Monday Morning Sentimonies: Hits and Misses

With the CFL Draft approaching, I thought it would be interesting (and only mildly depressing) to look back at the past 5 drafts for the Riders. Take a look at which picks we nailed, which one were not so great, and who we missed along the way. 

The rating system I will use to assess each draft class is based on comparisons to previous Rider QBs. 

2019

Early Round Success: This draft was about restocking the receiver shelves (which we needed). We took McInnis 6^th overall and Lenius 15^th. Both have proven to be starting caliber Canadian receivers (though both were only able to show it in flashes as a Rider)

Late Round Success: We only had 4 picks after the second round and we used one on Cam Judge’s mostly out of football brother (remember that?). But we did hit one home run in the 5^th round when we selected Charbel Dabire. There were 9 DL’s drafted before him and a total of 3 of them you can maybe argue are legit better than Dabire. Great value pick who has been a valuable contributor for the Riders ever since.

Biggest Hit: Brayden Lenius

Biggest Miss: Honestly nothing major. Brady Olivera went one pick before Lenius which meant if we wanted him it would have had to be 6^th overall. In retrospect, yes you do that. At the time, that’s super high for an RB.

Overall assessment: I would give this one a rating of Kevin Glenn… nothing flashy but pretty good overall.

2020

Early Round Success: None. We used the 7^th overall pick on Mattland Riley who retired with one career game played (not sure he even got on the field). Even at the time Riley was “safe” pick, not a top end prospect, though it was a relatively weak draft class overall. The whole experience made O’Day so leery to take an OL high that he’ll never do it again (at least that’s what it seems).

Late Round Success: Rider fans are willing to forgive O’Day the Riley because in the 4^th round he landed us Kian Schaefer-Baker… the steal of that entire draft.

Biggest Hit: Schaefer-Baker by a mile.

Biggest Miss: In the second round, there were only some moderately successful players taken like Marc Antoine-Dequoy and Nathan Rourke, that we could have used our first round pick on.

Overall assessment: This one rates a Michael Bishop… overall unmitigated disaster with one brief moment of brilliance thrown in there.

2021

Early Round Success: This was the Covid draft and it was a pretty thin class. We used the 2^nd overall pick on Nelson Lokombo. In theory a great pick but injuries have greatly limited his impact so far. We used our second round pick on Terrell Jana. Again, in theory a good pick but he retired without ever playing a down. But hey, the first overall pick by Hamilton was TE Jake Burt… so by comparison we did OK.

Late Round Success: Continuing the theme of “in theory” we did get Logan Bandy in the 5^th round. He’s been our 6^th OL for a while and started due to injury. The team really seems to believe in his potential. I don’t think he’s good and would add that the fact that O’Day believes in Bandy may be an indication of why our OL has been a week point until his watch.

Biggest Hit: Bruno Labelle, not exactly a huge impact player but he’s at least been on the roster consistently and using a 3^rd round pick on him was about bang on for his value.

Biggest Miss: Not a ton of big name players came out of this draft. Ben Hladik who went 22^nd overall and is now a legit starter is probably someone who would go much higher in a redraft.

Overall assessment: This one rates a Kerry Jospeh starting the 2014 playoff game… it seemed like a good idea at time but in retrospect you have the regrets.

2022

Early Round Success: Early last season it became apparent that Sam Emilus was a very good use of our 7^th overall pick. We grabbed OL Zach Fry in the second round who O’Day is still pumping up but who has yet to make a material impact on the team. Hopefully he’s on the Chris Best development path.

Late Round Success: Were it not for a home run in the 5^th round, anything after Emilus in this draft would have been written off as a failure for the Riders. But with the 54^th overall pick, O’Day landed a scrappy safety who has blossomed into a starting caliber player in Jayden Dalke.

Biggest Hit: Sam Emilus/Jayden Dalke

Biggest Miss: Honestly, none. Based on where they picked the Riders did not “miss” on anyone. In fact, it was not a super strong draft class once you got past the first round.

Overall assessment: I give this one a Cody Fajardo (while in green and white), was it the best? No. But it’s the best we’ve seen around here in a few years.

2023

Early Round Success: Still early to know the full impact but getting both Korte-Moore and Ford, who were defensive contributors as rookies, looks to be a good move at this point.

Late Round Success: In the fourth round we drafted a bruising RB out of Delaware by the name of Matthieu Bertrand-Hudon. In a mostly awful season, he was one of the few bright spots.

Biggest Hit: Hard to say at this point but Korte-Moore has so far lived up to the hype.

Biggest Miss: Too early to tell. Teams my regret letting the Stampeders get Clark Barnes at 24 but I would have lost it if the Riders used another high pick on a receiver with all their other needs.

Overall assessment: I’ll give this a Trevor Harris. On paper it looks okay and there have been some early flashes, but we will need to see a lot more in year 2 to be truly satisfied.

Monday Morning Sentimonies: Make It Canadian

Note: I will warn you in advance that today’s post is very light on actual news and serious analysis and very heavy on the ridiculous and whimsical. Obviously if you are a regular reader here you are used to a fairly regular dose of the ridiculous but if that ain’t what you are after this morning then try again next week.

I, like many of you, fell in love with the Canadian football game. The unique rules set it apart from its American counterpart in so many good ways and it is steeped in tradition and heritage. But today I ask, is the game Canadian enough?

Sure we have bigger fields, unlimited motion, less downs and the beloved rouge (the rouge is wonderful and I will not her arguments to the contrary) but there are so many more ways the game could be made even more Canadian.

 

1.     Metric system – the most obvious place to start is by fully implementing the metric system. Yards should be replaced with meters. First and 9.144 will be the new standard starting point. Players will strive for a 914 metre season instead of 1000 yards. And we will ooh and aah as Bret Lauther bombs kicks from 46 metres out and further. All player heights and weights would also need to be converted to metres and kilograms.  

2.     Aboot - next we clearly need to fully incorporate Oot in the lingo. Failing to get a first down is a two and oot. GMs will send their scoots to go recruit new players. Receivers will run roots. And Sports Centre may report on the ootcome of a blowoot or even a shutoot.

3.     Apologies – Anytime a player is penalized the amount of the penalty should double if they don’t immediately apologize. If the opposing team does not reciprocate the apology the penalty should be negated.

4.     Tims – All Gatorade container will be replaced with Tim Horton’s coffee. The post game Gatorade shower will become quite dangerous and hydration levels will plummet but dammit if we won’t representing the awful coffee that our nation seems to adore.

5.     Royal Assent – In keeping with the rules of our constitutional democracy, all player transactions should be subject to approval by the King/Queen via the Governor General or Lieutenant Governors.

6.     Public Health Care – The team’s individual injured reserves should be replaced with one central injured reserve that is funded by the league through public taxation.

7.     Bilingual – All PA announcements and referee calls must be in both official languages. Trash talk between the players will only be allowed if it is also in both official languages. Coaches are also encouraged to have their play calls in both official languages. Watch for L’option de courrir passer avec un déroulé de quarterback. 

Do have any suggestions for how to further improve the Canadiana of the CFL?

Monday Morning Sentimonies: Delayed Random Quasi Coherent Thoughts

Apologies for not writing a post last week. Rest assured the person responsible has been admonished and given a fine equal to 50% of their salary. When this blog cannot even live up to the extremely low standards it holds itself to, we take that very seriously.

While much of this is dated, let’s get caught up on what’s been going on in Riderville…

 

-        The Riders’ marketing team got themselves in some hot water over a “Girl Math” promotion they sent out. This was clearly a case of trying to be trendy and just missing the mark. I think they honestly would have been fine with the “Girl Math” headline but each successive line just get worse and worse. The Riders have apologized and I say good enough and move on. They tried to be creative it flopped, they apologized, case closed. No need for a further witch hunt.

