Is Tim Burke ducking responsibility for the Bombers’ struggles, or is he right?

One of the most interesting CFL stories this week comes from south of the border, as The Gazette (the one from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, not the Montreal one) ran a lengthy profile on embattled Winnipeg Blue Bombers coach Tim Burke. Much of it's a reflection on how Burke started his football journey in Iowa and how he made it to his current post, but there are also some particularly notable responses from Burke about his coaching beliefs and his team's struggles this year. Here's what he said:

At first glance, there seems to be a dichotomy there. On the one hand, Burke's demanding accountability, but on the other hand, he seems to be saying that he can't do much with the talent he has (which seems to be a shot at the recently-fired Mack). He does have a bit of a point, though. The Bombers' record of talent acquisition and retention under Mack was extremely questionable, and Burke's right that the greatest coach in the world can't turn a team with no talent into a champion. Burke should be evaluated on what he's able to do within the restrictions he's operating under, not on merely how the team does overall; there are a lot of factors there that he isn't able to control.

That doesn't mean that Burke gets a free pass for his own decisions because bad decisions were also made higher up, though. While he's right that he can only work with the talent he's given, he doesn't seem to have maximized that talent all that well thus far. Consider the Winnipeg defence, Burke's own speciality, which is getting shredded through the air: the Bombers have allowed a league-high 73.6 per cent of opposing passes to be completed, they're giving up 291.3 passing yards per game (second-worst in the CFL) and they're conceding 9.1 yards per pass on average (tied for second-worst league-wide). That's despite a league-high 24 sacks: Winnipeg has the talent to get to the quarterback, but they haven't been able to do anything else against the pass, and that would seem to be on coaching as much as raw talent (especially considering that successful defensive coverage is often about intelligent schemes and reads, not just raw physical skill). Overall, too, the Bombers are giving up 28.8 points per game, second-worst in the league.

Those are just the areas that Burke takes responsibility for, though. Despite his preaching about accountability and his role as the team's head coach, he's generally refused to take ownership of anything involving the morbid offence. He even went so far as to say this week that he left the potentially-disastrous decision to start CFL rookie Max Hall completely up to offensive coordinator Gary Crowton and his staff:

Regardless of if Burke is making those decisions himself or not, he should still be accountable for them. As a certain band would tell us, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Burke's quite right that he isn't responsible for the talent on the roster. However, he is responsible for how he employs it, and good coaches have the ability to transform players who might be mediocre in one system into superstars in a system that fits their strengths. (See Bill Walsh's work with Virgil Carter and Ken Anderson, for example.) Burke hasn't demonstrated much of an ability to do that thus far. He should absolutely be judged independently of Mack, but at the moment, that judgement doesn't look great for him either.