more markets and once they do this and once they do that there, there's always these checklist items. But I do think it's showing, like you've said before on here, it was either I think your second appearance, there is a finite ceiling right now for the number of people that are going to watch this. And just to make sure I say this on here, so Mike Mitchell came out and in his tweet today talking about the 1.2 million with the peacock bill, Shay commented on that, Bill's been on the show a bunch. Bill unfortunately was part of the layoffs over at Athletic, I hope he lands on his feet. He was retweeting his own take on the numbers and talking about how the viewership was down 300,000 this year for the usfl. So I asked him, well what do you attribute that to? And he tweeted me back, said Viewer fatigue, novelty has worn off. Still building team players, team league, affinity two, very similar competing leagues along holiday weekend with nice weather and many places. I think the total is within the expected range from his point of view. Do you think that 1.157 to two 1.2 million is within the expected range for the usfl? Yeah. Well first off, yeah, you brought up Bill there and I think he's an excellent writer. Sorry to hear that he got hit by those layoffs and he absolutely should have a good spot soon hopefully. I think his point there is absolutely fair. I think this is not a disaster. Drawing over a million is still a good thing and especially when you bring in those elements we talked what you mentioned of the long weekend and the other things going on, as we noted in our post on the championship game ratings today, this was the second most watched sporting event on Saturday behind only the MLB on Fox. So that's not bad. And when there's not a lot of people watching stuff and watching sports in general, that's fine. I think it's still absolutely fair to have some disappointment about this and to be like, especially for your championship game that it takes a big dive from year one to year two. But the other thing that's interesting here and you brought up Ben Fisher's Sports business journal article with Darryl Johnston and I think the other really interesting side of that. So in that article Darryl Johnston is talking about he's surprised on some levels that their broadcasts aren't drawing more viewers. He's talking about how great the broadcast quality is and the production quality is and so on. He's not really doing a whole law talk about how great the on-field product is. And I think that was an interesting omission. But even beyond that, what's interest, he made some comments that he made some comments about their hub bottle and the way that they only this year they had teams in free out of their eight markets, they played in four locations, but one of those is one that does not host a team. And I thought what was real, what was really interesting there to me is that he very much recognizes the thing that all of us have been about with the hub model and how you're not actually going to get local fans until you play games. They were near those fans, but he had some interesting comments there on, they recognize that they know that that's an issue and their whole thing is trying to not rush it and do it the right way. So talking about a very slow, more financially responsible build. And to me that really brings up and that ties in with these championship game numbers. And brings up an interesting point with all of these leagues, there's a balance between do you go hard from the gate, do you try to become the alternative football? Do you try to really establish yourself that way and you're going to take an absolute massive loss if you do that or do you try and to find some sort of middle ground and be a little more financially responsible and hope it pays off in the long run when the long run is far from assured. Well, and at some point with that, and I have comments on the hub thing and Andrew Murray and I are going to kind of do a segment this week as well, what's next on that At some point it is kind of you got to blank or get off the pot. I mean there's only so much kind of trepidation and I have been mocked a lot about this. I said last year with the usfl, I said I would've called them the stallions, the Mahler, the Bandits, whatever. I don't think the payoff in the, do the New Jersey generals have assemblance of local fan interest because they're named of the New Jersey Generals? I don't believe so. Because now what's happening is you're running into these things where hey maybe we want to revamp the Muellers, you can't change them now. They were in the championship game if you were going to make 'em be the Camp Muellers or you were going to move. And I think when they had these trademarks and we brought this up on the podcast and I said, God, they're picking these cities and the comments from Darryl back then was these are the trademarks that we have and this was the interest back in the eighties. And I said, but that's not conducive to building a market in 2023 and now you're locked into these unless you want to do another Tampa Bay Bandit's rebuilt, the Mahler would've been in Pittsburgh or the generals would've been in Jersey and not Canton this year. If there was that option now just the Mahler winning the division, making it to the championship game, that doesn't immediately say, Hey, we got to place now they're going to play in Pittsburgh. They would've done that already. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's an excellent point of how they have limited their future options because you're right, they are more or less locked into these hub cities unless they make some big changes. And that's going to be interesting because I really agree with you. I really don't think that they have built a lot of even interest in the cities these teams are named after where they haven't haven't played a game yet. I mean in particular speaking for my local media market in New Orleans, the breakers get occasional coverage from the local media sites just cause they happen to have New Orleans in the name, but nobody's talking about them. There's no no actual discussion of them in this city. And if they do actually try to play games here, I think even it's going to be year three of the team, they're going to be largely building from scratch. Yeah, it's kind of resetting that kind of. Yeah. And anything else, I have the quotes here from the Ben Fisher article, like you said, we're talking about the honor talent, a lot of we're Kudo kudo in Joel Clat and all of that. They're down 16% from they debut, 3% lower. We talked about that, the ratings moving into the markets. The other interesting quote I had was, and this was paraphrased by Ben Johnson, promised renewed efforts to keep the teams and their players visible during the off season, acknowledging the defending champion Birmingham stallion's, relatively strong fan momentum from the inaugural season did not carry over to the new season. And that was, to me, one of the most baffling things was the drop off. And we've talked about this and we got to keep the off season, same with the, you got to keep this, but it didn't feel like Birmingham had a lot of heat. I don't know if that was viewer fatigue or anything else. What did you make just, and it wasn't bad. I mean don't want to, I'm not poo-pooing on, but it just certainly was not, it didn't feel like her second coming here of our championship team. Well I think the thing that's interesting to me there is I think that is where the xfl hurts usfl the most. I think two years ago or last year I guess it felt very much the usfl was next Fein, the Super Bowl ends and we're talking about the N F L draft and so on, but the football discussion becomes about the usfl and this year that didn't really happen because the xfl starts so soon after the Super Bowl, that's where the discussion goes. That's what people are watching, that's what people are talking about. And so I think there are some ways to address that. Certainly if you keep your players visible, you do some interviews with the coaches or whatever. But I think it's hard and I think that's one area where the usfl schedule is a disadvantage compared to the xfl. I think the xfl really in lot ways has the right model of let's get this going after the Super Bowl, let's play for a couple of months. And then also a big part with all of these leagues is about the pathway to the N F L. And so to me at least it feels pretty good for the xfl to be wrapping up their season around the N F L draft and then N F NFL teams can take their players into consideration then versus the usfl now. Well, I mean there's not a lot of roster spots left for even training camp invites. No, and we've gone back and forth and like I said, I was on the record where I thought early on I go, man, this is great April, let's get out of the way. We'll rock him into training camp. We saw Brandon Aubrey this week that got noted that we haven't said officially which team as of this recording here, which is he's going to get on. But yeah, I mean there's only so many spots there. A couple other questions here we have, so the thought going into the usfl season from last year was that more viewers would watch since it had survived into year two and it was now based in more team markets than before. Instead obviously ratings are down. If giving 26 over the air broadcast windows being in three markets, let's say next year we go to four. But I think to me the one year one to year two jump of, hey, the question says we survived year one, we're doubling our hubs 26 broadcast windows, what's the next step or what can they do considering ratings are down this year from a, you get what I'm saying? I can't ask the question correctly. Yeah, well and I think that's the interesting thing and I think that's one thing that Darryl Johnston actually hit on quite well. He's right about about the broadcast quality, he's right about the names they've brought in. He's right. I mean I'm sure there are quibbles you can have or so on, but it feels, from my standpoint at least that Fox is doing a lot to try and promote this. NBC is doing a lot to try and promote this and particularly when you mentioned those broadcast TV windows, that is an incredible amount for a very unproven league. And so I, I'm interested to really see how much of that carries over into you year free after these results. But I mean, yeah, You think that they, sorry to interrupt. Do you think they pull back? Do you think they double down or do you think they pull back? I don't know, I, and the thing that's fascinating there is how the entire broadcast TV ecosystem is changing rather dramatically at this point. There's far less scripted content coming to broadcast TV at that point. At this point that's largely had the streaming services, A lot of what you would show on broadcast TV on the weekends way back when is not there anymore. And so even a lot of these numbers would've been seen as horrible failures even five years ago and that's not where it is right now. So I mean think at the moment they probably stick with something similar, but I think it all depends on what are their alternatives, what else can they do, what other sports leagues could they throw there? The thing that's fascinating too there too is that there's the discussion around cord cutting and how the whole TV ecosystem is shifting and every league, even the small leagues trying to sign a right steal now they want games on broadcast TV and so you'll see that in even these tiniest leagues of like, oh okay, well most of our stuff's going to be on ESPN plus but we've got two games on abc. Right? And so I wonder if there's going to be some further pressure there for Fox and for NBC and for espn a BBC with the xfl of like, okay, well we've also committed to throw these other leads on our broadcast T TV occasionally. And so I think that's all going to be real interesting. I don't think there's a compelling case to be like, yeah, it's dead, let's kill it, let's drop it off broadcast right now. But it all depends on what your alternatives are and what you think they'll do ratings wise. Well and it's obviously with the rider strike going on and not kind of knowing how long and the long range of that as well. Just talking about kind of scripted stuff going on with Greg Parks and I'S interview a couple weeks ago with the xfl stuff, the xfl and U S L did to a similar extent last year, positioned itself, okay, we're trying this out this year, this is our audition, this is what we're going to do and now, right, Bel is hoping that those metrics that they have internally is enough for E s PN and ABC to go, Hey, yeah, we're you, we're moving, you're getting the promotion, you're moving on here, US value, they got a lot of that and it's kind of like you go into a job and maybe you get a job you're a little underqualified for but you go now don't worry, we're going to work hard. Your paid and now they've given you the boat of the money, they've given you all these spots and then we paid the Super Bowl and we've done all the real football and our emails every week said it's real football for real fans and I don't know what that makes you if you only watch the xfl, but I think a lot of that hurt them. I sat on our stream or our said in our whatever when, well I think our usfl thing, it's hard for me to have a league position itself as real football all year and then come out and say we're baffled why our ratings aren't better. We don't understand that. But the point is to get that out usfl auditioned, they were given the promotion and now I said, do you fall back or do you stay? Cause it's either they cut it back, they maintain, I don't know if they doubled down again. I think they say we're going to give you the same window this next year or less. Yeah, well I think the real interesting thing to watch there is going to be what NBC does. I think of Fox because of their ownership stake here. I haven't seen any indications that they're cutting ties on this yet and I mean maybe they could, who knows Fi things change but I think Fox and certainly from the amount of promotion they've put into this and the effort they've put into trying to make this a thing, I think they're going to keep trying very hard to make this a thing. I'm really interested to see what NBC fixed because they are sort of this neutral party. They're the one judging this on its success as a television product rather than a product they have an ownership stake in. And so I I'm to see how they feel after this second year. A couple last things I noted at the top, 1.2 million versus 1.157 if you account for the peacock kind of streaming and all of that, obviously last year Fox doesn't have that similar, they don't have have their own throughout the X F season this year, right? There was always the asterisks of ESPN plus, we don't know, we don't how many people, it could be five could be 5 million. We don't know. Considering that this gives us a good ballpark, there was probably 50,000 people watching on Peacock. I would imagine your championship game is probably one of the more streamed, if not the most streamed considering in good faith 50,000 about watching usfl product on streaming at least through the peacock and nbc. Better, worse than you would think. What do you make of that? Yeah, I think that's decent. I think it's it. It's certainly not in the upper level of things we've seen of streaming relative to linear numbers I think, but it's an okay addition for them. They'll certainly take that. You brought up the ESPN plus stuff and I would add there, I agree with some of the things have been said on that in that ESPN plus is probably going to add more than Peacock to an average broadcast and there's a couple of reasons for that. One is that it has more subscribers partly because it's in all the Disney bundles, bundles and so on, and then it's linked to Hulu and so on and it does very well to promote what's actually live at the moment. So I think that is an advantage the xfl has, that's a good streaming partner for them. Peacock's fine. It's certainly better than the real nod option from Fox, but I don't think that streaming is going to, and especially over the top streaming, I don't think that's going to be the big thing for any of these leagues. In terms of the demos, obviously US L skewing higher, Greg Parks had a tweet out today that on average I think it was one point or 0.16 for the XFL kind of, or in the US 0.16 in the key demo for the U US F L versus 0.32. So kind of double for that with the xfl. Anything to account for that? I mean I know at usfl we're living off nostalgia here, but in terms of them trying to get, most of the people I see arguing on Twitter and I know Twitter isn't the be all end all, but it's not in that demographic. I mean they try to skew younger, so what do you make of the demo difference between the two? Yeah, I mean demo differences are hard and especially when we're talking about that small of numbers in general. But the one thing I would say there is that I think more than a usfl failing, I think that is an xfl edge and I think the big xfl edge there is that the young younger demographics wrestling a whole lot and the w e and the Rock connects a lot there and I don't know that the usfl has anything comparable to any of that. And so I think that is some very, even though there's no real connection to wrestling or the W W E or if at this point, but I think there is some useful crossover there of hey, that's the rock, I like the Rock, this is his league. I'll check that out. Last question for me. In terms of both the xfl and the usfl going forward, what do you think both leagues should do here in terms of the windows? ESPN said after the season they want to focus obviously getting better network clearances kind of days of the week. We still got to figure out the March madness of it all. We've talked about maybe doing a bi-week during March Madness. We've talked about doing maybe a rolling BI-week during March madness to kind of clear out some of the stuff. What would you like to see the xfl and the usfl do here if you had your druthers going into the next year? Yeah, well so I think for the xfl, I think the obvious one is let's get off of fx and I think there's an argument, and it's interesting in that from a distribution side, FX is fine, FX is comparable to a lot of like ESPN two, whatever. But I think there's an argument that you might be better off putting the game on even a lower distributed channel like ESPN News or ESPN U where people are more likely to go for sports. I think any analysis of the xfl rated showed the FX was a big problem for them this year. And so I'm interested to see how they try to address that for the usfl. I think to me it feels like they're doing all the right things on the broadcast side, especially if the amount of network TV games they're able to get. I think to me the big thing just with the usfl at the moment is it, it's the classic field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. Well, from my perspective, they've built it but the audiences haven't come yet. And so I'm interested C F L change. I like that we had when we were talking about the Cashman field of IT all in Las Vegas, I said the xfl was building the field of dreams. So now the usfl building that last note just to make sure we talk about it, and it's been on the screen here if you're watching on the YouTube, but we have some kind of the numbers here at the bottom with the usfl season comparisons being down 29% on nbc, 28% on Fox 26 on S a and then the 1.7 increase on FS one. So kind of around the board there. I think the FS one was probably, I don't know if that was the rain game on that one or they had a couple delays or whatever, but about 30% there across the board on the network. So it was weird to me. I would've thought the NBC game championship game would've done better this year just because NBC THEORE typically does do better than Fox in terms of the average ratings per their networks, which is interesting. But Andrew else from you, I appreciate kind of the deep dive here today, end of the season stuff. No, absolutely. I appreciate you bringing me on. I think it's great to see two alternative US football leagues still going. I personally hope they both keep going and that we're able to have lots more alternative football discussions in the future. Andrew, appreciate it. Again, take care and everyone check out the work over an awful announcement. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Well Andy, we did it. We met successfully made it through the 2023 season. Come on down, it's time to play the feud today. We're here trying to figure out who won the football war football feud here in 23 and kind of what's next. We've done kind of a little bit of the xfl and obviously that will err into this as well today, but kind of what's next for the US of L as well. How are you sir? I want to know where Steve Harvey is. If we're going to have a feud, we need to have our host we, but I guess you could play that role too. Yeah, I'll be the host today. I did even in, I was just trying to download a clip to obviously play in the show and even in just the random full episode I downloaded, they were asking what's the number that men exaggerate and you were supposed to be high wait, whatever, and the woman's like 69. Okay. I mean even the most basic questions kind of get those weird answers now, but we're here, I wanted to figure this out. We've had the Andrew Buckles on here. I think I'll air this after this, we'll kind of sandwich this in here, a deep dive meat sandwich here talking about all this, but viewership down, we have the championship down 23.8% compared year over year. We got some ballpark streaming numbers, all of that. What have you made of the usfl season? You've been along and I know Pat's filled in a lot on some of the recaps, but been we, we've followed along this whole time. So what have you made? For me, I think it was a proof of concept that even though you have a lot of ambitions to save money and try to improve the longevity of your product, that the end of the day you still need to put something out there that's going to draw people in. And basically from what I saw from the ratings, from the attendance to how the play on the field presented itself, the US L fell basically had four more versions of the same thing last year, as in four more places to play in four more or three more hubs I should say, and four hubs overall. And you pretty much got the exact same thing as last year, which from the standpoint of the quality of football was fine. If you're talking about the level of football and the level of competition, maybe it was a little bit better this year, although the same team ended up winning anyways and ended up being Crown champion at the end of the season. So you can argue about how much parity there really was in this league, but as far as what was presented and what was expected to attract more people, I mean it kind of flatlined honestly, there was not really a improvement overall from the standpoint of how many people were engaged in it from a TV viewing perspective, maybe from an attendance perspective, you saw some success in a market, say like you were mentioning last week, Memphis. Memphis did see some improvement overall as the season went along. But going into that season until last season, all I heard was Michigan was going to be a great market. I think it did, but not really what I think people were expecting. And Canton was mostly indifferent because the fact that there was two teams that weren't from the same area that were from neighboring states, from a neighboring state that didn't really have a team that they knew about that being the New Jersey generals and being the Pittsburgh Maller. So I don't know, it just kind of felt like more of the same in a lot of ways. I mean there was improvement from certain players, there was improvement from maybe some of the coaching. There wasn't maybe as many as egregious gaps, but then again, trying to improve on someone like Kirby Wilson and Jeff, Jeff Fisher to me is not that hard to do. But overall, I mean it didn't really feel like there was any substantial differences between season one and season two or should say, I should say the 2022 season. The 2023 season. Yeah, because now we're in the historical record books that right in the modern day, US L whatever. Here's a thought I have. So I've spent time listening, obviously we've read the Ben Fisher Moose Johnson, that kind of baffled radians comments and all of that surprised that they were down so low. I watched a lot of the press conference here again today that was going alongside when we were doing our pregame kickoff show on Friday. Moose strikes me as a lot more humble than I think if the usfl embraced kind of moose's, Hey MO are a family, we appreciate that. We have the Kirby Wilsons whatever. We're like, they're our family. We appreciate them. We're kind of slowly building. I like his because obviously we don't listen to Darryl talk a lot and I think there's a, and I know that Darryl doesn't run Fox marketing, but there seems to be a difference between the ity or Verboseness that Fox Sports has versus moose here where I think if he was maybe more focal but talking, they're trying to figure out all this stuff. But my thought listening to him when they're talking about expansion, trying to figure out, okay, we want to keep the hub model till we do all this. I've said all along, I think they should have had the teams be Sam Cities. Maybe we have the Birmingham team and the whatever. What if go back two years and then we're not relocating teams or we're not rebranding teams. What if then you got rewarded A usfl team? We award, okay, now at the end of the season, hey, we've got three new markets. Okay, Canton, you're getting the mallers and then we relocate them out of there as opposed to this weird, like I said, we've talked on here, no one in New Jersey knows the generals are playing or no one in would ever where maybe you get a little bit of boo, I mean obviously they can't go back now, but maybe you get a little boost out of that versus, okay, we're retroactively, we're moving them in or we're changing after the fact to be more if they could have been more proactive about it. Is that a terrible idea? No, it is. It's so weird that there's such a collision or two brands that Spring League and the usfl brand. I think we've talked about this all along. It's taking the pageantry of the usfl and trying to inject it into the spring league model, which doesn't really mesh because I think those are two different ideas completely. The USS f L originally was teams in the cities separate ownership competition with the nfl. You know, obviously they know that you can't have that sort of same parallel with that with the NFL anymore. But the Spring League was just so different in terms of having these entities that were just kind of stocks I guess, or just some sort of entity just to own. It was just owning something that you bought basically and hoping that the value of it increased over time. And that was Brian Woods' whole model, which was fine. And it was also a chance for people to get tape and go and practice. I mean it's really remarkable, honestly, going back and looking at some of the rosters for the spring league and seeing all the guys that we moved on from there, moved on to the C F L or moved on to the S F L and moved on to the X L. I mean, you see a lot of those parallels and that's kind of what it should have been viewed as. But instead now you're having kind of the hub model, which is fine, you know, continue to have the hub model, but instead of awarding the cities, it's kind of like this almost forced nostalgia you're trying to make fetch happen in terms of getting people to understand, well no, this is the great brand that existed past in the eighties. The Showboats, remember them? Oh, the Generals. Do you remember them? Oh, the mallers. Do you remember them? Quite frankly, a lot of people either don't or they just don't care anymore, and that's just the reality of the situation. It's so different from the xfl who just keeps rebranding over and over again, which is really funny to me because the mantra and the attitude of it is somewhat similar and yet they keep changing teams names all the time and they don't really seem to care about tradition in that way. Whereas usfl is almost behold almost too beholden to tradition. So I kind of agree with you in that maybe they should just grant a team to a city that they think is worthy and then continue to move them out. Maybe, I don't know, maybe four hubs was aggressive, it was welcomed, but maybe it was too aggressive this year. I mean, Memphis worked out. That worked out really well. Michigan was okay, can I think the whole can thing just again, I just noticed it was maybe a little bit much at the end of the season, especially in the playoffs because people had been going over and over and over and over again in that market. So yeah, it's going on. I feel like there's still these two brand ideas that are still kind of colliding with each other and they haven't really meshed Well because they're so beholden to it. And I was listening to the Moose's thing, and I will say Andy and I remarked about this at the top of the show. There were so many, and I know it was the US F L weekend, so many people at this press conference, I know obviously the newsroom crew was there and whoever the one that I was watching here with Believe Land Media, all these guys, we have all these cell phone videos at the press conference, do a writeup, write up some quotes. I saw James post one tweet like, Hey, Darryl's looking, they're walk, crawl, run or whatever. I'm write an article about it, write an article so we can figure this out. And now, because I got to go back, I got to regurgitate and then I'm doing no better here where I'm talking on this podcast that no one's going to listen to. But yeah, anyway, they're just so beholden to these cities now. And we've talked about this. If Pittsburgh, how do you rebrand Pittsburgh now where they've been in the championship game? How do you rebrand? Obviously Birmingham is solidified. I don't know. I know that the usfl was trying to beat the exit all to the punch, right? And Fox and they wanted to go last year. If you had rolled out just the Spring League 2022, put a little bit more marketing behind it. I mean they got 400,000 viewers, whatever on that fox that Saturday weekend game and that may of would've been 21, then you're not dealing with all this headache, you're not dealing with the city nonsense. You're not dealing with the trademark stuff. I know you've got the boost off nostalgia, but I mean we're seeing the numbers here and I have 'em if we wanted to pull it up, but some of these games, I wonder what the level, if this swing, if they could have had two more, two or three more steps, excuse me for before getting to this. It almost feels like if some Hollywood executive producer said, Hey, instead of filming this in a green screen and in one of our studio lots, let's film this in a garage, see how that works. And the pageantry of filming a Hollywood production will bring everyone together. It kind of feels that way in that, again, they take this established brand and they're trying to put it through a straw, basically trying to put it through a straw. They have it be presented in a really minuscule way where like you said, if they had just rolled out the second version of the Spring league or whatever version of it and just said, Hey, this is the football we're presenting. We have bigger ideas, but we want to continue building out with this and improving it, which it already had been. I mean, that's the thing. Spring League started really small, basically started out of Brian's garage and he basically brought it out into being more expanded. He did the hub model, he did it in two different hubs and it drew viewership even though there was no marketing behind it, there was nothing, Hey, there's football on tv. And that was fine. But with the usfl, it was just the expectation, the automatic expectation of as we've gone over is just, oh, there's football. You should be interested in this. Right? But there with being more numbers expected and clearly those numbers have not come because again, I think the way they went about presenting that same product didn't mesh with the audience that they were expecting because they are looking for one thing and I think they're presenting a completely different thing. And again, it's okay as long as you give them that ideal, but a casual audience. I think when you profess to have such an established brand, they expect a certain quality. And maybe most people are expecting all the teams to be in their markets, all the teams to have some sort of grandstanding tradition, like maybe a C F L fan for example. And it's not there. And so when it's not there, they ask questions. That's just how it is. This is going to blow your socks. So I just looked this up on here because I'm kind of like, this is all trying to remember here. Fever Dream, what were the Spring League? Let me, let's ponder this for a minute here. xfl and usfl stands. If you look back at this, Mike Mitchell here, the Spring League 2021 on Fox TV raids three hundred eighty thousand four hundred forty four thousand four hundred, 18,400. Now this is on Fox, right? Obviously like FS one average 181,000. That was up 503% over the year before because they, I'm presuming better time slots. So they weren't air at two in the morning here on spring, they averaged 409,000 viewers on Fox with they weren't even paying their players, right? I mean we had no branding, no cities, no anything. And if you're telling me that we got to cripple ourselves with this lawsuit for a year and deal with Steve Earhart and all of this and everything that's gone on with, I want the generals back in the day, da da da. Like it. I know the fact that they average what, let's say you hear, that's remarkable to me. I mean those are comparable to numbers that we saw this year, which is, that's What I'm saying. That's crazy. That is what's so bizarre about this whole TV thing has been so fascinating in that this league owned owns the usfl, they didn't own the Spring League, and yet they have these comparable numbers to their own product that they own by themselves, that they promote by themselves that they put advertising through and they try to put through all their syndicated channels and all of their personalities on tv, Colin Coward and Skip and all of them. And yet two things stand out. One this and second of all, they're getting better numbers on nbc. And we've talked about that. They've had better viewership drawn on NBC on some of their products. And it's so bizarre that it's like for whatever reason the usfl on the Fox channel is not hitting the same beats and yet all these other things do. TSL on the Fox with no promotion whatsoever, no brand identity, no familiarity with the audience. And then it's doing also the usfl is doing better on nbc. It's the weirdest parallel ever. I mean, I guess it'd be the same if the xfl did better on FX for some magic reason more than the espn for example. If for whatever reason everyone just is like, yeah, I really love watching football on fx. Okay, why? That would be it. It's kind of feels like that a little bit. It's really strange. And I guess like I said, like you said, maybe there wasn't that same expectation level of people and therefore it was measured and they said, okay, well we know they're playing in front of no people. But also keep in mind, again, I have to per half stress this. It was a different time the TSL was playing during covid. There were people who weren't in stands. That was an expectation. That was fine. That's not the case anymore. There are people in the stands, there are people showing up to sporting events. Again, you expect a certain energy level to come with that. And when the model doesn't really match with what's going on with the rest of the culture in terms of actually having people back in the stands, then yeah, people are going to start kind of comparing those two times. People would much rather watch games with fans in the stands. I mean, like I said, I have a really hard time going back to watching games that happened during 2020 and 2021 because it's really weird watching games where there's like cardboard cutouts behind baseball games or cardboard cutouts behind home plate or watching the NBA bubble or stuff like that. Cause it's just like time capsules. It's like what happened here? And so I think there's that. That's really a big thing for me is that there are just these disparate attitudes towards what was being presented and what people expect when they're watching these two products. So for Fox, I mean they got to figure out a way to, I don't know, drum up support in some way and try to get people to be convinced that they should be engaged in this product even though the numbers are just not there, especially with the attendance. I have the article here and I have the awful announcing version of this. Obviously the original credit goes to Ben Fisher over at Sports Business Journal. What Darryl Baffled TV ratings viewership. Were you baffled at all? And then I have a follow up about relocating the cities, but were baffled at all that the ratings were down this year. I'm sure the half dozen people who comment on my Twitter thread would say, I'm an idiot for being, not being baffled. But you know what, listen, I don't think that that's really expected here or should be expected here. Shock is not the emotion that is warranted here. I'm glad Darryl's baffled because maybe he cares about it a lot and he really expect a lot better and good for him. You know what? He has expectations for this league. That's what he should have. That being said, as an objective viewer, I would say absolutely not. This is what you're going to have when there's not really a end over expectation of what is going to be different from the year before or cache or you know, don't have that really outstanding star player or there's not really somebody to latch onto or personalities to latch onto. Yes, there's a lot of interesting stories of course, and for us to follow them is really part of our, is just part of our mission statement obviously as media members, but as far as this being an expectation for why casual viewers are not being engaged in the product, why would you be baffled? Again, not much change besides, okay, there's a few more hubs. Okay, there's a new brand with Memphis coming back and F F A going away, but I mean the players were basically, most of them were the same. The level of play again was mostly the same and the product visually, I mean, yeah, you could talk about graphics packages. Cool. That's a really cool thing to nerd out on. Most people don't care about graphics packages. That's something that most casual viewers are not watching a football game for. It's in addition. It's something that is cool to add onto it. As far as the presentation goes, Fox did a good job and giving all their games out, but as far as what people were expecting, I mean again, it was almost the same in a lot of ways. So I really don't understand what's there to be baffled by other than the fact that you thought because there was a second season, you thought that people would be impressed that there was a second season of a league, which maybe some people are, but most people still, most people probably didn't even watch last year and still don't even know that the u s Ffl is back. Well, I also think there's a non zero number of people that don't know that quite the difference. Even that there is an XFL and the usfl and kind of all that stuff. Because my thing is this, when it comes to these C expansions and obviously we see this all the time and I talk with Brett and the guys that run the Facebook groups and everything else, it the expanding the hubs is that's the silver bullet. That's our one guy, one bullet in the chamber here we add a hub immediate way to get a pop, right? That's how we did the Memphis thing. We got a pub, we did the Detroit. Yeah, you can only do that so many times, right? It's the same with the xfl. We can only expand so many cities or add so many things and what I don't like about it is in listening to moose's comments and don't, he's in a weird position where he's more involved in the football and he's kind of talking on the more larger ranging football ops and obviously he's part of that, but that's not necessarily his purview, Darryl Johnson, in terms of, okay, where are we going next? But it negates kind of anything else I feel like they should be doing in the meantime, right? It's I, I'm trying to need, get a new job. I don't like my job, I need to get a new job where maybe if you just worked harder at your current job, you could increase your, could increase your current position of whatever. I was like, well no, we got to move somewhere else. I got to go do that. You're like, yeah, but you're not being wildly successful even in the metrics that you are right now. So I don't know, just adding the hub versus let, let's BOL up. Let's get some New Jersey support in here. Let's do some marketing. I know they're trying to do more of the fan stuff and they're trying to do the Memphis but they're not where you're not even succeeding. I would say being down 30%. I mean when you're not succeeding currently at the level, hopefully you would internalize some of that as opposed to just saying, well we got to go add another hub. That's clearly what we have to do because I think there's things they could be doing right now that they could do in tandem with that, if that makes sense. I feel like this league needs to go a minor league baseball route in terms of appealing to their individual cities and saying maybe having some more gimmicky stuff, not gimmicky play or gimmicky coaches, but maybe in terms of entertainment, have a couple more sponsored events or things that happen, maybe games that people can be involved in having, giving the reason for fans to be involved besides, oh, you can come and watch football game for $10 or giving away spatulas. Apparently Memphis did. I wanted One of those. I wanted one of those too. That's a cute idea, but that's maybe not always the best way to get people involved and again, Memphis was one of the better markets, so maybe that was a huge hit with the contingency of dads in the Memphis area, but I think there needs to be more emphasis on playing down to that level of, look, we know we're not the nfl, it's fine, it's a little kitschy, I get it, but we're going to have fun with this. Here's how we can have fun with this. That's kind of what I think needs to be done. I don't know, but I don't know if that necessarily works for both them or the XFL for example, because the X ffl I think in some ways still takes themselves very seriously in terms of what they're trying to get done and I argue they still should do some more promoting in terms of getting people involved in getting, giving, throwing more bones to the fans themselves because I think there's a lot that they didn't do last year. We've talked about that before as well, but usfl again, yeah, it can be a good atmosphere for families, but I'm not seeing that on tv. I'm not seeing that in terms of what's actually happening in terms of what, what's being done here for the people who actually want to be involved and actually want to go to these games. Is this something is a viable option to take my child to an afternoon game on a Saturday instead of doing this? Right? That's what you always have to ask yourself as a promoter. That's something that you need to understand and trying to give people a reason to go. Look, I was told for years as a resident here, as a San Diego resident that the reason that people didn't show up to games was because, well, so there's a billion other things to do in San Diego because the weather's nice and people like going outside and there's no reason everyone's a fair weather fan. Well, let me tell you, look, despite their record, the Padres are selling out their games left and why? Because they gave their fans a reason to