https://www.tsn.ca/naylor-many-questions-but-few-answers-on-a-2021-cfl-season-1.1543725

The Canadian Football League has been outrageously quiet since it pulled the plug on its season more than two months ago, leaving behind a wake of speculation about where things are headed next.

With the reality setting in that COVID-19 is likely to still be around in some form next summer, there is real concern about what the 2021 season might look like or if it will occur at all.

There are teams that believe it is vitally important to play in 2021 and that without a season the CFL is in danger of being mothballed. Whether every team believes that is another question. And there is a lot to sort out before anyone can accurately predict what a season might look like and how much pain the teams are collectively willing to stomach to make it happen.

The league and its franchises are currently running through various scenarios for next season, trying to get a handle on true costs of each and working at ways to trim budgets and save money. That’s likely to continue until the league can truly choose a course of action, which feels like next April at the earliest.

Why? Well, there’s not much point in fully committing to a scenario that’s seven months away if that scenario might be totally unrealistic by the time you get there.

There has been no 2021 business plan presented yet, only regular updates to the presidents and governors about what the league is doing to prepare for the unknown.

It should be noted that teams will need to make decisions about retaining assistant coaches with expiring contracts by December, which will be the first real economic commitments to a 2021 season. Restrictions on signing players will need to be lifted well before the opening of February free agency, where players are likely to meet a cautious market – one in which signing bonuses will probably be absent.

There’s a collective bargaining agreement to amend, if not renegotiate, with the players, which will require some kind of pressure point because it always does. But the league can’t sit down with the players until it gets a true handle on revenues and it can’t do that until it chooses a course of action.

Will CFL teams be allowed to have full stadiums next summer? It doesn't seem likely. But just what percentage of capacity will be allowed – if any at all – is impossible to guess. It seems as if the league is counting on the restrictions that currently prevent fans from being in stadiums being lifted. But to what degree?

When will we see a schedule? Good question. Or could we see multiple schedules for different scenarios? Never say never.

Could it be a 21-week, 18-game season played in home stadiums? Unlikely, given the losses teams are expected to take with reduced numbers of fans in the stands. Could we see a return to the 10-week bubble? Maybe. A nine-game schedule played in home stadiums before fans? Perhaps.

The point is no one knows, so demanding answers to questions that can’t possibly be answered right now is a waste of time.

All we know is that there’s going to be a lot less revenue for teams to operate with under any scenario, not just because of crowd restrictions but also due to older fans choosing to stay home for their safety. The CFL’s fan demographics do it no favours in this regard.

Getting consensus on a best course of action won’t be easy for the CFL’s nine teams. Back in the summer, there were teams that were willing to play without government support and teams that weren’t. And just like then, the biggest challenge commissioner Randy Ambrosie faces now is finding a scenario they can all live with.

Adopting a revenue-sharing model so that each team absorbs the same amount of red ink would certainly make consensus-building easier, which many believe should be the direction for the future, COVID-19 or not.

The other elephant in the room is federal government, which many in the CFL believe left it high and dry last summer after months of back-and-forth talks where the league believed it was making progress.

Is the CFL prepared to go down that road again, knowing it doesn’t control the timeline and larger forces can change things in an instant? Perhaps, although it’s not as though the feds don’t have a long list of people coming at them with their hands out.

There will be voices demanding the owners suck up the losses of playing a season under any circumstance, as owners have done in other sports. But the business calculation in sports such as MLB, NFL, NHL and NBA is different because of the percentage of revenues those leagues derive from television.

Losses sustained by playing in those leagues can also be viewed as investments towards protecting massive franchise values. That’s not the case in the CFL, where teams can’t just float money on the backs of their franchise values, and where one third of the teams are publicly owned.

It would be beneficial for the league to soon announce its formal commitment to play some kind of season in 2021.

But beyond that, get ready for months more of waiting with lots of questions and speculation but very few answers.

