2023/2024 Blue Bombers Off-Season Thread (BRADY’S BACK! DALTON’S BACK!)

[Geebrr]

If all the owners decide they don’t want to own teams the league will be in trouble - no doubt. 

[TrueBlue4ever]

15 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

You circumvent the cap, that's how. Right now, Zach is costing us roughly 10% of the cap & with Schoen going from a rookie cap to perhaps a $300,000 deal suddenly 15% of the cap is spent on two players rather than just one. Why do you think players like Ken Lawler are restructuring their deals? There's not enough money to go around. 

 

15 hours ago, Booch said:

How??...U and many are bemoaning right now its one of Schoen..or BO....Or cant pay Schoen in range of Lawler....but remove ZC salary as your Marquee exemption...and then it becomes a non issue and more than easily done...and no wages don't go up ...or have to....If you want to be dumb, and put yourself right back in that same situation and pay foolishly for one guy...and again cant keep a second guy...well thats your own stupidity

Players can only make what they are offered, and when they realize they wont get the stars and the moon, and this is their only meal ticket...they will accept the best offer

 

13 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

I don't get how you're equating a Marquis Player Rule to inflating an already tight salary cap. The MPR is outside the salary cap so it's a separate entity. One has nothing to do with the other. The salary cap can remain the same from one year to the next but adding the MPR suddenly opens up over $500,000 for the Bombers in the case of Zach Collaros. It won't inflate the salary cap per se but it gives teams that have what they consider an elite player more wiggle room to sign players inside the cap. 

This thinking is fundamentally flawed in that you aren’t projecting past the immediate change this year. We free up $600,000 by making Collaros a marquee player. Same difference if we increase the salary cap $600,000. Suddenly we have enough to give Schoen a $230,000 raise to 300K, Brady a $100,000 raise to 200K, maybe we would have added $20K to Wolitarsky because Canadians are a premium. Maybe Bailey goes up to $160K (if he got offered $140K last year). Maybe Bryant stays at last year’s salary rather than a reduction since we’d have the extra room. Etc etc.  That works fine for this year, but then next year when comes time for free agency, we are short cash again because we are already up against the “new” cap (or the 44 player cap as opposed to the 45 player cap if you want to insist that the marquee rule is totally different than a matching increase in cap space - it is not)

It is ridiculous to say GMs will stay within a budget and wages won’t increase. If the cap is $5 million GMs will spend that $5 million. If it jumps to $5.5 million the GMs en masse are not going to agree to keep spending to $5 million and not go any higher because “that’s our budget” to keep wages from climbing. That is called collusion and it was already tried in baseball to control salaries and they lost a lawsuit because of it. And if one GM like Kyle Walters decided to only spend to $5million to keep within his pre-set budget, I can guarantee you 8 other GMs would happily spend to $5.5 and take Brady, Dalton, Streveler, Kolankowski, Eli, and anyone else off our hands, and the fans here would have a fit if we said our excuse for not bidding was “but we are keeping wages from increasing irresponsibly, so give us credit for that”.  

The cap goes up $600,000 than Brady’s price probably jumps to $250K easily simply because the GMs have the extra cash, and someone will look at the Canadian RB who is a ratio breaker and who put up the best CFL season in a decade, and will say “if the top end price for an American RB was $170K last year, and this Canadian outperformed him by 50%, then a market re-set is in order, and we have the money to spend, so we will spend it”. So a $200K offer is easy to swallow, because hey an extra $500K in our budget. Then another team looking to help its ratio issue jumps in and a bidding war starts. Suddenly $250K doesn’t seem so implausible, because teams will spend what they have to get a top end player, and now we have a new established market price for running backs. If that sounds ridiculous, remember when receivers’ top end was maybe $225K, and Lawler getting $300K from Edmonton seemed outrageous. Then the Bombers matched that amount, and now we throw that out for Schoen as the accepted going rate. The market shifted because one team overpaid, but instead of correcting back to the previous level, a new top end has been established and is the accepted going rate.

