Mike

I hate this breakaway challenge thing. When they said fans vote on the winner and the winner doesn't even have to score, I cringed. You want to make the skills competition interesting? Make it four events - keep the fastest skater, the accuracy, the hardest shot and add a real shootout. Not this breakaway challenge crap. And make it interesting. Honda likes giving away cars so much? Fine. Have every all star participate in the shootout, goalies cycle. Once you miss, you're out. Last guy left wins a car. Goalie who makes the most saves wins a car. I'd watch that. I don't want to watch guys like Ovechkin practice the crap they try during optional skates in front of a large audience. No thanks. You want another event? Obstacle course. Figure eight the circles, stick handle through pylons, chip the puck over something entering the offensive zone and shoot through a 5 hole cutout goalie. Fastest time wins. That'd be fun to watch.

Couple things I find interesting about this one. Saskatchewan was very much in the Shea Emry race last year during free agency. They weren't willing to go as high as Toronto. Wonder what changed now. Emry may be better than Foley (I agree with it) but this really does nothing to alleviate Saskatchewan's ratio issues. They get a bit younger, but they still need to slot in another Canadian somewhere if they lose Heenan. A rotation of Ainsworth and Lee likely won't cut it in 2015.

What a surprise...Mike disagrees with me! lolI've presented my thoughts and opinions on issues and others are free to agree or disagree. Pretty sure that's the point of a message board. Keeps things interesting in my opinion. Then why are you making such a big deal out of me disagreeing with you?

It's one thing to suggest people are being naïve if they don't admit some pro athletes use performance enhancing substances or if they're not willing to acknowledge some politicians are crooked to varying degrees. It's another thing altogether to paint every athlete and politician with the same brush using zero evidence whatsoever and going off total gut feelings and then claim the people who dare to question you are naïve.

Both sides win this one. Emry was a casualty of the Cory Greenwood signing

Hence the first post in this thread

The other thing to consider - could Barron Miles be following Hall to Winnipeg? And Missick is the replacement for him?

Scott Mitchell is reporting that Calgary DB coach Tony Missick is leaving Calgary to accept another opportunity and that the potential destinations are Saskatchewan or Winnipeg. I for one really hope it's Winnipeg, can't really see what opportunity he could take here that would be an "upgrade" per se but I don't think there's one in Saskatchewan either. Missick has coached a very strong secondary in Calgary for quite a few years and any time you can poach a strong coach away from a division rival, it's a plus.

No way we sink money into another receiver. We needed to make a big splash last off season to prove to players/agents we would spend money. We tried going after Butler but lost out, Moore was an awesome consolation prize who tragically ended up being injured most of the season. We're going to go hard after Heenan for sure, and probably check the potential of Holmes and Bryant as well. I hope the Bombers will go hard after Ernest Jackson. From an SMS perspective he may give us the most bang for the buck. Willy can't complete passes to even the best route runners if he has no time to throw the ball. Fix the OL and CanCon first, and Moore, Denmark, Watson, and whoever else they field will be more than dangerous enough that we don't need to add a receiver. The best laid plans... Just because we want Heenan and Holmes does not mean we will get Heenan and Holmes. Even if Walters does everything right. Free agency is the rare time players have the power. There will be 9 teams interested in these guys, and maybe outside of Montreal and Calgary, they will all be offering buckets of cash. And seemingly lost on the internet, players are actually humans, not just commodities. Maybe Holmes has been anxiously waiting his rookie contract out so he can finally move home to Ottawa and be closer to his sick grandmother or something like that. Maybe Heenan is sick of the prairies after living here his whole life and doesn't want to move just one province over, maybe he wants to live in Vancouver and spend his winters skiing, cause why not do it while he's young, these opportunities come around once or twice in a lifetime? Free agency isn't just an auction with players going to the highest bidder. So anyways, say we set aside approx half a million just to go after those guys and land neither, then what? Have a money bonfire? Sign Hurl for $400,000 just because he's a NI who kinda sorta could start, or if nothing else has totally bitchin hair? Of course plan A and B should be chasing after NI Olinemen, but if plan A and B don't work out through no fault of our own, is having a plan C that includes bringing in another premier receiver for our young QB to target such a terrible idea? I don't think it is. And the notion that we can't bring in a top grade receiver AND a guy like Heenan is nonsense. Josh Bourke isn't making chicken feed in Montreal, or Perrette and the rest of that Oline, and Popp said they offered SJ Green enough money to make him the highest non-QB player in the league. There is room in the salary cap to afford lots of talented players on the same team. Why do people keep forgetting that we have signed a big time receiver on a big contract and that signing two big time contracts at receiver seems far fetched when the o line sucks? We already have two.

How do you figure? Aside from this forum, I've read VERY little of him. I don't think the rest of the CFL community is in love with his 5 game stretch as you appear to be. Jackson is a lump in with the second tier of receivers that will hit free agency this year. That doesn't earn 200k.

