Team can start signing players with expiring CFL deals Tuesday
OTTAWA — Ottawa Redblacks history-making moments are still being counted in minutes, hours and days.
Another big one occurs Tuesday at 12 noon, when the Canadian Football League’s newest franchise can start selling itself to any number of the 66 players with expiring contracts with eight other teams.
“We are going to try to sign as many of them as possible at what we feel they should be getting paid,” Redblacks general manager Marcel Desjardins said on the weekend.
The Redblacks have 45 players under contract and rights to four unsigned picks from the 2013 college draft, but 26 of those 49 players line up on offence and one (Nick Setta) is a kicker. With nine defensive linemen, eight defensive backs and just five linebackers, there are greater needs on defence.
Available on Tuesday are nine defensive backs, 11 lineman; 10 linebackers.
The Redblacks’ mantra has been “best player regardless of position,” but Desjardins said that would change to the extent “relative to what the price may be for certain players.”
Also factoring in are roster rules governing the number of Canadian and import (American) players.
No point in signing a Canadian quarterback, for example. Good thing, too, because none will be coming on the market Tuesday, and the only new free-agent QB appears to be Montreal Alouettes third-stringer Josh Neiswander.
The Redblacks appear set at QB, anyway, after signing Henry Burris last Tuesday and installing him atop the depth chart ahead Kevin Glenn and Thomas DeMarco, their quarterback picks in the mid-December expansion draft.
Matt Faulkner, a non-CFL quarterback spotted at a tryout camp in Texas, was signed in December.
The idea that the Redblacks might trade Glenn, 34, to Winnipeg took a hit Thursday after the Blue Bombers acquired Drew Willy from the Saskatchewan Roughriders, named him their starter and kept him off the free-agent market by agreeing to new contract.
CFL teams can have 75 players under contract when camp starts, which in the Redblacks’ case will not include the four 2013 college draft picks or their upcoming selections — eight unless they make a trade — in early May. So they could sign approximately 30 more free agents, but they won’t all come out of Tuesday’s crop.
“There’s not a tonne of guys that are really difference-makers anyway,” Desjardins said.
Desjardins said he, assistant GM Brock Sunderland, head coach Rick Campbell and college/pro scout Jeremy Snyder would share the duty of calling agents and clients to determine whether players had interest in coming to Ottawa and finding out what kind of offer it might take.
“If they’re asking for the moon, I may tell them, ‘look, this is what we are willing to pay,’ or, ‘that’s too rich for us. Thanks, anyway,’” he said.
Assuming Burris, Glenn and DeMarco are the quarterbacks when the season starts in June, the Redblacks will devote more salary-cap dollars to that position than most CFL clubs, Desjardins said after signing Burris, but overall they will have comparatively fewer veteran CFLers with contracts to match.
“The big thing that we can pitch to a number of these guys is a true opportunity to play,” Desjardins said. “Our roster is so much more wide open than a lot of teams, so I think that’s an advantage that we can offer a lot of players.”
CFL free agency traditionally started Feb. 15, but that date falls on a holiday weekend in several provinces this year, so the league and players’ association advanced it.
By: Gord Holder, Ottawa Citizen
Photo: James Park, Ottawa Citizen
