GCn20

I like Sankey and think he works hard, but I have to question his impact when teams are rushing for those kind of numbers against him. He is a great tackler, no doubt about it, but his ability to anticipate the play and plug the gap is obviously lacking.

Dean was a much better LBer than Sankey imo. Honestly, if you look at the rush yards the Riders have given up for most of the season there is nothing there telling me that any team is particularly concerned about Sankey's presence in the middle. High tackle numbers for sure, but how many of those tackles are coming after the RB is 7-8 yards downfield. I always felt that tackle numbers for MLB is an over rated stat, sometimes it just shows that teams are willing to run right at you especially when they are running for 150 yds a game. Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating for Chris Jones way to build a lineup. Just saying he filled his locker room with all kinds of bad attitude and his plan was to salvage what he could and cut the others adrift. Craig Dickenson didn't get the memo about releasing the bad apples.

The difference is that Jones is more than willing to just release whoever he needs to no matter where they are playing. If they cost the team by being stupid Jones cuts them and moves on. Not saying that is the best approach either, but it is the reason that Jones is more willing than others to take on head cases and crap attitudes.

Riders may have to throw stupid money around this offseason like BC did and go with a cheap QB to make it work.

I think you take a lot of their players out of that toxicity and show them a character built dressing room you might see a difference in their character with the exception of some guys that have been there too long to salvage. I can't imagine guys like Nick Marshall, Duke Williams, etc ever really getting the whole FIFO concept.

7 games. That is the number of times that the Riders faced the other team's starting QB in 2019. I would imagine that most teams would have a pretty impressive record if they had the same kind of luck with the opposition roster. Now I can hear everyone in Riderland saying but Fajardo was our backup...nope, not the same thing...he took over the reigns a half minute into game 1 and took every offensive first team rep after that. In those 7 games, 3 of them were against the 2 worst teams in the league. The RIders record in those 7 games....4-3. Smoke and mirrors.

Yes, your coaching leaves a lot to be desired for sure. I can agree that Ferland has an upside of being serviceable. Yes, the RIders went 6-2 from LD onward, but it was an ugly, wart filled 6-2. Only 2 of those wins came against teams fielding their starting QB. Fajardo did manage to outduel CFL legends like Chad Kilgore, Jermaine Franklin, and Danny O'Brien but I don't suppose that is saying much. In fact, looking back over the entire season of 2019, the Riders only had 4 victories that came against teams starting their starting QB. Lots of lipstick on the pig that season.

If they end the season on PR they are free agents anyway, so not sure what difference that would make.

Ferland is the best of a bad lot. It's not saying much though. If you must pick the best smelling turd I guess he might be the one. He doesn't start on any other CFL team and really has a low rent upside as a starter imo. Johnson got turnstiled a ton more than Ferland but Ferland had his hold my beer moments when you though the Rider OL couldn't get more incompetent. For some reason though you guys are all giving him a free pass. Must be his birth certificate. Also, the cracks were there in 2019 as well. The OL was already inconsistent and began trending downwards in a big way in the 2nd half of the year. The RIders and Cody Fajardo looked like world beaters in the first half of the year but really were average in the 2nd half and winning very ugly, when they did win. Fajardo was very pedestrian in the 2nd half of the season. Smoke and mirrors. We've been saying it over here for two and a half years now. I know that fan bases often have the blinders on when it comes to chinks in the armor of their own team, but we were talking about many of the same issues you saw get downright ugly this season, in the 2nd half of 2019. History has proven us right in that regard.

Honestly, they ran it back week after week with the 3 matadors in the middle and two IMP OL that were just brutal as well. Ferland, Bandy, and Johnson are not CFL calibre starters, may not even be CFL calibre players period. Every week they trotted out their trio and then looked befuddled when every single team turnstiled them. Game 9 before they finally cut ties with Rodgers who was getting beat just about every play, and they never did move on from the local trio of awful in the middle....just sign a damn IMP OL to stick in the middle to help.

That's because Jones filled your locker room with crap attitude players, because Jones is pretty skilled at handling those type of players and can generally keep them in line. If not, Jones has no issues with roster churn if it doesn't work out. However, guys like Gainey, Marshall, Purifoy, Duke, AC Leonard, Marino and the list goes on....poisoned that locker room to the point that the Riders might as well release everyone and start from scratch. Then your management picks Mr. Ferley, probably one of the wishy washiest HC choices ever, to try and handle an insane asylum. Made no sense then, makes no sense now....but I guess JOD was clearly over his head as well because EVERYONE outside the big rectangle knew that your OL was an absolute disaster before this season even started, hell it was a disaster last year and wasn't particularly good in the past few years....but hey let's keep drafting receivers and dbs in the 1st round and hope that scrubs like Bandy, Johnson, and Ferland are ready for primetime because they come from the big rectangle. Makes no sense. You guys don't honestly have a single OL good enough to make our PR.

Blows my mind that for most of the season they started more NATs than necessary, but never even once gave a thought to dressing 3 IMPs on the OL. Just terrible coaching and management.

Probably not. However, if we develop him and he goes on to start elsewhere it's still good for us. Anytime a good starter is added in this league everyone benefits as it allows for crap QBs to be turfed/demoted.

I am deeply saddened to hear that the Riders are moving on from Fajardo.

Also, just his presence alone changes the way an offence schemes against us. He is one of the big reasons our D still has the fewest ppg surrendered. He creates nightmares for OCs around the league and the QBs simply are in chuck and duck mode and that takes sacks away from him. Our D has been bombarded by injuries all year for sure.

Where did the 300k up front number come from? I can't seem to find that report.

Me too. Mainly because I want Calgary's games to mean something so that they dress their starters and hammer the RIders the next two games, Secondly, I don't want either team having the opportunity to rest players.

I suppose you are right if he is indeed trolling. However, he just might be that dumb. It really is a toss up. I say that because he makes insane statements like that to his fellow Rider fan brethren too.

I see no reason why he couldn't unless he starts getting banged up.

Can't be sure but that other guy is also Migs imo. He has been known to have multiple accounts on forums before so that it creates the illusion that other members are agreeing with his absurdity. If I were a betting man I would wager that Cereal Killer and Section 139 at Riderfans are never logged in at the same time.

Not sure but I would imagine that ZC used a lot of our up front money leverage that we had.

Some might. It's tough living on PR money. At this time of year our focus is not on coaching up our PR guys either as we fine tune for the playoffs. I believe we have seen guys released late season from the PR show up in TC the next year on a few occasions before.

They have, we have actually....many times. The SMS year runs to Jan. 2 I believe each year. Anytime you see big signings of extensions late in the season, or right up to January you are seeing teams looking to spend unused cap before the SMS deadline. As a general rule, unless teams really get decimated by long term injuries this amount is only a couple hundred thousand max but all teams try to use up current cap to offset future cap.

It is all when the money is actually paid. If we signed Collaros to a 3 year 550k contract but paid him 200k up front as a signing bonus his future cap hit is 200k less because of what we paid now. I would imagine we paid him every dollar we could to the SMS limit as an up front signing bonus with that money counting against this year's cap. Given the amount of guys we have had do full terms on the 6 game that signing bonus was likely pretty substantial and would reduce his AAV in the next 3 years.

End of the regular season. I would think that these 5 guys were definitely not going to see the field this year so we sent them home. Wouldn't suprise me to see some of them back in camp next year.