A little Crow for our pre-game meal!

[pennw]

Ya know WCJ , i agree with you . Not saying coaches should not be criticized . Just that , as we collectively were criticizing ,and ,some were calling for their heads , they were hard at work to produce what we have now seen . The work came before the results were apparent and as such we collectively were wrong on our assessment of them , their abilities . And in that i too, cheer them on now.

[Belize City Lion]

I wouldn't characterize the fan criticism as now having to eat crow - although it is fun to look back to see what has been said. Quite the contrary.

What fans and media in BC were saying is what they are now doing on both offense and defense and the offensive players espec. the OL are backing that up.

What I am getting at, is that if many of us had had our way when this team was 1-6, Wally Buono would have been fired, Chap and MB likely gone as well. Lulay would have been benched and we would have watched JJ and Reily share starting duties as the team got ready for "next year". Bruce would not have been traded for because many thought he would be a distraction in the locker room.

[pennw]

What I am getting at, is that if many of us had had our way when this team was 1-6, Wally Buono would have been fired, Chap and MB likely gone as well. Lulay would have been benched and we would have watched JJ and Reily share starting duties as the team got ready for "next year". Bruce would not have been traded for because many thought he would be a distraction in the locker room.

Something I been saying too Belize , understand your frustration . You are quite right .

[WestCoastJoe]

What I am getting at, is that if many of us had had our way when this team was 1-6, Wally Buono would have been fired, Chap and MB likely gone as well. Lulay would have been benched and we would have watched JJ and Reily share starting duties as the team got ready for "next year". Bruce would not have been traded for because many thought he would be a distraction in the locker room.

Something I been saying too Belize , understand your frustration . You are quite right .

Well I guess one of the lessons is be careful what you ask for. A coaching change would pretty much write off the season. We managed to avoid that.

Not every critic was calling for coaching change. All I ever wanted was to liberate the play books and the play calling. We got that.

And those fans calling for firing are just doing what fans have done since there were pro sports. Better to call for change, methinks, than to accept an ongoing 8 and 10, 8 and 10, 0 and 5.

It's history now. And it's a positive story. No anguish for me.

[Belize City Lion]

What I am getting at, is that if many of us had had our way when this team was 1-6, Wally Buono would have been fired, Chap and MB likely gone as well. Lulay would have been benched and we would have watched JJ and Reily share starting duties as the team got ready for "next year". Bruce would not have been traded for because many thought he would be a distraction in the locker room.

Something I been saying too Belize , understand your frustration . You are quite right .

I'm not frustrated, in fact I think it is kind of funny. Image if our prayers had been answered in August!

[Toppy Vann]

I wouldn't characterize the fan criticism as now having to eat crow - although it is fun to look back to see what has been said. Quite the contrary.

What fans and media in BC were saying is what they are now doing on both offense and defense and the offensive players espec. the OL are backing that up.

What I am getting at, is that if many of us had had our way when this team was 1-6, Wally Buono would have been fired, Chap and MB likely gone as well. Lulay would have been benched and we would have watched JJ and Reily share starting duties as the team got ready for "next year". Bruce would not have been traded for because many thought he would be a distraction in the locker room.

Yes, I forgot some called for mid season firings. Not me as that rarely works and there was no one ready. If from within like the DC then you are down another coach and that hurts too as the D would suffer.

OK, crow for the mid season calls for firings.

[Belize City Lion]

I'm picking feathers from my teeth and thinking that crow never tasted so sweet!

[B.C.FAN]

What I am getting at, is that if many of us had had our way when this team was 1-6, Wally Buono would have been fired, Chap and MB likely gone as well. Lulay would have been benched and we would have watched JJ and Reily share starting duties as the team got ready for "next year". Bruce would not have been traded for because many thought he would be a distraction in the locker room.

Fortunately the Lions' braintrust is smart enough to ignore the knee-jerk reactions that always come up when teams are losing: Blame the coach, blame the coordinators and blame the quarterback.

I'm impressed that the coaches and players managed to overcome their slow start and end the season as champions. I'm even more impressed with the fans who supported this team with passion and pride from the dark days at Empire to the bright lights of B.C. Place. If anyone jumped off the bandwagon, it wasn't evident at home games. This team, more than any other, has shown great appreciation for the fans. This is a great time to be a Lions fan and share in this tremendous accomplishment.

[David]

I'm impressed that the coaches and players managed to overcome their slow start and end the season as champions. I'm even more impressed with the fans who supported this team with passion and pride from the dark days at Empire to the bright lights of B.C. Place. If anyone jumped off the bandwagon, it wasn't evident at home games. This team, more than any other, has shown great appreciation for the fans. This is a great time to be a Lions fan and share in this tremendous accomplishment.

