For the fourth time in 2012, Hamilton Tiger-Cats quarterback Henry Burris has been named the Canadian Football League’s Offensive Player of the Week.
Last Thursday in Toronto, Burris completed 37 of 55 pass attempts for 497 passing yards and four touchdowns. He also added 19 rushing yards.
His 37 completions tied the Ticats single-game record, his 55 pass attempts were the third-highest total in team history and his 497 passing yards were seventh best.
This season, Burris set Ticats records for passing yards (5,367), touchdowns (43) and completions (391) while leading the CFL with a 104.4 efficiency rating.
Unbelievable the Ticats didn't make the playoffs, Imagine if the defence was half decent !!
Congrats Henry !
Calling FenderGuy69. Here's a fresh new thread for you to dispute in. Here we go again. Burris just didn't do enough in this game because we still lost right. Damn him for not putting up 600 yards and scoring 50 points. :roll:
No… damn him for throwing the pick six to Younger! I think that’s the point FenderGuy has been trying to make. If Burris doesn’t give up the pick, the Ti-Cats probably win and the 497 yards and four touchdowns would actually mean something.
At the risk of sounding extremely catty & making it seem like I’m piling on Henry … Congrats for being the only first string QB that played in a meaningful game. I would think you should win when all others split time, saw limited action or didn’t play at all and were more concerned about ataying healthy winning. If you want to get pissy with that subjective comment … Fair game …
You called??? More than welcome to chime in!!! It’s so nice to be requested!!!
2 interceptions & 1 fumble against backups in a must win situation against a Toronto team who has virtually nothing to play for. Definitely POTW. Seems more like the prettiest girl at the plastic surgery malpractice convention to me?!?!
Because he wasn’t the most outstanding player on the Ti-Cats this year; Chris Williams was. MOP isn’t just about stats; if they were, Jamel Richardson would have won it last year. It’s about the entire package. I don’t think there was a more outstanding player on the team this year than Chris Williams. Very much deserved, and that is not a slight at Burris.
I don’t see why that was unreasonable. Last year, with what was believed by many (including those in charge of the team) to be an inferior head coach and inferior quarterback, the team got to the East Final. It seems entirely reasonable to think that a better coach and better QB would take the team beyond that. I mean, Obie said himself when Bellefeuille was fired that the move was made to make the team “more better.” I didn’t know that “more better” meant two fewer wins and no playoff appearance. I guess my definition of “more” and “better” are different than Mr. O’Billovich’s.
Not a big fan of Burris, but good to see he got this award. It's a good thing he had some decent receivers on the other end otherwise he would be just average. He also threw some great passes to the opposition as well, too bad there wasn't some award for that.
The sarcasm I’m throwing around here is because some feel as if Burris should carry the whole weight of the team on his shoulders. Now even the bad defense is his fault. Apparently he tired out our own defense by not sustaining our offensive drives long enough. That’s why the time of possession always favored the other team. Yeah right.
You might be onto something with Glenn though. He is a career .500 QB but he seems to be thriving in Calgary because he’s surrounded by quality personnel. But there’s no way Glenn would have gotten a different result here under these conditions.
I don’t think anyone is blaming Burris for anything other than what he can be blamed for. He turned the ball over more times than any other QB in the league and those turnovers had a detrimental effect on the team as a whole. He tossed four pick sixes and that, in my opinion, is unacceptable. Burris had a very good season, and played well for the most part, but I don’t think it can be said that he was the team’s best player nor can it be said that he didn’t play a role in the team finishing 6-12.
But if Glenn is here, the team has an extra 100K or so to spend on another player. Perhaps a quality d-lineman or DB comes to Hamilton instead of going elsewhere. Same with signing Fantuz. That’s 190K that could have been allocated elsewhere. It’s not either player’s fault that the team agreed to these salaries, but it does make me wonder what the team, with an extra 300K spent on essentially unnecessary player upgrades, could have spent that money on.
Having said all that, I actually do not think the talent on the team is the problem. I do believe, on both sides of the ball, that the team has good enough players to compete. This is why I want to see minor tweaks and not a full-scale overhaul.
You want top play the “what if” game… What if the defense had of stopped 1 more drive than they did?
It’s THAT simple… stop 1 more drive and the Cats are in the playoffs!
What if Burris doesn’t fumble on the one-yard line against Winnipeg in August?
What if Fantuz doesn’t fumble on the 10-yard line against Toronto last Thursday?
This wasn’t about what ifs, so I don’t know why you took it that way. It was said that Glenn would have led this team to a worse record than Burris did. But if Glenn was retained (and Fantuz not signed), then the Cats would have had more money to spend elsewhere. You just can’t assume that if team would have kept Glenn that the rest of the team would have been the same. Even say the Fantuz signing happens, there is still around $100,000 for the Cats to spend on at least one other player. The switch from Glenn to Burris meant the team had less money to lure other players to Hamilton with. Other players that may have helped the defense.
I’m not trying to single either of those players out, but the Ti-Cats did not need an upgrade at receiver or quarterback. Glenn was a perfectly capable QB that led the team to three straight playoff appearances and the receivers were decent enough that I’m sure they would have produced at a similar level without Burris throwing them the ball or Fantuz on the field. That’s not to say either player didn’t contribute, but if they aren’t here, the team could have used the money they spent on them to address more pressing needs.