-        It does make me wonder who the hell reviews and approves their material though. I (an aging white male, with no marketing experience) could clearly tell that was not in good taste. Somehow a team of marketing professionals who are presumably younger and more female than me, did not see the issue. That is like the equivalent of your finance team producing a financial statement where all the numbers are replaced with 58008 and not thinking it will be a problem. If you don’t immediately get that reference then a) you are clearly much younger than me and b) should go ask you parents for a calculator (maybe first ask them what a calculator is), type in that number and turn the calculator up side down. (This is what we used to do for entertainment).

-        The Riders signed a new LB by the name of Diego Fagot. Now a younger and even less mature Prophet would have had a hay day with this back in the day. All I will say now is that it’s definitely not pronounced like you think but I hope he makes the team purely to make the play by play guys sweat bullets. One Freudian slip and there’s trouble.

-        Good on the Riders for honoring former president Jim Hopson by naming the Jim Hopson Auditorium at Mosaic Stadium. And given his health, good on them for doing the honour while he was still able to receive the honour in person. We may bemoan the current state of our Riders but look back in history at what the team was before Hopson. There were years where they would have killed for down years like ones we bemoan now. Hopson was key part of raising expectations.

-        Speaking of a key part of raising expectations, it remains criminal that Roy Shivers has not been honoured in a similar way by the team. No plaza induction, no in-stadium recognition. The freakin’ CFL saw fit to add him to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame but we have not. Let’s not wait until its too late.

Monday Morning Sentimonies: Football-less Void

We have officially reached the painful final stretch of the offseason. Free agency is over, the draft is two months away and the NFL is even over so there is no football whatsoever. If we can just make it through this final stretch then football will be back and life will be good again.

God bless the Argos and Chad Kelly for trying to keep the CFL in the new cycle but there were likely better ways to go about it. A wrongful termination lawsuit was filed against them by a female trainer who Kelly allegedly made advances at. Since the news broke both the Argos and CFL have made themselves quieter than people who have run out of candy on Halloween and are trying to pretend like they aren’t home. It’s a media strategy that works about as well as Craig Dickenson’s coaching tactics in October.   

As someone whose day job involves human resources, things like this just make me shake my head. Rather than deal with an issue that was raised, they tried to sweep it under the carpet. Literally all they had to do was do some kind of internal discipline to Kelly for his alleged inappropriate behaviour and this probably never gets spoken of outside of Argo facilities. Instead they opted to make things much worse and turn it into a public story. The court of public opinion is always much harsher than actual court… and in the world of human resources both should be avoided.

I am willing to bet that since the Argos have no interest in losing Kelly’s services they will find a fall guy in management (John Murphy has previous experience getting turfed for doing dumb things) and give Kelly a slap on the wrist and have him do a super fake apology (that I can tell you right now will include “that’s not who I am”, “I found the lord through this” and maybe even “I have many friends who are women”). I will add a bonus prediction that given some people’s addiction to finding a way to tie the Riders to bad new stories, the headlines will read “Former Rider Assistant GM forced to resign in disgrace from current CFL team”.

In more positive CFL news, Vernon Adams signed a long-term extension in BC. Good for him. I am actually glad to see him have success. Remember that his CFL career started with more trades (BC->Montreal->Sask->Hamilton) than starts. Also remember that for a period in 2017 the Riders had him 3^rd on the QB depth chart behind Kevin Glenn and Brandon Bridge. Excuse me while I go silently weep for a few seconds.

Monday Morning Sentimonies: Big Additions

For the most part the official opening of free agency was about as exciting as most all-star games. Not a lot of real excitement and a whole lot of going through the motions. We made official all the deals we were expecting which was great, just not particularly exciting. I honestly thought that we were mostly done. But O’Day had other plans.

He made 2 more big (both literally and figuratively) signings. The first was bringing back Micah Johnson. Now I’ll be the first to admit that having Micah play for us in an even numbered year will be weird. He played for us in 2019, left for BC in 2020 when the season ended up being cancelled, returned for 2021, left for Hamilton in 2022 and returned in 2023. He was not due back in these parts until his 4th stint came around in 2025. But dammit am I happy he’s staying! I have been campaigning for this all offseason (you’re welcome). In a crap season, Micah was one of the few guys who gave it his all the whole year. Not only was he a strong veteran leader who demonstrated the heart you want to see from your key guys, he was pretty damn good still. At 35, he played a full 18 game season, notched his most sacks as a Rider and I contend, was our best defender (I get that the bar was pretty low but still, point remains, he was good). I think he is exactly the veteran leader we need to head up this revamped D-line under Coach Mace.

