Blue Bombers -- 2025/26 Offseason -- Discussion Thread

[17to85]

13 minutes ago, HardCoreBlue said:

Other than that, I'm just walking a white noise toddler doing his best to be funny and annoying. I'm told I'm really good at the latter.

You too huh?

[HardCoreBlue]

3 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

You too huh?

[Arnold_Palmer]

Love it! I love that Wilson and Lawson are the first two guys signed. I think it means we’re prioritizing the youth. There was so many times I saw Lawson double and tripled teamed and he still got to the quarterback. He’s a beast and will only look even better next once we get some help beside him. 

[BBlink]

Wilson and Lawson no-brainer signings. Very good players that shouldn't break the bank.

[Brandon]

3 hours ago, Booch said:

thing is tho...can he take that beating all yr....hasnt been able to do so last few yrs....And my opinion is he isnt a RB with a style to sustain a long career playing how he has to to be effective....and he is by no means a explosive back who can bust a TD from anywhere on the field and can morph his game

Love him...but soon to be 29...battering ram style runner...injuries starting to become an issue....To me doesn't seem like the smartest move...hometown hero and all

He has one more big pay day and 2 good years at least left in him.   I wouldn't want to pay $300 000.   But I'd have zero issues if it was $250 000.   We will need him for the next two years while we buy time in bringing in a real QB.  

[Booch]

1 hour ago, bigg jay said:

2 year extension for Cam Lawson.

Great signing....hopefully at the expense now of JT and Lawson can gobble up major reps and become the force he is likely to be

 

1 hour ago, GCn20 said:

As I stated in my last post, SMS impact is my secondary concern on this proposed contract. Almost all of the 3 year contracts being signed now in the CFL are done so that there is a large portion of year 3 guaranteed. That could be a disaster SMS wise down the road. If he wasn't a RB I wouldn't hate it as much, but you and I both know 3 years for a RB is like signing a receiver and offering him guaranteed money in year 10. The odds are higher that the contract will hamper than they are of it working out.

yup...for a RB who will be 30 in yr 2 of the deal...has had injury issues now3 yrs running....sure a couple instances he played nurt and through it, but was he at his best....could we have done as good or better with sitting hum down till healthy and used a cheap import....very likely

His playing style...his age....3 yrs.....man I just cant see the logic in it...and or the success with it through all 3 yrs

51 minutes ago, Arnold_Palmer said:

Love it! I love that Wilson and Lawson are the first two guys signed. I think it means we’re prioritizing the youth. There was so many times I saw Lawson double and tripled teamed and he still got to the quarterback. He’s a beast and will only look even better next once we get some help beside him. 

He actually was one of the higher rated interior guys league wide...Definitely with Canadians players he was...and with proper usage...a Oline killer DT riding shotgun with him....he becomes an elite National starter

 

5 minutes ago, Brandon said:

He has one more big pay day and 2 good years at least left in him.   I wouldn't want to pay $300 000.   But I'd have zero issues if it was $250 000.   We will need him for the next two years while we buy time in bringing in a real QB.  

Yup...a lesser cost....I think be more acceptable...Or half being marketing...even better even at 300k......And that option with marketing can allow us to chase a top ranked WR and or OL guy and that would likely allow BO to not get the snot beat out of him game in and game out as well

[rebusrankin]

If there is no limit on market money, the Bombers should use it extensively. Club has been making bank the past few years.

[Booch]

Yeah take advantage of the fact we have been pulling in the cash...reward the fans for that support

[bigg jay]

1 hour ago, rebusrankin said:

If there is no limit on market money, the Bombers should use it extensively. Club has been making bank the past few years.

Yep, the only limit is that the team has to be able to justify the amount of marketing money being paid to a player.  If BC was allowed to give Rourke 200k, the Bombers should have no problems giving Brady a good chunk either.  

[rebusrankin]

If there is no limit on marketing money, we should give Brady 200,000 (if he's coming back on a 300,000 deal) and give Zach something similar. Exploit that rule because we have the money.

[wbbfan]

wilson and lawson back is big. Hopefully on reasonable deals. 

[GCn20]

19 hours ago, bigg jay said:

Yep, the only limit is that the team has to be able to justify the amount of marketing money being paid to a player.  If BC was allowed to give Rourke 200k, the Bombers should have no problems giving Brady a good chunk either.  

