REGINA -- It’s one of the busiest times of the year for Canadian Football League general managers, and one that can go a long way towards turning a team into a Grey Cup champion.
With the free agent negotiating window opening on Sunday and the official signing period set to begin on Tuesday, Feb. 11, Saskatchewan Roughriders general manager Jeremy O’Day will be fielding many conversations with agents and players as plans come into place for how the team will look in the coming season.
Not only will O’Day be looking at re-signing his own free agents, it’ll also be a matter of attempting to entice players from throughout the league to come to Regina -- all while dealing within the CFL’s $5,750,000 salary cap.
A balancing act, to be sure, and one O’Day is confident will turn out well for his crew.
“The last number of years with one-year contracts and the salary cap that was implemented years ago, it's free agency. The fact that you can really change your team around when you go into free agency now,” O’Day said.
“We were very active last year and as I said before we've got a lot of those guys still in a contract, which is great. But we're going to do everything we can to improve our team within the restrictions of the salary cap that we have to abide by.”
The Roughriders have 20 pending free agents -- -- and O’Day is interested in bringing as much top-tier talent as he can back into the fold.
“It's important for us this year to work through our own free agents and get our guys back which we still continue to do. There's some that we've already offered contracts to and I'd say that we still have some offers out there that we're we're still working on. Then there are some players that we may still offer and there are some players that we probably won't offer,” O’Day said.
“It's a lot of conversations, a lot of tracking, a lot of talking to agents, talking to your own players, your coaching staff. When someone gets released or someone gets presented to you it sets off a domino effect: ‘I have the information now I'm going to talk to our head coach and then we'll bring positional coaches in we'll have a discussion about the roster.’ Then of course at the very end is the discussion with me over whether a player would fit in salary cap-wise or not. But you have to really get into the window so you can have open, honest conversations with the agents and what's going on with the player.“
Every team in the CFL is doing the exact same thing, which means the situation can be extremely fluid from moment to moment.
“It's a lot of moving parts and it changes really by the hour when someone signs back somewhere or you know a different direction is happening,” O’Day said. “We always shift and pivot so there's a lot of moving parts around.”
One thing that’s for certain is how important free agency has become -- it seems almost unfeasible for a team to succeed in today’s game without dipping their toes into the pool.
“You'd love to have a situation where you're just building through your drafting and scouting but it doesn't always happen that way,” O’Day said, adding that sometimes contracts don’t work out at the right time under the salary cap.
“You have a good player in a position that makes a good contract and another player is coming up that also needs a good contract and you're not able to provide two guys in the same position with the starting money that they would be asking for. You’re always going to have to do something in free agency.”
At the same time, a revolving door can damage a team’s continuity and familiarity, throwing another aspect into the free agency balancing act.
“Ideally, we don't want to be in a situation where we're super heavy in free agency because you want guys to feel comfortable and be building towards something, which is a championship,” O’Day said.
“You want them to be around the same guys for multiple years and if you can do that I think it pays off. If you have tough years then obviously you're going to be more active, if there's a change in the coaching staff, if there's a change in the general manager then there's obviously going to be heavy activity.”
Be sure to keep it locked to for all your Rougriders free agent news as it happens.
