TBURGESS

What a fun football game. Maybe the best one of the season so far. Two good teams going at each other. BC owned TOP, ran the ball well and racked up a lot 1st downs. Harris found some deep receivers open for big plays. The Ottawa defense got a bunch of sacks and managed to force a fumble at their own 2 to keep them in the game. Ottawa with the ball in the last minute still had a chance to pull the game out.

Darrin Bauming - ‏@DarrinBauming `@FarhanLaljiTSN just told us he's hearing a conversation will be had between Drew Willy and the #Bombers to renegotiate his contract. Best of both worlds. Keep Willy for those who think he's still got something to give and reduce the SMS hit for those who think he's being grossly overpaid.

It would be in his best interests to see what the Bombers are offering before he tries that. He might get another contract this year, but it will be a backup QB job at less than half of the $400K he's being paid now. Likely between $150-175K.

I'd rather have Frederick as the DI DB than Harris or Morgan.

Who are you going to take off of the roster once Randle and Frederick are healthy to put Macho on? I honestly don't see a place for him and if that's the case then we might as well cut him.

The point I was trying to make is that none of those 7 players can come back early, even if they are ready, because their entire salaries would then count towards the SMS. As I've said before, I know that Willy won't be cut. The question's never been 'What will the Bombers do?', it's been 'What should the Bombers do?'. It's not 'How can we afford it?', it's 'Is paying Willy that much money to warm the bench the best use of the money?'. Sure, we set aside a certain amount for the QB spot and Nichols bonus will put us $100K over that number. Assuming we can find it without taking from Willy's salary we'd have an extra $150-200K to extend players we want to keep like Chungh or to sign a couple of $150-200K players (It's half the season). I think that's better than paying Willy. You don't. It's as simple as that.

I'm basing my opinion on more than 5 games too. He played great for his first 6 or 7 games then his play fell off as he got beat up and other teams realized that all they had to do was blitz him and he'd fold. In 2015 he got beat up again, was in and out of the first 7 games before being injured for the rest of the season. In 2016 he looked bad in most games unless it was garbage time. I don't think the coaches and GM have given up on him either. They brought him in. Gave him the starters job at the signing presser. Didn't bring in any competition in the first 2 TC's. Gave him elite QB money before finding out if he was even a viable starting QB. Only brought in Nichols when the other 2 QB's proved they couldn't do the job. Blamed lack of wins in '15 on lack of Willy. Gave Willy the starting job back in '16 without competition. Finally gave Nichols a chance in the 5th game of a 1-4 start. Cutting Willy right now would be down right embarrassing and would mean they'd been wrong about him all along.

If that's true, then I apologize. I didn't look back, just assumed you were one of the Taman's an idiot crew.

Yup, cut a PR guy and a close to minimum guy who will be replaced on the AR with another guy making around the same amount of money. That ought to pay for Nichols bonus.

If Nichols goes out for a long time, Willy or not, we're done. Either you don't remember the 1-4 start Willy led us to or are you're ignoring it. 6 gaming Willy has almost all the perceived disadvantages of cutting him, and we get to pay him too. As for Nichols on the 6 game instead of Willy, his salary is less than half of what Willy makes and unless he goes down in the next 3 games, his bonus has to be paid from the SMS. Nope, its the depth is bad if you have to vastly overpay for it argument. You're one of the first who would jump all over Taman for paying $400K+ for a backup QB, but because we're doing it, it's not only OK, but nonsense for anyone to have a different opinion. You think that Walters went into the season saying 'How will we handle the SMS if Willy stinks the joint out so we have to start Nichols'?

IR'ing Willy is only an advantage if he stays there longer than 6 weeks. If you 6 game Willy, he can't practice for 4 weeks. Davis takes over the #2 spot on the roster anyway. If Nichols gets hurt in the first 6 weeks, Davis goes into the game, you have no SMS advantage if you bring Willy back and Davis will have taken all the #2 reps. Keeping Willy means we're paying about $200K for half a season of backup QB insurance that we hope we never need to use. If we do, we hope that he can find the game he had a couple of years back before all the injuries.

Funny, I would have said, no team in their right mind would pay a backup QB $410K, especially when he lost the starting gig a month ago. That's just pure stupidity.