go to games. They put their money where their mouth was, they got talent, they got people involved, they have great games, they have great atmosphere. It's fantastic for families to go to. They adjusted the time schedule so that it was more accountable for families to go to the games instead of getting to a game at 7:10 PM at night on a Wednesday and being like, well no children are going to show up to this event and being more comfortable with the fans and it's worked. It really worked and it it's worked for years and I think this is something that a lot, you have to give a reason. Prioritization, why should I come to your thing instead of this? That's what I don't get. Instead of just saying, well, we have this, why don't people show up? You should say, why aren't people showing up and how can we adjust those expectations? Because guess what, people have lives And then that's to make my point shorter, yes, these are all the things versus just, well, we need to go, we need to call the team the Canton, Canton Legend versus the Pittsburgh Mallers or whatever. There's tangible things you can be doing. I want to eventually direct the conversation to this who won the few whatever. That's more just branding for today, but I do want to have a conversation of who had the more successful season in terms of the other thing that came out the press conference was Moose talking about during in the infancy stages of being basically being a feeder system, I guess right to the N F L and the teams can retain rights and to me it struck a little bit of we need to have some ideas to talk about today at this press conference where nothing is for sure about that. Is that enough? Is that a thing? I mean, is this years down the line? Does the NFL even need something like this mean? What do you make of that? This infancy stages? I've been told this and I've been spun this from people my entire life saying the NFL needs a feeder system. Newsflash, no, they don't. Why? Because that requires money and capital and they're not going to spend that if they have a free talent supply AE or IE. The ncaa. They don't need to spend money because guess what? They already have a free talent pool for that. They don't need to develop this by themselves. There already is something that does that for them. Now, our goal, you and I and all the people in our group is to promote the people who maybe were overlooked, the people who didn't get that second chance or people who fell through the cracks or maybe just weren't quite there in terms of the development stage and just needed a little bit more time before they got into the league. Those are the kind of people that we champion. The NCAA is for people who are ready immediately. These are the prospects, these are the hot prospects that come out immediately and are ready to contribute at this moment. And as long as that's a free supply of talent, the NFL's never going to start a feeder system. I'm just putting that forward right now and I get that people want to have a minor league and all that. They really don't need it because the owners don't want to spend money on that because they know they don't have to. This is not other leagues, it's not mls, it's not nhl, it's not M, it's not mlb, it's not N nba like NBA's. Even getting more involved with this with the G league and having players that play at this professional level before being promoted because it does take time to be mature enough to play in the N B A because people are not staying in college long enough. That's a whole nother argument, but with the N nfl, you don't need to have that. And so no, I don't think that's going to be ultimately the goal. What you have to do though is somehow establish yourself enough and I mean maybe have some sort of notoriety of saying, well, this player moved on from our league and they did these great things. Is that enough to get people to come to your games? I don't know. I think there needs to be more legwork that's done separate from that, not just resting on your walls and saying, well look at all these great players that we've always promoted. I think the CFL's finding that out right now. Yes, I get it. Warren Moon played for your league, Doug Flute played for your league. I it's awesome. Fantastic. But those days are gone. Those kinds of players aren't coming out of your league anymore, so what are you going to do? You get people to get in the stands. You have to be able to find another way to promote yourself beyond just, oh, we sent X player to this league. Well, okay to the nfl, cool, awesome. But you're not going to have a partnership with them because they don't want to spend money on it. Well also I was just thinking about that. Yeah, I mean it is decades now from when the CFL had any of that and the closest thing they have now is God forbid Nathan Bke takes a snap in Jacksonville, hey, he is like, yeah, he played in your league for a backup for a year and then played for a season and got out literally as quick as he could. Literally was like, I, I want to get out of here immediately. I don't want to be here. This is, was it unexpected detour I think was the phrase that you had on there. So in terms of the seasons this year and there, so we've talked about with usfl and be better off if we rolled the spring league out and we could you imagine a world in 2023 where the jers are playing the hues and I know there's nostalgia. I know people have nostalgia for the generals. I have nostalgia for the jers, but in the FFLs side, so I think us F l is hand handicapped by, okay, we got the U usfl branding, kind of all those things going on. XFL expectations are handicapped by, well, we got the rock, right? You should draw 18 million people, you got the rock. And I think if you remove the rock from the equation, and I know it's you can't, whatever, but I thought xfl was a pretty good success this year and I know that people would call it home or whatever, but the metrics of that, obviously we got it into year two. How do you stack up season two of the US F L versus season one of the xfl here? Well, first of all, I just want to say I, I'm no stranger to force nostalgia myself, Reid, I hold on to the corpse of a team that played eight games, was below 500 and had quarterback trouble. That being the San Diego fleet, and I desperately hold onto that team, it's identity and it's brand because it was my team and I have really absolutely no reason to do so anymore because that league was going to flame out, the writing was on the wall. But to answer your question, I mean the thing is with the xfl, it felt like there was greater potential that never got realized and I think you and Mike Mitchell basically gave it somewhat on the periphery of a C grade as far as what it actually accomplished and in terms of it being a seven out of 10 in terms of just because there was so much that was expected because based on what had happened in 2020 and it didn't feel like they pushed all the right buttons. There were some great benchmarks, but there were a lot of other things that didn't happen. And I think that's different from the usfl. Like I've said before, I think the xfl in my opinion has had a higher ceiling in terms of expectations than what it can accomplish. Whereas the usfl has a higher floor in terms of what they're doing, but they're more concerned with being on that floor and being just a baseline standard. So I guess in terms of what was accomplished, I would say the US F L did a better job, but in terms of again, what was overall maybe more engaging and what was actually presented that was enjoyed a little bit more from my standpoint was the xfl, just in terms of the plays, the players involved, the coaches involved the games in a lot of ways, and I mean there were some really good games in the usfl, but it just felt like the xfl meant a little bit more how chaotic it was for a team like Orlando to get their only victory against the DC Defenders and just absolutely wild shootout or to see Arlington almost complete an insane comeback against DC as well. DC was really just involved with all the craziest games this year by the way. So if that's why I'm using them in so many examples, but I think in terms of your expectation levels being met, I don't think the X ffl really did that. But then again, my expectation levels for the usfl weren't really that high to begin with because I kind of expected similar to what was happening last year, so again, that's why the baffled comments from Darrell Johnson are amusing to me because I don't think there's really much to be baffled by, whereas I would argue there were more things with the XFL that baffled me where I said, why are they doing this? The Jersey snafu still to me is just one of the most egregious errors that they committed in terms of not getting the amount of time and then charging them for an exorbitant amounts of money. That to me was more baffling than a lot of other things that happened in the usfl. So that's where I'm kind of at with that, whereas one didn't really meet their expectations, the other one did, but it wasn't really that more impressive. It's interesting and obviously context of, okay, we know the broadcast windows and we know the xfl had fewer network, all those things, we have all the context for it, but it is remarkable to me that all the arguing we've done all year in terms of okay, every week the ratings come out and people are screaming and people are yelling and we're talking the gameplay and the parody of the leagues and all this tribalism back and forth and all that stuff. We ended up with a difference of 300 negligible difference, 300, 3000 kind of average and I know xfl had worse wins, but 3000 difference, we still had at least one losing team in the championship game. Kind of all that stuff it it's strikes me as funny how similar both of them ended up being even though obviously I always have our own perceived biases about all that. It's there was a couple years ago because I freelance now for 10 years and I might do a hundred different jobs a year, 150 weddings and we got all the, Hey, I'll pay you 200 bucks, can you come and go do whatever. And I remember one year I went to go do my taxes and I think I was like $1,300 difference between the one year and the other and I'm like, that's remarkable to me how many different things I've done this year and people calling me feels the same way here as much as we've argued all the year, it feels like at least from a number standpoint, they're at the same place right now. Do you feel like that or do you feel like there's more momentum with one or the other? I mean I think the xfl has a greater chance for momentum, but it's a matter if they take it or not. Whereas the usfl I think has a better chance at longevity if they just kind of stay the course, if that makes sense. But that's the thing. Is there going to be longevity from both of these leagues for how long are they both going to be okay with just competing against one another and what's going to happen eventually? That's kind of the biggest question going forward. I've had multiple people tell me from different parts of my experience as a football fan, whether it's somebody who just watches the NFL or people who actually are in this community or whatever, people telling me, well, the league should just merge the two entities and I still maintain that philosophically they're too different for that to happen. One of them's going to have to sacrifice their pride in order to let that happen and I think there's just too much ego involved that either side is not going to do that, so forget that idea right now. But in terms of survival, I mean again, I think the XFL has a chance to do that. They have a lot of to do it. It's just again, if they can take the right steps and they can be more, which league is going to be more humble and which one is going to have more humility in terms of realism as far as what they are and not just trying to force something that's not going to actually happen. And I think both leagues are still figuring that out. Darryl Johnson's figuring that out. The Rock and Danny are still figuring that out. Their expectation levels clearly are very different from what reality has dealt them. As you said, they're both kind of numbers wise were very similar. Maybe one spent more money than the other or one put these resources where this one, but at the end of the day they're pretty much on the same level as far as which product. I mean you're basically, I guess your decision making is that comparable to that of am I shopping at Marshall's or am I sharping at shopping at Target today? I guess that's kind of where it is at this moment. Some people don't see it that way. Some people think way lesser than the other, but in reality that's kind of what's happening right now. But it depends on what you think you put more stock into what you think is potentially going to be better Because like I said, well first off I think Target's a step of Marshalls. I think that's philosophy right there. Well, I was trying to think, think of another comparison. I personally believe that too, but I was like, what's another comparison to Target? I don't know what the copper called Ross and Marshalls is. Ross is Ross and Probably Ross and Marshalls. Yeah, but That's the thing is this whole year it's been every day every week and Mike posting all this stuff and other people copying and paste in tweets and for 3000 average viewer difference, it's just remarkable to me and I know Max went into it because Bill Shaa was commenting on some of this stuff and Bill's a friend of the show, so I will give him as much leniency. He have his platform and his views. I think he's earned that and he's sitting there going back and forth with, because Max Max's comments were he wishes the media covered these ratings a little bit more fairly because if the X FFLs ratings were anemic and the FLS ratings met expectations, it's like, well, how can both of these be in the same realm and one's anemic and one meets expectations? And Bill basically said, if you think there's some grand conspiracy about all this to get further 3000, what do you have to say? Well, that's the thing. I mean is that kind of a backhanded compliment from Bill? If you think about it, if you saying one is anemic, the other one is meeting expectations and they're both similar, is that him saying, I expected the U S ffl to just be this way, and if he's saying the XFL is anemic, is he saying that the XFL should be higher in terms of ratings? I think that's how I interpret it. Now he may disagree with me, but I think that's how I interpret it because if you're saying, if you're using that wording about the XFL and saying this is not comparable, this is not good enough, then maybe that tells me that you expected their ratings to be a little bit better because if you're saying the other one's meeting expectations and they're both comparable, that's how I see it and honestly, that's how I feel. I think the X FFLs ratings should have been better in a lot of ways. I think the usfl is pretty much doing what I expected it to do and maybe even a little bit worse than I expected, but honestly there was not really much that I was expecting to change during the season that I think the time slots and the broadcasting portals were better. Yes, of course they got the more network games, but clearly that didn't seem to make much of an impact and it arguably didn't at all because nobody watched Fox that much more than they regularly would have. And now you have this comparable rating of what metric actually averaged out this. As you said over and over, if the N N B C game after the Preakness stakes had been taken out, that would've lowered the average even more because that was just an outstanding outlier in the viewership. So always this is always going to be a comparison battle and it's going to say be the same thing next year. I'm already not looking forward to this being a piss contest next year either, but this is what's going to happen because people are going to argue about this as far as what they value in the leak. I argue that again, I think what was also interesting yesterday was the streaming numbers that needs to be more data that has to be looked at harder because I still don't think TV ratings ultimately in the future are going to matter all that much. It's all going to be streaming numbers. Whether we get access to those streaming numbers is another question, but that's another thing that people will have to look at and that's for the companies to decide themselves. Either way, if both of these entities think that it's viable to keep these things on television or at least keep them around, then clearly they believe in them in some matter or shape or form. I don't think this is going to suddenly change their thoughts overnight, but a lot of fans see it that way and they see it as, well, my favorite TV show is going to get the plugs going to get pulled on it. I don't think it's the same thing. Sports is in a different category in terms of that. It's more of just can they supply themselves with enough cash flow to be able to stay alive. So I kind of use this podcast I'm looking on here, I use this as kind of a measuring stick, my own metric and obviously because we're talking TV ratings and streaming and all that, but if you look at our show last year, Birmingham, the live show, 3000 viewers for that. This year we had 1500. Now obviously we weren't there live, but YouTube doesn't. YouTube doesn't know in the algorithm, but if you're live there or not, and then if you look at our championship game show this year, 670 views, so I can tell you there's a waning interest in this product at least year over year and then certainly year going into the championship game, I just, there's a certain level of buzz and I think the xfl was victim to that as well, but of trying to maintain that kind of momentum throughout. But I will tell you the usfl felt felt very cold to me going into the championship game this year. Did you agree, disagree? I mean, I think the mashup wasn't as sexy because there was no case cookies, there was no stars this time around, which was a little more spicy last year. But in terms of again, being the only game in town, because again, maybe it's viewer fatigue, I don't know, maybe people were just like over it at this point. I think that the numbers bear out in terms of how people view the league and what people wanted to see from it. And now that the stallions have kind of established themselves as the dominant team and there's not really other teams that kind of match their level of play, maybe it just wasn't as intriguing to people. But again, being the only game in town helps a lot too. Last year the S S L was here, the xfl was not this year both of them are sharing the same space and peripherally maybe there are people who are getting more into the C F L or seeing checking out that league as well. There's a lot of mitigating factors here, but for me it just says that the usfl needs to put more stock into what they have and try to improve their product even further so that they can entice people to continue watching because not the idea of just having football is not enough. For some people it's great as far as having a product to consume, but as far as a product to watch and to engage in from an entertainment standpoint, there needs to be some improvements. And clearly people had seen enough that they said, all right, this is enough. I don't need to watch anymore. And that's not the feeling you want to have, especially with a new league. Well hey old the new league I guess in a way. So that's the only thing that has to change and the pageantry is great. Again, they can add all the ips and they can talk about the old players. That's great. But again, I don't think that's really the target demographic they should be shooting for. They need to be appealing again to the younger audience and saying, this is why you should engage in this and why you should watch this. And if you want any context for how hot the CFL Gray Cup show was last year, over 15,000 viewers for that. So if you want any context for how big is the c, we poo poo when people poo poo the C F O ratings, all that stuff, there're 15,000 for that pre-game show the day before from we were at the casino up there. I did have a funny comment on my YouTube that made me laugh where they said the raid, the reason why the U US F L ratings were down this year is you had a losing team and in the championship game and you needed to have two hot teams. I said, well I don't know how the xfl pulled in off thing cause the xfl pulled in more viewership. Well, I mean the funny thing is though, I feel like Arlington was high, it's just their record didn't look good. But that make no mistake, that team, I've said this before, listen, the mallers, I think they were the same team the entire year, I don't think really much changed with them. They just managed to get their way to the championship game. That Arlington team, that was not the same team I saw in San Antonio that those were two completely different teams. So if you want to talk about hotness, that team was on fire. It's just they weren't above 500, which wasn't fun and it was also the fact that the playoff system didn't work. I think that's also something that needs to be, that's something that has to be addressed to these leagues that might delegitimize them and I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to be people understand, listen, I don't care that there's only eight teams. You need to have a wild card system. This division thing is nonsense. I don't care. It doesn't matter. I don't care if there's only eight teams. Better record needs to get in end of story. That's it. Not arguing about this anymore because people have tried to argue with me about it and I'm like, no, that doesn't make sense that just none of this playoff math scenario, none of this calculus math that we have to get from ESPN about why didn't this battle hawks get in and the Sea Dragons did. I don't want any more of it. Just record. If you crossover, if this team didn't perform well enough to win in your