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

[Nolby]

I love the signing but not at that insane money. Man, we better be pairing him with a damn good OC because hes got an enormous contract to live up to.

[17to85]

It's a **** load of money and probably way too much for a running back.... however... how do you not do what it takes to bring that guy back? The marketability alone makes him valuable to the club.

 

Just gotta make the rest of the roster work around that.

[rebusrankin]

Tyson Philpot who has never had a 1000 yard season and who has missed 5, 9 and 6 games over the past three seasons got $275,000. Brady was not getting less.

[M.O.A.B.]

I only list Oliveira, Demski and Castillo as my must have. 

Bryant and Jefferson on a discounted price, maybe. 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by M.O.A.B.

[SectionKBlackout]

We’ve been spoiled at RB for almost a decade and played really 2 guys Harris and Brady. Deactivate Hogans access card now, forget about last year and let Brady eat.

[SpeedFlex27]

2 hours ago, TBURGESS said:

Way too much for a RB. We've got a million bucks tied up in just two players. I don't want to hear any 'why can't we get big FA's again' whining this year.

Welcome to the new CFL. imagine what he would have got if he was a FA & the Lions & Ti Cats got into a bidding war?

[TBURGESS]

1 hour ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

Welcome to the new CFL. imagine what he would have got if he was a FA & the Lions & Ti Cats got into a bidding war?

I'd have been happy to find out. No CFL RB is worth the money we're paying Brady especially after overpaying Collaros.

[SpeedFlex27]

34 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

I'd have been happy to find out. No CFL RB is worth the money we're paying Brady especially after overpaying Collaros.

If Brady was a free agent, BC would have thrown a Brink's truck at Oliveira. We have no succession plan at qb. We're flying by the seat of our pants on that one. Brady is in his prime at 28. there is no one on our roster that is ready to step up as a starter like Oliveira did when Harris left. 

[rebusrankin]

Brady and Demski are our only Canadians who are outstanding.

[17to85]

23 minutes ago, rebusrankin said:

Brady and Demski are our only Canadians who are outstanding.

Some .might say that Jake and koala are just out standing there doing nothing...

[GCn20]

12 hours ago, rebusrankin said:

Tyson Philpot who has never had a 1000 yard season and who has missed 5, 9 and 6 games over the past three seasons got $275,000. Brady was not getting less.

I did not know Tyson Philpot was a RB. You are comparing apples to oranges.  Might as well have said that Rourke makes 800k so BO's contract is a bargain.

Edited 3 hours ago by GCn20

[GCn20]

13 hours ago, rebusrankin said:

I get the issue with how high Brady's salary is but this deal is not what is going to kill us. If we bring back Jefferson at $200,000,  Schoen at $175,000+, Kyrie Wilson at whatever he makes, all three of Holm/Kramdi/Nichols (two are fine), Vaughters at $165,000, Jake and Kolo at any price, aging foot soldiers such as Gauthier and Hallet, Mitchell at $160,000 and J. Jones at whatever he got, that huge amount of deadwood and clinging to aging vets, that's what kills us.

Hanging onto aging vets kills our game day roster, bad contracts kill our overall roster. SMS mismanagement will kill a team faster than anything. Gauthier, Hallett, did zero damage to our roster. Do they need to be replaced? Yea probably but they were STs toiling at near league mins. The only time they impacted us negatively was when we were forced to start them. Jefferson at 200k is another huge overpay. Good teams can't overpay like this. We have a million dollars standing in two spots behind centre, that is not good SMS management. 

[SpeedFlex27]

15 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

Hanging onto aging vets kills our game day roster, bad contracts kill our overall roster. SMS mismanagement will kill a team faster than anything. Gauthier, Hallett, did zero damage to our roster. Do they need to be replaced? Yea probably but they were STs toiling at near league mins. The only time they impacted us negatively was when we were forced to start them. Jefferson at 200k is another huge overpay. Good teams can't overpay like this. We have a million dollars standing in two spots behind centre, that is not good SMS management. 

The market is adjusting. You amateur GMs who think you know the way the money is doled out really know nothing. Although you think you do.

I think half you guys are still living in 2019 pre pandemic. when the salary cap was at $5 million. That receivers & running backs should only be paid $100,000 a year. Defensive Ends $80-90,000 etc. We don't know what the market is for older free agents like Jefferson or Gauthier yet until they hit the street running with their agents checking out offers from other teams. We also don't know what the new salary cap will be. However, I think with the deals being handed out to Philpott, Alexander, Oliveira, Hatcher & the majority of players eligible to switch teams in February as free agents with their contracts expired,

I believe we may have another off season where the cap rises significantly. Until all these things fall into place, the angst some of you show about overpaying players may be unnecessary. 

[SpeedFlex27]

48 minutes ago, 17to85 said:

Some .might say that Jake and koala are just out standing there doing nothing...

I would say they stand out because they're not out standinding. Koaaala, 

 

44 minutes ago, GCn20 said:

I did not know Tyson Philpot was a RB. You are comparing apples to oranges.  Might as well have said that Rourke makes 800k so BO's contract is a bargain.

You missed rebusrankin's point entirely. All he's saying is the Als are paying top dollar for Tyson Philpott who is a receiver who never stays healthy & is on the IR list for a big chunk of games every season. Maybe he's thrown to 5 or 6 times a game on average yet he's the highest paid Canadian receiver in the CFL who has never been a thousand yard receiver.

Oliveira is a stud running back with over 5000 career rushing yards who has also spent time on the IR but he has proven his worth 10 times over as he handles the ball 10-20 times a game. That's what ol' Reebus is talking about. Doesn't matter if you're talking receiver or running back. It's the overall worth of a player to his team. 

