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2024 Free Agency February 23, 2024

O’Leary: 3.5 thoughts to take into the weekend

Daniel Crump/CFL.ca

Senior Writer
@olearychris

Time moves fast in the CFL. We’ve hit the 10-day mark of Free Agency and with the Ticats’ recent re-signing of Tim White, we now have just one player remaining in CFL.ca’s top 30 free agents list that’s actually still a free agent. That is defensive lineman A.C. Leonard, who put together a 12-sack, 45-tackle season last year with Edmonton while suiting up in all 18 of the Elks’ games.

In his media session after the first day of Free Agency, Elks’ general manager and head coach Chris Jones didn’t entirely squash the idea of bringing Leonard back, but it did seem like it would require some salary cap juggling if it were to happen.

While that might be discouraging news for Leonard, I don’t doubt that we’ll see him in uniform this season.

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An oft-forgotten but very important part of the CFL off-season is still in front of us. After the CFL Draft and Global Draft, teams across the league will head into camps, evaluate the rosters they’ve assembled and without fail will release a higher profile player, freeing up some salary and opening the door for a player like Leonard, if he hasn’t found a match with a team already.

He deserves better than that, coming off of the type of season that he is at 32-years old. Remember that Shawn Lemon took a similar path in 2023, signing with the BC Lions in February but being cut in camp. Lemon of course sat idle until July, before signing with the Montreal Alouettes and racking up nine sacks in 13 games while helping the Als to a win at the 110th Grey Cup. Lemon signed a one-year extension with the Als in the wake of that big win. Sometimes the difficult journeys are worth it.

Here are a few other things I’m thinking about as the weekend inches closer.

VA gets a little security

For all of his Big Play highlights — and there are many of them — for some reason I always think back to a trying moment in Vernon Adams Jr.‘s career before anything else.

The Als had just traded for Johnny Manziel and were on the field a few days later, hosting Edmonton. Adams got the start, but the rowdy fans at Molson Stadium wanted to see Johnny Football, regardless of how acquainted he was with the offence.

The fans chanted for Manziel while Adams was out there giving his all — and paying the price, taking six sacks en route to a 44-23 loss. Adams had arrived in Montreal after a stay earlier that season in Hamilton where he briefly played receiver. Why? Well, Manziel was a late off-season addition to the Ticats and his splash in the QB room created a ripple that saw Adams lining up at receiver just to stay on the team.

That of course was preceded by stints in Saskatchewan and the start of his career in Montreal; neither worked out. The Als provided him a temporary home from 2019-2022 and Adams was named an East Division All-Star in 2019, but it didn’t last there either. He was traded to the BC Lions in 2022, after Nathan Rourke went down with a long-term foot injury.

Finally, in BC, Adams is doing his thing. He filled in well for Rourke in 2022 and when he was handed the keys to the Lions’ offence last year he raced away with it, putting up a league-best 4,769 yards and led the Lions to their second consecutive Western Final appearance.

On Wednesday, the team announced it extended Adams through 2026. He was heading into the final year of his contract and Lions’ co-GMs Neil McEvoy and Rick Campbell did right by their starter and put the idea of contract talks out of his mind well before camp will open. Security may be impossible to fully find in football, but Adams has gotten as close as he can to it and has earned every bit of it.

Simoni’s day

Simoni Lawrence was honoured by the City of Hamilton on Wednesday, after he announced his retirement as a player on Feb. 15.

What’s the best way to sum up what Lawrence has come to mean to Hamilton after his 11 years there? Maybe this?

It’s rare/just about impossible for a pro athlete in any sport to have the kind of stay that Lawrence has had in Hamilton. There are of course the on-field accolades that he amassed in that time. He’s the Ticats’ franchise leader in total tackles (734), defensive tackles (727) and single-game tackles (17) and his 742 career defensive tackles rank 10th in CFL history.

He’s also a three-time CFL All-Star (2015, 2019, 2021), a five-time CFL East Division All-Star (2014-2016, 2019, 2021) and he was named the East Division’s nominee for Most Outstanding Defensive Player three times (2015, 2019, 2021).

Lawrence became an extension of the team in Hamilton over the years. His enthusiasm and approachability and style of play made for a connection that only grew stronger with each season he suited up in Black and Gold.

What was most impressive to me, though, was how Lawrence ramped up his productivity in the late stages of his career. He set a career-high in tackles in 2019, with 98, when he was 30. He had seven of his 15 career interceptions between 2019 and 2023. Last year, at 34, he almost set a career high in sacks, with five. While he just missed the mark of six he set in 2017, he did match his career-best three forced fumbles last year, after doing it in 2013 and 2014. That Lawrence elevated his play and extended the prime of his career when many of his peers start a natural decline speaks volumes about what a unique player he was on the field. Off the field, he’s purely one-of-one.

Something to get the what-if wheels turning 

Jeremiah Masoli‘s agent, Fred Weinrauch, posted a short video on Thursday of Masoli in a workout.

It’s just a nine-second snippet and to me at least, nothing that you can declaratively state that Masoli is all the way back. It is encouraging though and it really let my thoughts run on what a healthy Masoli could bring to the REDBLACKS this year.

I’m a believer in Dru Brown and would love to see a two-QB system in Ottawa. Masoli fared very well in that setup with Dane Evans, with the duo getting within one end zone reception of a Grey Cup win in 2021. The Masoli-Evans pairing was largely fuelled by injuries, but there’s much to be gained with a possible first-year starting quarterback working closely with and even splitting game time with an experienced vet. With Tommy Condell in Ottawa as offensive coordinator this year, there could be an added level of comfort for Masoli in that kind of situation.

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