O’Day says Riders ‘feel good’ ahead of free agency

Saskatchewan Roughriders general manager Jeremy O’Day still has some names to check off his team’s pending free-agent list ahead of a unique free-agency period.

CFL free agency is set to begin at 11 a.m. on Feb. 9. This Sunday, teams will be able to begin talking to pending free agents from other organizations.

“I feel pretty good. Like most years, you always go into free agency with some guys that you don’t expect to get back. It’s not very much like any other year where you’ll have some guys go into free agency,” O’Day said Friday. “We’ve really tackled the list of free agents that we had this year so overall we feel good with it.”

O’Day admitted the Roughriders asked pretty much everyone to take less money in 2021.

“All of our players that have re-signed have come back for a reduction in salary with the exception of a few guys who would be coming off their rookie contracts,” O’Day said. “A majority of our veteran players have had to take deductions.”

The Roughriders have been busy, signing 23 of their 34 potential free agents. But there are some big names who still aren’t under contract for 2021.

One of those players is Canadian linebacker Cam Judge, who was named the West Division’s most outstanding Canadian in 2019.

O’Day said the 26-year-old Judge is currently pursuing some NFL opportunities.

“He’s still planning on working out for an NFL team. We’ve had constant communication with his agent throughout this whole process and will continue to do that,” O’Day said.

Linebacker Solomon Elimimian, 34, and defensive end Charleston Hughes, 37, are two CFL veterans who remain without contract extensions at this time.

“I wouldn’t anticipate that we’d have both back,” O’Day said. “I don’t want to get too detailed on where we are, but just like any other year, we’re going to get some of our players back and every year we’re not going to get all of our free agents back.

“In some cases, you wish you could just bring the team back from where you were but that’s not the reality of the environment that we’re in and we’ve got to make some decisions.”

Kicker Brett Lauther is also continuing to kick the tires on NFL opportunities and punter Jon Ryan had some interest from down south during the season so he is also in a wait-and-see situation.

How active the Riders will be come Feb. 9 depends on how many more of their pending free agents sign extensions. O’Day said in December the team wouldn’t be spending as much as it did in previous seasons.

“We have offers to a couple of our guys still that are on the table and we’re waiting for them to decide if they want to come back to our team or not,” O’Day said. “If those don’t happen, then we can be a little more active than we expect but overall I can say that we’re not going to be overly active in free agency.”