Ottawa REDBLACKS Signing Henry Burris?

Reports are abounding that the Ottawa Redblacks are signing former Ticat quarterback Henry Burris. A bit weird considering they already picked up Kevin Glenn in the expansion draft. Also weird that the Bombers lost out on Burris after Collaros being picked up by Hamilton.

Also weird is that Dave Campbell (@Dave_CHED) is reporting on Twitter that Burris is signing for over $400,000 (I don't think he got that much in Hamilton the last couple of years base).

On the intertubes people are speculating Ottawa trades Glenn back to Winnipeg his former team, which would be kind of amusing, although the chip on Glenn's shoulder must be reaching massive proportions by now. Glenn is a few years younger than Burris, but Ottawa must like Burris better to make this move. Or maybe they make training camp a like Glengarry Glen Ross where the winner get the starting job and the loser gets his release and no steak knives.

At least Ottawa looks like they're making an attempt to be decent in 2014. With the massive turnover that CFL rosters go over every year, the CFL is a league when in theory your team should be able to get better quickly.

Whoa. Ticats Sign Zach Collaros and Release Henry Burris

Seems that Kent Austin isn't afraid to shake things up. Funnily I was thinking this morning about the Ticat Collaros rumours and whether signing him would make the Cats better in 2014 versus keeping Burris. My thoughts were that the Cats probably would be a little better with Burris this year, but better with Collaros next year.

Burris had a decent year with the Cats in 2013, but somewhat unusually for a head coach, Austin wasn't afraid to put in his backups for a series or two in many games. It certainly seemed odd at the time, but it did seem to be effective.

Burris is obviously quite old now, even by CFL quarterbacking standards. Can he still be effective? I think he can and certainly the Bombers would have been better in 2013 with Burris at the controls rather than the pivots they trotted out. I'm guessing he ends up in Winnipeg.

I'm sad to see Burris go. He got the Ticats to the Grey Cup in 2013 (although lets not talk about 2012) for the first time since 1999. That's something important. But football is not a game for sentimentalists. We'll see how things pan out for Collaros with the Ticats.

Noteworthy Cat CFL Stats After Week 8

Henry Burris leads the league with 2135 yards, more than 200 more than Travis Lulay. Burris' pass completion percentage is only 65.1%, far behind Ricky Ray's 78.1%.

Rookie Ellingson is fifth in receiving yards, Bakari Grant is eighth and Giguere is 13th. Gable is tenth in rushing yards.

Johnson is 24th in the CFL with 23 tackles.

Ticats and Quarterback Sneaks

Bad teams fail on third and one, good teams convert third and ones in the CFL. I'm sure someone could do an analysis of this and correlate wins with the conversion percentage.

This year and I'm not the only one that has noticed this is that the Cats have been failing on third and one. They are using Burris, but I think they should go back to the old method of having their backup quarterback (at the time Quinton Porter) specialize in third and ones. By having the backup quarterback practicing this repeatedly, they could add in some more possibilities than just the straight ahead sneak, including occasionally going to the outside. Uncertainty always helps.

Further to this, Burris isn't young at all. Getting the backup involved improves his development. Last year the Cats were last, yet Burris took almost all the snaps. That might help Burris' raw numbers, but it doesn't help the team overall. If you're going to be last anyways, you might as well get some development in for your backup, especially when Burris is 38.