Had the Ti-Cats not dumped their quarterback for a more expensive one and not signed another receiver when they already had a pretty good group, perhaps that $300,000 could have been partially used to lure, say, Byron Parker to Hamilton. The fact is, with the Burris and Fantuz additions we know they couldn’t; without them, a lot more things are possible.
My only point in the part you call a “what if” was to point out that if Glenn is still here, you can’t say the team would have been the exact same. It’s not placing blame on anyone for anything, just saying that the team would not have been the exact same with Glenn behind centre. Not saying the team would have been better or worse, just saying it would have been different. We don’t know what Glenn would have been able to do here, but to say that the team would have been worse/the same for no real reason other than, well I don’t know what, is passing off opinion as fact.
Ahhh yes… stats without context. Perhaps the number of turnovers are the result of asking (arguably) the best player on the team to do more than any other one player to win games. It may be that, because of playing from behind most of the time and the state of the D, Burris knew that he was going to have to take risks and force plays to win games that, with an average D, he wouldn’t have to take.
Also, as having read your posts I’m sure you know, the turnover stats don’t account for a relatively young receiving corps who’s members may not have been in the proper position as often as they should have or who were not sufficiently experienced to know how to read the coverage as well as they should have. Pair that with a QB who wants to win and is willing to force the play and some disasters will occur.
Without even touching on the other issues with the team this year (o-line, issues with the running game) the guy threw the lights out of the place almost all season and his overall stats are off the charts. Yet you want to point to one stat, take it out of context and use it as evidence of the guy’s incompetence or to lay blame at his feet? Not what I would expect from a poster who is regularly a sane voice in this forum of ridiculousness.
And this is the problem I have with those that vociferously defend Burris. I am not calling Burris incompetent, nor am I blaming solely him for the team’s disappointing season. There were PLENTY of factors that went into the Cats finishing 6-12, but Burris is not entirely free from criticism because he threw for a lot of yards and touchdowns. But he isn’t a big reason or even a main reason, but his play in certain instances did result in losses for the Ti-Cats. That’s not saying he should be the guy who shoulders all of the blame or even a majority of the blame, but he did have his hand in this dismal 6-12 season. To say otherwise gives him a pass that he just doesn’t deserve. He made mistakes and a few of them were very costly; does that mean he should be shipped out? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to point out the mistakes he did make that cost this team some games.
Every player on the team could have played better, including Burris. Chris Williams fumbled the ball more often than I would have liked and dropped too many passes; the other receivers dropped passes or fumbled that ball at very inopportune moments (Fantuz last Thursday, Bakari Grant against Calgary, for example); the offensive line let players through on both run plays and pass plays, and was pretty much a liability all season; Avon Cobourne dropped passes, Chevon Walker disappeared after his injury and the running game, for the most part, wasn’t very good this year. On defense, they couldn’t stop the run, couldn’t stop the pass and couldn’t get stops that would have changed the momentum in games. The team as a whole went into a funk in the third quarter for much of the season and gave away leads in the fourth quarter far too often. And Henry Burris turned the ball over way too much.
And then we have the myriad coaching issues that came up this year, with bad decisions on play calls (shotgun on 3rd and 1) and lineups (Knowlton not starting in Week 1, Cobourne a healthy scratch for most of the first half of the season, Stala not used anywhere near as much as he should have been).
Then we kick it even further upstairs and talk about the football operations department with their questionable player acquisitions and neglecting of areas of need.
This is all to say that everyone associated with the Tiger-Cats had their hand in this disappointing, playoff-less season. You can place the majority of blame on whomever you like, but everyone earned a piece of this failure. And that includes Henry Burris.
Pretty good summary of the problems this season. All facets of the game saw problems, some more than others. As for where the most problems were, I think your statement, “On defense, they couldn’t stop the run, couldn’t stop the pass and couldn’t get stops that would have changed the momentum in games” says it all.
The next question is what needs to be fixed most urgently. I’m thinking the first priority is to keep players healthy - new training methods or staff perhaps? After that, I’m thinking start with some competition on the lines, one or two DBs, and maybe a new MLB, although I’m not convinced that Williams is as bad as some others seem to think. Porter is probably gone, but I’m thinking Lefevour could be better, and soon able to take over, and Stewart could be back as third string, so maybe no concerns there?
Oh, and let’s actually use the best players on the roster. Ok?
Thank you. Finally somebody who “gets it”. There are 11 other guys on the field and if even one of them screws up their role, the results could end up disastrous for the QB. Things that a casual fan might not notice because when the ball is snapped most people focus solely on Burris and where the ball eventually ends up. There’s a hell of a lot of other activity going on around him. With having to read the opposing defense, 5 receivers running routes and a collapsing pocket he’s only got a couple of seconds to make a decision. Sure the odd pass will end up picked in double coverage. The guys not Superman. But nobody ever mentions the 15 times a game that he gets away from a fierce blitz and makes a great play. Peoples expectations of the QB can be unreasonably high. Perceived poor performance for a QB can usually be attributed to some other breakdown on the field.