{"id":443925,"date":"2026-01-30T22:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T22:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443925\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T22:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T22:46:10","slug":"jeremy-oday-updates-cfl-contract-negotiations-with-saskatchewan-roughriders-pending-free-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443925\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy O\u2019Day updates CFL contract negotiations with Saskatchewan Roughriders pending free agents"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo: Reuben Polansky\/3DownNation. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

Saskatchewan Roughriders\u2019 general manager Jeremy O\u2019Day has been busy since his team won the 112th Grey Cup in Winnipeg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Green and White entered the offseason with 44 pending free agents<\/a>. Many have been re-signed by the Riders so far, including Trevor Harris<\/a>,\u00a0Tommy Stevens<\/a>, Jermarcus Hardrick<\/a>,\u00a0Samuel Emilus<\/a>, Kian Schaffer-Baker<\/a>, Caleb Sanders<\/a>,\u00a0Tevaughn Campbell<\/a>, Nelson Lokombo<\/a>, and DaMarcus Fields<\/a> among others.<\/p>\n

Contract talks with star running back A.J. Ouellette<\/a> are running in the right direction, according to O\u2019Day. However, there are some key players who have yet to sign contract extensions with the communication window set to open at 12 p.m. ET on Sunday, February 1 and the market officially opens on Tuesday, February 10.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get updates from the Grey Cup-winning GM on some big names.<\/p>\n

Question: Can you characterize where negotiations are with A.J. Allen? And do you expect him to be back with the Riders?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Day: \u201cI would say that they\u2019re early on discussions, probably haven\u2019t had\u00a0discussions very often. We\u2019ll wait and see \u2014 I\u2019ll never say that there\u2019s\u00a0no chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI will tell you, we\u2019re not going to get all of our guys back that are\u00a0free agents. I probably won\u2019t get into the specifics of who or what we figure will happen. We had early-on discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very valuable, other teams see that as well. Those discussions are somewhat ongoing, but there\u2019s only so much room that you have on your cap when you\u2019re signing so many guys back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question: Malik Carney, the top\u00a0pending free agent pass rusher. From the winter meetings you said contract negotiations <\/a>with him were at a stalemate. Has that changed?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Day: \u201cSame exact answer with A.J. Allen there. Nothing\u2019s really changed on that one. We\u00a0had some conversations early and everything that I said for A.J. is the same for Scoop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question: One player that seems to have caught people\u2019s attention around the league\u00a0would be Habakkuk Baldonado. He\u2019s not even viewed as a Global anymore,\u00a0most people talk about him as an American.<\/p>\n

We saw Corey Mace use him in a similar role to Malik Carney,\u00a0different spots on defence. Do you think Baldonado\u2018s a guy that would be able\u00a0to replace Carney if he moved on? Are you close to getting him back?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Day: \u201cHaba\u2019s arrow is definitely up. I think he\u2019s been anxious\u00a0to try to get his opportunity to play more. He got in the rotation a little bit [in 2024] and more so this [past] year, did some good things. I think\u00a0his arrow is up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would like to have him back. Those conversations\u00a0have been going on for some time now, but ultimately the player has to tell us he wants to be back and until\u00a0we get to that point, there\u2019s nothing really to report. I do think that Haba has the potential \u2014 he started half the season\u00a0last year for us \u2014 to prove that he can do it. It\u2019d be nice to see him do it for the full\u00a0year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question: In the secondary, you\u2019ve brought some guys back who have played safety such as Nelson Lokombo and Jaxon Ford. Antoine Brooks really showed well at strong-side linebacker last year.<\/p>\n

Do you\u00a0need C.J. Reavis back or could he get squeezed out while trying to re-sign as many players as possible from a title team? <\/p>\n

O\u2019Day: \u201cThat\u2019s a tough one there. I think part of the conversation\u00a0is how\u2019s our ratio going to shape up? Where are we going to play our Canadians? Which may impact C.J. C.J. has been an all-star for us, been a core part of our team.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose discussions are still ongoing with where everyone\u2019s going to fit\u00a0because you can\u2019t sign everyone back, and then you have guys that you want on the field that can\u2019t get on the field. C.J. has been a very good player for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are right, Antoine Brooks did play well for us at SAM, but C.J. also played good at safety, made some big plays and was a team player when he went back\u00a0there. [Conversations are] ongoing. How that all fits together is still yet to be determined.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d love to have everyone back, but we do\u00a0have restrictions of what we can do with the [salary] cap. That\u2019s our job to put it back together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Question: Do you have a plan to bring returner Mario Alford back? There\u2019s going to be some free agent returners out there, could you look at another option?<\/p>\n

O\u2019Day: \u201cStill evaluating it, probably goes into the window for sure. We\u2019ll see. Mario\u2019s been a great player for us, has some historic numbers for us that we don\u2019t forget about, but it has to fit and those conversations are ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Reuben Polansky\/3DownNation. All rights reserved. Saskatchewan Roughriders\u2019 general manager Jeremy O\u2019Day has been busy since his team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[166835,166836,183434,183435,183436,107931,183437,49,48,7028,520,122761,68627,89320,131099,183438,69897,69895,183439,10599,45083,24373,4400,82,11135],"class_list":["post-443925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-a-j-allen","tag-aj-allen","tag-aj-ouellette","tag-antoine-brooks","tag-c-j-reavis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-cfl","tag-general-manager","tag-grey-cup","tag-habakkuk-baldonado","tag-jeremy-oday","tag-jo","tag-malik-carney","tag-mario-alford","tag-oday","tag-regina","tag-riders","tag-saskatchewan","tag-saskatchewan-roughriders","tag-sports","tag-trevor-harris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443925","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=443925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}