{"id":472826,"date":"2026-02-13T17:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472826\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T17:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:44:11","slug":"roughriders-gm-oday-fills-voids-in-cfl-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/472826\/","title":{"rendered":"Roughriders GM O\u2019Day fills voids in CFL free agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>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. <\/p>\n

Taylor Shire<\/p>\n

Regina Leader-Post<\/p>\n

The list wasn\u2019t long but Jeremy O\u2019Day was able to check all the boxes.<\/p>\n

In CFL free agency, the\u00a0Saskatchewan Roughriders\u2019 general manager was able to find a starting defensive end, a potential starting American linebacker, a dynamic kick returner and a few American receivers.<\/p>\n

Despite losing a few key players to other teams, was it a job well done?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was good,\u201d said O\u2019Day. \u201cIt was obviously a lot of moving pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019d be able to offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saskatchewan\u2019s biggest splash in free agency came on Tuesday with the signing of veteran defensive end James Vaughters.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to side Vaughters a couple years back, I think when he was coming back from the NFL,\u201d said O\u2019Day. \u201cWhen we looked at the room, we wanted to add some veteran experience and someone that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHim 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"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. <\/p>\n

Defensive end was one of the biggest needs for the Roughriders in free agency considering the players they lost from last year\u2019s championship team as Malik Carney went to the Edmonton Elks while Habakkuk Baldonado ended up with the Ottawa Redblacks.<\/p>\n

Also high on the priority list were two starting linebackers as\u00a0A.J. Allen and C.J. Reavis also signed with the Redblacks, leaving voids on either side of middle linebacker Jameer Thurman.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s potential replacement at strongside (sam) is under contract from last year in Antoine Brooks Jr.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re excited about the linebackers,\u201d said O\u2019Day. \u201cAntoine Brooks has earned his opportunity to be a starter in this league.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time he\u2019s got an opportunity, he\u2019s done great things. He makes plays every day at practice and he\u2019s going to get his shot to play sam.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then we\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAubrey Miller got an opportunity to play a little bit last year, and did well, so we\u2019re happy to get him back, and then we\u2019ve signed Josh Woods, who has a lot of experience and has a lot of length, and we\u2019re excited about those three going into camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019Day 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a younger guy that we hope is ascending as a returner,\u201d said O\u2019Day. \u201cAnd his college career as a receiver was really good too.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut hopefully he\u2019s an electric returner that makes our league so exciting. He\u2019s excited to be here and we\u2019re excited to have him.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we\u2019ve done a fairly good job in the past of signing American receivers,\u201d said O\u2019Day. \u201cAnd I think there\u2019s also a larger number of those guys that are available.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve spent a fair bit of money on receivers in free agency so when you\u2019re looking at that and deciding on even bringing back some of the other guys that you might have already had, where\u2019s the value and where could you maybe save on the cap,<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo years ago, everyone was in here asking who KeeSean and Dohnte Myers were and then all of a sudden (they say) you can\u2019t lose those guys.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a pretty veteran receiver corps so for us to just try to find one is not too big of a task.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, while plenty of attention has been on who the Roughriders brought in and who they lost, O\u2019Day 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree agency just wasn\u2019t this last week for us, it started right after the season with signing some of our key guys back,\u201d said O\u2019Day. \u201cAnd obviously we attacked it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019re happy where we\u2019re at.<\/p>\n

\u201cI assumed everyone wanted to be back, but it also had to match financially. And so some of those decisions were made for financial purposes<\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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\u2019s other guys are just at different points of their careers where they\u2019re maybe ascending, and you don\u2019t fault them for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Releasing Lauther <\/p>\n

During his media conference on Wednesday, O\u2019Day also spoke for the first time about\u00a0Saskatchewan\u2019s decision to release veteran kicker Brett Lauther,\u00a0who had been with the club since 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery difficult,\u201d said O\u2019Day. \u201cHe\u2019s been a very good player for us for a number of years. And aside from the fact that he\u2019s a good football player, he\u2019s excellent in the community and excellent in the locker room.<\/p>\n

\u201cTough, difficult decisions that you have to make. Obviously, they\u2019re 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\u2019ve got to evaluate and see where you feel as an organization. And so, yeah, it was a tough decision. Brett\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

tshire@postmedia.com<\/p>\n

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