Well put. The amount of support this team received today at BC Place was staggering. We did not take a back seat to Mosaic Field in the loudness of the stadium when the Bombers were on offense, amount of (orange) in the stands, the number of fans dressed in costumes....anything! I somehow expected a more neutral crowd - lots of fans from other teams (which there were. Just not that visible) and, at the very least, newby locals who came because it was the big event. What I got instead was something akin to the 2004 West Final. The building absolutely rocked from the player intros to the trophy celebration.

Well done Lions fans!


DH

[PigSkin_53]

What I am getting at, is that if many of us had had our way when this team was 1-6, Wally Buono would have been fired, Chap and MB likely gone as well. Lulay would have been benched and we would have watched JJ and Reily share starting duties as the team got ready for "next year". Bruce would not have been traded for because many thought he would be a distraction in the locker room.

Fortunately the Lions' braintrust is smart enough to ignore the knee-jerk reactions that always come up when teams are losing: Blame the coach, blame the coordinators and blame the quarterback.

I'm impressed that the coaches and players managed to overcome their slow start and end the season as champions. I'm even more impressed with the fans who supported this team with passion and pride from the dark days at Empire to the bright lights of B.C. Place. If anyone jumped off the bandwagon, it wasn't evident at home games. This team, more than any other, has shown great appreciation for the fans. This is a great time to be a Lions fan and share in this tremendous accomplishment.

Agreed B.C.FAN, and as always, well said!

This is a most marvelous time to be BC Lon Fan!

[B.C.FAN]

Apparently Dave Dickenson wasn't fooled by the Lions' 0-5 start, according to Eric Francis of the Calgary Sun:

CALGARY - While few fathomed the B.C. Lions could turn their season around in such remarkable fashion, there was one CFL visionary who saw it coming.

His name: Dave Dickenson.

Five weeks into the season, the Calgary Stampeders offensive coordinator was asked privately which team he saw as the CFL’s best at that point.

His answer: The Lions. Yes, the only team in the league without a win in its first five outings.

Four months later, the Lions capped off a 12-1 run by winning the Grey Cup in Vancouver Sunday.

And they did it on the arm of Travis Lulay, who Dickenson pegged years earlier as a future star.

As a two-time Grey Cup-winning quarterback, Dickenson’s ability to read teams and situations made him one of the most accurate passers in league history.

That same ability has served him well as a young coach and prognosticator.

Perhaps another calling would be sports wagering, as few would have guessed a turnaround of any sort in B.C. could have included a west division title and a Grey Cup.

Stamps coach called Lions' Cup win

[Blitz]

Perhaps Dickenson was saying that we were the best team in terms of talent when we were 0 -5. Many others saw us as the most talented team to begin the 2011 season.

I believe a lot of things hurt us out of the gate. We only had one day of hitting and a slack training camp and perhaps were not game ready to begin the season. Perhaps that easier training camp helped us in the end...perhaps not but it may have impacted our start.

Our defense was awful to begin the season. Using the 3-4 defense, ww were not gettign any outside pressure on opposition quarterbacks from Hunt at defensive end and Taylor at nose tackle and our blitz packages, when we used them, were mostly ineffective. Sanchez was not healty at corner, teams were scheming away from Banks at nickel, and Phillips is not a cover guy but more of a read/anticipation guy who was not suited for shortside halfback. Our defensive secondary was not good enough to start the season and to add to the misery, they had to cover too long and were left out to dry.

Offensively, Travis Lulay began the season under severe duress at quarterback, constantly sacked and pressured, as we continued our MO of giving up the most sacks and pressures in the laague as we mostly had in the past and we were primarily a pocket passing spread offence that also was not committed to the run annd were using a very simple running scheme witha zone blocking scheme.

I really believe that our 0-5 start was the best thing to happen to us. If we had muddled through the first part of the season we may never have picked up players like Arland Bruce. We might have stayed in our 3-4 scheme. We almost certainly would have stayed mostly in the spread offence, with a simple running attack as we had in the past. All we had added to that running game was a receiver sweep. We also lkely would have stayed with our zone blocking scheme we had been in for a number of seasons.

penw is right in that we did not completely revamp our offence overnight but from the 0-5 start we began to make important changes to it and add to it as well and those were plays that we had never seen before this season. Changng our blocking scheme to a man blocking scheme part way throug a seaason was huge. Going to a two back tight end set on first downs was a major departure as was adding a number of different running plays and a new misdirection package. Our offence continued to evolve in new ways. Lulay was only sacked 6 times in his last 9 games and we gave up the least amounyt of sacks ever in the Wally/Chap era as a new brand of exciting offence emerged.

