GCn20

I think when it comes to retention of players the GM gets too much credit. Culture, coaching, and how players are treated in general by the organization play bigger factors imo. That being said, Walters has done a great job as well.

Any team employing Harris is going to base their offence around him. It's a no brainer and a pretty obvious formula for success no matter what the Lapo detractors are trying to sell here. The proof is in the pudding. Grey Cup Champs!!

Janarion is a key signing. Whenever you can get a returner as capable as he is of flipping the field it is a significant factor in a teams W/L column. I always felt that KRs never get enough credit for their contributions to team success.

What a steaming pile of turd the Riders current D front 7 is compared to 2019. Unless O'Day is going on a shopping spree the Riders D is going to get shredded. You subtract Judge, SolE, Hughes, and Evans from that front 7 and that's 2 solid NAT starters and two All star calibre IMPs out of the meat of your defence. Good luck replacing that especially when the reason that Hughes and SolE were released is because you had to shop the downslope of players careers because your scouting is terrible. I know the Rider fans feel like they have a Grey Cup contender but I look at that defence and OL and all I see is last place in the West. I'm not even going to get into other reasons such as Fajardo being likely to significantly cool down now that defences know his tendencies.

I didn't even know McAlister was back. He's a stud.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this in any thread but according to 3DN, and Burnham himself, the Bombers went hard and heavy after him and things got interesting before BC smartened up and gave him the money he wanted. Seems to me we might be players in FA after all.

Colin you just outed yourself as a geezer...lol. You are right though...

Come to Winnipeg on the cheap for a Grey Cup Almondo!!

This is a class move by the Bombers. It frees up Speller to potentially find himself a fit before FA hits and the shiny baubles start mesmerizing the eyes of the GMs around the league. There was little doubt we were going to be unable to keep the entire crew of NI OL around and Speller deserves a chance to play. At the same time we got him to go East instead of to a divisional rival, and some of our division rivals are hurting really bad for NI OL.

Fajardo doesn't suck....but he's no 500k guy. Defences figured him out after Labor Day last year, and he did have an excellent defence too. The Riders D won them more games last year than their O did.

Cody Fajardo is Mike Reilly in mentality only. Mike is far more accurate.

Nichols was an average QB on a team that only needed average QB play. He did his job for us and there is no need to crap on him. Fajardo is a one trick pony and was figured out in the last 3rd of the season where his production dropped off because teams had film and game experience against him. Did he do a fantastic job bailing out the RIders last year....sure did....far exceeded expectations. However, teams now know how to contain him and how to force him to make mistakes. He will have a much tougher season this season.....that and somehow the RIder OL has gotten even worse. If I were a betting man I would bet Jon Jennings v2.0 over Bo Levi v2.0 simply because he threw more 50/50 balls than any QB I've seen in a long time. That kind of gunslinging is unsustainable.

Why cancel it? Still umpteen thousands of reasons to go through with it.

Whether Lucky is back will be highly dependent on whether Grant re-ups or not I think. Both are very similar guys, but we need one of them back. Neither will command big dollars and will be good value for the money because of their ST skills.

That's true. I'm going to need something in my back pocket for when she comes to the realization I was mistaken.

Exactly. If we do not have Harris to bear the brunt of the work who is to say we don't heavily pursue a couple stud receivers, or go for broke on a Trevor Harris etc. To say we would have no offence without him is suggesting we would stay static without him. We wouldn't have done that. That is not an effort to diminish his value to us, it was enormous, but getting 25 touches a game between pass and rush really upped his stats too. Lapo gambled that Harris could handle the load and he did, and it led to a Grey Cup but I don't believe for one second that if Harris were to leave tomorrow that we wouldn't reload. It would be fantastic to have him back at the right price but if we can't do it then we take that money and find another way to generate offence.

Yea....yea....worst part is I got into a scrap with the wife about this the other day. She's a big Trudeau fan. Now I have to go home today and admit defeat.

What does his time before Winnipeg have to do with the argument. Clue...NOTHING. I totally agree he carried our offence the past several seasons but I disagree with the premise that we would not have upgraded our lineup elsewhere if we didn't have Harris. That makes the statement that we would have had no offence without him a straw man argument. In theory it is correct, but you would have to be pretty naive to think that we would not have loaded up elsewhere if we had to do so.

I would like to make a full retraction on saying JT was in Costa Rica. I just went to look it up so I could post a link and realized the article I was referring to was dated Jan3/2020. My bad and my apologies to JT. However, no apologies to the Ashtons.

I know Steve and Niki personally and you are absolutely bang on with your assessment. Steve ran a tab at my business in Thompson and then got ignorant when the bill came. He thought it should be comped....lol. Yep. Unbelievable that the mainstream media barely even touched on this.

Justin spent the Christmas break on vacation in Costa RIca.,

That's a bit of a straw man argument. Our offence ran through Harris because he was here and Lapo knew to use him for the work horse he is. There is more than one way to generate offence and without Harris we would definitely have to change things up, but we could certainly do that if we had to do it. Our offence over the past several years has not been outstanding, it's consistently been average. It's hard to say that without Harris we would have been worse because that would assume we would have done nothing else to up our offensive production. I agree with the caveat that Harris has to come in at a reasonable salary.....and by reasonable all I am implying is that he take the same level shave as Willie J, Collaros and others have taken.

Maybe...hope so...

A good question for Justin Trudeau and Niki Ashton as well.

I am glad I don't live in the USA. One side fixes elections and the other invokes riots. What a time we live in....but at least Trump or Biden didn't go to Costa Rica for Christmas.