TBURGESS

1 less NI per team = the 9 worst NI's not getting to play pro football in Canada. The CFL has reduced the number of NI starters in the past, and it didn't stop folks from watching. Reducing the starters by 1 wouldn't stop (m)any folks from watching. I've never heard anyone say... 'If they don't start 7 NI's, I'm not watching any more'. Personally, I think they should have reduced the number of NI starters by 1 when Ottawa came back into the league.

I'd be shocked, but I'd like to see it.

If it's just new contracts, then it wouldn't be a breach. With the number of players being re-signed, it would still effect a large percentage of the league.

I don't understand how this 'don't pay offseason bonuses' is legal. Players have contracts that say they will receive X dollars on Y date. Wouldn't not paying the contractual obligation put the CFL and the teams in breach of contract?

You want to talk Walters? OK, I'll go there, but that's not where I was going before this post. Walters MO in the past revolved around working the FA market big time, bringing in experienced guys and hoping that our scouts could fill in the blanks. This year he's gotten rid of a bunch of experienced guys and hasn't done much in the FA market. I hope the scouts can actually fill in the blanks this year. Walters biggest get this year was Bighill. No problem at all with that. We paid him big. We found him more money outside the SMS. All in all, good work. Goosen is one of our biggest losses, which isn't on Walters. He also extended a couple of good players. So far. So good. Losing Chungh wouldn't have been as big a deal if we hadn't already lost Goosen, but changing out 2 all star, NI OL at the same time is a big deal. Complaining that Chungh's camp knew that his value went up was sour grapes IMO, but Walters stuck to his 'number' and let Chungh walk. He stuck to his 'number' and let JSK walk. He stuck to his 'number' and let Loffler (A good decision IMO) walk. He also let Randle go, which I personally don't agree with. It remains to be seen if the new cheaper starters promoted from with in work out. Jefferson's a great DE. Rose can play although 3 teams in 3 years is a bit of a red flag. I'm on the record saying I'd have used the SMS room differently and I stick to my opinion. Making offers isn't Walters job. Signing players is. Other teams seem to value most of the FA's that we wanted more than we do. Is Walters 'number' the right one to get us the top players? It doesn't look like it is. I don't see us fixing the problems that we knew we had going into FA. I don't see us replacing the guys we lost to FA with FA's. I'd give Walters a C- so far in this year's FA game. That's hardly hating everything he does.

It's about the net, not about any individual players salary. Not surprising that folks around here want to make it about JSK's salary as he's probably the only one on the list where we won't get any SMS relief. No 17. It's not about Walters. I didn't even mention him. It's about the excuse that we don't have SMS money to sign players. We choose not to go over what we decide is enough money for each individual player. If we really spent all our SMS money then we wouldn't be making a big offer to Walker.

Loffler and JSK were the only 2 players on the list who were on their first contract IIRC. I doubt either guy was getting league minimum. We may still get some SMS relief depending on who we replace them with. It's not a 1 to 1 correspondence. If we replace them with someone already on the team, then we can replace those guys with rookies to get an SMS benefit.

I doubt we offered Walker the same as Toronto did or else he'd have signed with us.

It's not about how much each player makes. It's about how much SMS relief we got in total. Another reason we have SMS room is the QB situation. When Team A pays their QB 750K and we pay our QB 450K, then we have 300K more to spend on the rest of the team than team A. Team A shouldn't be able to outbid us on players we want.

SMS is an excuse. We have as much money to spend as everyone else. As it currently stands, Randle, Leggett, Wild, Dressler, Durant (70K), Fogg, Lankford, Loffler, Chungh, Goosen, Nevis, Okpaulogo, and JSK's, salaries are all off the books. Bighill got a raise, and we signed Jefferson who took Oko's salary plus more, Rose is likely cheaper than Fogg. Unless we were over last year, we should have a ton of bucks available to spend.

We've shown that we can lose good players like Calgary does. The key to winning though, is to replace those players with as good if not better players like Calgary does.

Loffler to Montreal. 2 years.

Hope it's a FA or Loffler. Jones and Hecht don't impress me at all. Big time drop from Loffler IMO.

Whose the 1st NI on D?

$250K is Chungh's market rate, assuming that's what BC paid him.

Sure it comes at a price. Blowing through the entire cap space to get the best players is the goal, not a bad thing.

Asked and answered. You'd rather start a rookie or an extra import OL and find yet another starting NI somewhere else? Think that's any cheaper or easier?

BC's been signing impact players all day. They've got less cap space than we do.

I'm telling you, without knowing what the real numbers are and the rest of the SMS for both teams, no one can possibly answer that question with any degree of accuracy. Lets say twitter is right. BC offered $250K and we offered $200K. I'd have at least matched the Lions number, maybe 5K more. I'd rather have Chungh than Jefferson at $200+K.

As it sits, I'd say we've got the fourth best QB in the West. Reilly, BLM and Harris are all better. Luckily, it takes more than just a good QB to win championships.

It's a specific question without a specific answer because neither of us know what the two offers were. We don't know if BC offered more or less than we did although I assume it was more. We don't know how much was up front. We don't even know if money was the deciding factor. I'm on record as saying I'd have 'overpaid' a young NI all star to keep him and I stick by that assessment. As for Demski... I'm happy we don't have to replace another NI starter but I hope we didn't give him much of a salary bump as he was already being over paid for his contributions IMO.

That would be a good signing, but I think it would cost more than $150K.

They are looking like today's Biggest Losers.

We need a couple of new NI starters, not Willie Jefferson.

Loffler... Not over paying him, but I'd rather have JSK @ $145K than Jefferson @ $200+K and use the extra to 'overpay' Chungh.