Kyle Walters was here back when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were just a teeny-tiny speed bump for Canadian Football League opponents. And he’s been here for the slow build which followed which saw the franchise morph into a Grey Cup champion and perennial contender.

That’s given the Blue Bombers GM a unique viewpoint of the highs and lows and of the high bar and expectation level the organization has now set after five straight trips to the Grey Cup from 2019-24, including two championships, and a season in which every game was sold out for the first time in modern franchise history.

That was certainly evident during Walters’ 30-minute season-in-review media conference on Wednesday where the GM admitted the disappointment of the 2025 season and some of the organization’s mistakes while making it abundantly clear that will be a driving force this offseason and into 2026.

“It was disappointing,” began Walters when assessing the 2025 campaign. “The bar that has been set organizationally is four years of winning the West and five years of Grey Cups and to not sustain that feels like a letdown and a step backwards and it was a step backwards.

“Organizationally we have to accept the fact it wasn’t as good as it needed to be this year and how do we get back to not taking another step the wrong way but get back to competing for the West and getting to Grey Cups.”

The entire session with Walters can be seen here:

And for those who want an abridged version of what some of the main talking points were, here are our 5 Main Takeaways:

THE 2025 SEASON WAS… MEH

The Blue Bombers finished the year 10-8 — a ninth straight season of double-digit wins — but that was only good for fourth in the West Division and a crossover playoff spot which then led to a first-round playoff exit in the Eastern Semi-Final loss to the Montreal Alouettes.

Some sound bites from Walters on ’25, beginning on why the season was so disappointing:

“The big one is the number of quality wins we had. We you look at it — 10-win season and making the playoffs is OK. But the thing that jumps out for me is we didn’t beat a Trevor Harris-led team. We didn’t beat (Calgary) when Vernon (Adams, Jr.) played. Davis Alexander (Montreal), we didn’t beat.

“You look at the good quality wins — early in the year when we beat B.C. and Nathan (Rourke) was playing and when Bo (Levi Mitchell) came out here and we beat a Hamilton team. We had two good wins but it was just too inconsistent, even on some of those other wins when it was, ‘OK, we snuck those ones out.’ You could tell it was we were grinding and we were fighting, and we were working but it just wasn’t the sustained level of quality play throughout the year. That was obvious for everybody.”

NEXT

We’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating here: the Blue Bombers opened the 2025 season and then finished on a 7-9 slide in their final 16 games, including the playoffs. Winnipeg was 40-10 in the regular season from 2021-24 and 21-15 over the last two years.

“Hopefully we look back and say this was a good turning point for the organization, that we’re able to now realize we had a good run. And no arguing that we took a step back. And now let’s re-set and get back. So, I’m hoping that this starts that process.”

Rebuild the right word?

“I don’t know ‘rebuild.’ People use that term. But certainly, we need to accept we weren’t good enough. If you want to say rebuild, make changes – we need to accept that fact. Yeah, we need to be better.”

Asked where the team goes from here with a roster mixed with young talent and aging stars, Walters offered this:

“I’ve stood up here and kind of complained through the years of the one-year contracts, but the benefit of so many free agents in our league from year to year that, I mean, you saw Calgary was last I believe last year and then they flipped their whole roster around. It’s easier to do with one-year contracts, to be able to make a quick change for your roster, more so than other leagues where once you’re in that situation you’re in it takes a while to get out of it.

“So what we need to do now is sit down and take a deep breath and get all the decision-making pieces organized and then, you’re 100 percent right, figure out how do we fix it. And as I just said, it is a little easier quick fix, for lack of a better term, in our league when there’s so many players on one-year contracts every single year.

“… We were 10-8 this year. So, the idea that the sky is falling and we’re 0-18 and missed the playoffs, that’s not the case – we’re a double-digit win team with a good core here and a group of decision makers that have been here a while who know how to win. Just trust that we’ll get back to winning.”

THE ‘ALL-IN’ — OR NOT — NARRATIVE

This one has been a talking point since last February when a few high-profile players exited in free agency, most notably Kenny Lawler, Tyrell Ford and Liam Dobson. But Walters explained in detail how the jump in the salary cap didn’t come until a lot of teams were already well into spending in free agency and how, for example, that jump didn’t come from the league until after Lawler had already agreed to terms on a deal with Hamilton.

On top of that, as head coach Mike O’Shea has stressed, just because the Grey Cup was in Winnipeg this year it shouldn’t change a team’s approach to winning.

“Mike has said this, I’ve said this — the idea that you go all in when you’re hosting, I don’t think is accurate. You try every year to put a roster together, to put a team together that can win a Grey Cup. This was no different, it’s just the bounces didn’t work out this year.”

