Over the course of a year and bit there have been obvious warning signs not all is right in Tiger Town. Tommy Connell leaves for family reasons and Orlando is off to Fresno State. Zac has not recovered mentally from a knee injury. Olsen retires before training camp. Fantuz and Tolliver ares out indefinitely with knee injuries. Page, Murray and Sears sign with the Arblows and appear to be doing well after three games. The Tiger Cats have attracted only one free agent signing Kannah and he has not seen any playing action yet. Austin overpaid for Laurent and Collaros and there is little wiggle room to sign any high impact the players to the team. I had a conversation with a free agent player before training going camp and he said he can't come to Hamilton because and quote"Ted took all the money." The player is canadian and plays defensive tackle. I will not reveal his name. Who wants to sign in the Hammer......no body.
So where does that leave the Tiger Cats? in my opinion, somewhere between walk and don't walk. Austin has lost the room and Collards has no confidence in the play calling or any support in the OLine. Austin is an ego freak and eventually pushes people away because he us a control freak. Austin is also pig headed enough to ignore the running game. Teams must enjoy playing the Tiger Cats because there is little preparation required. Just show up and blitz a really poor OLine. I believe Austin's days are numbered. And if they are not.....there is something wrong in front office that would allow Austin full control of the team considering he is a poor Evaluator of talent. That's my Monday morning rant ......................
However, the most obvious warning sign is how this team shows up game after game ill prepared. The results speak for themselves. We can debate all we want over what is the actual problem....unfortunately, no one who frequents this forum actually KNOWS exactly what the issue is.
Read carefully..... there are NO inundo or rumor, all has transpired right in front of your eyes. Rearrange the deck chairs because this garbage barge is sinking fast.
Lol. I did read carefully. All you did was make assumptions as to why the team sucks. I don't buy that any player told you anything, & the rest is just basically your guesses as to what's happening.
Now, if you read MY post carefully, there's no question the Ticats suck. My point is, no one on this forum knows the real reason why.
Thanks for the response. As far as warning signs regarding Page Murray and Sears, is this an example of poor player evaluation and playing them in the wrong position? Kind of funny how x Ticat Cat players seem to flourish elsewhere. In any event, there is serious trouble and I don't think the current brain trust has the know all to fix the obvious problems.
Sounds like the confusion is that he's mixing up Page with Cassius Vaughan who last time I looked was indeed on the Argos roster . I have no idea where Page would be at , but wherever he might be it's definitely not playing in the CFL for any team that I'm aware of at this moment . Speaking though of knee injuries , it is kinda ironic that it was Vaughan's low torpedo like hit on Toliver's knee that caused him to be shelved on the 6 gm for possibly the rest of the season .
In my books the knee injury incurred by Toliver was more akin to an omen or a curse rather than a "warning sign" of things to come when talking about this team so far this season .
Hindsight is 20-20.
But if u ask me, why they are sucking this season, I will say these points:
not taking seriously the injuries from last season. Still waiting for Washington, Butler, and we knew last season already about Fantuz.
Add Toliver to the mix as well now.
You cannot easily replace these players, and I don't think MGMT did.
Collaros. His knee injury is more serious than they let on. He is not running ( because he can't, or won't ), and he is like a sitting duck, waiting to get sacked.
losing some key players to Free Agency, and not filling them in very well.
Their drafting sucks. Besides Revenberg, I don't see any new players taking over; Canadian, or INT.
Their Offensive Line is getting hammered. Whether it is because of injuries, or because their Offensive Line Coach left ( don't know his name ). It cannot be 'Business As Usual'
given these conditions.
I don't think they have addressed the running game ( what running game?). Even with Scheurman in, how many touches did he get?
A rookie Offensive Coordinator. He may be a good one, but he is being fed to the lions - too many issues to deal with, to be successful right now.
Other Teams have gotten better since last year. Winnipeg is better; Toronto is better; Montreal getting better. And we just lost to the worst Team in Sask. last week.
I am not holding my breath....
.
When you put all of this together - you get a 0-2 team ( 0-4 if you add pre-season ).
.
Just my 2 cents...
The Eagle :cowboy: :cowboy: :cowboy:
They aren't "flourishing" any more in Toronto than they did in Hamilton...and I think you mean Clayshon (spelling???) Vaughn, not Page...
Murray and Sears were very good players - Murray was an EC all-star in 2014 - that ate up a lot of salary cap and rarely saw the field...
(by the way, Vaughan was beaten like a rented mule last game...)
Murray played in 20 out of 36 games in the past two years; Sears played in 8 out of 36 games in the two years he was here, and only played more than ten games once in a seven-year career; neither played in last year's playoff game (though it was rumoured that Murray could have but held himself out), and Sears did not play in the two playoff games in 2015...
If these guys could be counted on, I'd be all for signing them, but they are breaking down...and btw, both played in the first 3 games of the last two seasons before being hurt and unavailable, so you tell me what's gonna happen, sooner rather than later...
And if they stay healthy all season, it's one more piece of evidence that the football gods hate us!
Hindsight is 20-20.