division but can beat another team in the other division, put 'em in there, it's fine. Who cares? The divisions honestly in my opinion don't matter that much so much as it is the matchups. I don't think it really should be that traditional yet. We are not to that point, so I don't think it's really something that matters that much and the CFL doesn't matter, obviously they're like cool crossover all the time, who cares? I think this is something that they have to address, both leagues have to address because there needs to be more parity. I mean I don't know if the gamblers necessarily excuse themselves from not having that opportunity or the showboats excuse themselves that much, but would I rather seen them in there than the Maers or the Panthers? Probably. I mean I know I'm pulling straws at that point, but that again, giving you should be rewarding the teams to have more wins. That's just how I feel. Well, and to be fair, the C F L, the crossover doesn't really happen as much as I think that they really championed that you could whatever. We'll start to wind this down here. Looking forward, who has more work in the off season here do you think getting ready for season two with the xfl or season three for the US F L? That's a tough question. Yeah, I'm going to say the xfl just because again, their potential, their ceiling in my opinion is higher, but that means also there has to be a lot more work and again, how many more players do they have to replace too? Both leagues have to replace players and coaches. That's just going to happen. The xfl, I think there's a lot of player development. They still have to get underway. I mean they're doing the showcases, they're trying to put in more effort obviously in terms of keeping people mentally conscious of their products. So I think they have a lot more work to do if they continue to see themselves as a full fledged league u USS f L does as well. But the u s FFLs, just again, the concern with them is, all right, are you going to be continuing to do this hub thing? Are you going to continue having these brands in the same places? Are you going to just suddenly change the names and the teens and the cities all of a sudden? What's your strategy here? Why? And really evaluate why didn't more people watch this product this year versus last year? Really that's their biggest question. The XL I think knows that answer and they understand why they underperformed, they know why they underperformed as opposed to the usfl who seems be trying to figure it out and trying to understand why that happened. The XFL I think knows it. It's just a matter of them kind of pushing the right buttons in the right places. So they both have work, but it's different in terms of which question or which answers they have to supply. I agree with that sentiment. I think if you, and obviously were starting this conversation with the Gerald Johnston and all of that, but yes, I think XL goes, okay, we need to more consistent time slots, more consistent days of the week. We need to do get the guys into the stadiums more, hopefully have some better winning teams. I think if the Brahmas would've performed better, I think would've been at least marginally more audience there. Same with Orlando. We need to get spend a little bit more. We've got the new hires we're bringing in, we're going to kind of revamp all of that. I do think the usfl, honestly, and I'm trying to take the Homer whatever out of this is like what do we do now? We've put 26 games on network, had four hubs now do we keep Canton or do we rebrand that? But other than that, I don't. I think they did a lot this year and that they did kind of everything and I hope, and we will obviously know this next year because I was having conversations as well, we'll know what the X ffl, right? We'll be able to compare season. We have nothing to compare right now. Maybe the X ffl does everything next year and it's anemic ratings and it's still the same and it flatlines, but review the US ffl right now. I don't know what you do because I don't think you're going to go, well we got put all the games on A, B, C or N B C and Fox, right? You're never going to do that. I don't know if 26 is topping out, do you add a couple more? Does that make any difference? Do we try to do some more strategic? But okay, then you're popping a couple ratings. I mean the Preakness didn't, didn't really carry over at all, right? I mean you got the one 2 million rating, I don't know. As opposed to, I think there's a lot more unknowns there. Position better, get better lead-ins, get more people in the stands, try to do all that community building stuff. I mean Memphis roll with that, maybe Michigan's better. I don't know. I don't know what usfl does. I think it's a more unknown, Here's the thought. So one of the things that I don't think it's brought up enough against with the usfl is they seem to ignore the West coast market completely. The West coast market is a complete anomaly to them and if they're so focused on the Midwestern market, why not try putting yourself in some of these cities, some of these smaller cities that I've been told a million times desire to have a football team, Omaha, Nebraska or Oklahoma City or something of that nature because I think that's the market that they fit better in as opposed to the xfl, which is a little bit more spread out but kind of has their established brands. They're on the east coast, they're on the south, they're on west, kind of more spread out. usfl seems to have their contingency in their players, their brands. I think if I were them, I would just continue to focus on the Midwestern market and if instead of it being all these different hubs of building out, why maybe focus on it regionally and then start to expand out if you find the interest for it. So I think it's kind of starting a franchise restaurant. We're going to start in this area and we'll see where it goes after this. I would've argued that maybe that's what they should do instead is really focus on the Midwest and parts of the south and keep it that way instead of trying to appeal to all these different hubs and being like who wants a team? I've heard again, over and over where these teams should go and where they should be and I think for them maybe that's the better play. I don't know if New Jersey's really gun ho to get the generals back. I don't know if Pittsburgh's gun ho to get the mallers back. I don't know if Philadelphia really wants the stars back. These old brands, I don't know if they really care about it that much. And so instead of kind of appealing to those cities, those more peripheral cities where you're going to put your teams back in place, maybe you should just go after these markets that traditionally don't have as many, many teams around them. Not as many competing interests, not as many things, quite frankly things to do in those areas. I wonder if the S F L should just go that way and the XFL could continue going about their business or whatever they're going, but I think that is something that just occurred in my head because I do think that the Midwest I I'd to, I'd really have to get all the measurements of all the TV ratings in which markets perform better than others. But to me it feels like that's the region that cares more about it. Well you also need to find markets. They don't have as many gas stations have an openings on for July weekend or whatever their is on Or Janet Jackson concerts Or yeah, Garth Brooks, whatever down the street. But just to round out the conversation, I do, as I said at the top, I think it was 50 50, I posted a Twitter poll I think a year ago was the US F L better off? Just like I said, we got the modelers, it's okay, we've decided now we're going to award that to a city. We're going to do that because I think it's negligible. I mean, you know could get the numbers of the TV demos and stuff and Mike Mitchell had that I think with the US F L last year, maybe that'll be coming out kind of what markets perform better, but I think that way then you're not tremendously, we're retiring to Tampa Bay Memphis and then here we're Tampa Bay Bandits, whatever. I think then you're moving positives, right? Because right now where you have these eight name teams, anything obviously besides the team going to the city is considered a letdown. Whereas if you go the other way, it's all positive momentum and hey, we have this team that we're sending them in here. You get a team, you get a team, but I think we'll wind this out today. I appreciate it. Anything else for you Andy, before we get out of here? Ultimately I just want both leagues to figure it out and I like having football. I think it's, for me as a junkie, it's been really interesting considering the momentum has not slowed down for me. I'm still looking forward to watching more CFL this weekend. I know that NFL training camps are just around the corner and again, it's really funny that all these people in my life are like, Hey, football's back. I'm like, I never left. It's, it doesn't leave ever. It doesn't, the lights don't turn off here. But I just want both leagues to really seriously look in the mirror and consider what they need to work on and just again, have more humility and understanding of where are you right now And the fact that it's not, it's going to be a process. It's going to take a long time to figure this out. It took a long time for the MLS to get where it was. Right now I feel like they want to be the mls, but the mls, they don't understand how much work was put into that in terms of just trying to build themselves up in all the franchises and the notoriety IT building league is hard if you're not, you haven't been around for 50 plus years, it's hard. It's going to be hard. You have to really be conscious of that going forward. And this relates, we have the same conversations about the CFL and things they can improve and that league's been around and we're going to have the hundred 10th grade cup this year and there's still, we just had on our live stream on Monday, the CFL or three down had the article ways the CFL leadership is failing it's fans. And I mean this is not a, unless you're the N F L and it's the be all end all, there's always things you can do to improve and I think that all of these leagues and I think the C F L would benefit from considering itself more alternative football. I understand it's not alternative football to the people that live in Canada, but to a large portion of the world it is and I think the xfl and usfl, yeah, would you better to embrace Darryl Johnston's humbleness that I heard in this press conference and say, Hey, build this with us and not we are pro football for, or we are real football for real fans because then I don't understand what that makes anybody else. I think that, I understand that's marketing, but I still think that just the backwardness of having that marketing all year and then have it come out and say we don't know why our ratings are down very odd to me. Very, very odd to me. But we've talked about that enough Andy, I appreciate it. We'll be back, we'll do everything else here coming up, but I'm sure we'll have more off season content. So thanks again. Always around man. Take care. Well I appreciate this. It's been a long time coming. I've been corresponding with this gentleman. I appreciate it here kind of holiday week and making my life easy and coming on, so I do appreciate that. Cause I'm like, God, I got weddings every day this week and trying to figure this out. That's what I do for my real life. So Dwayne Ford here, c f L on Ts N How are you doing sir? Excellent, excellent. Thank you for having me. I'm glad we were finally able to make it work. It was good. Yeah, I was a little slow in getting my C F L draft stuff figured out this year and by that point it was a little too late but we got it here Dwayne. We're going into week five here, except I have my BC Lions hat on. We did not have the greatest of Monday night. So what have you made of the season so far? Yeah, I think it's been exciting. I think that it has largely lived up to expectations in terms of some very good football games. Things are starting to shake out with teams establishing, I suppose their pecking order at least in the early part of the season. But as we tend to divide the season into thirds in the world of the Canadian football league and where people stand, so we're still sorting out this first third and really still when you look at bc, Winnipeg, Toronto, trying to figure out who's on top with the Argonauts as you alluded to, making a pretty decent claim in recent weeks. No, I think we did did it Tuesday this week. Our kind of live reactions post recap of the games and I call the BC Lions America's C F L team. That's their branding I've given them. I was expecting maybe not six interceptions thrown by Vernon Adams. What did you make? Just, I mean because Argos came out and killed it anyway, but even with when it was near the end, five interceptions only being down 11 points isn't the worst thing in the world. Yeah, I think that because the story automatically becomes those six interceptions, I think that it overshadows some good things that BC did in the course of that football game and referring to their offense specifically that they moved the ball, they made some plays, but the bottom line is ultimately the turnovers killed them. Toronto Argonauts were they ultimately outplayed them by making big plays when they needed to make big plays going and getting the football and a lot of credit goes to their defensive coordinator. Corey, me a guy who I think has really established himself as one of the best in the business in his two years with the Toronto. It certainly seems as advertised here coming off Gray Cup last year and now we have Chad Kelly and everything else. Are you surprised? And it seems, I guess in a good way we're really kind of trying to brand Chad Kelly now as the new last year was a lot of the Nathan Roarke hype and okay, I mean it feels like we got Glenn Suiter on there and we're talking like you we're all trying to get around Chad Kelly, do you like that? Has he lived up to your expectations and what do you make just of the storyline around him? Yeah, he is exceeded my expectations, not in terms of what his potential is or what I believed his potential to be because this is obviously a guy who as a football player has a very impressive football resume. But just as a young quarterback in the Canadian football League historically, there's a learning curve that I don't necessarily want to call it a steep curve, but a curve that takes some time for guys to find their way. And so as a second year player in the Canadian Football League to be thrust into a starting position and to be thriving in this first third of the season, I think it reflects very well on Chad Kelly and on his future. Well you look here at another player who's had even longer here where you look at Cornelius with the Elks, someone that, okay, we're getting them a couple years here kind of expecting we had the Jar Doji or Daji Dey show. I can never the Dey show last week. Now we're back presumably to Cornelius as we record this. I think Morley Scott had it out that he was taking the first trips. Yes. What do you make of, I don't want to call it a dumpster fire, but it's a little scary here in Edmonton. Well the lack of clear direction and particularly at the most important position is a concern and I'm sure it's a concern for Chris Jones and offensive coordinator Steven McAdoo as well in that it was a question that you thought you had sort of answered a year ago when they had made a commitment to Taylor Cornelius all along. I think that the struggle for Taylor has been in terms of his accuracy and that was the limitation early on, the thing that they were looking to develop in him. Obviously that's been slow to develop. I think though when you look at the receivers they've brought in trying to bring in big targets, guys who can go out and win 50 50 balls when you consider especially Gino Lewis, Steven Dunbar, that that's been a lot of their game. I do think that a lot of that is designed to maybe erase some of the accuracy challenges that they would face at quarterback, but I mean this is something they're going to need to figure a way to work around. It may take some tweaking with their offense to play a little bit more to Taylor Cornelius's strength and for him to buy into that. And what I mean is getting him on the move a little bit. The guy is a remarkable athlete and I think catches a lot of people off guard at 6, 5, 6, 6 with his elusiveness and his ability to move that. I think he may have to build a little bit more of that into your play calling to get him into a comfort zone and maybe minimize the weaknesses, maximize the strengths. It's hard and obviously I watched kind of the NFL and everything here too, and it feels a little bit like a Daniel Jones with the giant situation where we have a guy, we could kind of but mean it. And I love Cornelius. We've tracked him all the way through the xfl back in 2020 and he played down there. So I mean we've had this history with him, but is it worth to build that up? I mean, we got Trey forward sitting there and I know DEI looked better off the bench than he did getting his start, but do you think Cornelius is the right decision there? I think at this time I think he is. He's their most experienced option and the guy that they've invested some time in that you know can put some practice time into developing the other guys. But I'm not sure that the other guys are ready to go through some of the ups and downs that are going to come along with this development curve in this early part of their careers that you want to be careful with the younger quarterbacks. And I know that Taylor Cornelius still kind of falls into that category, but with more starts more experience under his belt, I think he's probably better equipped to handle some of the ups and downs without it being damaging to his psyche and his long-term development than to throw the other guys in there. At this point you can continue developing them and I think if you get to a point in the season, whether you say it's at the one third mark, whether you say it's around Labor Day and mid season that you're going to give him to try and get going or give one of the other guys to be more prepared to play. But I do think that Taylor Cornelius is the right choice for Edmonton right now. I think he's their best option for the time being. It's just hard because we championed for on here and he was on the show kind of preseason and last year and I mean the best position in the world is to be that backup quarterback that everyone wants to see you right play. I mean he won in the preseason and all that. Any thoughts as Saskatchewan here with Trevor Harris and trying to kind of revamp after last year? He certainly seems to be doing better in that system than Cody was. Yeah, I think when you look at Trevor, I think that Trevor is a guy who throughout his C F L career has been, for the most part quite consistent and the guy who is accurate and a guy that gives you a chance to win, he provides stability at the position. And when you relate it to the Edmonton situation, obviously that there's, what they're looking at is a veteran guy who provides you some of that to the Saskatchewan situation, specifically in the move from Cody Jido to Trevor Harris, different guys, obviously Cody providing some of that athleticism mobility that isn't a big part of Trevor's game. Maybe Trevor would suggest an underrated part, and I know a part that he's worked on as his career has progressed, but overall, I think when you look at a healthy Trevor Harris, he's a guy that I think he's in a pretty good position. I think Trevor is poised for a good year. I think he's demonstrated that through the first few weeks of this season. A lot of pressure on them, especially after last year and kind of missing the playoffs and everything else. Do you think that they've done, if they looked like they're going to be, I mean we got Winnipeg here BC even with the Argonauts is looking good here in the west. We'll talk about Calgary, but I mean, is Saskatchewan doing enough? Yeah, I mean you await some of those measuring stick type games, right? Against, I think you would say Winnipeg, particularly in the West right now. Bc BC's still very much there. I think obviously disappointing performance for them in Toronto on Monday, but the fact is they're a very good football team, and so it does look like right now the road to success in the West division kind of goes through those two teams and that's taking nothing away from Calgary who's always going to be competitive. But yeah, I think Saskatchewan, again, especially considering that it's early in the season, they've had some changes to their lineup, little bit younger at receiver with some injuries and so on. There an evolving line as compared to last year that there's some flux there. But in the early part of the season, I think they've shown pretty well. Again, considering that it's this first third, we'll start to evaluate them a little bit more as we get to the middle part of the season. For sure. Take notes. You don't consider Edmonton a measuring stick game? Not yet. Not yet. And I'll never write anybody off in the Canadian Football League, especially early. And I'm certainly not going to count out Chris Jones as a coach. But yeah, obviously in the early part of the season, Edmonton, Edmonton has struggled and they're trying to sort things out and hopefully they will for the good of the league, for the good of that franchise. How long of a leash do you feel like Chris Jones still has there? How hot is that seat getting? I think that it's probably uncomfortable for him given his own expectations and obviously externally as well as everybody talks about the home losing streak and so on. And as I said, maybe that lack of clear direction, at least from our perspective at the critical quarterback position, a little bit of the feeling that maybe they've made some incorrect decisions. When you look at the number of guys