Everyone seems so unsure of what the market for American receivers is going to be. 200k seems to be a nice round number that people have picked out, but the reality is the benchmark for the new rate with the SMS hike has already been set when Denmark signed his new deal. He became a top 10 paid receiver in the league with that deal and he's not making 200k. He's making a bit less than Nick Moore, if I remember correctly. So a guy like EJax (or Ellingson or Chiles, who I'd use as comps) will not make anywhere near that. My take on free agency is this. We'll be in on SirVincent Rogers / Stanley Bryant with the hopes of getting one of them. We'll be in on Tyler Holmes / Ben Heenan with the hopes of getting both of them. We'll be in on a receiver IF the market is reasonable and I bet it'd be one of our later signings. We'll be in on Canadian talents (Watt, Tonye-Tonye, Hurl, Sinopoli, Rwabukamba, MacDougall) if we feel those guys are a fair upgrade-to-dollar value deal. The last thing we MAY target is a MLB, but I feel like if they aren't able to land Taylor Reed, they'll go to camp with an open competition. My prediction? We get one of Holmes/Heenan, one of Rogers/Bryant and end up making one or two other signings, one of which will likely be a "fly under the radar" type like Dan DePalma.

there's absolutely no way. zero

I don't imagine that's really how it works. You don't go into free agency with a limit on what you can spend. The limit is the SMS. You don't have a pool of "free agent dollars", there's no cap right now. The bigger issue with targeting a high number of guys is likely being able to work the phones effectively.

His point is that no trade we're in a position to make currently does that.

I have issues in all 3 defensive assistants we have since they agrees with Etch in (1) having no playbook and (2) playing players out of their natural position. That statement doesn't really make any sense. You don't know what their personal views on either of those issues were and in the case of a guy like Nelson Martin as an example, all of our defensive backs were experienced defensive backs. This whole "playing players out of their natural position" thing was so overblown while Etch was here. Truly. The only two players we had playing a position they weren't traditionally suited for or experienced at were Mike Cornell and Ian Wild. So one rotational guy and one full time starter. Our front 7 especially at lber was undersized. Etch never accounted for all the inside gaps. He didn't play a sound basic defense where every gap was accounted for defensively. It was predicated on stopping the pass & virtually ignoring the run. We were pushed back constantly. When teams started running on us we had no answer & wilted defensively. It was an unsound system doomed to failure. Every defensive coordinator I ever coached with had gap contain in their defensive playbook. It is sound, basic football 101. As far as the other assistants go? Etch was their immediate boss. They did what they were told to do as assistants. They did know going in what the philosophy on defense was going to be & agreed with it. Having said that, it doesn't mean that can't coach under Ritchie Hall & be successful. Our front 7 was not all that undersized ... his philosophy was far more of an issue. You're really not going to sell me that guys like Turner, Vega, Anderson, Peach, Booker, Fraser, Sears or Dunn were undersized for their positions.

I'm assuming these new players you are posting here are already signed pending announcement, correct? They're players who have been offered some kind of deal with the club. A few of them may run into a situation similar to what happened to a player at our camp that I talked about last year. He was signed, went to mini camp and released after mini camp - all before they ever bothered to announce the signing

Rodney Lamar, LB, Northern Michigan Transfer from Florida Atlantic. 6'1", 230 ... has played OLB and DE in college. Here's a highlight video filmed on a potato https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH9X2SM7Mds

I have issues in all 3 defensive assistants we have since they agrees with Etch in (1) having no playbook and (2) playing players out of their natural position. That statement doesn't really make any sense. You don't know what their personal views on either of those issues were and in the case of a guy like Nelson Martin as an example, all of our defensive backs were experienced defensive backs. This whole "playing players out of their natural position" thing was so overblown while Etch was here. Truly. The only two players we had playing a position they weren't traditionally suited for or experienced at were Mike Cornell and Ian Wild. So one rotational guy and one full time starter.

Either way, the reality is that the Jets will win the battle in the public court if they go toe to toe with the Bombers. The Bombers could be doing this for ALL of the right reasons, but people won't care.

Sounds like Wade Miller is about to make his first big misstep as CEO. He's trying to double dip by getting their fair share of the revenue AND having the NHL assume responsibilities for costs that they should not have to bear (which he's trying to justify by pushing the date of the hockey game) My god man, just take what you can get and move forward. You're going to make money either way, no need to get greedy.

I definitely don't want Stafford. I wouldn't mind a guy like Gagner.

They were banned for a year, not life, just to add

I'd be surprised if Knox joined a staff that requires this much commitment but those who have their ears to the ground with respect to the CIS would obviously know if he's expressed an interest in taking on coaching full time. He was a "part-time" defensive coordinator with McMaster for six or seven years until 2013, when he went to the University of Toronto to be their full-time coordinator. He went back to McMaster after one busted season in Toronto and took over from Kevin Eiben in a full-time role that I wouldn't really call full time. No slight on Knox's abilities because I'm not really in a position to judge and while his resume is strong, his actual level of commitment to a long-term full-time position is something that there has to be doubts about. Just as a note to add - I'd rather hire Kevin Eiben than Greg Knox. He was incredibly mistreated by McMaster in my opinion and I'd take him on as a defensive assistant or positional coach in a minute. He did great work for McMaster in his year there. Familiarity with O'Shea and the Canadian game. Young and eager to learn.