It won’t be hard for Riderfans to forget about the awful 2015 season considering there is almost nothing left of it. A complete overhaul of the Coaching/Front Office saw a good chunk of the Coaches/Players responsible for the Edmonton Eskimos Grey Cup win come over to Ridernation and they got right to work putting their stamp on the franchise. Rider legends like Dressler, Chick, Getzlaf, Brackenridge to name a few are gone along with the entire coaching staff and GM Brendan Taman. Chris Jones and John Murphy are leading the charge and have completely changed the face of the Riders in a very good way. It already feels like a completely different organization, the renewed focus on professional scouting has been a breath of fresh air. Not only does this put us in a good position for this season but into the future. However it is not all sunshine and rainbows unfortunately.
It has been a tough off season having to watch some of the greatest Riders of all time leave to play for other teams and making it worse is knowing it’s us pushing them out the door. We had heard Taman went ALL IN during 2013 to win that Grey Cup and that it would handcuff us down the road but don’t think anyone had an idea how bad until this offseason. It became public that Taman had to sign Chick for 260k and Dressler 240k to get them back for the 2013 Cup run, huge numbers in the current CFL landscape. This is such a tough situation. I think Chick/Dressler are worth every penny of that money, in fact I think they deserve to have a zero added to it. They play a dangerous game that is highly entertaining and they deserve to be paid closer to their NFL counterparts. That is part of why I wrote the blog about how to increase popularity of the league, I want the players to make more not constantly be in the position of earning money and than having to give it back to stay employed.
But unfortunately we aren’t there yet and the current landscape of the league dictates that 500k for 2 import players is too much. In previous years our management never would have moved on from multiple Rider legends that have and have had the impact that guys like Chick, Dressler, Getzlaf, etc… did. We would pay them and sacrifice at other positions holding the team back from improving. But this is a different team now and Chris Jones is all business. He saw what needed to be done to field a competitive championship team and he wasted no time in doing it. He asked the guys to take pay cuts and when they refused he released them to pursue other opportunities. Can’t blame any of the guys, it would be very tough to take less than what you feel you are worth and then play for that same team/coach. Can’t blame Coach Jones either, under the current CFL financial situation he did the only thing he could do. It’s very unfortunate but should serve as a wake up call to the league that there needs to be a collective effort put forward to increase popularity.
It’s going to be hard watching the guys play for new teams esp Dressler play for the Bummers, that’s gonna be a fn tough one to take. But seeing a competitive Rider team will help make that easier. Tough to really say much about the actual team since with all the changes almost everything is unknown. Excited for camps to open, then we will really start to see what kind of team we have. Really want Durant to come back beastin, pumped we still have him but def gonna need Smith to take a step forward this year.
Well we’re on the home stretch, season only a few months away now. Hopefully it’s a great year for the CFL and the Riders. Cheers!