Evan Holm has been around professional football long enough now to know there are some absolutes — namely, things you can control and things you cannot — and when you find that proverbial sweet spot on and off the field, well, that can be priceless.

Holm has found that sweet spot in Winnipeg with the Blue Bombers since his arrival in 2022, beginning with his first opportunity to crack the roster to earning a starting gig and then morphing into a Canadian Football League All-Star in 2025. That’s why despite the potential temptations around him — he had a workout with the Pittsburgh Steelers in late December and the CFL free agent market is a month away from opening — Holm scratched his name onto a new two-year contract to remain in blue and gold that will reportedly make him the highest-paid American defensive back in the league.

Yes, the numbers on the paycheque matter — that’s something Holm absolutely earned — but so, too, do the other intangibles that have made the Edina, MN product so comfortable in Winnipeg.

“There’s always the fear of the unknown,” Holm said Thursday during a media zoom call on the temptation to test the free agent market. “Maybe you could get more money somewhere else, but does that really mean you’re getting the money with rent being higher in a lot of cities? Is the fan base there? Are you playing in front of a sold-out crowd? Do you have friends on the team? What’s the environment like? So, there are a lot of unknowns in that, and Winnipeg is a place I really enjoy.

“I enjoy the coaching staff and they’ve allowed me to improve my game year after year. They’re trying to help me get better; they want me to get better, and we all want a Grey Cup. There’s too many positives… it would have been substantially more (financially) somewhere else for me at this time. And family is a huge part of that and Winnipeg kind of feels like family. The fans have been very welcoming and the atmosphere is incredible. I love playing there. It just resonates with me.”

Holm’s 2025 season was his best in Blue Bombers colours as he not only was named a CFL All-Star for the first time but was also selected as the club’s Most Outstanding Defensive player after finishing with 55 tackles, six more on special teams, two forced fumbles and a team high four interceptions. He started every game in 2025 and has not missed a single contest since 2023, with 63 games – all as a Blue Bomber – now to his name.

All that is the reward for his work. The bonus is having his offseason base so close in Minneapolis and having his wife and 10-month-old daughter with him during the season. There’s all that, plus a coaching staff he trusts, led by Mike O’Shea, along with defensive coordinator Jordan Younger and long-time assistant Richie Hall and the recent signings of two of his closest compadres on defence in Deatrick Nichols and Redha Kramdi.

“I like Osh, I like the way he runs it. I like the way he tells you like it is, but also lets the players kind of lead, and then he guides you,” Holm said. “I like JY. He’s always striving for always being better, giving players a lot of agency to make their own calls, make their own mistakes. He’s really been key in my development as a player, as well Richie Hall. Both of those guys have been really helpful in helping me understand the game, giving me advice. And they’re always looking to help coach you, where I’ve heard around the league some coaches kind of leave you alone. ‘You’re a professional, you’re supposed to do this.’ But not here in Winnipeg. It’s like you can go see them anytime to ask them anything, and they can help you try to get better. They want you to be better. They want the team to win. So that’s pretty easy. So, all those guys have been great.

“I’ve been speaking to (Kramdi and Nichols) both a little bit. Having them back as key parts of the defence is really important. Redha’s our quarterback back there. Same with Deatrick. They’re both really good guys to work with. And they also have kind of the same mindset. We want to win. We want to win now. And we want to be good every day. They have high standards that I like and resonate with. And they help me be a better player. And they’re good dudes, too. They’re pretty funny.”

Holm said his tryout with the Steelers was only 20-30 minutes in duration with himself and four other defensive backs being put through a series of drills. That window now seemingly closed — he’ll turn 28 in April — he’s more than thrilled to have his next two seasons locked in here in Winnipeg.

“Those (NFL free agent workouts) are so quick. It was like 20, 30 minutes or so. I didn’t think it was my best workout, but I wanted to kind of explore that option before coming back to Winnipeg,” he said. “Kind of knew I was going to be back in Winnipeg if that didn’t work out kind of last month. But wanted to give it my best shot there and see what happened. It would have had to make sense there as well. I wanted to explore that. I knew I was coming back to Winnipeg other than that.”

The Blue Bombers have now locked up three critical pieces in their secondary in Holm, Nichols and Kramdi — all three were pending free agents — as the organization looks to reload in 2026 after posting a ninth-straight double-digit win season but finishing fourth in the West Division at 10-8. Asked to make a case that the team isn’t in decline, Holm offered this:

“We made the playoffs last year. We just couldn’t find continuity as a team or find that team football. There’s flashes of offence doing great, defence doing bad, defence doing great, offence doing bad, special teams doing great, you know. We couldn’t find that special spot. Especially in the playoffs, I thought as a defence we came out terrible. We just didn’t do what we needed to do. We fought back, and that’s great and all, but at the end of the day, I feel we lost that game as a defence – the offence was playing great. It’s hard to say that, but I feel if we done a couple different things, we’d be having a different conversation. You’d say ‘Wow, you guys are still great.’

“The goal is always the Grey Cup, and we didn’t get there and that’s just something you have to come to terms with. But I think the key pieces are there. You can learn from our mistakes, we’re not trying to repeat the same things. Me being older, Redha being older, we can step up in different ways and maybe there will be some new faces here and there but just trying to pull the young guys along and kind of see what happens.”

Watch the entire Holm media availability here: