Richie Hall

One of my favorite players when he played. I think his time has come to retire. I don't see any man to man coverage, I don't see any bump on the line, I don't see much for adjustments during the game, mediocre D.

Agreed. Methinks all coaches need to go, Miller needs to go back to the head office job he is supposed to be doing and find a replacement for Taman.

Richie Hall's defence held the opponent to 17 points. You should win your fair share of games if you do that.

Defence wasn't the problem.

As for that dreadfully anemic offence that can't score a touchdown. . . are all those fans who were calling for Doug Berry's head earlier this season happy now ?

no worries, none of the coaches you see today will be here Come February.

It's time to blow this team apart. It's not just a few pieces missing - the engine is no longer running at all.

Normally I would agree but the two games before, we were out scored by 70 points. D was not good and has not been good.

Yah, it’s time to stop making excuses for players and coaches. HARD TIMES REQUIRE HARD CHOICES!!

With one exception - I hope Craig Dickenson is retained - he has done wonders with the special teams this year.

In a game in which they gave up 17 points, the Riders lost ... by 16 points. That's not on Richie Hall or the D, who were overextended the whole game. The offense was abominably bad, and now there's no blaming Doug Berry and Greg Marshall. Miller came in and had a positive short-term impact, but there's only so long that emotion can carry you. People forget that the Riders had stretches last season when they looked almost as poor as they do now, even when Miller was in charge and Etcheverry was the DC.

There's a good core to the team, but a rebuild is needed.

I'm not sure that its entirely Hall's fault.

To be sure, some of the blame rests with him, but lets look at this carefully.

The Riders offense has not done its part to keep the defense off the field. This has been going on all season. By the 4th quarter, the guys are gassed. So yeah, lots of points get scored against them towards the end of the game. Sustained drives by the offense would help that problem out a lot.

Also, there has been much complaint over the "bend but don't break" schemes, and the lack of press man coverage. Some of this complaint has come from me. But realistically, as a coach, you can only use the personnel you are given by the GM. Hall was not given personnel who are capable of press man coverage. Graham is an absolute joke, and has been burned more than a marshmallow on a campfire all season. Butler is good, but safeties don't generally do man cover. All Hall could really do was scheme zone, and hope for pressure to get to the opposing qb and force bad throws. Oh, wait, he never got a decent rush end to apply that pressure. And the D-line was also porous against the run.

Then, to make matters worse, a couple of his better players were made into scapegoats and traded. (Kornegay and, to a lesser extent, Mullinder). This was not Hall's call. He picked the best he had at camp, but really, he was forced to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Yes, Hall bears some responsibility, but I put the bulk of the defensive woes on Taman.

It doesn't matter, really. IMHO, Taman should be gone at the end of the year, and if the new GM is smart, he will hire a new HC and give that HC complete control over his entire staff. That likely means that Hall would be gone. I feel bad for the guy though. I think he got a bit of a raw deal.

the best defense is an offense that can move and control the ball because if they dont have it they cant score.
and with our 2 and out the oposition offence has the best oportunity to score

Very much agreed. It’s the Printers analogy: ‘chicken soup from chicken poop’.

Having said that, I think Etcheverry could have done a better job. That’s not saying that Hall did a bad job at all. But Etch had similar depth chart issues last year, although he did have Morgan and Kornegay. He managed the 6th ranked defense with less than 10 sacks form his front 4 (remember Hawkins only had 3 sacks all year and 2 were against Printers and a bad BC oline in week 2).

How much better could Etch do? I don’t know, I would suspect not a lot, but at least his exotic looks could have given the undermanned secondary a helping hand that Hall’s conventional sets don’t.

This defense wasn’t all that great LAST year. I’ve been making this point for months.

I gotta wonder just what went on when Hall came in, and Etch walked. Was Etch unhappy about Hall interfering and/or taking his job outright? Probably. Was he also pissed that Taman/Miller couldn’t/wouldn’t get him the players to make the defense good again? Maybe … I mean remember, he walked just a couple weeks before camp. Perhaps he was just as unimpressed as I was at Taman’s (lack of) defensive recruiting over the off season.

