TrueBlue4ever

American running backs who hit 1,000 yards may be disposable. A Canadian RB who hits 1,500 (and 2,000 from scrimmage) much less so. And if he goes down, we have Another Canadian to step in as well as any American. As for Schoen, we still have Lawler, who is at least his equal production-wise. And many keep saying that Bailey would be a top 2 1,000 yard receiver on any other team, maybe he’ll finally get the chance to meet these fan expectations here if Schoen is gone.

Wait. You led the “This is the year fans will turn on Mike O’Shea, and if he doesn’t change his roster ways Wade Miller should sit him down and tell him his services are no longer needed” after a 15-3 season and losing by a blocked field goal in the Grey Cup, then started a whole thread about getting rid of Zach Collaros, and NOW you are expressing surprise about an entitled and spoiled fan base?

Which is why Atlanta is getting a third look. And why Houston is always mentioned.

We resigned Lawler to a 2 year deal in 2023 reported at the time to be worth $260,000 the first year and $300,000 this season. It has now been re-structured where the now reported $310,000 amount for this year is $285,000 with a $150,000 signing bonus. All numbers courtesy the Winnipeg Sun. So I would say yes, our own GM went there and met the ceiling of $300K for the top receiver when he re-signed last year.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Looks like my original response got me filtered and demerited all at the same time, gosh darn it all.

I’d go again, but it feels like piling on. Hey, any idea when Booch and TBurg get here?

If my dog had your face, I’d shave his butt and teach him to walk backwards.

Show me on the doll where Mike O’Shea hurt you.

Yep, Lawler plays on the offence.

Store open 10am-5pm Feb. 3 Buzz and Boomer visit the store 11am-2pm Autographs Kenny Lawler and Adam Bighill 10am-12pm Willie Jefferson and Tanner Cadwaller 1pm-3pm Winter jackets 25% off all day (excludes other discounts), in store offer only.

Were you thinking of Rita Moreno?

There is a whole Netflix documentary on this very thing called “Dude, where’s my jet?”

Worked in 2021.

Main Bomber store has been undergoing renovations, scheduled to re-open Feb. 1.

And some fans on a football forum will excuse away any ranking system that rates him highly as being fundamentally flawed, and tell you they know better than the coaches and that the top running game, second fewest sacks against, another great win-loss record and top ranked OL in the league all mean nothing because, results be damned, they know better then our staff paid to put the best product out there to win games and keep their jobs, based on their own eye test.

Jets are going nowhere in the playoffs if they can’t sort out the special teams. Injuries or not, a half season of futility should tell you that the system and/or the players used to implement it is broken.

Oops! Bad typing on my part. I blame my father. I inherited a condition called stubbiness.

Edmonton just hit 15 straight wins, and while that stat is always impressive regardless, I took a look at their opponents and they only played 4 playoff level teams on that stretch of 15. They beat the Rangers and Toronto, but they beat Philly before the Flyers went on their recent heater, beat the Kings who have been in free fall, and the rest are teams like Columbus, Chicago twice, Sharks, Ducks, Flames, Devils when they were outside the playoff line, Habs, Sens, Wongs and Kraken. Now you have to beat who you play, but maybe they are not as good as a 15 game heater suggests (just like they weren’t as bad as a 5-12-1 start suggested) but it seems like they have again been anointed as Cup favorites by the media based on beating up on weak competition. Let’s see how they do against the likes of the Canucks, Avs, Stars, Jets, Bruins Panthers and Canes, or even mid-range teams before bowing down to them.

If you told me the Jets would score 3 goals in 3 road games (plus an extra 8 minutes) and come away with a .500 record, I’d gladly take that. The all-star break can’t come soon enough, this team looks worn down and beaten up offensively.

Should we read anything into the fact that the club has added 6 receivers but only one running back to the roster in the off season?