{"id":484271,"date":"2026-02-19T01:55:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484271\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T01:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:55:12","slug":"jeremy-oday-explains-why-saskatchewan-roughriders-signed-james-letcher-jr-james-vaughters-in-cfl-free-agency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484271\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy O’Day explains why Saskatchewan Roughriders signed James Letcher Jr., James Vaughters in CFL free agency"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Photo: Montreal Alouettes<\/p>\n

The Saskatchewan Roughriders believe the team upgraded its primary returner in CFL free agency and filled a need at defensive end.<\/p>\n

After electing to let Mario Alford move on, the Riders signed James Letcher Jr<\/a>. The 26-year-old flashed his potential with the Montreal Alouettes, particularly in 2024. That year, he ranked second in the CFL in both kick-off and punt return yards. Injuries limited him to nine regular-season games in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe liked him quite a bit and got into the window\u00a0so we could have discussions. We put a lot of value\u00a0into our coach\u2019s evaluations, our head coach,\u201d general manager Jeremy O\u2019Day said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a younger guy\u00a0that we hope is ascending as a returner. His college career as a receiver was really good \u2014 possibility of implementing him on offence. Hopefully, he\u2019s an electric returner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following Malik Carney and Habakkuk Baldonado\u2019s departure for Edmonton and Ottawa, the front office felt a veteran presence was needed at defensive end: enter James Vaughters<\/a>. Corey Mace was his defensive line coach for two seasons (2017 and 2018) in Calgary with the Stampeders. That relationship helped the two sides come together for a contract.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tried to sign Vaughters a couple years back,\u00a0I think when he was coming back from the NFL, so we had discussions with him in the past. That\u2019s an area where we lost some guys\u00a0in the defensive end position. When we looked at the room,\u00a0we wanted to add some veteran experience,\u201d O\u2019Day said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone that\u2019s played a number of years in our league\u00a0and has experience working with Corey, knows our defence,\u00a0and brings a little bit of that veteran leadership,\u00a0him and Mike Rose will assume that. We\u2019ve got some young guys that are growing\u00a0into more of veteran-type guys\u00a0and leaders in the defensive line room.\u00a0Saw the value there, had discussions with his agent and then worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 32-year-old Vaughters spent the 2025 season with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, recording 36 defensive tackles, six sacks, and one defensive touchdown over 18 regular-season games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Montreal Alouettes The Saskatchewan Roughriders believe the team upgraded its primary returner in CFL free agency and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[166835,166836,49,943,48,7028,521,522,520,182038,60449,68627,183580,182042,131099,69895,10599,45083,55574,24373,4400,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-484271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-3down","9":"tag-3downnation","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-calgary-stampeders","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-canadian","14":"tag-canadian-football-league","15":"tag-canadianfootballleague","16":"tag-cfl","17":"tag-cfl-free-agency","18":"tag-corey-mace","19":"tag-grey-cup","20":"tag-james-letcher-jr","21":"tag-james-vaughters","22":"tag-jeremy-oday","23":"tag-mario-alford","24":"tag-regina","25":"tag-riders","26":"tag-roughriders","27":"tag-saskatchewan","28":"tag-saskatchewan-roughriders","29":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484271","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=484271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}