I will say this about Hall. His defense is considered conventional because he MADE it the standard. There were others doing similar stuff but Hall more than anyone made this heavy zone defense the norm. He was the leader (and to a lesser extent Stubler). Give the offense the short stuff and then close in, hit. Offenses had gotten so reactionary through the 90s that they were taking ONLY what the defense was giving. So Hall gave them nothing but nickels and dimes, and even then, with the DBs recruited, small, quick feet, even LBs were all quick and could backpedal, cover, react and close (Reggie Hunt). It was beautiful to watch. But offenses are getting a lot more aggressive now. You play cover 2, they go over the top of you anyways. Everyone’s an ace set, 5 receivers all over the field trying to get iso’s deep and stretch you out. You have to play man now. Not every down, but you have to be able to jam when you need to. You need guys with a little more height or at least some vert for those high point jump balls. You can’t rely on a 10 yard cushion and then separate the guy from the ball on a 6 yard hook anymore. You can’t expect to line Chris McKenzie or Nick Graham, or even Tristan Jackson (God love him) in man against Geroy, Nik Lewis or ANYONE on Montreal. At least not consistently and expect good results. You’re taking a knife to a machine gun fight.

Look at Calgary. All of their guys can jam. Sure they give up more points than they care to, but that’s the nature of man coverage. The receiver always has an advantage. Look at Winnipeg. They have Hefney and Suber, and a couple other dudes are pretty good, but on the whole not quite as talented as the Stamps, but they get after the QB something nasty which makes it a lot easier for guys like Stewart to thrive. Stewart tall dude, good vision. Look at Hamilton. They’ve got a ton of talented young guys, and just added another Webb. They’re inexperienced right now and there is growing pains, but they are definitely on the right track. They can’t possibly come out of this without at least 1 probably 2 stud allstars in their secondary in the next year or 2. Even an old dog like O’Bie gets it. His coaches tell him to get him man coverage dudes to try to stop Jamel Richardson, he goes and finds those skills.

The difference to Saskatchewan is night and freaking day. I know it’s not easy to find good DBs, but other teams do to varying degrees of success. When I look at Taman’s record it’s like the secondary is an afterthought. A low priority.

After QB, DB is the toughest position to fill on the entire 42 man roster. If you don’t understand this, you are in the wrong business. And I haven’t even touched on the rush end spot yet.

The situation with Hall is kinda like our running game. Is it just that Cates is old or the Oline can't control the line. Probably both, right.

Hall had one of the best Ds out there. It got him a HC job. Now he still has the same D strategy but has the game evolve and he hasn't adjusted or is it the players are not good enough to implement it? Probably a combo of both.

I would hate to see him go though. Name me one player who has given back as much to this organization, or any other in the CFL. He stuck with this team and province thru some very rough years. Most people would have quit. I hope he still stays with the Riders in some capacity. I loved watching him play when I was a kid. No bigger heart in the entire CFL back then then Richie Hall.

Realistically, no defense is going to look good when paired up with an office that's scored a total of 9 points in 3 games. There's room to improve the D for sure, but it's just a couple of personnel changes away rather then needing to be blown up.

If Hall goes, it should be because the new HC decides he wants to bring somebody in and not because upper management is panicking. Let the HC pick who he wants.

Etcheverry didn't have to compensate for a completely moribund offense the way Hall is forced to right now. I agree that Hall may need to modify his style, but IMO the problems would remain if Etcheverry were in charge, because Hall isn't in charge of recruiting, nor is he responsible for the Riders not breaking double digits in points over the past two games. In the CFL, when your D allows 17 points in a game, you should expect to win that game. Easily.

Yep

We need a complete overhaul in the coaching staff. Nobody survives!

Ah, the extremist approach. Sure, that will get this turned around by next year.

Just to show how absurd your suggestion is: what did Craig Dickenson or his ST units do so bad this year that he deserves to be A-bombed with the rest of the coaches? You’d be much more credible if you thought before you typed.

The sad thing is, I think he does.

I’d like to see Hall stay, for the reasons mentioned earlier in the thread: heart, dedication, and skill. I agree that he does need to adapt some, but he is capable of doing so if given the right players.

However, I’d like to see a new GM more. New GM also means new head coach, and especially after the Marshall situation, no HC will come here without first guaranteeing that he can choose his own people. Unfortunately, I don’t think that Hall survives that situation. Dickenson might be ok at ST (especially since I’m sure his brother would be high on the wish list for HC), but I think that Hall may end up as collateral damage.