they've gone through, obviously it's been brought up in recent weeks that Chad Kelly is a guy who was their property who was on their neck list and they traded him away. And so his success while they struggle at that position, is something that's not helping the case there. But I do think at the very least that Chris Jones' job is safe for this season unless the wheels completely come off and we're honestly nowhere near that at this point. Calgary here, obviously a team near and dear to your heart. We had Jake Mayer on last season and I was kind of big. I said, I want to kind of hitch my ride to you as this new upstart, right? We're kind of moving, well I out at the time moving on from be Levi and here we'll talk Hamilton, but Calgary hasn't been great thus far. Competitive. What have you made, what's the storyline on Calgary? Yeah, Calgary is, we always think of Calgary as a reloading team and never a rebuilding team, but they're very much to me, a team in transition more than they have been in some time. And that is signaled or headlined by the change at quarterback that occurred partway through last season. It's almost like in season you just move on as if Bo was injured, but it's still kind of the Bo era and maybe in season rather than off season. It oddly enough, it may have been easier to make that move and have that transition. But one of the other things is this is another team that has been impacted by injuries on offense and you look at the receiver position, you look at Kadeem Carey being out at running back, obviously they've got some depth there and a system that allows them to have some success in the run game. But playing with a lot of young receivers as well as a relatively new quarterback, preseason being what it has become in the Canadian football league where there are not a lot of reps for starters together, particularly at game speed that a lot these first few weeks of the season quite frankly are extended training camp and extended preseason. And again, to emphasize especially with that team playing with a lot of young receivers, that there are going to be some growing pains. They get a little bit of help with Reggie Beton coming back off the six game injured list and the resigning of Mark and Michelle who should be able to transition into that lineup fairly seamlessly. But when you look at the young guys that they've played with and the young guys have played well, but they're still young guys playing in the Canadian football league playing professional football. And so I think that explains some of the stamps challenges early on. Yeah, and sorry, we've just gotten off of, well with playoffs and everything at 12 week xfl season and the U us F L season, so even with our listeners and stuff, it's like it's a marathon, not a sprint here. But yeah, it's very much, I don't know, I'm in the very much live and die every week, so even though we are only going into week five here, I was very close to have my BC Alliance hat in the garbage here after I came up on Monday. Calgary facing Winnipeg here, had their bounce back BC kind of just kicked the snot out of 'em and then they really held down Montreal there to just the field goal bounce back Any cause for concern with Winnipeg? No, I don't think is, I do I think that Winnipeg is still one of the best teams in the Canadian football league and I, I'm very careful in saying that as on our broadcast last week I referred to Winnipeg as the measuring stick, the yard stick against which all other CFL teams are kind of test where they are at this point. I don't want to ignore the defending Gray Cup champion to Toronto Orates who are demonstrating in the early part of this season that they deserve to be in that competition or in that conversation. But Winnipeg certainly remains one of those measuring sticks I think for everybody, sort of the model, the standard that everybody is chasing, they had a tough game against BC but I think that they recognized what their challenges were and they responded in a big way in terms of managing those challenges, overcoming them outplayed at the line of scrimmage, certainly in the BC game. But I think they more than answered the bell in that regard in the follow up game against Montreal last week Because we've had conversations on here where maybe their defense is phasing out a little bit or we've lost a couple too many. I mean it, it'll get to the point at some point it will get there. I mean if we have a rematch again, and I don't want to discount my BC lions, but if we see Winnipeg Toronto here in the Gray Cup again, I mean I would give Toronto at this point, and again I know we're a ways away, quite the edge on that. I mean just in how they've looked, but it, it's exciting to at least feel like there's a little bit more competition. There is, I don't know, Toronto is almost like two overpowered in the east now where you have kind of them and then the rest of the world hanging out. Yeah, I think everybody is, you started the season, it was wide open and nobody really knew what to expect in the east because you had so many changes at quarterback. For one thing, you had Cody Fajardo coming off a tough year in Saskatchewan, so you weren't exactly sure how that was going to look. In Montreal. Everybody debating what Levi has. Levi Mitchell has left as he moves to Hamilton Chad Kelly who had one late season start under his belt. So for all intents and purposes a rookie starter in Toronto, they've had to deal with the Jeremiah mis injury lingering into this season in Ottawa. So uncertainty at quarterback I think created a lot of uncertainty in terms of how the division was going to unfold. But you do have to be impressed with what Toronto has done offensively. Chad Kelly obviously a big part of that, a young offensive line that has, has really taken steps forward when you look at having Ryan Hunter for the entire season, the former first round pick, former NFLer coming in partway through last year, late season, A nice addition for them, but now to get a training camp and really be prepared for the Canadian football league season, very important guy. Peter Nicastro, the East Division rookie of the year, a year earlier, misses all last year but comes back in this year and that's just a big boost to that offensive line as well. And as I said, I think that what Corey Mace is doing with that defense and some of the guys they've got over there, Winton McManus typically the guy leading the way. I think Toronto is a force, certainly a force to be reckoned with and the team that has stepped forward in terms of separating themselves in the east, Talking here, Ottawa, we had the reports, I think it was aj, Jackie Beck had said yesterday as we recordation of Oli taking first team reps and that's been the plan getting him, we've lived through the Tyree Adams and all of that. Is oli enough to, I mean Otto has had some wins here and not pretty wins, but they've had win. Is that enough here, Moli coming back to ride that because this is an exciting game to me, obviously the Bo Levi and lot of expectations with the Thai cats here going into the season. What do you make of the Saturday game? Yeah, I'm excited about it. I think it, it's you add some intrigue with Jeremiah Masoli making his return in Hamilton against his former team and a Hamilton team that as you alluded to, is still looking to answer questions at quarterback since he left that things haven't gone as smoothly as they thought. Obviously the move to Dane Evans last year and onto Bo Levi Mitchell this year, Matthew Shilts taking the reins for the time being. When you talk about Maoli and his potential impact in Ottawa, I think it's significant because his, it's not just his presence. You're talking about a guy who not that long ago was a finalist for the league. M o p has battled injuries a lot since then, but a guy capable of playing at that level for one, but also his demeanor I think will bring a little bit of confidence to those around him. And you get a little bit more out of some of your receivers. I look at Jalen Acklin in particular, who is one of the most dynamic receivers in the league, but still trying to find his way as he adjusts to a new position in 2023. Ma Soli is the guy that knows him best and I think is someone who can get a little bit more out of him, a little bit more out of Justin Hardy, who's become a bit of a fixture in that receiving course. Something of a go-to guy, a former n f NFLer who provides some veteran presence. So I look forward to seeing, seeing that group work together and the impact that just masley's veteran presence and poise have on the whole group. That way It's sliding doors here. If Oli never goes the Ottawa, if a Hamilton never deals him and then we don't have the Garrett Marino hit and then we don't have, I mean a lot of things changed from that. Are you overwhelmed, underwhelmed or whelmed with Bo Levi Mitchell and everything happening with Hamilton right now? Well, I would say underwhelmed so far, and that's a whole team thing that's not just a Bo thing. Obviously on paper, high expectations for Hamilton coming into the season with them hosting the Gray Cup and they obviously recognize it and clearly going out to get some pieces that they hope give them a chance to be in that gray cup before their window closes with some of their veteran guys. And I think it's pretty clear that was the edict, but what looks good on paper doesn't necessarily work out great on the field. And that's not to say it won't, again, it's not to keep going back to the idea that things take time, but in terms of finding their way and developing rapport offensively in particular with a lot of new faces, there's been a struggle there. And it's not just the C F L veterans like Bo Levi Mitchell, James Butler, duke Williams and fitting those guys together, but they've had to start some young guys on the offensive line when you look at the Montreal game in which they had their hands full with what can be a pretty tenacious alo at front, that was a game in which Hamilton started three rookies on their offensive line, which is going to be a challenge for any team. And so as they straighten that out, that's obviously going to allow any quarterback to be in a better position to be successful, whether it's Matthew Schultz or Levi Mitchell. But in terms of moving to a new team and new offense, new offensive coordinator, it's not like any of the receivers that are in Hamilton are guys that he has had played with previously in Calgary. And I think that contributes to a lot of the growing pains there, but obviously a little bit of anxiety in Hamilton given what they anticipated and given the way things have unfolded in the early part of the season for them. If you had to give the edge for this one, the Zola coming back, is Hamilton right coming off the by as well? Trying to figure that Bo, is Bo still out, right? Is it Shilts still? I'm trying to, I expect that it'll be Matthew Shilts again this week. Yeah, and I like Matthew Shilts as a quarterback. I think that he has a lot of tools to be successful in the Canadian Football League, but as I said, it doesn't matter who's playing quarterback if you have a hard time keeping him standing upright or giving him time to do his thing. And part of the question for Hamilton, I talked earlier about Edmonton and maybe doing some things in their offense to play to their strengths and particularly to the play, to their strengths of their quarterback. You may see a little bit of that kind of thinking in Hamilton as well, where if you're going to be a little bit younger, maybe not quite as strong on the offensive line that make sure you're getting your money's worth out of free agent signing James Butler at running back and give him the rock and take a little bit of heat off the qb and quite frankly, take a little bit of heat off your offensive line. Last game here. We'll get out of here. I appreciate your time talking BC We need to bounce back here. I think Cody's looked good. I feel like he's a little more swed this year. I feel like he came in with, I don't know if he bulked up a little bit. What do you make? He's a friend of the show now. We had a little few for a little while. We have our group chat, it is called EZ on the Cody Cody Fudo season. We're excited for him. What do you make of this Sunday night game here or whatever, Montreal coming into bc? Yeah, this is one where when you're Montreal, obviously Montreal would've spent a lot of time looking at BC on film and preparing for Winnipeg and different sides of the ball, so to speak, in terms of who's looking at that film. But when you're that Montreal coaching staff, there's very much an awareness of the things that BC had done well to this point in the season and recognizing what they struggled with against Winnipeg. And as I said, again, that's a lot at the line of scrimmage that Winnipeg really kind of imposed their will at the line of scrimmage after having BC do that to them a week or earlier. The aats know what they're in for and kind of recognize that it, it's up to the guys on their fronts on both sides of the ball to step it up. I mean the BC defensive line led by Matthew Bets has been very impressive, to say the least. A Montreal offensive line that was without Pierre Olivier Achi last week. They hopefully get him back this week. But the bottom line is a veteran group that has to do much Winnipeg did against them is answer the bell after a bit of an off outing. Yeah. Matthew Bets had a sack on Chad Kelly that looks like a D D T it looks like. Was that a pile driver or was that d d really impressive there? I don't know. I felt we saw, at least in the first half of the Winnipeg, Montreal game, it felt like Cody we're getting the ball moved enough. I mean, he's got a lot of targets there and obviously stand back's back and he's healthy, like you said. Does he have enough time to do any of that? But I don't know, I, I'm concerned as much with the blowout loss against Winnipeg cause at least I felt like the ettes were doing something. Do you share similar sentiments or how do you feel? Yeah, it was an interesting one because when you look offensively, there were stretches from Montreal that were impressive and looked like they were going to get themselves back into that game. I thought particularly in the third quarter. And the issue that they had was turnovers that came at critical times, mistakes that came at critical times because they got their running game going and got stand back involved in that third quarter and were moving the ball. And I thought that was important for them. But then they had the fumble when they got into scoring territory and that was one that changed the game. And then they had the interception when again, they're in scoring territory, but they moved the ball into that scoring territory, a matter of finishing. But when you look for positives to build on, I do think that there were positives there that it's just erasing those turnovers at critical times. It's a big part of it. I look forward to the special teams battle in this game as well. And a couple of pretty good returners, Terry Williams and BC and Chandler Worthy and Montreal. And the difference that those guys might make in terms of the field position in this ballgame. Yeah. Plus even it was the rain delay last week and sometimes I feel like with that it kind of messes with your whole everything. And that game was so delayed. And then you coming there, were you with that game? Was that I Was, yeah. And so it's like, you know, come in and I don't know, we've, I watched a lot of baseball right now and you kind of have the same thing. You're sitting around for two hours and then you got to go play. I don't know, I kind of feel like it, it's kind of a wash, but yeah. Last things here, we'll get out of here. I appreciate it. BC was, what's impressed me is obviously, you know, have the kons back here and Dominique and everything, but you're lucky it's been out that Justin McGinnis kind of stepping up. There's just so many tools there for Vernon. I don't know, I felt like he got so rattled last week. I don't know. I said on our show it was almost like if you're at the casino and you've kind of lost a couple hands and you're like, well I got to keep going here. As opposed to, yeah, I mean would've just ripped the bandaid and put Dana in just to give some sense of relief to Vernon. But do you think he can, not, obviously in the game didn't bounce back, but this is kind of Vernon's life is, it's kind of up and down, up and down. Do you think that there's enough here he can shake off? Yeah, I do. I think having the opportunity to step back and have a look at it when you're Vernon Adams, I think he'll see the exact thing that you said is that he threw a couple of interceptions and then it was trying to get it all back at once instead of just settling down and doing the things that have made him successful to this point in the year. And again, sometimes if you're not comfortable with what you see as a quarterback, particularly when you can move Vernon, tuck that ball and run and avoid the loss, turn it into a positive play. And so I think that he's matured a lot from his early days in the league where this might have sent him into a little bit of a spiral that I do think that there's an opportunity to bounce back here for him. And I think that he's wired in a way that that's what I expect of him. Yeah, there was the one, I think it was the fifth interception where it was like the guy's not even moving, went straight to the defender. Yeah, it was. Well Dwayne, I really appreciate it. Like I said, coming on, taking time on the long holiday week and everything else, really appreciate it. Excited for the season, pleasure and should be good games this weekend. We'll see bounce back and like you said with Hamilton and everything else, so really appreciate your time. Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. Look forward to doing it again soon. Huge special thanks to all of our guests today. Like I said, Dwayne Ford, taking the time, making my life incredibly easy here on the holiday weekend, taking the time, coming on, talking through all of the CFL teams and kind of how they're standing, how Dwayne kind of sees the C F O landscape right now in the first third of the season. Thanks again to Andrew Buckle. It's coming on from awful announcing, taking the time, breaking down all the numbers. And of course Andrew Murray long ranging conversation with him. I really appreciate that. That will do it for me today. Short and sweet here at Three Grass should be fun. Just stick tune and I will be back Jason on Monday. We'll be talking all of the games for the C F L over the weekend. Hopefully the BC Lions celebrating the victory here against the Montreal. Thanks as always for your support and subscribe. We'll see you next time and keep in mind now, we didn't hit this 3,500 subscribers through the usfl season, so now, alright, win. Get your chance, get an xfl or usfl season kickoff ticket, kick kickoff, opening weekend, whatever you want to say. You can do it for the inaugural game. You can do it for one of the other games of the weekend. But a subscribed, get us up to 3,500 subscribers and we'll be given away tickets to that here. Hopefully. We'll see. We do this every week if you're new, if you're old. But stick around, lots of giveaways. Other things, I still have some Spring league practice jerseys I need to give out at some point as well. So appreciate it. As always, we'll see you next time. Thanks.

CFL 2023 Week 4 Results: Winners and Losers of CFL Week 4, What Did We Learn?