But the major turnaround began with our defense. Getting our secondary solidified was an important step, with Banks back partnering with Marsh and Phillips back to the wideside but the most important change was upfront. In the 4-3 defense, along with some excellent blitz packages, we got pressure and heat on opposition quarterbacks and our defense went for a long stretch without giving up a touchdown.

The terrible start, after two mediocre seaasons, was the impetus for change and those changes happened in a number or areas and in a number of ways. Those changes were more significant than every before and I believe were the cataylyst for us really turning things around. Without that terrible start, I doubt that we would have been playing in or winning the Grey Cup game.

There is a saying that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sometimes I think it makes one smarter. Sometimes adversity is a great teacher. Our Leos came back from great adversity and there are some who want to see the story as some lost the faith and never should have. A diiferent way of looking at this season is that a 0-5 start meant that faith was being lost by fans, media, and even within the locker room. Arland Bruce saw oru Leos as a despondent bunch when he first joied our Leos. Sometimes it takes a crisis to begin to ask the kinds of questions that one never asks without one. At 0-5, with a backdrop of our past two losign seasons, our Leos were in crisis and there was a lof of season left to play.

That crisis moved us away from 'same old, same old' to new approaches. Some of those changes happened right away and some evolved over time as we started to see thier success. Success in new ways created confidence to try even more new plays...and we saw Wildcat and fake/dive/fake reverse and throw plays etc. and the whole thing snowballed in positive ways, just as it can when a team starts to lose and they go back to a more basic conservative approach and get worse.

Winnipeg's offence during the Grey Cup game was an example of a conservative offence that played for 57 minutes like it was trying to avoid mistakes. They exploed in the last 3 minutes when they went after it. During our winning steak our offence began to go after it and continued to build on that philosophy each and every game during our streak. Defensively, we played the same way during our winning streak. We attacked, pressured, blitzed, and went after interceptions on defense instead of the conservative approach we began the season with. Heck, we even dressed six defensive linemen including five of them being imports during our two playoff games and took our chances on not dressing a backup import in the secondary for the Grey Cup game.

It was exciting to see how our Leos played football in the latter part of this season....to see Wally gamble on third and short in our own end of the feild as we did during the Grey Cup game, to see Lulay attack the field vertically, to see us hit Geroy on a fake reverse and throw down the sideline with deception rather than just trying to just outexecute a defense with a high percentage conservative approach. It was thrilling to see Gore lined up as a tight end and to watch Lulay fake the cutback to Harris and bootleg with a pulling lineman leading him to hit Gore at full speed quicly underneath.

It was imressive to see Benevdes use a run blitz from the offside to shut down the Bobmers running game or to see Anton McKenzie doubling deep on a wide receiver when the Bombers set up four receivers to the wideside to attempt to create single coverage on the short side or to see Korey Banks coming on a halfback blitz.

Our terrible start is not something to aat crow about but to rejoice in.....it was perhaps the biggest key to this magical and very successful season overall and perhas the most important reason why we hoisted the Grey Cup last Sunday.

[Sir Purrcival]

Well said Blitz.

Through failure comes the motivation to change. Some of the crow eating comments may be a bit undeserved IMO. Yes, when the Lions were O-5 , people were calling for wholesale change but it wasn't based solely on the 0-5 record. In fact, it was based on several years of similar underwhelming performances and a lack of playoff success. I saw the word kneejerk earlier in this thread and truthfully, I think it is misapplied in this situation. The response was anything but kneejerk. It was years in the making. If it had been any coach other than one with the stature of Wally Buono, it is likely that the cries for change would have come much sooner and much more passionately than they actually did. During a time when the Lions had the personnel to win a couple of cups, we managed only 1. Sometimes those are the fortunes of life but there were many troubling things about those failures which spoke to poor judgment and questionable coaching.

I have been watching all the games from this season over the last couple of days and have been looking for the signs of progression. Even here it took a frustrating amount of time before Harris was finally recognized as the offensive force that he is. We can only wonder if Wally had been quicker to incorporate Jerome Messam into the offence, whether he might still be here and rushing 1000 yards for us instead of the Esks. Wonder about the reluctance to use Paris Jackson during those 5 games when we were losing and could have benefited from the experienced hands of a Canadian receiver rather than put all that pressure on new receivers who were struggling with the drops.

