Colin Unger

I believe Zach reworked his deal.

This reminds me of how people fought in world world 2. They would battle it out during the day and then call a timeout so everyone could sleep and then wake up and do it all over again.

As a player on the field his age isn't a big issue.. It's just that injuries can start to happen more frequently as players age.

They still gave up fewer passing yards than we did and led the league in pass knockdowns.

Is it safe to assume Montreal was the team which was rebuffed despite offering 30k more for Fenner?

Perhaps they did. Dressler was already on a lower salary. We have a team filled with guys who want to be here and took less than top dollar to stay here. It would be really hard for any of these guys to accept giving Westerman 200k when there's very few teams in this league willing to do so. He left because his desire for top dollar outweighed his desire to continue playing here. Ditto for Heath. So you move on and replace them. We got a different Canadian starter in Demski who wants to be here for much less and we have two top shelf american rush ends. I don't see this being any kind of an issue. When you look at the amount of talent this team has from top to bottom it hasn't come from paying athletes absolute top dollar. If you want top dollar you can go and play for the black hole that is the Montreal Alouettes. The thing about the CFL is that we don't know what many of the players are making. However, I can only imagine that we have players who are making more money than they did last year and the worthy additions of Bowman and Durant didn't come for free.

You're making assumptions that other players didn't get any raises. You can be that Winnipeg is viewing it the cost with Westerman in the cap and the cost without Westerman in the cap. 200k is a lot of money for an aging player who had a season ending injury last season. Signing him would have cost more than both Fogg and Clarke above rookies and Clarke and Fogg give the team much needed depth. There's also the opportunity that not all the veteran DB's we have under contract will make the team. Perhaps if you take Gaitor, Clark, and Fogg they will battle it out and only two of them make the team.

Westerman wants 200k per year though.. That's what 140k above a replacement level player. So when you have guys that make like 140k that's 70k above replacement level. So for one 200k player you need to replace two guys making 140k with league minimum players.

But who are you willing to subtract in order to pay for that easing? Fenner and Bowman?

The only problem is that this assumed Chung and Goosen will be healthy all year. We definitely need to draft another offensive lineman in the first round IMO.

If things don't work out on the offensive line we can still look at starting Corney/Faith on the defensive line. But i don't think it will come to that as I have faith in Couture if Nuefeld gets injured.

We will probably cut our major penalties in half without Westerman. I like Jackson Jeffcoat.

On what planet? I was expecting we had to pay a lot more.

Nice.. Good price for such a talent. I would imagine Heath wanted a lot more for doing a lot less.

Perhaps Ed Hervey wants to blow this team up. I wouldn't be surprised if Fenner was paid north of 150k. But who knows how much money Heath wanted.

I wonder how much more Heath wanted....

Fenner is exactly the kind of guy i was looking for. Somebody who can help replace Heath but also can fill in for Leggett if he gets injured.

I would like us to bring in a veteran as well but maybe not the highest price guy. Wait a couple days and if there's someone out there still who could help us then go after them. There's zero doubt in my mind that Santos-Knox would be a significant upgrade over Sam Hurl though. He's got a year under his belt and he's a natural middle linebacker. I would sooner spend on defensive backs and canadians.

We need at least one more solid DB IMO. We need a defensive halfback who can start and also potentially play SAM if Leggett continues to struggle with the injury bug. I doubt that Gaitor is at or near league minimum but still much cheaper than Heath who may be looking to be the highest paid DB in the league.

Personally I'd rather have two very solid DB's than one TJ Heath at this point. We had the all-stars we had the front end talent but your secondary has to play as a unit and it is only as strong as the weakest link.

True. But right now we are one Trent Corney injury away from having to play Faith as a nearly every down player. We need more depth there IMO.

I still would like to have a proven veteran National defensive lineman on the roster. I imagine we will sign somebody who is less expensive and younger than Westerman. Zach Evans would be high on my list.

This is why its better for players to have bonuses before free-agency starts.

I wonder how much the signing of Bowman impacted pending free-agent receivers. Perhaps Winnipeg was seen as an reason to hit free-agency but they may have informed certain agents that they are no longer going to be going after top receivers in free-agency.

I think role may have played into this and having to be on the same team as Duron Carter may have been a deterrent as well