Well, good morning. All right. Tuesday morning here everyone on the mark cast. Happy 4th of July if you are in the United States celebrating that Happy Canada Day long weekend if you are friends up north. Interesting, interesting week here. I had a lot of trash talk has been said here. I did not skip Bayless. I very close to skip Bayless my hat into the trash last night, but I still have it on today here after a little bit of an interesting game here. I don't know if it lived up to what we expected, but it certainly lived up to something. Nonetheless, Jason and Evan standing by, we'll bring them on. I'll kind of preview the show here. We'll get in everything. Jason, a lot of smack talk for me at least your lack of a quarterback in struggling games and Evan's kind of a Beastie Lions fan with me. We're eating a little bit of humble pie today. How are you doing Jason? I'm doing great, Reid. How are you? I'm sure you Evan Welfare check. How do you feel today? I feel good. Wasn't here last week, but excited to talk about the three games. It's a bit of a lesser slate because I'm Calgary, Hamilton, Saskatchewan, all to buy obviously. But yeah, it should be good. It should be good. Yeah. BC fans a little bit of just made today, but we'll get into that. I don't know if the sky's following anything else. Just set everything up. We'll do BC and then the Winnipeg game. And then I was saying before we got on here, Ottawa feels like a lifetime ago, I do have this article, Jim Mullen shared friend of the show. We were going back and forth last night about our BC Lions woes and then Mariners with a thrilling six six to, what was it, six to five win here in the ninth inning. But this three down Nation article, eight ways you feel like cfl is leadership is failing the fans. So I think we'll get into that in the end of the show because normally we get four games for the hour. We have the three this week. But I did want to say, and I echoed this sentiment and I saw a lot of people echoing this, a Rash madani friend of the show here. I was sitting there Thursday of the long weekend, no cfl games. I was sitting there Sunday of the long weekend. No cfl games, Jason, this, okay, we have a three team buy, it's a long week. What do you make of this? Are they, because there was nothing else going on this weekend. I mean I know there's like regional baseball and stuff. Yeah, I just don't agree with how they scheduled this week. Maybe it was due to something like the stadium availability ability at availability at Bemo Field, but at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure this game should have been on the Sunday honestly, because when you only have three games on that week, it doesn't really make too much sense. Thank goodness we didn't have a Thursday game this week because it would've been stretched even more thin. And then it was just kind of a disjointed week with the whole rain delay on Saturday as well. So I mean it was just a weird week for the cfl schedule. Yeah, it was weird. I went back and watched and we'll get into it. I had some notes on kind of the delay, but I went, it was my birthday on Saturday and I went back. It did. It felt like that game existed in the vacuum. I saw nothing about it. I'm like, oh, okay. There was a rain delay. Okay, Winnipeg beat the snot out of the ettes. Okay. And I went back and watched it and they had to preempt it and there was kind of all that stuff Evan did. I know we're sitting here, we're in our best life Monday. I have to work today, I have a wedding today. But a lot of people are off today, but that that's not necessarily the case for these Canadian viewers here for the long weekend. Yeah, I mean it was definitely a weird slate and the weather delay didn't help things. Yeah, I thought it was very a bit too spread out. Obviously. Again, given the long weekend, I feel like you should have just had Friday, Saturday, Sunday done or even a doubleheader or something on Canada Day, maybe on Saturday. I don't know. That's just a thought. But yeah, I'm sure it looks like it's going to return to normal in week five cause there's back to a four game slate. Yeah, and if you're listening to this, it's just, I says, well, I have a Canadian professional football game up against nothing else on the sports calendar on the Sunday of a long weekend, the beginning and New beginnings. The other thing I just wanted to know, and I don't need to play this but shout out, I thought Rod on his show Friday did a good job friend of the show talking just about a lot of the grassroots stuff that Rod and if he feels like the cfl used to do and kind of failing to do now where he's sitting there he is like, we have three teams on the bye week. It's a Friday of a long weekend. No one's calling me to come on the show. No one's calling to promote anything and just why is that happening? Just kind of the state of the cfl here. So I just thought that was interesting, but it really echoed to me, and I know we'll get into this year maybe later in the show with the leadership and everything that maybe cfl fans are a little whatever disenfranchised right now. Jason, overall for the three games, what did you make just kind of top level view here? I think it was pretty sloppy overall in the three games. I just didn't think I was that the Friday game was pretty rough. The Saturday game was pretty rough once it got going after the rain delay and then the Monday game, it started off very good, but then I mean unfortunately Toronto kind of just took away with it when it ran away with it in the second half. That is, Yeah, Evan, yeah, kind of your 30,000 foot view here looking down. Yeah, I mean the Toronto BC game was obviously the best, but even that one got out of hand really quickly and really wasn't entertaining after probably second quarter you could argue. So yeah, I don't know, just a pretty boring slate I guess you would say this week. Nothing, nothing too exciting. So I guess we'll get in here. We'll start with kind of the marquee one and we'll kind of move, excuse me, move our way back here. BC Lions big hyped here the Monday night for the record, and I posted this in the chat. I don't count the Argos. The Argos having a weak one by, I don't count them as the same level of undefeated as the BC Lions. We kept having this matchup of the two undefeated teams BC Lions played three games, Argos on the bi week next week as well. So I play the same number of games. Call it that, Jason, am I out of line in that I think that the Argos need to prove something else here before they're the true champions of the undefeated. Yeah, I agree with that because yeah, like you said, they have that weird thing going on with the two buys in the first half of the season. Actually I believe someone said to me that they have three buys in the first half of the season and then they play 10 games in a row to end the year. But yeah, just a weird situation going on with the Argo schedule and yeah, I wouldn't weigh it too much as being a true undefeated team so far, even though they look like the best team in the league at this point of the season. If you wanted to know Mike Mitchell, he left his notes. He said show notes, Argos are the best, Hamilton better than not lose to Ottawa and Edmonton the next two weeks. So that is your Mike's I think doing the parade today. I think Mike's very excited about that. Evan, in terms of expectations going into this game, I think they were high. I guess think we have a lot to talk about here. I don't know if they met the expectations necessarily. What were you looking forward to in this game? Just a close game, honestly. I mean these are two very high powered teams on both sides of the ball. That's obviously what makes a football game good. You could even argue bring in special teams too. Obviously an important factor, but special offense defense, it was just a very highly talented matchup I guess you would say. And it left up to the hype probably in the first quarter. It was tied at one point, kind of a back and forth. It was like seven, seven, then 14, 14, but then Vernon threw a couple picks probably more than he should have and Toronto just kind of pulled away. We'll get into more of that and what I think about that performance specifically later. But overall in terms of the matchup, I just think I was really expecting BC to win, even though the game was in Toronto and it did look like that was plausible for a while. Even when Vernon was still kind of turning the ball over in the first half, I was like, okay, they can still kind of pull themselves out of this, but by the third quarter all hope was lost, so Yeah. Yeah. Jason, go for it. I was going to say it's kind of a misleading story score line because I thought that the defenses actually did play very well in this one. It's just a bunch of turnovers caused the score to be and a big special teams touchdown, but the Argos caused the score to be a lot higher than I was expecting. Well that was the thing it felt like at the beginning that Toronto couldn't score on offense at all. It felt like that either BC they came down, they scored early Toronto, we kind of solved them and then we had the big pun return and then it really felt like that was, it kind of unraveled from there. I guess my big question will go to both you guys. We can go to Evan first. Did Vernon Adams here, six interceptions in the game? I tweeted, I've watched 24 weeks of X F L in U S F L football. I've never seen a quarterback throw six interceptions. I guess the cfl record is seven. I think Matt Dunnigan did as well as Jim Moen told me. A couple others. Evan, did Vernon Adams lose this game or did Theron the Argonauts win this game? Yeah, it's a great question. I have to lean towards Vernon and Adams lost unfortunately because I still feel like without the turnovers, BC would've won or at least made it extremely close. I just, again, given what went on in the first quarter before the turnovers really started coming out. But yeah, I put in my notes, I said this was a very Jamus Winston esque performance, and I mean that in kind of a good and a bad way because if you look past the interceptions, if you take away that six interception number, Vernon Adams had 388 yards and three touchdowns, he was nearly averaging 10 yards in a temp pretty much right on the money there. So yeah, if you take away the turnovers, I mean he should have easily won this game, but when you're giving the ball away six times to the other team, especially three going to the same player, Robertson, Daniel gets pretty tough to win. And clearly, I mean you just look at the score and that's all you really need to know. And again, yeah, it's a bit misleading on some fronts, but it's just a shame because Vernon in this game I feel like had so many good plays on offense that got overlooked because he was given the ball to the defense so many times. Hey Jason, same question to you. Sorry, what was the question? Did Vernon Adams lose this game or the they're trying to argon that's win this game. Okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, I do believe that Vernon lost this game for them. I think especially when you looked at late in the fourth quarter, it looked like they had a lot of momentum towards a comeback when they were down by, I think they were down by 17 points at one point and then they cut it to 11 and then I think they were driving and then that one big interception that I don't know what Vernon was seeing on that play. I think that was the absolute killer because I really do think they had the chance to come back in this game. So I think there were some of these picks that weren't his fault and then some of them were obviously his fault, but I mean when you throw six interceptions, it's kind of unacceptable. Kind of reminded me of a game that Peyton Manning had years ago when he played against the Chargers and I think he threw five interceptions but also threw four touchdowns and was just kept on coming and almost won the game anyway. But anyway, yeah, Vernon and I think lost the game for the Lions overall. It was hard. It was before that I had my tweet ready before I was about to throw my hat in the trash when they were down 11 points going there at the end and five interceptions and if the game had ended or the Argos had ran out the clock, turning the ball over five times and only losing by 11 points is pretty remarkable I think if you really look at it. But to me it felt like when I was in college, I was a little bit of a casino addict and we had a casino by our college w we could go because it was an Indian casino. I would go a lot and it's kind of one of those things where you start losing and then you're going, you throw more good money after bad and you really need to know to walk away. And it felt like Vernon just kind of spiraled there and was, he was so lost even, I think he had a big completion of the Keon Hatcher near the end his, so I'm like, that was still in triple coverage. I'm glad Keon is in a phenomenal athlete that could catch the ball. I don't know if that was still a great thrower decision to make. It just felt like he was so rattled. You saw him on the sidelines. Evan, are you surprised that we didn't see a day in day in Evans out in here even just to give Vernon a break at the end? Yes, yes, I definitely am. And I'm glad you brought that up because it just seemed, it gets to a point where even if there's only, you know, hit the three minute warning or whatever, even maybe halfway through the fourth quarter, I mean Vernon again in my opinion, minus the turnovers, had a very good game. But if Dane Evans just comes in and manages for a bit and doesn't turn over the ball, even if he's not throwing as many yards completing as many passes, that's kind of what you want at that point in the game. You just need someone to come in, manage, keep the deficit close so you can at least try and get back in it. Because like you said, there was a time where they were down by 11 and Vernon had thrown five and then you look at the score when Vernon throws six and it's like, well they all do add up even if again, he had a great performance. So yes, long story short, I do think Dane Nevins should have come in at some point. What point in the game? I don't know. I didn't watch the fourth quarter of that game personally, but I'm sure there was a time where he could have come in. Yeah, I had the tweet here. I guess just share this while talking about the Argos by here. Yeah, the Argos have a bye the start the season play through games. Excuse me, have another bye. So Herb pointing that out in terms of the Chad Kelly of it, Jason, I, I've noticed this and I said this last week as well, he's kind of getting the Nathan Wark rub here, this is our savior now we're talking about this guy all the time. I saw the attendance not great for the Argos. I think it was like 12 and change, which I would hope you would want a bigger four marquee matchup on the long weekend and all of that. What did you make of Chad Kelly? I think he started slow, like you said, and I think that was the big missed opportunity for BC in this game because they were moving the ball really well in the first half, whereas Toronto couldn't get anything going, but a couple of big plays really turned it around for them. But Chad Kelly in the second half, you saw the confidence start to grow. I mean he can make some amazing plays out there, extend plays really tough guy to bring down in the pocket. So I think that he definitely has the potential to kind of go the Nathan Rourke route and have that kind of a season this year. Maybe not in terms of the sheer numbers of it, but I think in terms of the talent out there, I think Chad Kelly is really showing why everybody believed in him to start the season or why so many people were high on him to begin the air. Evan thoughts on Chad's performance? Yeah, I had in my notes here, I literally said, Chad Kelly has no issues keeping this Toronto team on track from their Great Cup win because there was a lot of questions going into the season. Okay, great. Chad came in late in the gray cup, pulled off the victory, it was a thriller, it was great, great story. That's what you want to see. But the reality is then MBT leaves and Chad has to now replace him for a full season and possibly many more seasons to come. Looks like Chad is going to be the new franchise quarterback there for a couple years, assuming everything goes to plan, he doesn't get picked up by the N F L, doesn't get injured, whatever, but he's ready every week so far we had that discussion I think it was two weeks ago. Is Chad Kelly the best or most important player in the cfl right now and you could really make the argument that he is at this point, again, I know maybe this is recency bias. Not every team played this week, you know, had three on a bi, but still I think Chad Kelly being the quarterback of the Toronto organs is, I mean that's a difference maker. They really could go back to the Great Cup and I know we had talked about this matchup in particular possibly being a great cup preview for when we're in Hamilton, but yeah, I mean long story short there. Yeah, I think Chad is great and if he stays in this trajectory that team is going to have no problems. Well and especially just, we've talked about this before with the cfl East here. I don't see a world where the Argos aren't at least in the finals there and maybe the ettes really tuned it up here and come on and I didn't think they played terrible in the first half. I saw against Winnipeg here kind of coming off their butt whooping and wanting to do all that. But yeah, the Argos are so good and the east is so bad to me here at the one thing I just to point out as well with this AJ Ette and I know we've been talking about him before 14 for 70, but he was on the sidelines a lot getting worked on and I'm kind of afraid of if he had been full go the whole time, I don't know if BC would've been able to stop that as well. It felt like BC when he was in there was kind of churning and doing not as a standout performances last week where you kind of have the hat trick of touchdowns. But Jason, what did you make of that aj? And it seemed like we had, myel was on the sidelines too, some injury bugs, especially AJ here because I know we had such a good week last week. I think AJ Olen has looked excellent to begin the year, so I think that having him healthy going forward is such a important thing for the Argo's offense, but I think Andrew Harris came in, got a lot of work, but it wasn't the same when he came in. I definitely agree with you there, Reid. I think that Ette just brings a different level of physicality and shiftiness I think that Andrew Harris doesn't provide at this point of his career and I think that he's kind of the key to that Argo's offense I think going forward in what we've seen so far this season. Evan, do you have anything else to add on aj? I would just say that I kind of thought Andrew Harris would be the top rusher on this team. I understand that he's old, but I still feel like he would give a bit more juice, but so far they haven't even really needed him. I mean in this game he had what three carries for nine yards and he hasn't really done a lot this season Outside of that I think he's had maybe a touchdown or two, but AJ's the guy clearly and they don't have a problem with him and that he's been rolling so far. He's one of these players that's sort of on the come up and there's a couple guys that that we'll talk about later with some other teams or at least I want to talk about. But yeah, I agree. He's been great so far this season. A couple other notes or I had, I'm not the biggest Suter guy I know it's kind of hit or miss on here. He was really worshiping Chad Kelly and he's, he's not following the rules, he's breaking the rules, he's just doing whatever and then there was a weird scrum at the end where they had it really delayed the game by he get two, three minutes while they were, it was the police officer kind of ticketing everyone and he's like this, that's not tough. You need to be tough in the game. This isn't the way to be tough. Jason, am I the only one that's out on Glen? It was really when I turned on the game, I'm like, oh my god, we got Marshall Ferguson and Glen suer here. I'm like, this is really good. I don't know how I feel about this. Yeah, I thought they were very obnoxious, honestly, yesterday. I think that one of the big things with Glenn suer is he, and I'm all for talking about the Canadians in the league, but he goes out of his way to mention it every two minutes and I think that that kind of drives me crazy. Same with Marshall really, I think, I mean it's good to mention that as an aspect of the game, but I think just the frequency in which it was mentioned drives me crazy and I didn't really notice as much the Kelly thing. But yeah, definitely the Canadian thing is something I noticed quite often with some of these commentators, but I think that suitors is probably the worst defender of that. Well, and you had Jim Kelly there, right? So you had Chad's uncle there and I've said before on here in the alternate world where the U S F L pays up to get Chad Kelly to come play there. The football landscape I think looks very different right now. I mean clearly for the Canadian Football League as well, so they kept talking about Jim Kelly and the Buffalo Bills and it's, it's okay, you can both of the N F L and the cfl. It's okay, it's okay. I'm like Glen, you're the last person that is ever should be like it's okay to, he is such a pro Canadian and it's great Canadian pro cfl and you'd be like, what's okay, if you want to watch the N F L, that's okay as well. I just thought it's kind of one of those things where you're like, Hey I, I'm okay if you do that, that's fine if you keep saying it so much, it's almost like you're not okay with it. Yeah. Evan, I don't know if you have anything to add, but any thoughts on Glen or anything else? Not really. I mean I don't pick up on this commentator stuff as much as other people do. I will say there definitely is a push for the whole Canadian thing and I think that's great, but with all sort of commentators you can only bring up something to a certain extent. And this happened in the X F L when they talked about the N F L in the U S F L too. There was a lot of repetition, but ultimately, yeah, I mean if you're bringing up the same thing so many times it just gets boring and then you're just sitting there. All right man, let's calm down a bit. We got other things going on in this game. Maybe talk about Vernon six interceptions or something and how that affects the flow. I don't know. Yeah, Glen's also the one, like I said, it's okay to watch this, but I'm going to poo PPO on the X F L or any other American leagues and stuff on there. We'll get out, we'll move on to the next game. I just had comments here. Denzel checking in. Poor BC Lions yesterday. Uncle Denzel's a big fan of the cfl out here. Angie Murray the morning Happy Independence Day. Marcin. Hey, I enjoyed the game yesterday. James Henderson checking in. I was very surprised by the Lions. I guess their time at the top last of the week. I don't know about that. I guess we'll do that before we get out of here. Gary says, Evan agree with you. Can't ever come six. He deceptions you were really close. Fourth quarter was a testament to that. And then Andrew says, we're Jason Payton Peyton through six interceptions and just two dds but lost because there was a missed field goal. The win that my team never makes it easy. So I guess before we move on to the next game, we'll go Jason then Evan, cause for concern here with the Lions or was this just like a freak performance by Vernon? I just think that you're going to get these games from Vernon from time to time. I mean this, that's the natural course of his career. He is going to have some very good games and some very bad games and I think he was just due for one against a very good Toronto defense here. I picked the Argos to win on my channel, so I'm not overly concerned with the lions. They moved the ball very well in this game against a very good defense. So if they can just cut out the turnovers, I think they'll be okay. Evan, same question to you. Yeah, I mean again, you take away that turnover column. I think everything else was about the same. Receiving course still looked great, especially with Keon Hatcher coming back into the lineup. You had big plate of Justin McInnis, a lot of great takeaways. Matthew bets on defense had two secs, so they're still on the right trajectory. Again, as long as you, yeah, don't throw the ball to the other teams six times, you're going to be just fine. There's no