Wednesday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and will the last player to leave the East Division of the CFL please turn out the lights…
There are two ways of looking at Kyle Walters’ handiwork on the first day of the Canadian Football League livestock auction.
1) D’oh!
2) D-fence!
It seems to me that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ most pressing need going into free agency was a pair of hands capable of latching onto quarterback Matt Nichols’ offerings more than five yards down the field. A lickety-split, big-play, go-up-and-get-it guy who wins the majority of those one-on-one, game-changing battles with cornerbacks and DBs should have been at the top of the Winnipeg FC general manager’s shopping list.
You know, someone like Derel Walker would look good in Blue and Gold. Or DaVaris Daniels. Or Naaman Roosevelt.
I’d even be willing to put Duron Carter in that group, if only he’d cross his heart and swear to god and Bud Grant that he’d park the attitude. As it is, bringing the man-child wideout aboard would be like signing Dennis the Menace or Bart Simpson, so the B.C. Lions are welcome to him. (I’ll list the over/under on Carter wearing out his welcome on the Left Flank at 10 games.)
At any rate, we’re told that Walters pitched woo, also serious coin, at some of the three-down game’s prime pass-catchers on a frenzied Day 1 of the annual cattle call, but they played Lucy van Pelt to his Charlie Brown. Whoomph! Swing and a miss. Thus, he’s still looking for that special pair of paws.
That’s significant because, on paper, the Bombers offence is noticeably weaker than the group of 12 that failed to find the end zone in the West Division final last November.
Gone are O-linemen Matthias Goossen, who’d rather chase bad guys in B.C. (he’s going to be a cop), and Sukh Chungh, who’d rather be Mike Reilly’s bodyguard in B.C. than keep Nichols vertical in Good Ol’ Hometown.
Given that Nichols is as mobile as a La-Z-Boy rocker, that’s a huge hit.
There are, however, glad tidings. Very glad tidings. That is, Walters has convinced Willie Jefferson to do his QB pillaging at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, so Winnipeg FC might only require placekicker Justin Medlock’s left leg to get the job done offensively in 2019.
I mean, who’s going to score on the Bombers? D-coordinator Richie Hall can simply dial up 1-800-GET-SACK and if Jefferson isn’t in the QB’s kitchen, Jackson Jeffcoat will be. Should the J-Boys falter, Beastmo Bighill will be right behind to tidy things up. Just call them the Monsters of Mayhem. It’ll remind the rabble of the Bombers jail-break defence of James (Wild) West, Tyrone Jones and Greg Battle.
So, ya, Walters coughed up a football-size hairball in his receiver search on Tuesday, and he has to do better. Good paws are still out there.
For now, though, Jefferson is a boffo consolation prize.
Here’s the question I found myself asking once the dust had settled on Day 1 of CFL free agency: Why is it that the available pass-catchers passed on Good Ol’ Hometown? We know Greg Ellingson abandoned Bytown for Edmonton because he wants to keep playing catch with QB Trevor Harris, but what scared the rest of them off? Like, is DeVier Posey serious? He’d rather run routes and dive for Johnny Manziel’s flutter balls in Montreal? So perhaps the hangup is O-coordinator Paul LaPolice’s dink-and-dunk scheming. The Bombers go deep about as often as Chris Walby passes on second helpings, and that can’t be appealing to the pass-catching divas. Then, again, maybe it comes down to the QB. Given a choice, do you want Bo Levi Mitchell, Mike Reilly, Harris or Nichols hurling the rock your way? I know who I wouldn’t choose.
Yoo hoo! Tranna Argonauts! Anybody home? Or did Jim Popp sleep in late? Seriously. All the plums had been plucked by the time the Tranna Argonauts GM joined the fun on Tuesday, and that’s a head-scratcher. No franchise needed a jaw-dropping, headline-churning addition more than the Boatmen, yet it was all fizzle and no sizzle. Chris Rainey, Mercer Timmis and Kevin Fogg aren’t going to put people in the pews at BMO Field in the Republic of Tranna, leaving us to wonder how low the head count will go in 2019. Do I hear an average audience of 10,000? Less?
Never mind attendance in The ROT. What will happen in Bytown now that the RedBlacks have lost starting QB Harris, one of their top two receivers, their starting running back, and one of their starting O-linemen? I fear the worst.
Assuming the league and workers come together on a fresh Collective Bargaining Agreement and there will, in fact, be a 2019 CFL season, it might become a total embarrassment. I say that because, based on Tuesday’s troop movement, the West-East imbalance of power has never been greater. You can’t compete without quality quarterbacking, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (Jeremiah Masoli) are the only outfit that has it east of the Manitoba-Ontario border. I can see the Tabbies finishing first in the East Division with a sub-.500 record, while the bottom feeder in the West Division is plus-.500. That would make a mockery of the Grey Cup runoff. I’ve never been an advocate of a one-division, top-six playoff format, but this could be the time to do it.
And, finally, the B.C. Lions will be paying two players—Reilly and Chungh—a combined $1 million per annum. In Lotus Land, that ought to be enough for them to afford a room at the local Sally Ann’s.
The River City Renegade 
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