Mike

Steep price to pay for Campbell. I do like most of the moves the Riders made today - Foster and Lawrence are both very underrated players. Gainey, however, is garbage.

I gotta be honest man - you're going to be disappointed if you think the Bombers are in on any high price tag items going forward. If any signings are made, they'll be of the value variety. No more big fish.

23-0 to be honest

I love how every time I mention that Walters is actually spending money the exact opposite way Taman did, I get crickets over there. If they pretend they don't read it, it's not true.

I think there's a good chance Hurl is one of the victims of a purge or maybe a restructuring. Or maybe we fit him in for one more year - but he's kind of unnecessary at this point. I understand depth but he may not be required any longer due to our upgraded ratio. Realistically, our locked in Canadians at this point will be Harris, Chungh, Goossen, Westerman and Shologan. I would operate assuming we trot out 8 again, so between Bucknor, Waggoner, Neufeld, Hurl and Kohlert, we need 3 (minimum 2) - is Hurl one of those? Or is it more efficient to start Bucknor at field corner, Kohlert as our WR2 and Neufeld at guard? You have to think the third OL is one of the Canadian spots, so again ... more efficient to have a Canadian at field corner or in the very middle of our D? Seems like an obvious choice to me. Hurl was a ratio necessity last year but he no longer is.

The thing I find funniest is that you have a guy like Rider_Stronson over there (who I have a lot of respect for, he's a very smart CFL fan) talking about how our build is so "Tamanesque" because we're spending like mad in FA but then in the same thread, he brags about how smart Jones is because they have cap room and are now set up to spend on day two and beyond. All in the name of "value".

Anyone expecting much more than the official Cummings announcement tomorrow is getting greedy. We'll be done aside from maybe a depth signing at this point. We went big today.

Seems like the current ratio breakdown will be 3 NI OL (Chungh, Goossen, Neufeld) along with RB (Harris), DE (Westerman), DT (Shologan), REC (Kohlert) and probably a third spot on defense. We'll continue starting 8 Canadians.

I'll take 5 years 38 million all damn day.

Impossible for you to say this - they never publicized which player was auctioned off first. Hypothetically, the Bombers could have had whichever one they wanted but there's absolutely no guarantee they could've had both and it would certainly not have been for a first and third rounder - it would've cost the first and the second if it was at all possible.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear they want both.

Washington is very underrated because he plays a position where you're usually only noticed when you're making a big play or getting burnt. Nobody remembers the games where he shuts down the #1 receiver because it happens quietly.

Absolutely not.

FA opens at noon, otherwise I'm with ya

... what's wrong with that?

You can't avoid signing a Canadian because there's a huge drop off in talent anytime he gets hurt. There's a huge drop off in talent any time anyone gets hurt, that's why the starters start and the backups don't.

You plug and play somewhere else. Let's say you start Harris, 3 NI OL, Westerman, Bucknor and Kohlert. Harris gets hurt? Put in a Canadian receiver. Easy.

I don't get this "we seem to be signing a lot of ex-Rider players and coaches" nonsense. Like who? Dressler and some training camp fodder? Not that it really matters, because EVERY team has players with connections to every other team on it, but the Riders have brought in more ex-Bombers than vice versa since Chris Jones took over. Dan West, Markus Howell, Jordan Reaves, we gave Marte Sears a look too, heck I'll even claim Shawn Lemon on that list.

Macho Harris yuck. Really like the Shayon Green signing, though.

It's easy to say "go OL in the draft" but the horses have to be there and this year, they just might not be. There are only 5 rated in the current "top 20", which doesn't necessarily mean much but there isn't a ton of talent beyond that either. It's a weak year for the OL. St. John and Vaillancourt are likely going to get NFL looks, Guy is a question mark in every aspect and Gagnon/Seguin are both question marks in terms of standalone value - they play on a fairly complete OL but are they anything better than just serviceable pros? Can they hold their own at the combine? This draft is going to be a key one - I'm calling it right now that only a couple teams are going to walk out of this thing as winners. There isn't a ton of talent out there and having taken Waggoner already is actually looking more and more like a good move every day. I can't even imagine who I would want at #1 or #2 right now, Smith/Onyemata will get NFL looks, Abdesmad is talented but a big injury risk who pushed his draft year due to health concerns - he would've maybe gone in the 10-15 range last year and is rated 3rd this year. As always, the picture will clear itself up after the combine and after we get the full scope of talent that is eligible (seems like more and more players are becoming late entries in recent years) but right now, this is not a fantastic draft. Guys I was liking in the 9/10 range originally seem more like top 5 picks (Corney/Loffler) and I think you might see us make a move like WR/DL with our first two picks ... or even package them to trade for a proven guy.

Not really - if you read the rest of Cobourne's twitter feed, it's pretty obvious the news is accurate. He's just legitimately wondering how it was leaked.

I didn't think there was ANY drop off from Randle to Leggett, personally.

Venable would be one of the last big names we should be targeting. Aside from the option to upgrade the middle by changing our ratio, our linebackers are well above average with Wild and either Randle/Leggett.

Read this in an article that was written re: his presser This seems obvious to me. You want to scout the guys who have already met the pre-requisite of being viewed as potential pro players. Isolate the ones who won't cut it in the NFL. Stop with this free agent stuff where you get every guy who caught a pass in college showing up. There's value in both - but scouting NFL camps means basically half the work is done for you.

I'd like to see us add one more, probably not Smith. Either Fuller or Stafford, preferably.