problem there. All right, so moving on here we have the Winnipeg Montreal Ollywood scam. So like I said, so this is my birthday, I come back, I got this all recorded on my FUBU to watch weird weather delay. Jason, how long was this? Because I kind of ended up fast forwarding through the panel because it came on and they're talking and it didn't seem like they really acknowledged it at first. How long of a rain delay was this? So it was supposed to kick off at 7:00 PM Eastern time and didn't start until 8:40 PM Eastern time, I believe So yeah, an hour and 40 minute rain delay. Huge. So that ended up pushing it for it. It was interesting. So it was on the CCBs Sports Network. I had it recorded and then they ended up preempting it with the the Portland N W S L whatever soccer match. So I went on the CBS Sports Network, unless you have it recorded, there's no on demand on there, which is kind of frustrating for me because I know the CFL plus games don't have that right if you're watching 'em on your browser. But I would hope that the CBS Sports Network could put those on demand on that. I did have in my notes here, I'm sad that they really made Marshall work all weekend. I think he's the low man on the totem pole. I'm glad he had to wait through the rain delay there to kind of call the game. Are we fans of the red Owlette jerseys this season? I'll go Jason and Evan. Yeah, I love them actually because I think they stand out compared to the other jerseys that we see in the league. I think that yes, Calgary has red Jerseys, but I think they're different enough from them that they're a pretty good jersey in my opinion. Is it like a throwback or is it a homage? What is the story behind this Jason? Well I, I'm not too sure about the story behind it or anything like that, but I mean they've always had red as part of their color scheme but they never made that their primary color. So I think it was just a natural thing that teams do. They kind of switch around the primary color of their jersey so I think that's what they're going for here. Yeah, I knew Alter Jersey. Evan, any thoughts on the Jersey stuff that's probably outside your purview? I mean a bit but I still liked them and I honestly a lot of the jerseys and the cfl this season. I know BC sort of has the gray and the black. I love that with the orange, the ones they wore in Toronto last night, those are probably my favorite. And then Toronto's jerseys too. They're new ones. They unveiled. I love those. So you've got a nice kind of collection here in 2023. Yeah, it's such an easy thing to do to be a pop your fan base a little bit there anyway, so long rain delay we come in. It was interesting. Like I said, I'm watching the first half of this game. Montreal was keeping it close and they're going into the half. Okay, they're down 10 zero and then I finally flip on cause I knew they lost the game but I flip on and one field goal here at the end. Jason, what was the storyline of this game for you? Because it felt at least closest from what I was watching that the Montreal was at least playing decently in the first half. Well to me this was a throwback game for the Winnipeg Blue bombers when they first started be being this really good team. They started being this team that could win with physicality, the running game, their defense shutting teams down and that's exactly what they did in this one. Winnipeg's offense passing offense specifically could not get much going in this one besides maybe Dalton shown had a pretty good game in this one, but I think that they won this game with their defense. Willie Jefferson showed up, had a couple sacks in this one that was good to see from a guy that had a pretty down year in terms of production last year. So I think they won with the run game. Brady Alora ran the ball very well once again despite having that reported injury. So I think this was just a throwback win for the Winnipeg blue bombers and they didn't allow the aloe to get anything going. Evan thoughts on this one? Yeah, I would say great bounce back defensively for Winnipeg after they gave up 30 points to BC the previous week. I think they really needed that as a confidence boost. And then yeah, what else do I have here? Yeah, Jason touched on a lot of the points, especially with Brady Olivera. I think it was a slower day for Zach Ros in the passing game, but Vera stepped up and that's sort of good I think for long-term success and health if you can rely on the ground game more and kind of give Ros some time off or time the rest, I mean he still had two touchdown passes but I think they were throwing the ball a lot early in the season. I mean it was just left and center all over the field, but now that you have kind of Brady LoRa with an expanded role again even with whatever injury he had that was reported didn't seem like it bothered him with 120 yards. So that was good to see. And then on defense there's a guy Abu Dmi Suarez the cornerback, he was tied for the team lead in tackles with Aden Darby I believe and just wanted to point him out as someone who I'd like to see more of down the stretch. Very unique story from him. Played with the Potsdam royals and the German league and then eventually went over to rookie mini camp with the Cincinnati Bengals last year I think. So definitely someone that I think could have an expanded role with Winnipeg and this was kind of the first time to me that he really stood out, so just wanted to point that out as well. Yeah, the Oliveira thing is, I mean we obviously saw Andrew Harris there for years and Oliveira was always at number two really coming in here really on his own. Jason, how impressed are you with Brady here throughout, what is it, four weeks of the season? Yeah, I'm just incredibly impressed with him because I think going into the season he's a guy that I wasn't super high on his upside. I didn't think he was that great last year despite having a thousand rushing yards. I think just his usage was really high, but I think this year he's really established himself as one of the better running backs in the league can catch the ball to the back field is incredibly well-rounded player can run inside the tackles, outside the tackles. So I think he's just a great running back that they covered in that offense and is a key part of that team going forward. He did have, I had a note on mine, he had one fumble, which I thought was like, that's pretty rare. I don't see, I don't view him very much as a fumbling guy. Jason, do I have that note correct? Honestly, I actually missed the first part of this game so maybe I missed the fumble. It's weird. Yeah, it's weird because I it show it on this sat line here but anyway, yeah I have my note for that. Austin Mack had a really weird o p I call. I thought some of the calls in the first half were weird that way. I did have a funny thing too, just talking about Winnipeg defense, this Willie Jefferson coming in, it was a face mask and it turned his helmet sideways and he was completely blind and still just going at it. I thought he was good. Evan, we talked about kind of the bounce back Winnipeg defense, good to see anything a note on that? Not really. I mean I feel like it was just a very collaborative effort. I think Ricky Walker on the blue Bombers had a nice game with a sack and three tackles for loss. But other than that, just a very collective effort and holding a team to three points, no touchdowns, that's an accomplishment in any game. And I know that's sort of, and not necessarily a standard for Winnipeg, but I think there were a lot of questions after they lost to BC last week and this might have not answered all of them, but you have to keep in mind the weather delay I think affected performance for both teams. So it might not have been perfect, but I liked the law of what I saw from that. Yeah, I have my note. Yeah, Austin Mack had the weird opi call and then there was another call, they had a defensive on Montreal and then they came back and they had an offensive against very hard. I don't watched football now and I'm certainly no expert on this. I don't know how you're supposed to defend balls and I certainly don't know with, it was just a really long one with Austin Mack too. They were kind of took it out, it felt like they were kind of beating themselves and then drew Ky here on his first TD really getting almost shoved out of the stadium. I thought. Very dangerous there. Kind of getting shoved by the defender. Jason, do you have any other thoughts on the game itself? We can talk Montrel and Winnipeg, you're kind of like future looking, but anything else on this game? No, I just think it was a very workman-like performance from the bombers. They just went in, had to bounce back and they got the job done. Wasn't pretty. But I think, yeah, like you said, I think the rain delay kind of took a lot of steam out this game and I think as someone watching it kind of took a little bit of excitement out of the game as well. So yeah, definitely agree with you there. Evan, anything else? How do you feel here? I guess how do we feel about Montreal moving forward? Because I would like to have the East be at least somewhat competitive this year and I don't know if the Red Blacks are going to do that and Hamilton's still out. How do you feel about Montreal moving forward? Yes, so despite them only putting up three points in this game, I still am a firm believer in the whatever we're calling it, Saison de Cody Fido. Yes. And I do think the Lio ettes, they could be a dark horse Gray cup contender. I dare I say that too early. But I think again, just given where the east is at right now, I really think that they could slot in behind Toronto. And then just a couple players on the Ali Wes side that I want to talk about Kaon Julian Grant, I know as someone that we've talked about in the past, I spoke about his potential before but he's already living up to the hype here a month into the season and it's really good to see that. I think he was drafted in 2019, so he's someone I've had my eye on the whole year and to see what he did in this game makes me sort of, I guess, reassure my feelings about him. He's a phenomenal player with phenomenal upside. And the same goes for Austin Mack. I know we've talked about him too at several points on the show this season, but I really think he could be sort of the next great cfl receiver with multiple all-star appearances. You could be putting him in the top five maybe by next season. I don't want to speak too early, right. I understand we're a month into however long the season is, 18 or I guess 21 weeks, 18 games in the regular season and you know, can never speak too soon. But I mean so far he has the N F L pedigree. He has sort of the, I don't know, just big playability. He's got really everything you could ask for. I'm definitely going to study his game more, go back over some of the tape. But my kind of final thought here, at least from the offensive side in Montreal, which is what I really wanted to touch on today is K J, G and Mac. That's it looks like Montreal's just found the perfect replacement for Gino Lewis and Jake Winneke, which was a big question going into this season. So I think it's really good to sort of see that and especially in that Winnipeg game. Again, I know they didn't score, I know it was kind of a weird night with the weather delay, but a lot of positive takeaways there. Really. If you're Montreal still Hopefully the background noise issue, I'm muting myself on and off. My neighbors decided to mother-in-law at 9 33 on the holiday Tuesday, so you know, can't beat on that. Hey Jason, then we have a couple comments. We'll get to the last game and then we'll do the list here. But how are we feeling in Montreal moving forward? Cause I think Winnipeg it is what they thought they got whooped. I mean you can comment on that too. What do you make of these teams moving forward? What did we learn here? Well, I think to echo Evan's point, I think it's very, very good sign from Montreal that the receivers have stepped up, filled those roles that were vacant on paper to be going into this season. So I think that's huge for the ettes. One thing with Cody Chardo and why I'm a little bit hesitant to say I'm all in with him is he's still taking a lot of sacks. He holds the ball, holds the ball too long in my opinion. He had a really brutal red zone interception when they were trying to come back in the game and they had a chance to, and I think William stand back also had a big fumble as well. So a couple of turnovers really hurt the ettes down the stretch in this one, but I think overall it's still a strong start to this season for them, but I think we just need to see a few more weeks of data from them. We have a couple comments here. Scott's checking in late Argo's, our America cfl team. I don't even know if the Argos are Canada, the CFL team. I would start there. Jody, a big Argo's fan checking in Argos. It was fun to watch. Then we have a comment here, shocking how the cfl doesn't market Austin Mack to the big D Ohio State University fan base. We, we've had conversations for years on here, where do these leagues need to market more to the colleges that the people go to? I don't know how much that does if you're a CFL fan or if I'm an American Ohio State fan, like, oh, I'm going to go watch. I don't know. It's kind of the global draft to me like, oh, we got a kicker from Norway. If I live in Norway, I'm going to watch the cfl. Jason, do you have any thoughts on that? The marketing of the cfl, let's really tap into the American college system in terms of marketing. Well, I don't know how much it had moved the needle in terms of getting additional fans to watch the league, but it definitely can't hurt to put out more information specifically about the American players that are coming into the league because a lot of people just don't know that these guys played at major universities. So yeah, I definitely don't think it hurts, but I don't think I'm skeptical about how much big of an impact it could make. And then we have, I know this is breaking news, Elks T trade, Kevin Francis of the red black for 24 fourth round pick according to the three down nation. I don't know if that's that just got Ted on here. I don't know if that's breaking news. Talking the Elks on here. This game feels a little bit like a fever dream to me. Back last Friday on here we had Edmonton, the Battle of the Ottawa was the second longest not winning at home streak. On here. Evan Ottawa finally puts it away 26 to seven. We'll get into the Jared Aggies of it all, but what did you make Thoughts on the Red Blacks finally getting the home victory. Yeah, well that's kind of funny here is the Red Blacks get their first home victory in X many games over the team that still hasn't won at home and even more games. So that was a bit, it's happy and sad at the same time, right? I'm sure it's definitely happy if you're an Ottawa fan and you were at that game. But yeah, this game, to be honest, really don't have any takeaways from it, especially not many on the Edmonton side. We'll get into that later with Jart Dougie or I hope I'm saying this last name right, It's Douggie, right? I think Max tell us Douggie. Yeah, yeah, I better not screw that up. I think I've called him four different names at this point. But anyway, yeah, so for Ottawa, the one player I really want to talk about is Demore Tuggle of the running back. I think it was interesting, yeah, he had 17 carries for 126 yards, but the more interesting storyline I think is that he's another Ohio player sort of slowly breaking out in the cfl or someone that might have a high upside. And the other guy that went to Ohio was Nathan Rourke. So it was interesting to kind of see that. Definitely a great game for him, happy for him and his performance. I want to talk about Tyrie Adams again quickly. I thought he had a modest performance, maybe he could have had a couple more yards through the air. I think he had 185 passing yards, but in terms of completion, percentage and yards per attempt, those were spot on. I think they're definitely building something with him. Again, whether it's long term or not, we'll see, we still got to find out how well Miss Soley can play when he comes back. You have to keep that in mind as an Ottawa fan, but I think at this point Tyree Adams is a solid backup option and you're definitely going to take him over Nick Arbuckle because we saw how well that experiment went at the beginning of the season and that's no hate to Nick ar Boko by the way. It was just an unfortunate stretch of events there. But the last thing I really want to talk about for OT up, I think something that's going to get overlooked is they had two cornerbacks, Hakeem Bailey and Abdul Kana combining for six tackles for loss, which I think the defensive back position to have those kind of numbers is pretty impressive. Just sort of something that stood out in the stat sheet, not necessarily something that you would've picked up on during the game. But yeah, overall, I mean this was definitely a game that Ottawa needed. Again, I know it's against Edmonton. I know they're not the strongest team, but Ottawa really needed a win like this where they could just go out in front of a home crowd and just have a good time again because there hasn't been a lot of that for this team in what feels like a while. Yeah. Jason, do you take anything away out of a fly around me now? Do you take anything away from Ottawa winning this game because it was against the Elks? What do you make of this? I mean, you got to take some positives out of it. I mean, the thing is the last time they won a home game was also against Edmonton, so I think they've won two home games in the last four years and they've all been against, they've both been against the Elks, so take that for what you will. But I think Tyree Adams provided a good spark for the team. I think that he allows them to run a little bit more of versatile offense because of his legs. I think he can get outside and run some bootlegs and whatnot and that kind of puts additional pressure on the defense. So it kind of opened up their playbook from that perspective. And I think that also opened up the running game as well. So I think Tuggle played really well in this game for them, like Evan said. And then I think their defenses actually looked very good through three games this season against Montreal. Week one they looked good and then against Calgary they looked pretty good for the most part. So definitely some positive signs in Ottawa, but I think they'll need more from their offense going forward if they want to consider themselves true contenders. But like you said, Evan, it's up to when Olis back I And we still have no time. I know there was the big notes here coming off the buy, but as far as I know there's still no timetable on when he's coming back, right? Jason? Jason? No. Okay, Good. Okay, so anyway, so no timetable on that. I have some notes here. We had the big kind of dey he's coming out. Okay, what are we going to do here? 1933, according to Morley Scott on here, it looks like Cor Cornelius is back taking the ones for the Alex. I have tweeted here the definition of insanity. Evan, what do you make of this? We're going back to Cornelius again. Yeah, so Jared Dey definitely came down a bit back to earth I would say after he came in the other week and had a nice ending to that game and everyone started asking the question, Hey, maybe is Jarrett the guy going forward again? This was a game where he turned the ball over too much. If you can look past the turnovers, I think he did all right. It was definitely better than what Cornelius had offered in previous weeks, so I'm still surprised yes as well that they're going back to Taylor Cornelius, I think. Yeah, it didn't work out with Jared, but you know, could put in Trey Ford and I know Ky Loxley has gone now, but maybe you tried getting another guy or even, well, I mean Khalil Tate's more of a short yard adoption. I know they signed him, but it wouldn't even hurt for him to get in. I mean, at this point it's such an experiment and I mean we can talk about this for a while, but I just feel like there's so many things there where it's like, you know, can only plug so many things in to fill so many holes and it's like I just don't know how many holes there are. It just seems like there's a lot of trial and error and it seems like this team shouldn't be at a point where there's that much trial and error. And it's very frustrating because every week you want Edmonton to get better and it just doesn't seem like they're heading in the right direction. It almost seems like they're regressing and that's a problem, that's a problem that if it doesn't going to get fixed soon, might start costing people some jobs. And I love Chris Jones, I think he's a great man, but at this point, I mean if they can't, hell if they don't win a home game this year, I'm sorry, but that that's someone's got to go at that point mean right now. I think at the rate they're going at, you're looking at a possible four win season. And I think Andy had brought that up in our chat saying that that's almost a ceiling because you could really say three wins even. And I don't know, maybe that's being a bit harsh, but what else do you have to show for it? It's a real shame and I'd say right now they're in a worse spot than Ottawa. I know Ottawa just broke their home streak too, and they've had their own struggles and they're down some players, but I mean, man Edmonton every week, it's just like, I mean I can't imagine what it's like to be an Elks fan. I really can't. I had this tweet here I thought as well. This three down Monte, Chris Jones built this team. Chris Jones hired his assistants. Chris Jones shows to go all in on Cornelius. Chris Jones is a hundred percent responsible for the current state of this Alex football team. It's time to move on from Chris Jones. I remember too with Rod when they hired Chris, but it was before they brought in Victor Que and there was like this, well how do you hire the head coach at GM before the president? I think we're seeing maybe a little bit