There is a kind of loose justification every team must give the league for the marketing money. According to most reports I've read about the justification to the league it is pretty close to "trust me bro".

[wbbfan]

4 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

There is a kind of loose justification every team must give the league for the marketing money. According to most reports I've read about the justification to the league it is pretty close to "trust me bro".

It's such a silly change. If you want to let teams pay to win (or try to) just do it. Make the top end of the cap a soft cap and make teams pay for it. 

[HardCoreBlue]

8 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

There is a kind of loose justification every team must give the league for the marketing money. According to most reports I've read about the justification to the league it is pretty close to "trust me bro".

How most world wide web posts end with.

[GCn20]

On 2025-12-09 at 9:11 PM, wbbfan said:

Walter’s who brought us two extremely strong draft classes back to back, a couple great canadian talent trades, and a bumper crop of rookies like vaval, allen, woodbey, and the rookie ends who dominated in their one game. The same who already has us with the next group of high end imp ol in rando, who would’ve been an acclaimed all star on any other play off team maybe gotten nfl looks, and vanterpool who barely played but was our best ol when he did. 

The huge majority of the problem lays at the feet of mos. Walters hasn’t been perfect by any means, but we’ve seen him have the best free agent periods in the league while here when he has money to spend. He’s handed out some over pays for sure. And we’ve lost guys. But the team from top to bottom was in a maintain stage. If we are really in a re tool phase and it sure looks like we are, I wouldn’t pick any other gm in the league to do the job over him. 

Walters who saw us go from the elite team to pretender wears the bottom line for all of it. He is the boss. Everything that is done in our organization falls on him. If Osh's handling of the roster is costing us, that's on Walters to address. You guys just want to hand the guy whose responsibility it is to have a championship roster a free pass and that's BS.

He has not provided a championship calibre roster. If your measure of his success is that a couple DE's played great in an exhibition game, Woodbey, and Allen then it's no wonder he's getting this free pass. Talent lost FAR outweighs talent brought in thus our decline. We can say he was in roster maintenance mode, but again that's not what good GM's do and money is only an object if you do boneheaded things like pay a RB 250k and couple it with an over the hill QB making 600k. Is that on MOS too.  As for money to spend, that's entirely and 100% Walters doing or undoing if you will. He controls the SMS and how it's spent.

I still can't believe people are still trying to justify the crap job our front office has done over the past three years with last year being an absolute abomination. Vaval, Allen, Woodbey are a bare minimum for any team for an offseason. 

That being said I think Walters is a top notch GM when he applies himself. I think he got fat and sassy the past few years.  I trust he can rebuild, what I don't trust is his recognition of need to do so. He has been far too happy to let talent go over the past several years without bringing equal amounts of talent back. That has to change....like right freaking now.

7 minutes ago, wbbfan said:

It's such a silly change. If you want to let teams pay to win (or try to) just do it. Make the top end of the cap a soft cap and make teams pay for it. 

This rule was written specifically for the Toronto Argos when they were spending like drunken sailors for a couple years. That's my theory anyway.

Edited 1 hour ago by GCn20

[GCn20]

On 2025-12-10 at 12:26 AM, SpeedFlex27 said:

That's the 2018-2022 Walters. This version isn't even a shadow of his former self. He has chosen not to spend $$$. I don't know why as he has the resources to do so if he wants to. We'll see how he does this coming February. 

Couldn't agree more. At one time Walters was aggressive and creative in acquiring and keeping talent, now he just shrugs his shoulders as they go to other teams. Just this offseason he stated that the Bombers don't renegotiate contracts. Why the hell not?  People blame MOS for being overly loyal yet have crickets to say about that very telling GM flaw.

Edited 1 hour ago by GCn20

[wbbfan]

2 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

Walters who saw us go from the elite team to pretender wears the bottom line for all of it. He is the boss. Everything that is done in our organization falls on him. If Osh's handling of the roster is costing us, that's on Walters to address. You guys just want to hand the guy whose responsibility it is to have a championship roster a free pass and that's BS.

He has not provided a championship calibre roster. If your measure of his success is that a couple DE's played great in an exhibition game, Woodbey, and Allen then it's no wonder he's getting this free pass. Talent lost FAR outweighs talent brought in thus our decline. We can say he was in roster maintenance mode, but again that's not what good GM's do and money is only an object if you do boneheaded things like pay a RB 250k and couple it with an over the hill QB making 600k. Is that on MOS too. 