If the cap jumps, it will become accepted that you pay $600,000 for two receivers, or you pay $200,000+ for an MOP running back, or $300K instead of $250K for a top end defender, or $150-180 K for a game-changing kicker like Medlock instead of $130K. Getting a bonus $600,000 this year will simply defer the problem of being up against the cap to next year and beyond, and every team’s profit margin suddenly shrinks by over $500,000 in a league where most teams are not running in the black if recent financial reports are to be believed. Unless you are prepared to add a player to the marquee list every year (and if you do that, then you might as well scrap the cap altogether right now), your one-time cap circumvention has not solved the problem at all for next year, you still won’t be able to  pay all your pending free agents come Feb. 2025, and team profits have shrunk across the board. 

Edited February 5 by TrueBlue4ever

[SpeedFlex27]

37 minutes ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

 

 

This thinking is fundamentally flawed in that you aren’t projecting past the immediate change this year. We free up $600,000 by making Collaros a marquee player. Same difference if we increase the salary cap $600,000. Suddenly we have enough to give Schoen a $230,000 raise to 300K, Brady a $100,000 raise to 200K, maybe we would have added $20K to Wolitarsky because Canadians are a premium. Maybe Bailey goes up to $160K (if he got offered $140K last year). Maybe Bryant stays at last year’s salary rather than a reduction since we’d have the extra room. Etc etc.  That works fine for this year, but then next year when comes time for free agency, we are short cash again because we are already up against the “new” cap (or the 45 player cap as opposed to the 46 player cap if you want to insist that the marquee rule is totally different than a matching increase in cap space- it is not)

It is ridiculous to say GMs will stay within a budget and wages won’t increase. If the cap is $5 million GMs will spend that $5 million. If it jumps to $5.5 million the GMs en masse are not going to agree to keep spending to $5 million and not go any higher because “that’s our budget” to keep wages from climbing. That is called collusion and it was already tried in baseball to control salaries and they lost a lawsuit because of it. And if one GM like Kyle Walters decided to only spend to $5million to keep within his pre-set budget, I can guarantee you 8 other GMs would happily spend to $5.5 and take Brady, Dalton, Streveler, Kolankowski, Eli, and anyone else off our hands, and the fans here would have a fit if we said our excuse for not bidding was “but we are keeping wages from increasing irresponsibly, so give us credit for that”.  

The cap goes up $600,000 than Brady’s price probably jumps to $250K easily simply because the GMs have the extra cash, and someone will look at the Canadian RB who is a ratio breaker and who put up the best CFL season in a decade, and will say “if the top end price for an American RB was $170K last year, and this Canadian outperformed him by 50%, then a market re-set is in order, and we have the money to spend, so we will spend it”. So a $200K offer is easy to swallow, because hey an extra $500K in our budget. Then another team looking to help its ratio issue jumps in and a bidding war starts. Suddenly $250K doesn’t seem so implausible, because teams will spend what they have to get a top end player, and now we have a new established market price for running backs. If that sounds ridiculous, remember when receivers’ top end was maybe $225K, and Lawler getting $300K from Edmonton seemed outrageous. Then the Bombers matched that amount, and now we throw that out for Schoen as the accepted going rate. The market shifted because one team overpaid, but instead of correcting back to the previous level, a new top end has been established and is the accepted going rate.

If the cap jumps, it will become accepted that you pay $600,000 for two receivers, or you pay $200,000+ for an MOP running back, or $300K instead of $250K for a top end defender, or $150-180 K for a game-changing kicker like Medlock instead of $130K. Getting a bonus $600,000 this year will simply defer the problem of being up against the cap to next year and beyond, and every team’s profit margin suddenly shrinks by over $500,000 in a league where most teams are not running in the black if recent financial reports are to be believed. Unless you are prepared to add a player to the marquee list every year (and if you do that, then you might as well scrap the cap altogether right now), your one-time cap circumvention has not solved the problem at all for next year, you still won’t be able to  pay all your pending free agents come Feb. 2025, and team profits have shrunk across the board. 

