{"id":947412,"date":"2026-10-26T22:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T22:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/947412\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T22:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T22:16:17","slug":"ryan-dinwiddie-expects-ottawa-redblacks-to-hire-new-de-facto-gm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/947412\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Dinwiddie expects Ottawa Redblacks to hire new de facto GM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto: Bob Butrym\/RFB Sport Photography \/ 3DownNation. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

Though it remains unclear if Ryan Dinwiddie will remain with the Ottawa Redblacks after a 1-17 season, he has indicated that he\u2019s willing to give up the title of general manager.<\/p>\n

His reason? He wasn\u2019t performing those duties anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Shawn Burke) was vice-president (of football operations), but he was still doing the GM stuff. I came in\u00a0with the GM title, and I got to have final say on who we played on the\u00a0game-day roster,\u201d Dinwiddie told the media on Sunday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOffensively, I\u2019ve been a coordinator and head coach for years, and I\u2019ve been pretty darn good at it, so I believe\u00a0in that, but the GM title? If they\u2019ve gotta change that, it\u2019s not gonna change my workload at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

CFL rules stipulate that coaches and personnel people with term remaining on their contracts cannot make lateral moves to other teams, and can only interview for a job if it constitutes a promotion.<\/p>\n

When the Redblacks hired Dinwiddie last offseason, he was under contract with the Argonauts as their head coach through 2027. He was given the GM title in Ottawa, and Burke moved up from general manager to vice-president of football operations.<\/p>\n

Dinwiddie has now seemingly said the quiet part out loud: his added title was merely a way to circumvent the rules.<\/p>\n

Is this the first time a CFL team has \u201cpromoted\u201d someone in order to hire them away from a rival? Of course not, but it\u2019s rare to hear someone admit it on the record.<\/p>\n

Dinwiddie doesn\u2019t know if he\u2019ll be brought back for 2027, though he has two years left on his contract. He indicated that new team president Mike Morreale plans to hire someone to replace Burke, who was fired in August, giving the Redblacks a new de facto GM.<\/p>\n

In an interview with\u00a03DownNation last week, Morreale said he\u2019d like to have the team\u2019s new football operations department settled by the end of November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe and Mike went and had lunch the day before we left to go to Hamilton, so it was just more catching up on a personal level,\u201d said Dinwiddie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did talk a little bit of ball, but right now he said he wants to evaluate everything\u00a0including myself, and\u00a0that\u2019s fair. You go 1-17, everything should be evaluated.\u00a0I plan on being here. I want to turn this thing around.\u00a0I don\u2019t want to be out of here and not have the opportunity to give one more shot at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old acknowledged his team\u2019s shortcomings. If he\u2019s back next year, Dinwiddie indicated that he\u2019d like to get better along the offensive and defensive lines, and wants to bring in a defensive coordinator who can \u201cgive these guys opportunities to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that said, it seems he regrets being so active in free agency, wanting instead to rely on in-house options.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou come into a new organization, you don\u2019t\u00a0know the ins and outs \u2014 you\u2019re brand new. Thinking about our approach in how we built the roster, I think we should probably have been a little bit less aggressive in free agency, and been more vocal on getting some rookies in here, and scouting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t build a whole roster through free agency. I think that was one thing that we learned the hard way from last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Redblacks suffered more injuries than any other team in the CFL in 2026, as\u00a0Dinwiddie indicated the club went through 141 different players. This made it challenging to create continuity and build familiarity within different units.<\/p>\n

The one position at which the team stayed healthy all year was quarterback. Jake Maier made 12 starts, McLeod Bethel-Thompson made four, and Bryson Barnes made two. Though none had particularly bad statistics, the Redblacks clearly weren\u2019t good enough at the game\u2019s most important position.<\/p>\n

When asked about his plans at the position for next year, Dinwiddie was non-committal, though it seems there could be significant changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho knows what the free agent market is going to look like, right? We\u2019ve got some guys on the (negotiation)\u00a0list, guys we\u2019re scouting,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce (the new vice-president of football operations and I)\u00a0sit down together and put a plan together, I\u2019ll have a better answer for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note: since Dinwiddie spoke to the media, Chad Kelly has reportedly agreed to a long-term contract extension with the Toronto Argonauts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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John Hodge is a longtime Canadian football reporter, insider, and podcaster for 3DownNation. Based in Winnipeg, Hodge is also a freelance television and radio broadcaster.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Bob Butrym\/RFB Sport Photography \/ 3DownNation. All rights reserved. Though it remains unclear if Ryan Dinwiddie will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":947413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[119759,166835,166836,49,48,7028,521,522,520,527,167748,122761,14230,20739,1627,7338,70504,52041,82,19237],"class_list":["post-947412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-119759","tag-3down","tag-3downnation","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-football","tag-football-operations","tag-general-manager","tag-gm","tag-ottawa","tag-qb","tag-quarterback","tag-redblacks","tag-ryan-dinwiddie","tag-sports","tag-vice-president"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947412","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=947412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}