And when pressed if the organization did everything it could or whether it would change anything in hindsight on what happened in the offseason, Walters said:

“I don’t want to get into that. I mean you can second-guess, when you don’t win the Grey Cup, you can go back to the Grey Cup loss. Unless you win that final game, every organization is going to look and you can second-guess and decide what we should have done personnel-wise, playcalling, roster, the whole bit. It’s kind of a slippery slope when you start looking at why you didn’t win. Bigger picture-wise, we need to be better. We need to be better, all-around, get better across the board.”

And, specifically, on Lawler who claimed the club did not provide him an offer in free agency until a day before the market opened:

“So, Kenny is a very emotional young man, which makes him really good on the football field. I deal with the agent on that sort of stuff. The agent and I… it wasn’t the day before free agency. We had lots of talks — and I think we beleaguered this point way back in February — and it did not work out. Kenny went on and had a great year. It’s very similar to the first time when Kenny left to Edmonton where we thought there was a decent number and then another team came in quite a bit over the top and it was like, ‘OK. Good for you and your family. That’s awesome.’ It tended to remind of Edmonton a few years back and that situation.”

THE TAYLOR ELGERSMA QUESTION

Taylor Elgersma; courtesy (Zach Bolinger/AP Photo)

The Blue Bombers selected the Wilfrid Laurier star in the second round, 18th overall, in this year’s CFL Draft. He then attended training camp with the Green Bay Packers and had his moments before being cut and then getting a look from the New York Giants.

Since then, nothing has happened as the 23-year-old, 6-5 quarterback has been waiting to see what might still shake down in terms of NFL interest. Walters said he saw Elgersma in camp with the Packers this summer and spoke with his agent, Fred Weinrauch, during the season. The club had hoped he’d come to Winnipeg this fall, but he’s still going to chase options down south.

“We’re still, organizationally, optimistic that we’ll see (him) but I don’t think that’s going to sort itself out until after February 1st when all those future contracts get signed (in the NFL), ” said Walters. “That’s their prime objective, to be honest, to hold out and try and get another NFL shot. We’ll just wait and see what happens.”

Walters said if he doesn’t get another NFL look that he’s open to the CFL.

“It’s a unique one, with a player of that physical ability. You see a lot of players with physical ability, but he comes up here with a whole pedigree of Canadian football, which is a little bit different. He runs hard, he’s big, he’s athletic, he can zing the ball. He’s got it all.

“He just needs to get up here and get reps and play and play against this level of competition. And it’s tough. We were hoping they would come up for a few weeks at the end of his year to start learning, because training camp is quick, and it’s hard on any new player, let alone players at that position. The expectations are we think he can be a real good football player in this league. But you have to temper those until he gets into training camp and starts playing against this level of players and on the Canadian field.

“… The quarterbacks, American, Canadians, when they come up here, they understand it is a whole different world up here. They want to come in and play right away and compete, but I think they understand there is a pretty steep learning curve that they need to go through. But you never know until you see it. You’ve got to get him up here and see how he processes, how he picks up the playbook and go from there.”

FYI…

-On QB Zach Collaros and whether his contract would be renegotiated given his numbers in the last two years: “We’ve never been big on renegotiating. Zach’s earned his contract. He led us to all those Grey Cups playing at a high level. We need to be better at surrounding him with better support for him. You saw it last year and again this year, he’s still a guy that can get it done out there. We just need him to surround him with better support.”

-Walters confirmed that Danny McManus, the club’s assistant GM/Director of U.S. Scouting, will be back for a 12th season. He had been considered a candidate for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats GM job.

-This on Dalton Schoen, who is coming off another knee injury and is a pending free agent: “All players that finished the year with injuries we need to get more medical reports and talk to our trainers and doctors before any decisions on those guys are made moving forward.”

-On Brady Oliveira, a pending free agent, and the club’s plans to try to bring him back: “It’ll be like all of the players and their agents. Their agents all believe they’re worth a certain amount, and it will be back and forth. Brady’s an outstanding player, a big part of our community. And do we want him back? A hundred percent. And now it’s a matter of what does that look like and the process will start, and it probably won’t be quick. But we want Brady back.”

-On Dillon Mitchell, one of the prized free agent signings this year, who played in just nine games and had 19 receptions for 193 yards and one TD: “Certainly, everybody was on board when Dillon came here. The reports were great, his film was good, and he showed up and he just struggled. I don’t want to get into the specifics but yeah, Dillon struggled. It is what it is.”