IMO, the CFLPA is looking for some deeper pockets than the CFL to offload the concussion issues to. Could be good for the players.

Yup, you'd have the money right there to pay the additional $100K for Nichols bonus, if you assume that every player who is on the team is making 50K less than every player who is on the IR and that we'd cut or IR all the players who are starting once we bring back the guys on the IR. It answers the question of can we afford to keep Willly, but it doesn't answer the questions of if Willy's worth what he's being paid or if he's a good vet backup QB, which are the reasons you'd want to keep him.

For every player you have on the IR, you have another player who is being paid. The difference between the IR'd players salary and the playing players salary minus their bonuses (Signing, Games Played, Etc) is what we are saving on the SMS. Once the player comes off of the IR, you have to cut the guy who was playing or account for both salaries, IR the other player, or offer them a PR spot and bump on of the PR players if they take it. Denmark's entire salary and Nichols $100K bonus wouldn't have been on the books when they set up this years SMS. Those two moves alone eat up a ton of the contingency space. It's very possible that we could account for Willy's salary plus Nichols bonus, plus Denmark, plus the rest of the backups who are getting starting time and stay under our SMS limit. The real question should be... should we? The answer is yes if you think that Willy is a good vet QB who is worth top 6 in the league salary. It gets less obvious if you don't believe either that he's a good vet QB or he's worth his salary and I don't believe either are true.

It's not just about Nichol's $100K bonus, although I'm sure that it's not in the SMS budget as the Bombers would have expected that money would only be paid out if Willy was on the 6 game. It's also about paying Willy $150-$200K to hopefully sit on the bench for the rest of the season. That money could be better used elsewhere. I get the 'we need a good vet backup QB' argument, but I don't see Willy as a good vet backup QB. Personally, I'd rather go with Davis and the extra money. We've got about a week to make decisions on cutting vet players if we need to reduce the salaries to stay withing the SMS limit (And I think we're close). No one player is going to give us $150-200K of SMS space for half a season because no other player is getting paid 300-400K. That means dropping 2 vets to make it up. Macho Harris doesn't have much use now that Loffler's taken his spot. Hurl's being paid $120K to be a special teams player, but cutting him would hurt our NI depth. Neuf is expensive, can't stay healthy, but is on the IR so his salary is 'hidden', so not much advantage to getting rid of him. Any other suggestions?

Agreed, but full playing time bonuses could be anything from $100 per game to $100K if he starts more than X games or anywhere in between. I expect that at least some of his bonus money would have been paid out at the start of the season. Ed Tait http://www.bluebombers.com/2016/08/20/209750/ says: "Drew Willy has been a pro since Nichols grabbed the No. 1 QB chores from him, but the move – as inspired as it has been for the team – also creates a potential salary-cap squeeze for the Bombers. The club is paying Willy a QB1 rate, while Nichols has some bonuses in his contract that will max out if he keeps playing." - IMO that means that Nichols has more bonus money in his contract than Willy does, which would make sense as Nichols was the backup QB when he signed his contract and Willy was the undisputed starter. I still say that Willy's contract size plus how he's played this year makes him untradeable.

I just reread that article. It doesn't say how much of the salary is bonuses nor does it say that the contract is bonus laden.

This is the first time I've read the bolded part. Do you have a source? IIRC Willy's first contract was incentive based and his second was more guaranteed/less bonuses. A couple of weeks back Brown was talking on the radio about Willy having a $22K game check, which would mean $396K over 18 games and 15K of bonuses. How much of that was paid out at the beginning of TC and how much is playing bonus wasn't discussed.

Yup. Looked like Frederick was locking them down. I'd like to see him at DI instead of a LB this week.

Bowman against the Riders D seems like a lock to me.

Why would he want to go to the dumpster fire that is the Riders if he can make as much money and have as good a shot at starting elsewhere?

We won't be trading Willy this year. No one wants him at $411K, let alone give us a good player and take on his salary. We'll likely hold on to him for the rest of the season then ask him to take a pay cut to less than half what he's currently making. I'd rather sign Franklin and let Willy go, but I doubt management will see it that way.

Still less than Willy's making.

We should be able to get a starting QB in trade for Willy? SMH.