Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Midweek Musings

Unsurprisingly the Riders lost last week to the Eskimos rather handily. As I said last week, I have no faith in Marcus Crandell and apparently neither do the Riders, as they traded for Argos QB (and noted Ticat killer) Michael Bishop. Reports out of Regina also say that Crandell might even be released before the Labour Day weekend game, thus avoiding to pay him after the rest of the season (vets salaries are guaranteed after 9 games). Bishop might help the Riders out of their two game tailspin, although it is tough to see him starting this weekend. Bishop to me has always been rather underwhelming, however combined with the Riders good defence and his big play ability (22 TDs last year, although with an ugly 52.1% completion rate), Bishop has a chance this year to do ok. I still think the Riders record after their first six wins will be below 500. To many injuries. The Bombers have back to back games against the Riders starting this week and unfortunately for the Ticats I think the Bombers might win both.

For Toronto, well Kerry Joseph is the man now at QB. The Argos also released former Cat Orlando Steinauer who played in the secondary. Apparently another victim of veterans released before game nine not having to be paid for the rest of the season. The money saved also is saved on the salary cap, so I wonder if this is a strategy if you know your team will be currently over the cap for the entire year to get under by the end of the season. Getting rid of Bishop helps the Argos salary cap situation as well. Perhaps they paid to much to Mike Vanderjagt coming back from the NFL.

In other news, the Cats eighth overall pick (received from Montreal for exceeding the salary cap), receiver Samuel Giguerre from the University of Sherbrooke may be released from the Indianapolis Colts. Or not. We should know soon however. Doubtful he could make much of a contribution the rest of the season, but who knows. Here's a Sportnets article on him.

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