of that disruption here. Now, Jason, what do you make of this? Just the overall welfare check on the Elks. Oh, it's just such a circus in Edmonton. I mean now they're putting Cornelius back in. It just doesn't make sense. If you're going to make that switch, you got to let a guy that's making his first career cfl start at least have a couple of games to get it right. I mean, if you really believe in the guy and now you're showing that you don't really believe in the guy to get it right and you're going back to formerly, that won't work in Taylor Cornelius. So it just drives me insane. Like I said, what I would do is just put Trey forward in there, try to make some kind of option, run heavy offense at this point because just don't think this team can run the ball. I think the offensive line is also a huge problem and I think that it's just a complete circus in Edmonton. I really don't know what to make of it at this point. They just seem, like Evan said, they're regressing. Yeah, Gary here has the, I won't pull it up right now cause I'll cover all this. In my opinion, line is a starting point. Doesn't matter who the quarterback receivers or running back is if the line isn't working. This was interesting too. I had a tweet here from Chris. This Goel situation is truly fascinating. The whole business might need new ownership and governance model. It's possible the idea of community owned has actually destroyed it under the weight of traditions, storied history and volunteer board. I don't know, I think when I talked to Victor qui two years ago, I felt like it was a very different Victor queen than I talked to this year going into the season. Evan, anything else on Victor? The Elks? I think it was a situation where he came in, had a lot of excitement and ideas and I think there is a lot of things that you have to deal with there in terms of this whole lineage of everything and we can't disrupt too much and we got to keep people happy. Anything else on the Elks here? I mean there's really two sides to the situation. What we've discussed a lot on this show is on field performance. You're talking about Jarret, Dague, Taylor Cornelius, Gino Lewis, et cetera, et cetera. But the other side of it is kind of behind the scenes. It's what you don't see on the field, it's fans not being in the stands, you know, haven't won a home game and X many at this point. You're talking years, which is just staggering. I know there was the covid year and everything, but still you're talking about an ownership group that came in very excited and a coaching staff that came in very excited. Chris Jones, again, all the assistants, everyone that he put together, everyone came in really excited and that excitement has quickly disappeared and for good reasons because it's just so much, I want say misfortune, but I feel like a lot of it is just, it's poor construction. I feel like this whole, again, love Chris Jones, great man. I think he's from Tennessee, so a fellow Southerner, that's fantastic. I love Chris Jones. But yeah, as a coach you can only have so much loyalty towards a player. And I know we're shifting back here from the ownership to the on-field play and that's fine because I can only talk about the ownership so much because I only know so much about it. Right? As fans, you're only seeing a lot of the on-field product, so I'm going to go back to that for a minute and say, you know, can only have so much loyalty towards a guy like Taylor Cornelius before, you just have to realize if I don't pull the plug or switch something soon, this could not only cost my job, but everyone else around me, the whole domino effect could fall pretty quickly if you don't start making drastic changes. So it's kind of weird to see Edmonton, it's like you made the right step putting in a guy like Jar Diggie and I know he didn't have the best performance but then you immediately go back to Cornelius as if nothing happened. And I'm with Jason on this. I think at this point Trey Ford is like, it's just screaming Trey Ford. That just seems to be the top option in my opinion. Now that you've let go of Kai, it would appear that you have more trust in a guy like Trey Ford. And I really liked what I saw from him last year before he got injured. So I, I don't know mean there's so many questions here, but it just doesn't seem like, again, there's just not really any answer. It almost seems like you never want to speak too soon, you never want to speak too early. But I was saying in week one it's like you just have this ominous feeling that this season has almost gone the waste already. And you never want to say that in such a long season, but at this point you're kind of just playing to get things done and to move on to the next thing, which in week four is, Ooh, that's brutal. That's all I'll say about it. Jason and I was flashing some tweets on here. I have years up here every week. I think the Youngs have hit rock all and they still might still might not be there. Also at Christina Costal, kind of with the gross Brittany phase. Any other thoughts on those comments and then we can look forward? So one thing I wanted to say and what drives me nuts about this is that they had the confidence to start Tray Ford last year as a true rookie over Taylor Cornelius. And Carol Cornelius, I believe was the fourth string quarterback to begin last season, but they won't start him now. I just don't get that. So just confusing all around from the Elks and how they've managed their quarterback situation. I think that Chris Jones, I think it's just a situation of him wearing too many hats there. He's the gm, he's the head coach and the defensive coordinator and that also makes it more difficult. The one tweet was saying to get rid of him during the middle of the season here. So let's move forward here and then we can kind of hit this three down thing before we get out. I think we'll go good timewise here and then I got to go. I got a 4th of July wedding here today. Looking forward here, who is it? Okay, so Montreal's on the playing BC here, Edmonton Thursday night going into Saskatchewan. We have Calgary at Winnipeg, Ottawa going into Hamilton and then Montreal at BC Evan game here. You're looking forward to thoughts here as we kind of recap this. I would definitely say BC Montreal seems like a kind of bounce back game for both teams given that they both lost and given the potential on both sides there. I definitely think that'll be a good way to wrap up the week. And then a game that I would say has some potential is Calgary, Winnipeg. Calgary is still a team I believe in. I would not put them over teams a Saskatchewan or again in Montreal even though they're in another division. But I feel like Calgary maybe they come off to buy. Maybe Jake Mayer does some things better and maybe they give Winnipeg a run for their money because again, Winnipeg, we're not counting Winnipeg out yet. Obviously they have been essentially a dynasty here in the past couple of years going back to 2019. But at this point Calgary could give them a run for their money. I mean they've been playing slower football again. I know they played in a game that had a weather delay and that might have caused some issues and the week before they kind of just crumbled. But it would be nice to see a close Winnipeg Calgary game, especially in Winnipeg too. I think that'll be a good one. Jason, are you worried about now a red hot Ottawa red black team coming in the Hamilton? Well, I'll be picking the Red Blacks to win this game for sure. Oh no. Yeah, I just don't have any confidence in the Tigercat at this point. But I mean maybe they got it together over the bi week. They figure out magically how to score touchdowns. But at the end of the day just I'm looking forward to that game. I'm going to be at that game, but I just don't have that much confidence. I don't have that much excitement for that game. Although I, what I will say, what would provide some more juice to that matchup is if Jeremiah Maoli suddenly made his season debut at Hamilton has returned to Hamilton, but it doesn't look like at this point based on reports I've seen that he's super close to returning. Yeah, it's hard. It's getting to the point in the season here where it starts becoming a little more lopsided, right? I mean the first couple weeks, okay, what's going on? And I understand the c l season's a marathon, not a sprint, but we are kind of discovering kind of who these teams are at this point. I would like to see BC really kick the snot out of the Montreal Al Wetz here just to bounce back and kind of show what they're at. But obviously love Cody and kind of everyone over there. Yeah, Winnipeg, I think that would be a good one. Kind of Friday night this Edmonton, I just don't know if they can get right here going into Saskatchewan. I think that's going to be tough for them. Any other thoughts you guys have? We can kind of hit this list real quick in the last five minutes before we get out and the eight ways cfl fans leadership is failing that. Anything else from either of you guys before we do that? I was just going to say that Jake Mayer usually plays really well against Winnipeg based on his early career here. So I think that that could be a pretty fun game on Friday night. So we have this here, this is from Matthew Ross and I, like I said Jim Mullen had kind of shared this earlier in the week I had this book Mark cause I'm like, well we've got three games kind of get into this. And so he had posted on cfl on Twitter and on Reddit here, things where cfl fans feel like leadership is failing them and I want to see if we don't need to do a deep dive on all of these, but talking like grassroots, developing the grassroots, working with Football Canada where football Canada has an agreement with the N F L now and kind of trying to figure that out and Rash Madani just got signed onto to the board of Football Canada technology. We're doing the stats and kind of all that stuff. Evan, where would you say that you feel like cfl leadership is failing its fans right now? If they had to ask you? That's a great question and this is really a great discussion to have here. At the end of the show I lean towards promotion and not necessarily, I mean promotion of the product, but really it originates with diversifying the product. And I've talked about that with certain people where the cfl has unfortunately fallen behind in areas where I guess fan engagement, a lot of it seems almost recycled. And what I mean by that is the X F L and the U S F L, again, those are completely different products. So I'm not really trying to draw a comparison here, but those are also football leagues operating in the United States and the X F L, I don't know, it seemed like they made an effort, same with the U S F L to sort of bring in new concepts and kind of make it their own unique product. There was always something again unique about it and the cfl is definitely unique. That's not really the point I'm getting at here. The cfl in terms of their teams and location and really the history is what makes it so different. But I just feel like every year it's just less and less the number of in-person fans is dropping off, the viewership is dropping off. I feel like the league I kind of ending their relationship with ESPN to stream the games through ESPN plus. I feel like that ultimately I feel like that wasn't a great idea because now your TV option is CBS Sports Network, which just isn't as accessible because they used to have a lot of games on like ESPN too, which a lot of people had. Now you're streaming through CFL plus. I do like the CFL plus if you want to talk about promotion in positive areas. I think them sort of expanding CFL to a broadcasting stage at least for the games that aren't being aired on. I think that's a good step in the right direction to grow international viewership. But ultimately a lot of the product just seems so old and used. It's like every year I feel, I want to say it's the same thing. I mean they bring in different players and this and that, but ultimately it's like they just really need a brand refresh. I think that's what they really need. And I don't know where that starts. Again, this isn't necessarily my expertise. I only know so much about the ins and outs of, I mean I know a decent amount about how football leagues work, but there's a lot about this that runs deeper than that. So ultimately I think you're just looking at I just finding more ways for fans to be interested. Again, whether that means bringing in different names or I think a lot of people at this point, and I've discussed this too, is just expanding the Canadian talent make it more, there's sort of this hodgepodge right now where you have some good Canadian players but then a lot of the guys that get talked about are Americans and some people don't like that and there's a lot of the Canadians who can't deal with that. So I think maybe you're looking at bringing in more Canadians and taking pride in the Canadian football development. I mean you brought up football Canada earlier, Rita, I mean, you know, want to bring in maybe homegrown prospects. It was a big deal, big deal. Excuse me, last year when Trey Ford was drafted a Canadian quarterback that had starting potential. I know we just talked about the Elks before, but I feel like the league, if they capitalize on that homegrown talent that could draw in more viewers from their own country who are already tied into, again, the universities eSports programs in Canada, things of that nature. And I know I'll end this with saying that's a controversial topic and I understand that bringing Americans to that league definitely diversifies the talent pool just because of their background. I mean look at a guy like Austin Mack who played at Ohio State, you know, don't really have that in Canada. So again, it's a controversial topic. I would still like to see Americans in the league, so maybe what I'm getting at here ultimately is you change the import rules again. But I don't know, that's already talked a lot so I'll just leave it at that. That's good. Jason, before we get, yeah, what do you want to see here? As someone you follow the league, you know, cover the league every week, what would you like to see them? How are they feeling the cfl fans? Well, to borrow a line from my good friend on social media, Todd, this league has to act like a professional league. Just do the simple things and that would really change the perception I think of the league. I think that something as simple as having your statistics correct, having live updated statistics, I think that's important. Having just good infrastructure around the league, I think that's important. The tech thing I think is absolutely huge in terms of being able to reach new fans and have data accessible to fans. I think that is super important. But I think the league just needs to do the simple things better because I think there's certain areas that they just don't do well and I think that has really plagued their reputation and I think going forward a lot of issues we can talk about and they get in to a lot of these in this article. But I think a lot of it comes down to, I think transparency is a big thing as well because the league is kind of a sixth month a year league or however many months long the season is because in the off season it's pretty dead around the cfl and not many people talking about it. The league needs to find a way to keep themselves more relevant during that time. Maybe it's holding more of a more press conferences or something like that or just being more open about what their plans are. But I think at the end of the day there's just a lot of problems plaguing the cfl and I think that just being transparent and acting more like a professional league is a big thing. I don't think I was very clear there, but acting more like a professional league is very important. I think It's interesting and we obviously deal with this a lot with the X F L and the US F L and I think all these other leagues and to lump the CFL in there, which I know that they don't like. And I was talking with Jim Moen last night about this and I said, I understand the CFL is not an alternative league in their mind and nor should it, but just in terms of the greater landscape it is, right? I understand it's it's the primary football and everything in Canada. I understand all that. I deal with this with the X F L and the s l. Like I said, everyone looks at the f l and it's like, well we need to act like that, we need to be, and you get maybe a little bit more standoffish sometimes. And we had the whole thing this year with the U S F L and we're real football for real fans and we really know what we're doing. And then they come out before the championship game and it's like we're baffled why our ratings are down this year. And you're like, well, because you kind of acted standoffish and an a-hole all year in terms of this is our league and this is what we're going to do. And it's the same with the cfl I think embrace more of the grassroots, embrace more of the content creators, Jason and the CF perspective guys and the three down the N F NFL doesn't need to play ball with anyone because they're bigger than anything in the entire history of the earth. Where anything else besides that, I wish that they would lean more in. And I've said that the same with the X F L, I think the X F L needs to be more cfl than N F L in terms of let's get fans out to the communities, let's get people working, let's do fan events, let's do local trade shows, let's kind of do all this stuff. Like I said at the top where Rod was kind of lamenting that they don't do that anymore and I don't know if it's lack of funds or lack of caring or lack of resources or lack of time. But yeah, it's hard. And I talk with some of the C CFL teams and we only want players to come on during the week and certain teams, well we only want people to come on during whatever and we can't do it during training camp, but then during the season it's too busy. It's like, you know, can't hide this in the bushel basket, you know, kind of got to get this stuff out here. So that's kind of my 2 cents. Evan, anything else from you? We'll go to Jason, we'll get out of here. Like I said, I got to go. We got a wonderful 4th of July wedding here today is so anything else from you Evan? Yeah, sometimes I wonder how different the landscape would be right now if the CFL and the XFL kept their partnership in place. I know there were some talks about potentially having a X Ffl team maybe in Toronto, whether that's related to the Argonauts, I don't know that might really piss off the pro Canadians so I won't go into that too much at the risk of being bullied or something like that. But no, I mean look, it's a very complex issue. The bottom line here, there are many issues plaguing league. It's not just one glaring problem that we're all dealing with or looking at and I do think the league has time to turn it around. I think the one great part about this product is if you can get fans engaged and can get fans to follow along, it's a 21 week season and I keep saying that every show I'm like, ah, 21 weeks, 21 weeks. But that's a long time. I mean you're going from June to November, the Great Cups of November, that's a long time for football. I mean you're looking at those are N F L numbers. So yeah, I mean if you can get fans to commit to a team and it's really something to follow along, that's what the cfl has the advantage over leagues like the X F L and the U S F L where it's only a 10 game regular season, there's a lot more time to be a fan or engage with a product and really follow along and there's so many more things that could happen. It makes it more interesting on that front and that's a part too that I think the league could really capitalize on. So that's my 2 cents as well. On top of the whole, I don't know what I was talking about before even I guess it was sort of the import sizes, things like that, developing more Canadian talent. I think all those things would definitely be a step in the right direction. Final note from you, we'll go to Jason. I just saw this here, courtesy Farhan lo. It looks like Moli is starting practice today, so that is exciting here. Good news for the Red Blacks. Good news potentially for your matchup. There was at the Friday matchup, right? Ottawa coming in there but any other thoughts? Any other thoughts from you Jason before we get out of here? Yeah, the last thing I'll say about the whole, and this is more of an overarching problem with the league is that I think there's a lack of lockstep with all the nine teams. I think that not much comes from the cfl Fred front office itself. I think a lot of it is just due to a lot of the things in terms of engagement promotion is up to the teams themselves and I think that's a big problem. There's less of that league led initiative. I think that's a big problem. I think there needs to be more centralization in the league in terms of the leadership. Yeah, it it's tricky and that was when we had come into all the X Ffl talks and kind of learning how all of this works and ambros is more of at the whim of them and trying to balance all that stuff. It's interesting because we talk in the X F L, I'm like, or the U S F L, Hey we want to sell off all these franchises and do whatever. I'm like you got that, it's hard then and then you got to deal with it is easier when you kind of have central ownership there of managing all of this and when the X F L I'm like if they can't get social where it's one office doing it all spread out, good luck. Then when you have eight or nine or whatever different kind of individual franchises we will get out of here. I appreciate it. Check out Jason does the kind of previews going into the weekend and the instant reactions and all of that stuff. Hope you have fun at the game this week, Evan. I appreciate it. I don't know if we mention it on the show but Evan we'll be joining us at the Gray Cup as well and Jason's going to be there in Hamilton and I'll be there so should be fun. We'll figure that out and subscribe and we'll see you next time. Thanks.