Ricky Santos

The coach who works with Ricky Santos during the off-season has posted at the Bomber's official message board that Santos is back in Montreal. Don't know if he means Santos has officially signed already or not.

Nothing official so far. If it is true and Santos is coming back to us, it might be a sign that Leak's injury from yesterday's game is more serious than initially thought.

I remember liking what I heard of Santos in preseason last year. I'd welcome him back.

Was skeptical at first, but this makes sense in light of Herb reporting McPherson has a potential knee injury.

. . . and also with the 'undisclosed' injury to Leak.

Confirmed by both RDS and Herb that Santos is in camp. No specific news on the injuries to McPherson and Leak.
Ive always liked Santos gung-ho attitude, but really no way to evaluate his skill level because of lack of opportunity.

If Santos is back, this is bad news. This means they let Pickett go too early. Santos always makes honourable efforts and gives the best he has. But he hardly buy a victory, and that's why he's been sent to Winnipeg. If so, he's merely a temporary solution. Future is with McPherson and Leak.

McPherson and/or Leak are the future? Agreed.

But I'd prefer Santos over Pickett. . .

RDS just wrote that McPherson will be gone from 6 to 8 weeks; he will be transferred to 9 games injury lisy.

No news on Leak.

Anthony can't be injured. I am not a Santos fan.We should have kept Pickett.

Richard

And I am not a Pickett fan, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that.

But we CAN agree that none of us want to see AC injured.

I have tried to forget, but can’t, AC being injured and replaced by the likes of Dan Gonzalez and Ted White in years past.

If McPherson is out that long, then I hope Leak gets some quality playing time early on, just so he’s ready to go should anything unfortunate happen to our leader.

Leak had back spsams,-RDS-explaining why he did not practice. He will be OK and our number 2,while Santos will be number 3.

Richard

That’s good news! Like MadJack said, don’t wanna see the days of Gonzales and White all over again.

Haven't seen you posting in a while Crimson, welcome back.

Thanks…took a break after the Grey Cup. :wink:

For what it’s worth, here are a couple of excerpts from some of Coach O’s posts about Ricky that were made during the off-season:

Ricky is ready! Best off season he has had in my opinion. Very focused and determined. Rick has been working out with his college wr David Ball (Hamilton WR) up at UNH. ... I have been blessed to work with Rick and many other QB's over the years and I can honestly say my work is done with him. He is fundamentally sound his release is as quick as ever seen it and his footwork is great. ...
Ricky is doing well, he is hitting the gym everyday. Like I said before this is the best shape physically and mentally Ricky has been in.

I prefer Santos to Pickett. Not by much, since Pickett is at least CFL-tested, but Santos just looks like a better athlete. Also, I remember hearing good things about Ricky's accuracy at last year's TC.

With what we’ve seen from Pickett last week end, I’m puzzled. Maybe with Montréal’s QB coaching he would have step up his game and would level Leak or McPherson. Fortunately, Leak will be OK for the beginning of the season. Santos can be fair, but I hardly see him do much better than what we’ve seen of him. At least, the Alouettes could have waited a bit to see who all in all would have been available. Well, maybe you and Popp see something in him I don’t see.

It's not that I'm a big fan of Santos, it's just that I am singularly unimpressed with Pickett. On that basis, plus their relative ages, I suspect that Santos has more upside. As long as Leak is healthy, I'm not concerned particularly with who happens to be #3 on the depth chart. . . frankly, if both are fully healthy, Leak beating out McPherson would not surprise me in the least, I see as much if not more potential in him than I do in McPherson.

But they don't pay me to make those sorts of decisions, and that's probably a good thing. . . were I to be in charge, we never would have gotten rid of Stanley Jackson !!!

I would agree with you on that one.

We all have players we prefer or not for several reasons, and I respect your disagreement, just as you respect the other’s opinions. I would have prefered Pickett because he has CFL starter experience. Last year, with Toronto, he played with an undisciplined weak O line, and receivers that dropped balls thrown in the numbers. I don’t mean his struggling was all their fault, but this explains a substantial part of it. He proved he can run, yet I agree he has to learn how to scramble and roll. I believe that with better QB coaching than what he had in Toronto, he may evolve to a decent QB. Being under Trestman or Hufnagel, he can get just that. Regarding Santos, he doesn’t have as much starting experience. I’ve never seen him playing long socring drives. I saw him play a bit against the Alouettes last year and he didn’t impress me too much. He plays rather well in short yardage situation, but I never had the feeling he is tooled enough to be a real starter. I hope I’m wrong.

I'm always happy to agree to disagree. . .and it's nice doing so like in this case where we both respect each other's opinions and do not resort to name callling, as happens way too often on other teams' boards. Generally I Ihink we Als' fans are the most respectful of each other's opinions.

I hear what you are saying about Pickett, my problem with him was that I just never saw anything in him that led me to think he had starter potential. Weak arm, questionable accuracy, poor defence-reading skills. Sure that sieve of an offensive line coupled with a really weak receiving corps and (last season at least) a poor coaching staff didn't help him.

But the fact remains that twice, over two seasons under 2 different coaching staffs, Pickett was given the opportunity to take over the starter's spot from Joseph, and both times he failed to hang on to it.