Montreal 10-8 Cavillo has another subpar year (for him), competition in the east is much tighter than in years past
Winnipeg 9-9 slow start thanks to early road games, an OC still getting integrated into the CFL game, and changes along the Oline. Young Dline will need to learn to come together without D.Brown. Team comes together and bounces back in the 2nd half of the year. How well this team performs will depend on how much the young players continue to improve over last year, has nothing to do with which aging FAs they didn't sign (see Bombers 2011 season in which they didn't sign any FAs and went from 4-14 iin 2010 to 10-8 and a grey cup appearance).
Hamilton 9-9 Strong receiving core underperforms as Burris starts well but tails off over the course of the season. Hufnagel wouldn't have shelved him in favour of Tate if he didn't see issues. Defense matches last years performance which wasn't good enough to get them over the hump.
Toronto - 8-10 biggest Q is how good will the Oline be. I don't think they'll be good enough, Ray faces a lot of pressure and has his struggles a la 2010. Bringing in Chris Jones as DC is a boost to the D, but secondary will see probably at least 3 new faces and 1 in a new position in Younger - will they be good enough early on?
Lions - 12-6 Good team brings back most of its players, should be good enough to overcome loss of Elimimian. Biggest questions - can Lulay repeat his 2011 performance? Will benavides handle the pressure taking over as HC from Buono?
Stamps - 9-9 expect them to be average, decent roster but underperforming at times as they did last year, driving hufnagel up a wall
Eskies - 8-10 - Jyles or Joseph? Either is a drop off from Ray and may not inspire as much confidence late in games as he did. Who are the real eskies - the team that started 5-0 or finished 6-7?
Riders - 7-11 can they replace Fantuz? didn't last year, maybe partly from keeping his spot available anticipating his return late in the year, but will need someone to step up in that spot this year. Need Dline improvement - love Odell but for every sack he makes he offsets with penalty at some point. Running game needs to improve. Back up QB should Durant struggle or get hurt? They make strides but aren't fully back to where they were when they went to the grey cup games.
Yes, that is the main reason that most rank them lowly (and the 2nd reason that - although capable, the offense doesn’t exactly light it up), but you missed the biggest departure of all → Doug Brown. The 3 that you mentioned are all replaceable. Doug Brown, extremely hard to replace, and an NI too.
Doug Brown made Odell WIllis’ job easy. I think Vega makes a very good replacement for Willis, but Odell or Vega, either one would have a lot less sack production without Doug Brown lining up next to him.
The biggest single player loss to ANY roster this off season league wide is Doug Brown.
Also Winnipeg hasn't shown yet that they know how to draft and develop players. Muamba hasn't been able to grab the MLB position this year making him one of the most expensive backups in the league since Bauman was signed by Tillman. Etienne hasn't shown anything even according to some of their fans. The rest of them haven't been able to stay healthy for more than a game or two or are long term projects. Will be an interesting season. Most everyone has all teams with close to .500 records or better. It rarely works out that way.
Poblah hasn’t been able to stay healthy, granted. Etienne and Muamba have yet to play a factor on the field, true. But that’s about as far as I can agree with your statement. Muamba and Etienne have been around for only 1season. 2011 first round picks aside from Etienne and Muamba - Parker, Mitchell, Coehoorn, Ianuzzi, Holmes, McKnight - which team drafted an immediate impact player? Only Scott Mitchell played regularly for the Eskies. You look at the entire draft, only a couple players out of the 47 selected (Milo, Butler, Mitchell) played on some sort of regular basis. Most of those aren’t even on anyone’s roster anymore. So I don’t know how you can point at the bombers and say they don’t know how to draft and develop players. Muamba is competing for the starters job. Poblah and Watson are the NI receiver starters so there’s no pressure on Etienne to put up huge number right away anyway.
And as for Winnipeg’s last few drafts - 6 picks in 2011, 5 still with the team. The only other team that had as many from their draft class stick from 2011 was the Riders. And compare their record vs Wpg last year. Going back to 2010 - 4 Bomber picks and 3 are on the roster competing for spots. So since Mack has taken over GM of the 10 picks his first 2 years, 8 are on the roster competing for spots with a chance to contribute as starters or as backups and not just TCF. That’s a high percentage in my book.
Not really a fair comparison, is it? I’m sure you’d agree there is a pretty big difference between scouting/drafting and knowing whether or not the veteran QB you been working with for years can still do it…