But if u ask me, why they are sucking this season, I will say these points:
- not taking seriously the injuries from last season. Still waiting for Washington, Butler, and we knew last season already about Fantuz.
Add Toliver to the mix as well now.
You cannot easily replace these players, and I don't think MGMT did.
- Collaros. His knee injury is more serious than they let on. He is not running ( because he can't, or won't ), and he is like a sitting duck, waiting to get sacked.
- losing some key players to Free Agency, and not filling them in very well.
- Their drafting sucks. Besides Revenberg, I don't see any new players taking over; Canadian, or INT.
- Their Offensive Line is getting hammered. Whether it is because of injuries, or because their Offensive Line Coach left ( don't know his name ). It cannot be 'Business As Usual'
given these conditions.
- I don't think they have addressed the running game ( what running game?). Even with Scheurman in, how many touches did he get?
- A rookie Offensive Coordinator. He may be a good one, but he is being fed to the lions - too many issues to deal with, to be successful right now.
- Other Teams have gotten better since last year. Winnipeg is better; Toronto is better; Montreal getting better. And we just lost to the worst Team in Sask. last week.
I am not holding my breath....
.
When you put all of this together - you get a 0-2 team ( 0-4 if you add pre-season ).
.
Just my 2 cents...
The Eagle :cowboy: :cowboy: :cowboy:
Well, Eagle...firstly, Washington played against Toronto & got lit up (as did the whole secondary) for 500 yards. I agree that Butler is a huge loss, along with E. Davis & Kanneh.
As for Collaros, I don't think his knee injury is more serious than they thought. He would not be medically cleared to play if there was an issue, plus it has been over 1.5 years since it happened. I'm more inclined to believe that he doesn't believe in the offence he's being asked to run, so he's trying to force things.
Re: drafting, I think they've done ok. Revenberg emerged last season & Mike Jones was probably our best offensive player against Toronto. I agree that they maybe should have taken an O lineman rather than McGough this year though.
The O line: this is a coaching deficiency. I remember reading a quote last year when Zach was getting hammered saying that an anonymous coach told Paul Friesen (I think?) that they don't understand the Ticats' protection schemes, ie they don't make sense. I doubt any of us would argue with that. I'm a believer that if your O line is broken, you don't stand a chance to win games. This goes hand in hand with your point about the running game. Austin seems to stubbornly cling to a refusal to commit to a ground game. I thought Alex Green showed well in pre-season & that with him, we could have had a ground game for the first time in awhile. But if you can't run block, & your pass pro sucks, what's left? It all starts with the O line. This has to be priority 1.
As for Ptaszek, I think he's a great coach. But he gets 1 game to call plays & then has playcalling taken away? Austin has had far more than 1 game to fix these issues, but here we are, week after week dating back to 2015, trying to understand why this team never shows improvement. Bottom line is, Austin has complete control, it all falls at his feet.
I just wish that we'd get some actual answers instead of the canned responses from Austin that have gotten really old. I know we won't get answers, but I would love to be a fly on the dressing room wall.
I think we are reeling from the end of last year's regular season and the Eastern Final loss to Edmonton if I can speak for myself at least anyway. We beat Ottawa in OT in Ottawa in week 18 of the season and then Zach came back and hasn't looked the same (my opinion again) and lost now 5 straight since his return. That win was a big high for everyone then flat after that.
I am more inclined to give Austin some leeway here, mainly because he's had a lot of staff turnover. Loosing your OC, DC and Line Coach is going to cause coaching issues, even for the best head coach. That said, a loss this week means someone needs to get canned. You can't have an offense being that anemic and a defense that's letting teams score over 30 points a game. For our woes though, I'm more inclined to blame Tillman and our scouting department.
We've had injuries for the last few seasons, that screams a need for depth which we don't have. We are starting a secondary entirely of rookies and one sophomore. Yeah, two guys are hurt on injury, but that's still leaving way too much youth there. Then our O.Line, I don't understanding the logic in starting a rookie import lineman. The whole point of having an import lineman that it's a guy whose experience is needed, since the second a non-import rookie comes along, he's already better for the team then a rookie import. Our receiving corps have been decimated and is also predominately rookies apart from Luke Tasker and Junior Collins (who doesn't have a long resume either). Knowing that Fantuz was going to be out till labour day, that still would have left us only with Tolliver and Tasker as the only two marquee guys.
We've been suffering a slow bleed of players since our Grey Cup run, and haven't found enough talent to replace those gaps.
Wish people would shut up about Collaros' knee. The only place Collaros' knee is an issue is in your heads. He is showing no ill effects of his injury physically. However, whenever he makes a mistake or isn't playing up to his par, everyone jumps in and says it's his knee.
NEWSFLASH. PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES GET KNEE INJURIES. THEY ALSO GET AMAZING MEDICAL CARE AND PHYSIOTHERAPY. HIS KNEE IS FINE!!!! Please find some other stupid reason in your head as to why the team is no good.
A.J. Jefferson?Verified account @AJJefferson 1h1 hour ago The Redblacks have released me. #RNation is was fun while it lasted. Word from the GM is he wants younger guys. I'm 29.