The second addition caught me completely by surprise. With Ferland and Blake back and young guys like Bandy, Fry and now Zerr, I assumed O’Day would be content at Canadian OL. In what might be the first time the term “pleasant surprise” has been used in conjunction with anything O’Day has done with Canadian OL in the past 3 years, he went out and landed Ryan Sceviour (I assume Mueller and Mace’s Calgary connections had some play in there as well). An 8^th overall pick in the 2018 Draft who has locking down the RG position on the Stamps OL for a few years now, and was named a West Division all-star in 2022. This was a massive addition to our OL. The only downside here is that this makes me pretty confident that O'Day will now continue his streak of completely ignoring OL in the draft... but I guess that's a future us problem. For now let's focus on the good.  

Honestly, other than American receiver (which we can address through recruiting), I feel like O’Day has checked all the boxes in terms of our major needs. The cynic in me fears becoming hopeful because decades have history have shown that hope almost always precedes that hope being violently bashed to pieces. But like Michael Scott I am ready to get hurt again.

I don’t expect there is much more coming our way in free agency but there are a few names still out there that I would certainly at least be looking into to see if you can get some late value. Some names include receivers like Cam Phillips, Rasheed Bailey or Lucky Whitehead. Even a Canadian WR like Nate Behar or Tevaun Smith (we will need depth if we look at starting 3 Cdn WR). DBs like Roberson Daniel, Winston Rose, Alden Darby or Jeremy Clark. Or DL such Woody Barron or AC Leonard. For the right price there could be some good value here.

Monday Morning Sentimoines: Successful Tampering

I hate the term “won free agency”. Teams that “win” free agency generally are terrible (good teams don’t need to sign a bunch of FAs because they already have a talented roster) and tend to not win the actual season.  That said I do think the Riders had a very successful tampering period. I had listed 5 primary needs and we managed to address 4 of those is a big way. I don’t think that suddenly makes us Cup contenders. I do feel better about our roster than I did a week ago.

I said needed LBs. We went out and got the best LB available in Jameer Thurman. Dude is a flat out stud and will definitely be a strong anchor for our D. We also got Adam Auclair. Basically he is a younger Teitz. Between Thurman, Auclair and Reavis we dropped the average age of LBs significantly.

I said we needed OT help. We went out and got the best one available in Jemarcus Hardrick. In the process we righted a historical wrong. Hardick was a Rider in 2015 and not deemed worth keeping in the new Chris Jones regime. To use a Jones term, he has been “moderately successful" since. Did we overpay? Probably, but when your option is spend a lot or suffer another season trying to fix out OT issue in-house, I say its money we needed to spend.

I said we needed a CB. We went out and got Jalon Edwards-Cooper. He kinda got overshadowed a bit in BC playing alongside some bigger names guy. I think he can be an impact player. The stat is that he did not give up a TD in 2023. That's good right?

I said we needed DL help. We went out and got Malik Carney. I’m still not exactly sure why we seem to be moving on from Robertson but Carney has 12 sacks over the past 2 seasons and I think instantly adds a proven pass rusher to our rotation.

RB wasn’t a priority but we went out and got Ouelette. He’s the second best RB in the CFL and will bring a hard nosed bruising style to our run game that we haven’t had in a while. I was always a big Morrow fan but I do think Ouelette is objectively a bit better.

This haul has Rider fans more excited for the season than soccer moms were to see Usher perform at half time. We still have some holes to fill but O’Day and Mace definitely did good job of aggressively going out and addressing our biggest needs.

Long road still ahead of us but good first step.

