A Festivus for the Rest of Us

While the Riders will likely lose some starters, this will be a real test of the Riders depth to see if the players behind the starters can move into starting positions as the Riders try to do something never done in Riderville before – win back-to-back titles. The Riders will be balancing the financial demands of players against things like injury history, age, supporting players and potential draft picks to fill holes.

The Riders have been back filling their salary cap with the December signings they can also fit under their 2025 cap The signings of Trevor Harris, JeMarcus Hardrick, Caleb Sanders, Samuel Emilus show the Riders are looking to continuing their locker room culture building by having players who have won Grey Cups and bring that experience back.

It is hard to win a championship, but it is harder to repeat. Teams run into thinking that since they won one title, how hard can it be to win another? In Riderville with five titles in 115 years, fans have an appreciation for how rare and how hard it is to win one title, let along two.

Depending on how free agency progresses, the Riders will be looking at deciding whether they will move to younger players on the defensive line and rotating them with say, vets like Micah Johnson. Johnson is the defensive line equivalent of Hardrick who also contributes to the offensive line on short yardage and when rotated on a regular basis, can shut down the interior of opposing offensive lines.

This means shutting down the opposition running game, and this is where players like Sanders are invaluable because in the games Sanders missed due to injury, opposing teams ran the ball on the Riders at will, like Calgary. If rotating players like Sanders helps keep them in the game and helps shut down opposing rushing games and running quarterbacks, then I am all for that.

The only player on the defensive line I cannot see coming back at this time is defensive lineman Shane Ray who missed the last part of last season to injury. Ray was good to contain outside running and scrambling quarterbacks, but the Riders may be looking at players like Canadian Seth Hundeby, Ali Saad and maybe even Charbrel Dabire to help fill those roles.

One of the factors the Riders will be looking at in re-signing people is injury history. The Riders let Justin McGinnis go to BC after he spent most of his first three seasons on the injury list and of course when he gets to BC, no real problems with injuries.

A lot of this comes down to players out of U Sport and the NCAA coming to the CFL and thinking just natural physical talent will be enough. This is aided and abetted by the changes to practices designed to reduce the number of injuries which results in players not being their best in tackling, blocking or whatever else comes up.

So, if you place increased physical demands on players, but they aren’t ready physically, or mentally for those demands, they end up on the injury list. The Riders have enough veteran leadership where younger players see the leaders working and leading and younger players get the idea that stuff like lifting weights, tackling, learning the playbook, are important if you like getting paid for playing football.

Around the CFL, the Stony Mountain Blue Bombers have re-signed Brady Olivera to a three-year contract which roughly averages out to $300,000 a year. The Bombers signed Tommy Condell as their new offensive coordinator replacing Mike Hogan who was a running back coach who became offensive coordinator but did not use his running game and is going back to being a running back coach.

While Bomber fans were complaining that Hogan was not using Olivera as much as he could have been as a runner, Condell did not use a running game much in Ottawa either and one suspects Condell was hired to give Zach Collaros some confidence someone knows what they are doing as an offensive coordinator.

The $300,000 level for skilled players has come as a bit of a surprise, but considering how the CFL keeps its financial stuff under wraps except for the two publicly owned teams, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Gambling interest seems to be behind the increase in the players cap since I can’t see Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment doing anything to promote the Argos.

The Bombers managed to keep Mike O’Shea as head coach after he interviewed in Toronto and discovered how bare the cupboard is. It is hard to hire the high-profile people when they find out they must start from the ground level just to get the franchise up to the level of a Canadian Junior Football League team.

The Argos hiring of Matt Miller, their quarterback coach was good because he has a relationship with Chad Kelly who may return to starting as a quarterback next year after breaking his leg in the 2024 eastern final. The Argos also went through some whispers they had approached Rider Coach Cory mace without asking permission from the team to talk with him about the Argo job first.

The result was some investigation with no idea of what happened or what the discipline was for the Argos if the allegations were true. The Argos did let John Murphy move off into the sunset where the guy who is a pretty good scout but lacks the skills to be an effective GM,

Then the Argos brought in John Hufnagel as a senior advisor (which is how teams get around the football operations cap) to try the Argos reaching a level of consistency the Stampeders once had under Hufnagel before he moved upstairs and let Dave Dickenson take over.

Bringing Hufnagel is not a bad idea since Michael Clemons, the GM in name, is more of a figurehead and team ambassador than a GM who has contacts for scouting or has a good grasp of how to build a functional football operations department. MLSE is probably looking at the CFL expanding and perhaps increasing the value of their franchise so they can unload it and concentrate on running the Maple Leafs into the ground.

Toronto fell off the playoff map last year mostly due to their defense leaving in free agency and not being able to figure out how to replace them. This is Miller’s first job as a CFL head coach, and who he brings in and if they get the players to come in, will determine how well Toronto will do, especially with the Argos playing three home games in Winnipeg, Regina and Hamilton because Toronto was too cheap to play elsewhere in southern Ontario unlike the BC Lions who decided to play their two games they could not play in BC Place in other parts of BC to expand the footprint of the team.

Coming in the new year is what will happen to Tre Ford, the former starting quarterback of the Edmonton Elk who is due a large offseason bonus even though he lost his starting job to Cody Fajardo. Ford is Canadian and while he can scramble like Doug Flutie on Meth, Ford has not been able to show he can read opposing defenses and do anything more than scramble around and maybe find a deep passing target.

If Edmonton doesn’t want to pay the bonus to Ford, they will have to cut him and lose him to another team without getting anything in return. The obvious thing would be a trade but there are very few options in this scenario with Ottawa perhaps being the most likely option, but even then, I don’t think any team will give Ford the starting position without him showing he can handle the job and responsibilities that go with it.

From here until February, look for teams to go through their list of free agents and making the hard decisions on who to bring back and who to move on from. The Riders should be concentrating on their defense for the next month, unless they get some good options from their remaining offensive free agents.

One thing that has become apparent is the work Mace and Rider GM Jeremy O’Day have done in building a team culture. When watching the Toronto Blue Jays going into the playoffs, you got the impression those guys loved playing with each other and when you have that atmosphere, it puts pressure on everyone to contribute because you don’t want to let your buddies down.

The Blue Jays had that in September and October, the Riders had it all season. I’ve seen a lot of teams with talented teams on paper that fell short, but those teams that rallied together like the Riders and Jays did enjoy success and it gets you hungry to enjoy even more success.

The Riders signing Emilus shows the team believes in what they are doing and have sold a vision of success to the players who have bought in. Now the fun part is to see how many more have bought in.

by Greg Urbanoski

A Festivus for the Rest of Us

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