Fair points Bubba. Hopefully we have the personnel to open up the pass game. I am not quite as confident as 17to85 in that regard. Hope I am wrong. Losing our best deep threats in Adams and Whitehead has not helped. Maybe Bailey is our new burner?

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by TrueBlue4ever

Let's not forget that Collaros is a really good QB. Focus on his fragility but don't forget he makes plays and slings the ball like very few in this league. 

Curious to see how the FG game pans out. Almost forgot what it is like not to have gimmes all the time, and Medlock won us a lot of games on his leg alone that even a miss or two would have turned into a loss. 

Whitehead was one of our best deep threats......? When.....? 

Not sure but outside of Toronto and Hamilton every team should be concerned about losing there starter. Also every team in 2019 except Montreal had injuries to their quarterbacks to say that this is just a question mark for Bombers is laughable. 

1 minute ago, Noeller said:

Whitehead was one of our best deep threats......? When.....? 

Yeah, he was more of a quick short pass, then take it to the house kinda guy. I'd argue Darvin was our primary deep threat.

QB Killer !

50 minutes ago, JCon said:

Let's not forget that Collaros is a really good QB. Focus on his fragility but don't forget he makes plays and slings the ball like very few in this league. 

And Collaros distributes the ball well to his receivers. Pretty sure he will get a good protection from our OL. 
The only thing I'm worried about is the cheap shot that will come from Dirty Lawrence.

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by M.O.A.B.

53 minutes ago, Noeller said:

Whitehead was one of our best deep threats......? When.....? 

That one game against edmonton

1 hour ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

. His passing attack was not very neutered when he had the two people in your username playing for him

"Hey milt, get open deep against a double team" what a big brain that lapo is. 

Look the problem wasn't the offense lapo designed, the problem has always been that Lapo sucks as a play caller. That was true in 2002 and it is still true today. Passive to a fault. Harris was the safe play so he rode that horse as far as it would take him. Worked against Hamilton in the Grey Cup but it failed spectacularly in the 2018 playoffs against calgary.

1 hour ago, Bubba Zanetti said:

Yeah, he was more of a quick short pass, then take it to the house kinda guy. I'd argue Darvin was our primary deep threat.

Yeah Lucky SHOULD have been a deep threat, but was never really given the opportunity. I do recall a few times seeing him behind coverage but the ball never made it's way to him. Too bad, but I don't think he will be a huge factor in BC.

5 hours ago, Bigblue204 said:

Yeah Lucky SHOULD have been a deep threat, but was never really given the opportunity. I do recall a few times seeing him behind coverage but the ball never made it's way to him. Too bad, but I don't think he will be a huge factor in BC.

Yeah, I doubt MR will have the protection to throw deep consistently, as much as he would like to. And Lucky is quite a ways down that totem pole.

Nichols again limited in practice by his shoulder. Rbs are screwed.  

20 minutes ago, Bigblue204 said:

Yeah Lucky SHOULD have been a deep threat, but was never really given the opportunity. I do recall a few times seeing him behind coverage but the ball never made it's way to him. Too bad, but I don't think he will be a huge factor in BC.

I've rewatched the first few games from 2019 and he was used as a deep threat as well as a short pass YAC guy. He actually did fairly well on some deep balls. Nichols was actually way more accurate with the deep balls in the first few games than I remember too. I haven't recently watched the second half of the 2019 season, but I do remember being disappointed by Lucky as he wasn't doing as well as the hopes I had for him after his early success.

I wish they have the same OL comes Labor Day and Banjo Bowl

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by M.O.A.B.

9 minutes ago, M.O.A.B. said:

I wish they have the same OL comes Labor Day and Banjo Bowl

Any one who looks at that and says yeah that's a contender is either a biased rider fan, or pandering for clicks. 

2 minutes ago, wbbfan said:

Any one who looks at that and says yeah that's a contender is either a biased rider fan, or pandering for clicks. 

I do think the Riders have a good secondary and good receivers, to be fair. 

That said, they're going to get absolutely manhandled at the lines like the 2013 Bombers so it's not going to matter. 

