Kayle Neis/Regina Leader-Post Saskatchewan Roughriders Vice President of Football Operations and General Manager Jeremy O’Day speaks during a press conference at Mosaic Stadium on Tuesday, November 25, 2025 in Regina.

Taylor Shire

Regina Leader-Post

The list wasn’t long but Jeremy O’Day was able to check all the boxes.

In CFL free agency, the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ general manager was able to find a starting defensive end, a potential starting American linebacker, a dynamic kick returner and a few American receivers.

Despite losing a few key players to other teams, was it a job well done?

“It was good,” said O’Day. “It was obviously a lot of moving pieces.

“I think free agency was pretty unique for us this year where pretty much every position that you looked across the board, our free agents were top targets. And so it was a challenge with managing who do we get back and who we’d be able to offer.”

Saskatchewan’s biggest splash in free agency came on Tuesday with the signing of veteran defensive end James Vaughters.

The 32-year-old Vaughters joins the Roughriders from the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, where he had 36 tackles and six sacks last year playing opposite Willie Jefferson. Prior to Winnipeg, Vaughters had three separate stints with the Calgary Stampeders as also spent time with six NFL teams over the past 10 years, playing a combined 27 NFL games. He has experience with Riders head coach Corey Mace from their time in Calgary in 2017 and 2018.

“We tried to side Vaughters a couple years back, I think when he was coming back from the NFL,” said O’Day. “When we looked at the room, we wanted to add some veteran experience and someone that’s played a number of years in our league and has experience working with Corey, knows our defence and brings a little bit of that veteran leadership into that.

“Him and (veteran defensive tackle) Mike Rose will assume that, and we got some young guys that are growing into more of veteran type guys and leaders in the defensive line room.”

Kayle Neis/Regina Leader-Post
Montreal Alouettes receiver James Letcher Jr runs the ball during the first half of CFL action inside Mosaic Stadium on Friday, August 16, 2024 in Regina.

Defensive end was one of the biggest needs for the Roughriders in free agency considering the players they lost from last year’s championship team as Malik Carney went to the Edmonton Elks while Habakkuk Baldonado ended up with the Ottawa Redblacks.

Also high on the priority list were two starting linebackers as A.J. Allen and C.J. Reavis also signed with the Redblacks, leaving voids on either side of middle linebacker Jameer Thurman.

Last week during the CFL free agent communication window, the team re-signed Aubrey Miller Jr. and added free agent Josh Woods, who spent the last five years with the B.C. Lions. Both will be in competition to replace Allen at weakside (will) linebacker while Reavis’s potential replacement at strongside (sam) is under contract from last year in Antoine Brooks Jr.

“We’re excited about the linebackers,” said O’Day. “Antoine Brooks has earned his opportunity to be a starter in this league.

“Every time he’s got an opportunity, he’s done great things. He makes plays every day at practice and he’s going to get his shot to play sam.

“And then we’ve done a decent job with our ratio, so we have some flexibility with A.J. moving on, we can actually continue to use that as a Canadian spot, or we can go American.

“Aubrey Miller got an opportunity to play a little bit last year, and did well, so we’re happy to get him back, and then we’ve signed Josh Woods, who has a lot of experience and has a lot of length, and we’re excited about those three going into camp.”

Signing a kick returner was also a need for the Riders after Mario Alford ended up signing with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. And the O’Day shored up that position last week with the signing of James Letcher Jr., who was released by the Montreal Alouettes after three seasons with the team.

“Just a younger guy that we hope is ascending as a returner,” said O’Day. “And his college career as a receiver was really good too.

“But hopefully he’s an electric returner that makes our league so exciting. He’s excited to be here and we’re excited to have him.”

While the Roughriders were able to retain receivers Samuel Emilus, Kian Schaffer-Baker and KeeSean Johnson in free agency, the team lost Dohnte Meyers to the NFL while Joe Robustelli joined the Edmonton Elks leaving an opening at starting American receiver.

And over the last week, the team added three American receivers with NFL experience in with the additions of Freddie Swain, Juwann Winfree and Tyrie Cleveland to go along with the five other Americans who were previously signed.

“I think that we’ve done a fairly good job in the past of signing American receivers,” said O’Day. “And I think there’s also a larger number of those guys that are available.

“We’ve spent a fair bit of money on receivers in free agency so when you’re looking at that and deciding on even bringing back some of the other guys that you might have already had, where’s the value and where could you maybe save on the cap,

“Two years ago, everyone was in here asking who KeeSean and Dohnte Myers were and then all of a sudden (they say) you can’t lose those guys.

“We have a pretty veteran receiver corps so for us to just try to find one is not too big of a task.”

Overall, while plenty of attention has been on who the Roughriders brought in and who they lost, O’Day points to the work done since December as the biggest indicator of success considering his team was able to retain the majority of the players who helped Saskatchewan win the Grey Cup.

“Free agency just wasn’t this last week for us, it started right after the season with signing some of our key guys back,” said O’Day. “And obviously we attacked it.

“I think we had an abnormal number of free agents, just because we had a lot of guys on the roster at the end of the year. But as I said before, we’re happy where we’re at.

“I assumed everyone wanted to be back, but it also had to match financially. And so some of those decisions were made for financial purposes

“But we did have some players that left money on the table with other teams that decided they wanted to come back and try to win back-to-back Grey Cups. So they took less than what they could have got with other teams. And there’s other guys are just at different points of their careers where they’re maybe ascending, and you don’t fault them for that.”

Releasing Lauther

During his media conference on Wednesday, O’Day also spoke for the first time about Saskatchewan’s decision to release veteran kicker Brett Lauther, who had been with the club since 2018.

“Very difficult,” said O’Day. “He’s been a very good player for us for a number of years. And aside from the fact that he’s a good football player, he’s excellent in the community and excellent in the locker room.

“Tough, difficult decisions that you have to make. Obviously, they’re not decisions that we take for granted or that we make snap judgment on. We felt like we gave Brett opportunities and stuck by him for a long time, and ultimately at the end of the year, you’ve got to evaluate and see where you feel as an organization. And so, yeah, it was a tough decision. Brett’s a pro; just class act. He made a lot of big kicks for us. I think when a player has a down year, people tend to forget about what he did for us in the past. And through some of his challenges or his struggles, when he missed some, we remember that. And we gave him the opportunity to kick out of it, but unfortunately, we decided to go a different route and ended up releasing them.”

tshire@postmedia.com

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