No, no, no, no. You & some here are saying that the universe will explode if we add a marquis player rule.  There will be a hard salary cap in place. One GM won't spend to $5.5 million if the cap is set at $5 million. All you'll get is ONE player per team not included in the cap. Teams will have some manoeuvering room to sign some of their star players that may leave for elsewhere or give them the financial room to sign a key free agent or three. Whatever they want to do. It won't be financial armageddon. As far as, "We tried this in the 90's", the CFL is a much more disciplined league now financially. We have better & more responsible  owners than we did thirty years ago. No Murray Pezim's or Nelson Skalbania's in today's group. Yes, we have some **** GM's like Chris Jones but again he still has the hard cap to deal with if he wants to go nuts signing free agents.

[TrueBlue4ever]

17 minutes ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

No, no, no, no. You & some here are saying that the universe will explode if we add a marquis player rule.  There will be a hard salary cap in place. One GM won't spend to $5.5 million if the cap is set at $5 million. All you'll get is ONE player per team not included in the cap. Teams will have some manoeuvering room to sign some of their star players that may leave for elsewhere or give them the financial room to sign a key free agent or three. Whatever they want to do. It won't be financial armageddon. As far as, "We tried this in the 90's", the CFL is a much more disciplined league now financially. We have better & more responsible  owners than we did thirty years ago. No Murray Pezim's or Nelson Skalbania's in today's group. Yes, we have some **** GM's like Chris Jones but again he still has the hard cap to deal with if he wants to go nuts signing free agents.

If the cap is $5 million for 45 players this year, and then $5 million for 44 players next year, then sure next year you will have an extra $600,000 for those 44 players with your marquee player rule removing that one salary. And teams will still spend to that $5 million for those 44 players next year. The problem then surfaces again in two years time when you need to give raises, you are at the $5 million cap for your 44 players, have already assigned the marquee exemption to a player, and there is no extra money for raises. Your marquee rule only defers the problem for one season, then you are back where you started. Your extra $600,000 is only a one season correction, it won’t give you an extra $600,000 every year. 
 

[SpeedFlex27]

2 hours ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

If the cap is $5 million for 45 players this year, and then $5 million for 44 players next year, then sure next year you will have an extra $600,000 for those 44 players with your marquee player rule removing that one salary. And teams will still spend to that $5 million for those 44 players next year. The problem then surfaces again in two years time when you need to give raises, you are at the $5 million cap for your 44 players, have already assigned the marquee exemption to a player, and there is no extra money for raises. Your marquee rule only defers the problem for one season, then you are back where you started. Your extra $600,000 is only a one season correction, it won’t give you an extra $600,000 every year. 
 

I don't agree. Where the Marquis Player Rul;e becomes a problem is in a non salary cap league as then the $600,000 you talked about can be used to up salaries as you said. In a hard cap era, the reality is any new money left over won't cause an inflationary explosion of increased salaries as there is a check in place to prevent it & there are penalties for going over the cap. And next season, the cap only goes up by $100,000.

[SpeedFlex27]

5 hours ago, Geebrr said:

It’s  the best group of ownership probably in my lifetime.

There are still lots of issues across the league. Remember Randy Amrosie told a Commons Committee in 2020 when he was trying to secure funding from the feds to have a season that the league was losing $20 million dollars a season pre pandemic as of 2019. I don't see any growth by the league financially or in the stands. The league is stagnant & looks lost with no real plan for growth. How long will these owners stay around if their team;s don't start turning a profit within a reasonable amount of time?

[Jesse]

3 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

I don't agree. Where the Marquis Player Rul;e becomes a problem is in a non salary cap league as then the $600,000 you talked about can be used to up salaries as you said. In a hard cap era, the reality is any new money left over won't cause an inflationary explosion of increased salaries as there is a check in place to prevent it & there are penalties for going over the cap. And next season, the cap only goes up by $100,000.

Everyone gets the extra money in their budget, so it doesn't help anyone sign their FA's. Everyone is still in a bidding war for those who want to go to FA. 

