It is amazing Joe. It's almost like Popp makes it clear to his coaching staff the Als are always going to play an all-national offensive line so you better develop the Canadians we have. No excuses.WestCoastJoe wrote:OMG ... Looking at Montreal's All National O Line, makes me shake my head in amazement. Tremendous drafting. Tremendous development of talent.
LT Bourke ... Rd 3
LG Matte ... Rd 1
C Brodeur-J ... Rd 6
RG Bomben ... Rd 4
RT Perrett ... Rd 3
And what it does for the ratio ...
For our part, we had to use three Internationals to get a semblance of productivity from our O Line. And we have drafted high for the O Line, year after year.
Do we actually develop our Internationals? No, they come ready to play, skills intact, out of the box, with NFL experience. But Nationals? They usually take some time to develop. And that takes coaching.
I guess Montreal just got lucky. Time and time again. Yeah, right!
I like our guys. Norman. Fabien. Steward. Thorn. T-Dre. I like Valli too. But in about three years, will this group be able to start 5 Nationals, and play at the level of the Montreal group? What are the odds of that happening? We are a few years behind the 8-ball here in developing our talent. And of course, we see backsliding and stagnation.
When Dorazio arrived the Lions were playing 4 Canadians with Mantyka at tackle. He ran into injury problems and the constant pounding of our QBs led to import tackles with Jiminez and Murphy. That had been a fixture up until this season when Ramsey got hurt and Steward started and looked very good even though the Lions were trying to convert him to a GUARD because god knows a Canadian can't play tackle.
More oline struggles led to Dorazio getting his way and astonishing starting 3 internationals. It's got to the point where his inability to develop young Canadians is crippling the team elsewhere, whether that's sitting a Tim Brown or not being able to dress another import receiver.
Enough is enough. He simply has to go.