The Hamilton Tiger-Cats face another off-season of questions after the team once again failed to live up to the championship expectations that came after the team made a number of high-profile moves last winter.
This was supposed to be the year. With a future first-ballot Hall of Famer under centre, the Ticats seemed destined to win their first Grey Cup in nearly a quarter century and they were going to do it in front of their fans at Tim Hortons Field.
Then the season started.
The quarterback got hurt, the team lost six of their first nine games, they fired their offensive coordinator, and the quarterback got hurt again. They rallied, as they tend to do under head coach Orlondo Steinauer, but it wasn’t enough. Despite all the hoopla and all the hype, this season finished as the last one did with an East Semi-Final loss in Montreal.
The Tiger-Cats have a number of important questions they will need to answer if they hope to contend for a championship in 2024. Here are the four biggest questions facing the franchise this winter.
Reconcile or restart?
When you have a question at the game’s most important position, it trumps any others you may have to answer.
Given his post-game comments following the playoff loss to the Alouettes, it seems as if the Tiger-Cats and Bo Levi Mitchell are headed for a divorce just one year after getting together.
For Mitchell, the next move will be an interesting one. If he decides his playing days are over, a future in television likely awaits. If you watched any of the TSN’s playoff coverage over the last few years, you know Mitchell is a natural and would make for an excellent addition to both the panel and potentially the booth.
Should he want to keep playing, the options are much less attractive for him outside of Hamilton. Six teams — B.C., Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Saskatchewan, and Edmonton — appear fully committed to their starters for next year and Calgary isn’t an option for obvious reasons. That just leaves Ottawa, a team that’s probably sick of dealing with quarterbacks who can’t stay healthy.
Hamilton’s options outside of Mitchell are limited as well. They could ride with Taylor Powell and use the money they’ll save on his rookie deal to build the roster around him. This strategy has recently worked well for B.C. and Toronto with Nathan Rourke and Chad Kelly, respectively. Projecting Powell to be the next Rourke or Kelly would be foolish, but having even a passable starting quarterback on a rookie contract has proven to be a successful roster-building move both north and south of the border.
If the team wants to go looking outside the building for their 2024 starter, there aren’t a lot of viable options there either. McLeod Bethel-Thompson has expressed interest in returning to the CFL, while the Ticats could also tap into the free-agent market to make Winnipeg backup Dru Brown their starter, similar to what they did a decade ago when they replaced Henry Burris with Zach Collaros.
What the Ticats do at quarterback this winter is shaping up to be the move to watch and the trickle-down effect it could have on the rest of the roster will be interesting.
Which brings us to…
Reload or rebuild?
The Ticats have 37 potential free agents, tied for the most of any team entering the off-season, and the chance to completely remake their roster is there should they choose to go down that path.
Some long-time key contributors such as Ted Laurent, Dylan Wynn, Brandon Revenberg, Richard Leonard, and Simoni Lawrence are all eligible for new deals, as are younger but equally established players such as Tim White, Tunde Adeleke, and Stavros Katsantonis.
A number of these players will probably sign new deals before free agency opens on February 13. There are over 260 players from across the league currently slated to hit the open market and all nine teams will re-up a decent amount of them before free agency starts, the Ticats included.
Which players they decide to re-sign and which ones they try to lure to Hamilton should give us an idea of where the team sees itself in 2024. After going all out to build a championship team the last few seasons, the chance to hit the reset button might be strong after this core group continuously failed to achieve their championship goal.
Short-term pain could lead to long-term gain, provided you have the right people making the decisions.
That leads us to…
Restructure or reshuffle?
Ever since Kent Austin vacated his post midway through the 2017 season, the Tiger-Cats have operated with a committee-style approach to their front office. First, it was a co-general manager setup with Shawn Burke and Drew Allemang. When Burke left to take the GM job in Ottawa, the Ticats pivoted once again with Steinauer at the top as president and three assistant general managers underneath him in Allemang, Spencer Zimmerman, and Ed Hervey.
This setup has not worked out, as the Tabbies have stagnated the last few seasons, winning eight games in each of the last three seasons after their incredible 15-win campaign in 2019.
The Ticats would benefit from a more traditional structure and while the dream scenario of luring Kyle Walters back to Hamilton, where he spent all seven years of his playing career, is dead after he signed a two-year contract extension with the Bombers. That doesn’t mean the Ticats can’t reshuffle their front office into something more traditional.
One in-house candidate who could potentially handle the reins is Hervey. He’s enjoyed two stints as a CFL general manager, and while his second stop with the B.C. Lions did not go according to plan, he was a major part of the brain trust that helped bring Edmonton its first champion in 10 years in 2015.
Hervey took over a sputtering Edmonton franchise that had just two winning seasons and two playoff wins in the seven years prior to his arrival, turning them into a contender almost overnight. Under Hervey’s watch, Edmonton made the division finals in all three of their playoff appearances, won double-digit games in 2014, 2015, and 2016 and won the Grey Cup over the Ottawa Redblacks in 2015.
While Steinauer might be hesitant to give up power as the president of football operations, giving more personnel power to Hervey would allow Steinauer to do what he does best: coach.
When Steinauer was only in charge of the on-field product, the Ticats were sensational, setting a franchise mark with 15 regular-season wins in 2019. The Tabbies followed that up with a second straight Grey Cup appearance in 2021 but when Steinauer was named football ops president, things began to take a turn for the worse.
It’s a long shot but giving someone else more control over the roster and allowing Steinauer to focus solely on coaching would be in the best interest of the club.
Hervey would be just the right type of guy to hand the keys over to in any situation.
Speaking of long shots…
Rehire or return?
With Scott Milanovich not being hired as head coach of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, the Tiger-Cats have a decision to make.
Do they bring Milanovich back? He reportedly has a contract to remain as offensive coordinator into next season. Or do they make another change and go outside the organization for their next offensive play-caller?
If they choose the latter, an interesting name threw his hat into the mix not that long ago: former Ticats head coach June Jones.
The 70-year-old recently expressed interest in returning to coach in the CFL after spending the last few years coaching in the second and third iterations of the XFL.
Jones coached 30 games, including the playoffs, for the Ticats from 2017 to 2018, going 15-15 and helping the team reach the East Final in 2018. He stepped down as head coach following the 2018 season to give the job to Steinauer and then left the organization a few months later to become the head coach for the Houston Roughnecks.
The Tabbies’ offence under Jones was exceptional, scoring 28.5 points per game in 2018, second-best in the league that year behind only the eventual Grey Cup champion Calgary Stampeders. Jones also helped turn Jeremiah Masoli into an M.O.P. candidate and revitalized the career of Brandon Banks.
Jones had his shortcomings as a head coach, but as an offensive play-caller, he has a 40-year résumé of excellence.
The Tabbies are likely going to stick with Milanovich, especially since the CFL’s ill-advised football operations cap makes it imprudent to move on from highly-paid coaches, but should they opt to go in another direction, Jones would be an excellent choice to call plays for the team’s offence in 2024.
