TrueBlue4ever

Just a reminder that the Grey Cup is in B.C. in a dome this year. Cold weather won’t be a reason for reduced QB performance in the final this year. 

Wow. An actual insider who names his sources. Put him on the payroll!

Wow. An actual insider who names his sources. Put him on the payroll!

The exact same argument can be made for paying Schoen big dollars. His cap hit would hamstring us even more than Brady in terms of not getting other pieces. Brady’s increase is $115,000 over his last contract. Schoen could be as much as $230,000. And replacing an elite Canadian who put up 1,500 yards, even as a running back, may not be that much easier than replacing a starting American receiver. We already have one under contract in Lawler. 

Impossible to truly know if other backs could match Brady’s numbers, but I will offer two things:
1. If we were debating 1,200 yards vs 1,150 or even 1,000 I might buy that. But 1,500 yards is rarified air (as is 2,000 yards from scrimmage) and I think people being irked about Brady’s tweet fuelled a lot of downgrading about how good his year was. 
2. The only real fair comparable if we want to say anyone could match Brady’s numbers with this o-line is to look at the last guy who played behind this o-line. Andrew Harris never put up the numbers Brady did last year, and people want him on our Ring of Honour. Put me in the camp that says Brady, especially as a Canadian ratio-breaker, would not have been easily replaced. 

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?

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. 

That was cold blooded. UNITY! Hahahaa
Wow! Every one getting their licks in. 
 
seriously though. Desjarlais was a hard loss last year. This is just funny. Get that money yoshi. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Well put, Booch. Nailed it. 

well said young fella

Maybe I'm drunk ( I am) but anyone else think the jake Thomas signing is 1000% for character and character alone. Dude knows what it's like to be a blue bomber.
To me it's interesting that we applaud this organization for having character guys, yet now when we sign character it's upsetting.
4 grey cups in a row guys. We can have our oshea roster doubts. Let's trust Walter's to do his job.
If Walter's says Thomas adds value.. I'm behind him
4 GREY CUPS in a row. 2 plays away from winning 4 straight. Man I get the resentment, I do. But Thomas was signed for a reason. Maybe a reason we don't understand yet. We've been given no reason to over analyze yet.. this ain't previous regimens..
My first 28 years of life on this earth we didn't win a grey cup. Now we've been there 4x straight and it seems like a good portion of this board is ready to jump ship like it never happened. I get that we need to be critical but let's reserve that until we haven't made a grey cup lol. Seriously. We were in the conversation to be the worst pro franchise in sports. Everyone hold their horses. These guys know what they are doing
We have people on this website ( and I mean this respectfully) who think they know better than the management who has brought us to where we are now.
- and to those people who know better. Where are your grey cup rings and why aren't you coaching pro football? It's easy to be critical like friesen when you ain't making the calls..
To winning a grey cup that dodged us for 29 years... shessh man. Do we not remember where we were just a few years ago?

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

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

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

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