Monday Morning Sentimonies: Where’s Our Canadians?

I alluded to this in my Friday post but I am beginning to get concerned about the state of the Canadian content of the Riders. It’s not any particular position or player that concerns me or even concern over starters but just the fact that we have so few of them.

Here’s some quick numbers for you. We need 20 Canadians on the game day roster. Currently we have a mere 24 Canadians signed. Meaning at this point all but 4 are guaranteed a job. It gets even more concerning when you look at who comprises our 24.

-       3 of them are juniors (Newman, Solomon and Clark)

-       1 is a CIS guy who has never taken a pro snap (Bodnar)

-       1 is a guy whose knee is in serious question (Bagg)

-       2 are tokens at best (Boulay and McHenry)

-       1 is Jordan Sisco (which I won’t bother getting into)

-       1 was drafted 3 years ago and has yet to really do anything so is a question mark (Hutchins)

So that leaves 15 guys that I would consider “roster worthy”: Shologan, Shomari, McCullough, Butler, Woldu, Huclack, Milo, Picard, Best, Labatte, Krausnick-Groh, Neufeld, Bell, Hughes and Getzlaf.

Even if you assume we get a sure thing with our 1^st overall pick and assume that Bagg’s knee is healthy (which are both far from certain) that only gets us to 17 sure things meaning 3 Canadians will make our team by virtue of being mediocre simply because we won’t have a shred of competition for Canadians. Solid move Taman. And then what happens if someone gets hurt? We aren’t that far away from Matthieu Boulay having to be a starter because we don’t have the luxury of a back-up plan. Or from having to beg Gene Makowsky come out of retirement and play receiver. Or praying that the US officially annexes Canada and we become one big happy country.

Maybe Graig Newman is a Craig Butler clone and maybe whoever we draft will be a superstar and maybe Rob Bagg will be his old, awesome self but equally as possible is Newman being the next Sasha Glavic, our draft pick will ending up at an NFL tryout and Rob Bagg giving us Dominguez flashbacks… there are no guarantees either way. 

I’ve seen this script play out somewhere before too… Winnipeg… under Taman, where his absolute disregard for Canadians not named Doug Brown was laughable.

As I said before it’s not any particular position or player that concerns me but just that we have so few. And if we end up drafting Ben Heenan we are only making the problem worse… unless we plan on starting 4 offensive guards.

CFL Ins and Outs

Hamilton

In: K Luca Congi (free agent signing), DB Milt Collins, DB Dee Webb (contract extension)

I bet Luca was ecstatic to catch on with another team… at least until he realized that Jim Daley would be his Special Teams coach again when he likely started screaming uncontrollably.

Calgary

In: QB Cam Sexton, LB Danny Lansanah (free agent signing)

Why can’t we sign the QB named Sexton? I want a Sexton jersey. I also plan on stealing the name Cam Sexton should I ever go into the adult film industry.  

BC

In: Geroy Simon (contract extension)

I wonder how much Simon wished he could have caught just a few more balls last year. Having to come back for a full season after winning a Grey Cup just for 66 measly yards.