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by Dr Zaius

Unless he will be pulled out from the 6-game IR, he will not play on LDC and BB

1 hour ago, 17to85 said:

"Hey milt, get open deep against a double team" what a big brain that lapo is. 

Look the problem wasn't the offense lapo designed, the problem has always been that Lapo sucks as a play caller. That was true in 2002 and it is still true today. Passive to a fault. Harris was the safe play so he rode that horse as far as it would take him. Worked against Hamilton in the Grey Cup but it failed spectacularly in the 2018 playoffs against calgary.

I could point out how many times LaPo has had the number 1 offence in his coaching career, how offensive schemes and play calling kind of go hand in hand, how “not being a big play riverboat gambler” or “ball control limit the turnovers” is not the same as “sucks as a play caller”, how his conservative style may have to do with the weapons he was handed, or simply ask how many teams you have coached or Grey Cup rings you have won compared to him since you seem to have all the answers, but it would fall on deaf ears because you have had an axe to grind with him seemingly forever, culminating in your support of Joe Mack over LaPo when the team faltered with them both and you wanted to assign blame. So throwing your credibility chips in with Mack tells me all I need to k ow about your judgment, just as cherry picking one division final loss in Calgary against a Grey Cup winning team as proof that LaPo is a failure does. Honestly, if I wanted to hear from a clown, I’d conduct interviews at the circus. 

Hey man chill out. It's GAME DAY!! No room for negativity here!!!

5 minutes ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

I could point out how many times LaPo has had the number 1 offence in his coaching career, how offensive schemes and play calling kind of go hand in hand, how “not being a big play riverboat gambler” or “ball control limit the turnovers” is not the same as “sucks as a play caller”, how his conservative style may have to do with the weapons he was handed, or simply ask how many teams you have coached or Grey Cup rings you have won compared to him since you seem to have all the answers, but it would fall on deaf ears because you have had an axe to grind with him seemingly forever, culminating in your support of Joe Mack over LaPo when the team faltered with them both and you wanted to assign blame. So throwing your credibility chips in with Mack tells me all I need to k ow about your judgment, just as cherry picking one division final loss in Calgary against a Grey Cup winning team as proof that LaPo is a failure does. Honestly, if I wanted to hear from a clown, I’d conduct interviews at the circus. 

14 minutes ago, TrueBlue4ever said:

I could point out how many times LaPo has had the number 1 offence in his coaching career, how offensive schemes and play calling kind of go hand in hand, how “not being a big play riverboat gambler” or “ball control limit the turnovers” is not the same as “sucks as a play caller”, how his conservative style may have to do with the weapons he was handed, or simply ask how many teams you have coached or Grey Cup rings you have won compared to him since you seem to have all the answers, but it would fall on deaf ears because you have had an axe to grind with him seemingly forever, culminating in your support of Joe Mack over LaPo when the team faltered with them both and you wanted to assign blame. So throwing your credibility chips in with Mack tells me all I need to k ow about your judgment, just as cherry picking one division final loss in Calgary against a Grey Cup winning team as proof that LaPo is a failure does. Honestly, if I wanted to hear from a clown, I’d conduct interviews at the circus. 

To be fair though... the 2019 Grey Cup run was WOn on the shoulders of that dominant D, not because of Lapo's offensive playcalling. 

To Be more fair though... it's because of the DOMINANT D and the team, in all phases, were playing complimentary football. 

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by wanna-b-fanboy

MBT starting for the Argos! Hope his ancestors are ready! Nick Arbuckle who?

4 minutes ago, Bubba Zanetti said:

MBT starting for the Argos! Hope his ancestors are ready! Nick Arbuckle who?

Arbuckle has been hurt for a bit.

2 minutes ago, Bigblue204 said:

Arbuckle has been hurt for a bit.

He's been limited but still practicing.

which one of the voices in MBTs head is going to start for the Argos this week? That guy is like a younger Gary Busey....