[TrueBlue4ever]

4 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

I don't agree. Where the Marquis Player Rul;e becomes a problem is in a non salary cap league as then the $600,000 you talked about can be used to up salaries as you said. In a hard cap era, the reality is any new money left over won't cause an inflationary explosion of increased salaries as there is a check in place to prevent it & there are penalties for going over the cap. And next season, the cap only goes up by $100,000.

Your financial logic makes no sense when you say there won’t be any increased salaries. 

Right now let’s say the cap is $5 million for all 45 players on your roster, which includes your top player let’s say at $500,000. Your total budget for player salaries is $5 million. If you add the marquee player rule, then you have $5 million now for 44 players, who currently cost you $4.5 million, plus your $500K marquee. Teams are not going to continue to spend only up to $4.5 million for their 44 player roster, they are going to spend the “extra” $500K to afford the Schoens and Oliveiras and Betts of the league. Any team that puts in a self-imposed cap of $4.5 million instead of spending to $5 million will be left behind at free agency time and be forced excoriated by their fan base. All the while the market is re-set because someone will pay an extra $50K for Schoen or an Oliveira or a Betts because they now have that extra cash, so a $300,000 ceiling for a receiver jumps to $350,000, running back jumps to $250,000, and Canadian linebacker star or front line defensive player jumps to $300,000.

But you still have to account for your marquee player in your salary budget. So even if the cap is frozen at $5 million, your salary budget will jump to $5.5 million, because you still have to pay the marquee player, He won’t count against the cap, but he will count against your total salaries paid out. Suddenly every team’s salary expenses budget has jumped 10%. And maybe with QB likely being the cap exempt spot, those salaries go back up to $750,000 since that was where the market was set before.

And the following year, if the cap stays frozen, you have the same $5 million available to spend on your 44 players that you spent on them this year, and you have already assigned your marquee salary to the 45th, so next year you have the same problem you have now of having no extra money to offer the next wave of players who want increases, because you are already up against the cap. This is not the NHL where you sign players to longer contracts and have to stay below the ceiling to fit in future salaries while paying out your current players. The CFL is the home of the one year contract (and the terminated without consequence contract), so it is harder to retain your core when other teams can outbid you for that one big free agent who wants a raise and would throw your current salary structure out of whack with the jump they deserve, because it forces cuts elsewhere. The marquee player rule will not solve that dilemma, it will just increase the salary budget by the amount of the marquee contract, while the rest of the 44 man roster will adjust upwards to fill up the total cap space. If my analysis (or JBR’s or Jesse’s) is wrong, please explain it to me. If Speed’s or Booch’s is incorrect, maybe someone else give it a shot explaining it to them. 

Edited February 5 by TrueBlue4ever

[Booch]

7 hours ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

If the cap is $5 million for 45 players this year, and then $5 million for 44 players next year, then sure next year you will have an extra $600,000 for those 44 players with your marquee player rule removing that one salary. And teams will still spend to that $5 million for those 44 players next year. The problem then surfaces again in two years time when you need to give raises, you are at the $5 million cap for your 44 players, have already assigned the marquee exemption to a player, and there is no extra money for raises. Your marquee rule only defers the problem for one season, then you are back where you started. Your extra $600,000 is only a one season correction, it won’t give you an extra $600,000 every year. 
 

you also dont factor in player attrition thru career ending injury...age out...play decline...etc....its an ever evolving entity.

I see your point but, but your thinking is also maintaining the current roster set up indefinately...which wont happen, so onus is on the G.M's to not get caught up spending like drunken sailors like decades past...where they almost bankrupt's everyone....Players can only make what a G.M is gonna pay, or they won't play.....the smart G.M's will construct a roster the smart way...spreading it around effectively, and work within the constrains of the SMS and having an excluded Marquis player...the dumb ones...Like Jones will do like he has...splurged on 1 guy...maybe two...and well you see what happens there, compared to whats happened here...Walters has price constriants for positions and sticks to them, and if yiuo dont fit..aka Harris...Casey Sayles...Stove...BO....I could go on...well you are sent packing....

[17to85]

4 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

I don't agree

But you're wrong... exempting one player is only a 1 year fix and then it's right back to the same spot.