Edited 3 hours ago by SpeedFlex27

[wbbfan]

13 hours ago, rebusrankin said:

Tyson Philpot who has never had a 1000 yard season and who has missed 5, 9 and 6 games over the past three seasons got $275,000. Brady was not getting less.

100% agree that deal screwed the market big time. 

[wbbfan]

14 hours ago, Booch said:

Yeah I dunno man if that's worth it..and with it garuanteed in yr 3...for a then 31 yr old back who plays a physical game...big risk...hes already shown last few hes injury susceptible 

As @TBURGESS said...million bucks in a QB in serious decline..and a back who could fall of a cliff in 2027...just dont know...if its half marketing id be ok..but man..when u could fill that spot at 80k and get just as good production...that other 210k would go a long way

Such a raise off a down year is pretty wild. His production has been going straight down the last 2 years as well. And again, Hogan plus the last year of Buck was brutal. Our ol the year before last was brutal too. Our passing game was atrocious. I don't blame Brady for the drop-off. Paying him an increase after 2 drop-off years is something that almost never happens. A good part of that is the appearance that teams will use the cap increase to fatten the biggest contracts. Part of that is desperation on our end. 

 At the end of the day, we've overpaid a RB, one of the last positions you overpay, when he's coming off an injury and 2 down years, when he is 28 and will be 29 before the end of next year, and yeah, given a rb qb money. 

 

Part of me is happy that Brady will be here for the future. Another part of me is happy for him; he's a great person as well as a player, and all the local kid stuff. A lot of dirtbags have made bank in this league, and are currently. Brady is a great ambassador of our game, league, city/province. It would really suck to see him in another jersey. Harris was bad enough, but he was never the guy Brady is. 

Another part of me is saying, OK, Walters better find a way to dig our ass out of the hole this deal puts us in. I've been the biggest defender of Walters lately. He needs to have one of the best league free agency periods of his career this year.  He needs to churn out another ROTY-calibre kid this year, and he needs the guys poised for progress to take the next step forward. 

[wbbfan]

Edit, double post

Edited 2 hours ago by wbbfan

[brett_c_b]

1 hour ago, rebusrankin said:

Brady and Demski are our only Canadians who are outstanding.

Disagree. The bombers hired a social media engagement consultant. They developed a word cloud to visualize fan engagement. Thomas appeared as one of the largest words in the cloud. The consultant thus confirmed the fan base is incredibly engaged with Thomas and highly recommended his resigning him based on projected additional revenue driven by fan engagement. 

Other words that popped Hogan, MOS and Rum hut. So the course of the team has been set in the CFL version of Moneyball based on social media engagement instead of, checks notes, getting on base.

[blue85gold]

If the team is paying Brady this much then they need to lean into an offense focused through him and take advantage of having a Cdn RB by playing another American on offense. Either go three American Olineman or play 4 American receivers. No need to trot out a crappy Cdn centre/guard or Cdn receiver that is no threat to do anything. 

[Pete]

your right, the thing that makes ths contract palatable is that having a cdn starting rb allows us to have an import elsewhere. If we were to use a 3rd import on oline it would easily save us 100k or more for a free agent cdn.

 We have to get away from just pegging in cdns at traditional spots and utilizing cap money by looking at the forest and not just the trees. 

The best way to get around this is to draft effectively and actually play the younger (cheaper) talent

Edited 1 hour ago by Pete

[TBURGESS]

Any other RB's getting 290K? Nope, not even close. 

Any other receivers getting 270K? Yup.

[blue85gold]

3 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

Any other RB's getting 290K? Nope, not even close. 

Any other receivers getting 270K? Yup.

To be fair there are 45 starting receivers and 9 starting RBs.

About 18 starting Cdn receivers, vs really just 1 starting Cdn RB. 

Cdns get paid in the CFL

[M.Silverback]

8 minutes ago, TBURGESS said:

Any other RB's getting 290K? Nope, not even close. 

Any other receivers getting 270K? Yup.

I'm a broken record about this but RB's are about 7th to 9th in terms of average salary paid by position in the NFL due to availability of replacement level talent and overall impact. Why are we going against a trend run by much smarter and wealthier football organizations? Don't tell me it's because he's Canadian. Yes Canadians get a premium in terms of salary, but a smart team should still be paying that premium at the impact positions based on the bigger, smarter NFL - Dline; WR's; all star OL; QB's if you have a unicorn Canadian star (hopefully we might). This was a decision to appease the fans who value the local community impact over good cap management. 

[Super Duper Negatron]

I feel like the drop off from Brady to another decent back is probably small enough that we could have used that $150k somewhere else.

[Mike]

The reality with Brady’s deal is that you really need to know what the cap hit is in order to talk about whether the deal is good or not. In the new CFL, with the marketing money, I don’t think we’re really going to know that early on after a signing so you have to play a bit of a wait and see.

That being said, there are two things that (imo) should be getting talked about more with regards to this deal.

1. This contract makes very little sense at the reported cost (even if you build in 100k of marketing money) if we still insist on playing more than the required amount of Canadians. We’re essentially paying him regardless of passport at that point, which makes this deal awful

2. Lots of people haven’t had their mindset catch up to the reality of the new CFL and the cap figures. The cap hasn’t just gone up, but teams are shifting more to youthful American OL which means less money is being tied up in unmentioned Canadian OL and more is being invested in big name splash Canadians.

Everyone talks about Brady and his big deal, but nobody blinked twice 10 years ago when guys like Tyson Pencer and Chris Kowalczuk were making six figures as middling (that’s generous) Canadian OL.

Canadian football is developing, which means more guys can play at premium positions, which means the “you gotta have 4-5 Canadian OL” mentality has kind of gone by the wayside. The money getting distributed has changed a bit as a result.

(one last thing, anyone who thinks Gauthier or Hallett make near league minimum are WAY off)