Monday Morning Sentimonies: The Waiting Game

In the week leading up to the negotiation window, the Riders had a huge week in terms of re-signing their own guys. We extended Milligan for an extra year (by far our best DB). We retained Lanier and Bane (arguably our top pending free agents on either side of the ball). We also extended Nelson Lokombo (not nearly as notable as their other 3 but Canadian depth is crucial and for an organization that has struggled to retain and develop draft picks at times Lokombo makes it 7 of our last 9 1^st/2^nd/3^rd round picks still with the team). 

When healthy and not stupidly being played out of position at D-end, Lanier is among the most disruptive DTs in the league. I think Mace is a coach who can get Lanier to that next level of excellence. Bane is simply a massive piece to keep. Look at what he did last season and factor in the carousel of back-up QBs and underqualified OC he had to deal with. I don’t think we have seen his ceiling yet. Farhan Lalji reports his deal is around $175,000. That is really good value when you consider some other WR salary (i.e. Eugene Lewis $300k+, Rhyme $240K). 

As of right now, O’Day is busy legally tampering. We may yet see some of our guys re-sign after seeing the open market isn’t as lucrative as they hoped but for the most part this is the time to attract new guys to the team. 

Here’s what I see as our top area of needs.

 

1.     Linebackers

You can debate the quality, but at pretty much every position the Riders could field a team today if they needed to. The glaring exception is LB. We got nobody other than Reavis. If you trust your scouting you could maybe fill one spot with a new player but not 2. Obviously the top target should be Jameer Thurman. I expect us also to kick the tires on Adarius Pickett, Ben Hladik and Adam Auclair (drafting his brother didn’t pan out, maybe we can get some games out of an Auclair after all). I honestly would not rule out a Larry Dean return if we miss out on some of the top end targets but that is definitely not the preferred route.

 

2.     Offensive Tackle

As of today the starters would be Hawkins and Council (maybe old man Blake). So unless we get some upgrades here they might as well just pre-reserve a hospital bed for Trevor Harris. Biggest name on the market is Hardrick but he’s the only legit starter hitting the market so he will be fielding multiple calls. Trevon Tate and Tyrone Riley would be your other options. I am still holding out hope that Colin Kelly returns once he is healthy.

 

3.     Cornerback

We have Milligan, Henderson, Williams and Dalke. I expect Williams to take a step forward in year 2 but Henderson has always been inconsistent and even with him penciled in as a starter you need one more guy. Best case scenario is convincing Jamal Peters to follow Mace here. Or if you wanted to spend a bit less Robertson Daniel. Other names I’d be calling include Demario Houston, Ciante Williams and Damon Webb (I always felt we gave up on him too early).

 

4.     Interior OL Depth

Godber, Ferland and Blake (Assuming we aren’t forced to bump him out to tackle) should be solid on the inside but when (not if) we need someone else to fill in for a short or long term absence it gets scary again. The organization seems to love Logan Bandy, though I’m not seeing in him what they are yet. We are waiting for Fry to finally take the next step. And maybe Zerr gets his career on track (being dumped by 2 teams in 2 seasons is not a great omen for a high draft pick OL). Bottom line we need reinforcements and while logic would dictate we get some of that through the draft, O’Day has been about has willing to draft OL early as I am forgo my morning coffee. Geoff Gray, Sean Jamieson and Phillip Norman are options.

 

5.     D-line

My sense is that the team is banking on some combination of Albright and Cox to be able to lock down one DE spot. We have Lanier and Brown inside. With Korte-Moore and Dabire to rotate. At a minimum we need another DE to replace Robertson and likely more depth at DT with both Christmas and Micah not yet re-signed. I don’t see us paying for Betts (with other more pressing needs) so guys like Dewayne Hendrix, Sean Oakman, Ricky Walker, Dylan Wynn, Brandon Barlow and Malik Carney become the target list. Whoever we add I just hope it turns out better than last year’s D-line splash… Stefen Banks.

I know I left RB off the list. We will likely add one but its not really a pressing need and with so many hitting the market all at once, there will be a decent one available regardless of how long we wait.