[TrueBlue4ever]

1 hour ago, Booch said:

you also dont factor in player attrition thru career ending injury...age out...play decline...etc....its an ever evolving entity.

I see your point but, but your thinking is also maintaining the current roster set up indefinately...which wont happen, so onus is on the G.M's to not get caught up spending like drunken sailors like decades past...where they almost bankrupt's everyone....Players can only make what a G.M is gonna pay, or they won't play.....the smart G.M's will construct a roster the smart way...spreading it around effectively, and work within the constrains of the SMS and having an excluded Marquis player...the dumb ones...Like Jones will do like he has...splurged on 1 guy...maybe two...and well you see what happens there, compared to whats happened here...Walters has price constriants for positions and sticks to them, and if yiuo dont fit..aka Harris...Casey Sayles...Stove...BO....I could go on...well you are sent packing....

Agree that smart roster building is the way to go, but it only takes one GM to re-set the market (like Jones did with Lawler 2 years ago - $300K is now the accepted ceiling), and all GMs, including Walters, have to work with that standard going forward or risk losing their top guys like Schoen. Add more money available equally for all teams and all that happens is the ceiling for the top guys will go up as the bidding wars increase. A marquee player rule will not change that reality. And every club, including the Bombers, will overpay depending on their current state (think Travis Bond when we needed to climb out of our hole). 

Edited February 5 by TrueBlue4ever

[Booch]

8 minutes ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

Agree that smart roster building is the way to go, but it only takes one GM to re-set the market (like Jones did with Lawler 2 years ago - $300K is now the accepted ceiling), and all GMs, including Walters, have to work with that standard going forward or risk losing their top guys like Schoen. Add more money available equally for all teams and all that happens is the ceiling for the top guys will go up as the bidding wars increase. A marquee player rule will not change that reality. And every club, including the Bombers, will overpay depending on their current state (think Travis Bond when we needed to climb out of our hole). 

yup...One G.M can thro a wrench in things, but if he the only one...he cant sign all the guys, so the others will have to take whats offered..it will re-balance...Receiver already is rebalancing....and will be interesting to see what high end guys top out at

[bigg jay]

13 minutes ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

Agree that smart roster building is the way to go, but it only takes one GM to re-set the market (like Jones did with Lawler 2 years ago - $300K is now the accepted ceiling), and all GMs, including Walters, have to work with that standard going forward or risk losing their top guys like Schoen. Add more money available equally for all teams and all that happens is the ceiling for the top guys will go up as the bidding wars increase. A marquee player rule will not change that reality. And every club, including the Bombers, will overpay depending on their current state (think Travis Bond when we needed to climb out of our hole). 

Is it accepted though?  Jones keeps signing receivers to that number (first Lawler and then Lewis) but no other GM has gone there.  Lawler is making $250K but after that nobody was close to that mark (Tim White had the highest max at 220k).  Maybe it's different this year but Jones "reset" in 2022 did not make 2023 salaries follow suit.

[Booch]

6 minutes ago, bigg jay said:

Is it accepted though?  Jones keeps signing receivers to that number (first Lawler and then Lewis) but no other GM has gone there.  Lawler is making $250K but after that nobody was close to that mark (Tim White had the highest max at 220k).  Maybe it's different this year but Jones "reset" in 2022 did not make 2023 salaries follow suit.

thats soley my point...One stupid GM wont upset the apple cart....nobody else followed suit...same with dumbdumb in Regina...big overpay for Lanier...yet better players in that position made significantly less....and he goes and does it again....Idiot

[bigg jay]

1 minute ago, Booch said:

thats soley my point...One stupid GM wont upset the apple cart....nobody else followed suit...same with dumbdumb in Regina...big overpay for Lanier...yet better players in that position made significantly less....and he goes and does it again....Idiot

And their respective records back-up their smarts.    If I'm another GM, I'm not necessarily inclined to follow their lead.