I still can't believe people are still trying to justify the crap job our front office has done over the past three years with last year being an absolute abomination. Vaval, Allen, Woodbey are a bare minimum for any team for an offseason. 

This rule was written specifically for the Toronto Argos when they were spending like drunken sailors for a couple years. That's my theory anyway.

He brought in the pieces to fix the issues. Mos didn't use them. Yes, he could've tried pushing Mos more. But he isn't the big boss either; that is Wade. 

Walters talked about how every personnel discussion used to be a fight with Mos and how it's changed post Grey Cup wins. 

It sure seems like the power structure from the top down does not go Wade to Walters, then to Mos. 

At this point, the ultimate responsibility and failure to maintain the contender we had falls to Miller. We hemorrhaged front office types, coaches, as well as players.  That doesn't all fall on Walters. We had the pieces to win 2 more Grey Cups. 

You can't understand justifying a guy who was stuck in the middle, but still producing in Walters, but you can for Mos, who hasn't executed his job with any level of competence in years. 

Guys like Vaval, Allen, and Woodbey aren't bare minimums across the league, nor are all the other additions you chose to omit. 

[GCn20]

We 

10 minutes ago, wbbfan said:

He brought in the pieces to fix the issues. Mos didn't use them. Yes, he could've tried pushing Mos more. But he isn't the big boss either; that is Wade. 

Walters talked about how every personnel discussion used to be a fight with Mos and how it's changed post Grey Cup wins. 

It sure seems like the power structure from the top down does not go Wade to Walters, then to Mos. 

At this point, the ultimate responsibility and failure to maintain the contender we had falls to Miller. We hemorrhaged front office types, coaches, as well as players.  That doesn't all fall on Walters. We had the pieces to win 2 more Grey Cups. 

You can't understand justifying a guy who was stuck in the middle, but still producing in Walters, but you can for Mos, who hasn't executed his job with any level of competence in years. 

Guys like Vaval, Allen, and Woodbey aren't bare minimums across the league, nor are all the other additions you chose to omit. 

We finished 4th in our division barely qualifying for the playoffs. There was no one or number of players sitting on our bench that puts lipstick on that pig. I don't buy your man in the middle theory either. It's pure speculation. If Walters and MOS were fighting every day before the GC's maybe they need to get back to that. That worked. Walters rolling over hasn't helped one iota and is a huge flaw. I see a very flawed SMS usage. That's not on Miller or MOS. I see aged out veterans being re-signed to big contracts. THAT'S THE GM. You keep saying we had the talent but we didn't because we used our SMS terribly.

Pretty damn sure that neither Miller, or OSH advised Walters to let Kenny walk or let our OL fall to pieces and all the other massive amounts of actual proven talent that we lost,  No coach in the world is telling his GM he doesn't want him to re-sign his all star player.

Edited 56 minutes ago by GCn20

[bigg jay]

21 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

There is a kind of loose justification every team must give the league for the marketing money. According to most reports I've read about the justification to the league it is pretty close to "trust me bro".

The league had announced a crackdown on abuse of the system last year - that was under Ambrosie though so who knows how Johnston feels about it or how hard they actually enforced the rules.

CFL teams could face salary cap punishments for abuse of marketing money: Randy Ambrosie - 3DownNation

[17to85]

It's mot just some DEs looking good in one game... think about the home preseason game... the #1s looked ho-hum but as soon as the 2s went in the performance level went up noticeably. 

[GCn20]

13 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

It's mot just some DEs looking good in one game... think about the home preseason game... the #1s looked ho-hum but as soon as the 2s went in the performance level went up noticeably. 

I don't look at any exhibition game as an indication of anything. They are exhibition games. Preseason games have to be taken with a huge grain of salt because the 2s and 3s are also playing the other teams 2, and 3's. The Montreal game where our two DEs looked good late in the season was also an exhibition game of sorts. Montreal didn't dress half their starters and neither did we. That being said I am hopeful these young guys come in and don't regress like we've seen out of most of our top young guys over the past few years.

Edited 47 minutes ago by GCn20

[17to85]

That is one way to look at it and it very well could be correct... or it could be correct that there was more talent here than roster usage showed.

[HardCoreBlue]

34 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

That is one way to look at it and it very well could be correct... or it could be correct that there was more talent here than roster usage showed.

Yup and we will never know what's correct here if we continue to play players like JT etc.