Most Valuable Canadian award<\/a>. That Grey Cup win for Saskatchewan marked the first\u00a0in Emilus’\u00a0career and the second\u00a0for Ouellette, who won his first with Toronto in 2022.<\/p>\nNext up,\u00a0Suitor\u00a0made his pitch for why the Green and White should re-sign\u00a0Global defensive lineman\u00a0Habakkuk Baldonado.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t get a chance when we did the games to make as big a deal as I would have liked to.\u00a0I go back and watch the games over and over again, I look at different players, and their study habits \u2014 Baldonado kept jumping off the page,”\u00a0Suitor explained.<\/p>\n
“Not necessarily statistically every game, but creating havoc.\u00a0Sort of the Micah Johnson approach, where he blows up the O-line forcing the running back into his own linemen from\u00a0the opposition.”<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old Baldonado has been with Saskatchewan since 2023, after the team took him with the 12th overall pick in the Global Draft. In 2025, the six-foot-four, 251-pound defensive lineman played 18 regular season games for the Roughriders,\u00a0he registered 17 defensive tackles, four sacks, one special team tackle, and one forced fumble.<\/p>\n
Despite being over a decade older than Baldonado, Suitor would like to see 37-year-old defensive lineman Micah Johnson sign a contract extension with the Riders.<\/p>\n
“When you look at Micah Johnson over his career, statistics aside\u00a0because sometimes it can be misleading, if you have a year with four or five sacks from a defensive tackle spot, that doesn’t necessarily mean your production has dropped,” Suitor said.<\/p>\n
“I’m not saying that’s true with Micah this year, I put those things aside for\u00a0and watch what he does on the field. Someone has to block his right arm, someone has to block his left arm, and then he has to be blocked by the running back as well. When he draws all that attention and dents the pocket the way he does, you don’t need a sack to be accomplishing something really good from that position. It leaves one-on-ones on the outside, and that’s why Malik Carney and other guys can have big seasons. “<\/p>\n
Carney set a single-season career-high with eight sacks in 2025 and led the team in that category as well. Johnson was tied for second among his teammates in sacks with six, the same number Mike Rose posted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Suitor highlighted his offensive and defensive player priorities, but did not forget about special teams.<\/p>\n
“I thought Aubrey Miller Jr.\u00a0on special teams was dynamic,” Suitor noted. “A guy that was blowing things up, and young, fresh legs.”<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old Miller Jr. spent\u00a0his first season with Saskatchewan\u00a0in 2025,\u00a0he\u00a0previously played with the Edmonton Elks in 2024. In nine games with the Roughriders,\u00a0he totalled 14 defensive tackles and five special team tackles.<\/p>\n
General manager Jeremy O’Day and his staff are deciding\u00a0who their priorities are to re-sign. The CFL free agency communication period begins on Sunday, February 1, 2026 and continues until\u00a0Sunday, February 8. During that period, players will be allowed to talk to other teams. Officially, CFL free agency opens\u00a0on Tuesday, February 10.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SportsCage analyst Glen Suitor looks at the 112th\u00a0Grey Cup champion\u00a0Saskatchewan Roughriders remaining pending free agents and breaks down\u00a0who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[3878,49,48,521,522,520,3290,4398,27684,27683,1893,4401,27682,4400,4399,82],"class_list":["post-377806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-agriculture","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-contests","tag-country-music","tag-gx94","tag-manitoba-news","tag-radio","tag-rider-radio","tag-saskatchewan-news","tag-saskatchewan-roughriders","tag-saskatchewan-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}