The 2016 CFL season will be the most interesting year Canadian Football will offer in sometime, with coaches jumping ship left right and centre, star players finding new teams, and a Grey Cup Champion coach leaving for the 2015 bottom feeders.
The main questions to ask: Who will improve the most? Who has the most to lose moving forward? And who will be the biggest disappointment of the 2016 CFL season?
A Cleaned-out House in Sasakatchewan
After their worst season in recent memory the Saskatchewan Roughriders entered the 2015 off-season poised to make major changes both on the field and in the office. Gone are fan favorites Weston Dressler (Winnipeg Blue Bombers), John Chick (Hamilton Tiger-Cats) and Tyron Brackenridge, to name a few. Corey Chamblin and Brendan Taman were fired at the halfway point in 2015.
What does this all mean for the Riders?
The answer is simple: a new regime is in charge that will pay attention to winning games, not winning friends. This is Chris Jones’ team, and with that comes his beliefs about building a football team to win. And Jones has begun already by dropping the axe on such overpaid commodities as the aforementioned Dressler and Chick, who were scheduled to make more than they are worth in 2016, and are quickly approaching their best before dates.
Darian Durant will be back and will start for the Riders in 2016, if he can stay healthy and that’s a big if considering how the past two years have gone. The Green and White are 8-2 with their leader behind center compared to a brutal 5-21 with out him in the past two seasons.
For the Riders, the 2016 CFL season isn’t a rebuild; this off-season has been a complete gut job of the team and coaching staff members who were successful in the past. The fans are being led to embrace the hype of massive change and look forward to the future. How far into the future they have to look depends on the mad scientist sitting in the GM office.
The Riders have the most to lose in 2016 because people don’t like change, and in Riderville there will be a lot of finger pointing and shouting if they don’t make the playoffs this year.
Winnipeg Searching for Answers
The Winnipeg Blue Bombers will be searching for answers this off season on how to make the leap into the playoffs as well. The Blue and Gold have brought in Paul LaPolice to head up an offence that desperately needs leadership. They also went out and grabbed Weston Dressler, who had massive success under LaPolice in Regina.
Free agency is just over a week a way, and look for Winnipeg to make plays for big names. The last time Winnipeg lifted the Grey Cup was 1990. That’s not the longest drought if you count Ottawa and 1976, but it’s clear that Kyle Walters and the new Bomber brass understand this team needs to be successful, and soon. That stadium bill already looks nasty hanging over their heads, and it’ll look even worse if the losses start piling up again this year.
Winnipeg will likely have improved this year, but if the losses start soon, look for LaPo to take the reins from current head coach Mike O’Shea.
Buono Back in B.C.
Wally Buono is back behind the bench in Vancouver. He will oversee a team that has limped into the playoffs the past two seasons only to be crushed in the first round.
Is an older head coach the answer to get B.C. over the hump? Likely not. The Lions will need help at the quarterback position for 2016–note that Trevor Harris is still available at the moment.
Travis Lulay is a pending UFA; with his injury-prone years in B.C., it’s probably time for both parties to move on. Andrew Harris is also scheduled to become a free agent, and his absence in 2016 would be felt more than Lulay’s.
The Lions will have the services of Solomon Elimimian and Adam Bighill, but if this offence continues to struggle like they did in the failed Cortez-Tedford experiment, Buono may end up testing them on the offensive side of the ball.
Wally Buono has an outstanding resume in the CFL; it’s just too bad he isn’t the one actually touching the ball on game day. Buono’s return to the sidelines will be the biggest disappointment of 2016. He did say that with him at head coach, he will have no one to blame but himself. Let’s see how he handles getting the blame from the man in charge.
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