[Booch]

Just now, bigg jay said:

And their respective records back-up their smarts.    If I'm another GM, I'm not necessarily inclined to follow their lead.

nope....but I do hope they continue as is hahahaha

[3rdand1.5]

Is it possible to have the marquee player talk etc. put into it's own topic. I get we go off topic at times but it's kinda overtaken the actual Blue Bomber talk...

[Stickem]

14 minutes ago, 3rdand1.5 said:

Is it possible to have the marquee player talk etc. put into it's own topic. I get we go off topic at times but it's kinda overtaken the actual Blue Bomber talk...

very true....the tampering has opened and not even a whisper about us and where we're headed...tampering wise that is....somebody somewhere must have picked up something ....besides the Betts hype wagon

Edited February 5 by Stickem

[JuranBoldenRules]

9 hours ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

If the cap is $5 million for 45 players this year, and then $5 million for 44 players next year, then sure next year you will have an extra $600,000 for those 44 players with your marquee player rule removing that one salary. And teams will still spend to that $5 million for those 44 players next year. The problem then surfaces again in two years time when you need to give raises, you are at the $5 million cap for your 44 players, have already assigned the marquee exemption to a player, and there is no extra money for raises. Your marquee rule only defers the problem for one season, then you are back where you started. Your extra $600,000 is only a one season correction, it won’t give you an extra $600,000 every year. 
 

You're missing the point that every time the NFL and NHL have increased their cap number the teams have just left that amount as open space.  NFL players still make $70,000 like it's 1992.  But they have so much cap space.

12 hours ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

If the salary cap goes up $100,000 a year & you have one player per team who is a Marquis player geting paid outside the cap how is that going to make everyone want $25,000 more as per your example? The salary cap isn't drastically going up but money is being circumvented to help create financial flexibility on the roster. To retain top end players like Dalton Schoen while paying one elite  player like a Zach Collaros on every team not included in the cap. 

I can tell you are not an accountant LOL.

The same issues remain for teams trying to retain or attract top level players.  Those players set their price.  Sure a few of them might end up without dance partners in the end.  The agents know how much money teams have to spend.  When it comes down to it and a team is trying to pry a guy off his current team, what is the attraction?  Money.  Current team steps up to keep the guy or lets him walk.  Repeat this with 5-10 free agents per team per year.  And your "extra" cap space is kaput.  It's just normal now.  But the QB doesn't count so you've created a market there where they highest willing bidder will get the guy.  So maybe a guy like Brown gets $600,000 on this deal so someone blows up the market to make sure they get him.  This is what the 90s and 2000s were like.  We've lived it.  The revenue can't sustain it.

Every single time the cap goes up in either hard capped (NFL, MLB with CBT luxury tax) or soft cap leagues (like CFL, NFL,NBA) the average salaries go up to meet that number.  Every single time.  That's why some guys are called value if they signed long-term 3 cap increment raises ago.  Like how Schiefele was on his current deal.

Edited February 5 by JuranBoldenRules

[Brandon]

Things could be worse, imagine if Vince McMahon would of purchased the CFL back when he wanted.

I wish the federal government would of gave the league some money. They can bail out corrupt companies like Air Canada for which the execs pocketed tens of millions of dollars but they can't throw some money to the CFL?

[WinnipegGordo]

 

[Arnold_Palmer]

Just now, WinnipegGordo said:

 

A blessing in disguise. Any team signing him to a big deal will be disappointed. 

[Noeller]

great news, re: Houston! I still have hopes for Tyrell Ford

Edited February 5 by Noeller

[Booch]

Just now, Noeller said:

great news, re: Houston! I still have hopes for Tyrell Parker...

not counting new recruits, but with holdovers we have, Parker is our best all-around DB next to Nichols and look forward to even more progression from him...Glad we are moving on from Houston...Desmond Lawrence should have been in ahead of him....is he still under contract?

[Noeller]

4 minutes ago, Booch said:

not counting new recruits, but with holdovers we have, Parker is our best all-around DB next to Nichols and look forward to even more progression from him...Glad we are moving on from Houston...Desmond Lawrence should have been in ahead of him....is he still under contract?

sorry, I meant Ford.... brain fart.