We may be armchair QB's and our preferences are probably more wrong than they are right most of the time but Wally and his coaches furnished us with loads of material to be critical of over time. It is a credit to him and his coaching staff that there were able to change what they were doing and make it work but it does bear remembering that it really almost got to the point of firing before those changes started to be made. I am delighted with how the season turned out and the credit rightfully goes to the players and the coaches of the BC Lions. It doesn't mean however that the fans were out to lunch when they were calling for heads. In this case, it was only when many of the things that have been oft discussed here for several years were implemented that those fortunes turned around. In many ways, the final outcome of this season is a validation of the fans, not a repudiation.

[Blitz]

Well said Blitz.

Through failure comes the motivation to change. Some of the crow eating comments may be a bit undeserved IMO. Yes, when the Lions were O-5 , people were calling for wholesale change but it wasn't based solely on the 0-5 record. In fact, it was based on several years of similar underwhelming performances and a lack of playoff success. I saw the word kneejerk earlier in this thread and truthfully, I think it is misapplied in this situation. The response was anything but kneejerk. It was years in the making. If it had been any coach other than one with the stature of Wally Buono, it is likely that the cries for change would have come much sooner and much more passionately than they actually did. During a time when the Lions had the personnel to win a couple of cups, we managed only 1. Sometimes those are the fortunes of life but there were many troubling things about those failures which spoke to poor judgment and questionable coaching.

I have been watching all the games from this season over the last couple of days and have been looking for the signs of progression. Even here it took a frustrating amount of time before Harris was finally recognized as the offensive force that he is. We can only wonder if Wally had been quicker to incorporate Jerome Messam into the offence, whether he might still be here and rushing 1000 yards for us instead of the Esks. Wonder about the reluctance to use Paris Jackson during those 5 games when we were losing and could have benefited from the experienced hands of a Canadian receiver rather than put all that pressure on new receivers who were struggling with the drops.

We may be armchair QB's and our preferences are probably more wrong than they are right most of the time but Wally and his coaches furnished us with loads of material to be critical of over time. It is a credit to him and his coaching staff that there were able to change what they were doing and make it work but it does bear remembering that it really almost got to the point of firing before those changes started to be made. I am delighted with how the season turned out and the credit rightfully goes to the players and the coaches of the BC Lions. It doesn't mean however that the fans were out to lunch when they were calling for heads. In this case, it was only when many of the things that have been oft discussed here for several years were implemented that those fortunes turned around. In many ways, the final outcome of this season is a validation of the fans, not a repudiation.

Great post.....you've summed it up brilliantly!!!

[LFITQ]

Here's the thing I take from it. Yes a little crow is deserved for me. But at the same time, I think the majority of ppl were saying if Wally stays the course, then he needs to go.

Wally did not stay the course. He left his normal modus operandi by going out and signing free agents. There was a change in game planning and play calling with the emergence of a star in Andrew Harris.

Thus those asking for change, sitting those dropping balls and replacing them with receivers that can catch, were actually proven correct. Wally didn't have to go, but his historical tendencies did. Historically he didn't sign free agents. Historically the team did not switch their game planning. Historically the team did not put in much of a run game.

Now to put it all in to perspective as a fan...

Did my complaining on a website or on twitter or facebook or whatever have an impact on the changes in tendencies? My ego would like to think so, but my head knows much much differently. Did it help Lowell and the other beat writers with their stories and questions to ask Wally and the boys, I would say in a little way.

But here's the real deal. I am a fan of the team. I like some players and I like some coaches. So long as they are with the my Team, the BC Lions, I ALWAYS ALWAYS want to see them succeed (when they leave my team for one reason or another, I want them to succeed, but just not in the same way). Will I criticize their play? you bet. Just like I criticize the latest movie endeavour by any of the stars. Football is, at it's roots, entertainment. It might be labelled "sports", but the reason why we tune in season after season is because we feel we are entertained.

And here's the real kicker - part of that entertainment for me is dissecting the what ifs, the shoulda's, the coulda's and the might have beens. Analyzing the game and the people that play it is part of the entertainment. It is part of what i get out of buying all the jerseys, memorabilia, supporting the sponsors and attending games and events.

do the professionals who get paid to play the game always get it right? No. Do the beat reporters who get paid to dissect the game and the players always get it right? nope. So, guess what, the fan who PAYS to see the game won't always get it right either. But it is part of what they are paying for - the right to be wrong.

And sometimes it feels great to have been wrong.