With major roster cutdown looming it’s a tense few days, even for coaches and high draft picks

The second week of training camp is an exercise in multi-tasking. Coaches are looking slightly ahead as they prepare their offences and defences for the impending opening of the regular season, while at the same time standing squarely in the present, trying to determine who will actually make the team after the final exhibition game Friday night.

So here were the Ticats on Tuesday morning working on position-specific drills, installing plays, honing their timing and venturing deeper and deeper into the playbooks on offence and defence. The ‘ones’, or anticipated starters, get much of the action but their top backups, and highest-regarded challengers for certain positions—more on defence than on offence—are sprinkled in and out of the high-intensity team drills.

Now, training camp has shrunk to just one more practice, with a walk-through Thursday before Friday’s pre-season game in Guelph against the Argos, which is absolutely critical to dozens of players. That game, Wednesday’s practice, and the objective analysis of two weeks of drills, team meetings, playbook review, and last Saturday’s exhibition against the Argos accumulate to determine who will still be in black and gold after the weekend.

CFL teams have until 10 p.m. Saturday to declare their opening-week rosters. The game-day roster consists of 44 or 45 players, and up to 13 more can be on the practice roster, while others can land on the one-game or six-game injury lists.

There are still a number of competitions for roster spots being waged, and the coaching staff is focusing in on those, while simultaneously grooming the presumptive starters to hit the regular-season ground with momentum.

Head coach Scott Milanovich addressed how many active roster decisions he and his staff still have to make by Saturday night and you can’t count them on one hand.

“I’d say it’s normal, which would be more than a few,” he said Tuesday. “You also are taking into consideration the practice roster, so the number climbs a little bit. It’s somewhere in the double digits for sure.”

The staff will determine later this week how much field time on Friday will go to players anticipated to be the ‘A’ units on offence and defence.

It’s a stressful couple of days for many players, even those who played well in Saturday’s pre-season game against the Argos, and even those whose resumé includes being selected with a high draft pick investment last month.

No. 2 overall pick, linebacker Devin Veresuk, and No. 9, defensive end Isaiah Bagnah, tick both those boxes.

Each made an astounding play against the Argos—Veresuk bringing down elite returner Janarian Grant with an all-pro-type special teams tackle and Bagnah batting down a quick-delivery Nick Arbuckle pass for a third-down turnover—but each knows that last week was last week. That’s not the present, nor the future.

“I’m always very hard on myself, so I always put a lot of pressure on myself,” Veresuk said Tuesday. “I don’t know if there is a certain expectation on me; I’d assume so because I was a high pick. So I do whatever I can to try to put my best foot forward. I want to prove our coaches right and our staff correct.

“At the end of the day, I don’t necessarily think of who has jobs. I just do whatever I can to improve myself and show the coaching staff that I can do my job.”

Bagnah’s pass deflection came only five plays after Veresuk’s jaw-dropping stop on Grant, last year’s CFL Special Teams Player of the year.

“It was cool, very sick,” Bagnah said of his fellow rookie’s tackle. “The guy, first of all, is a great person. So seeing him go out there and make some plays and do what he was meant to do, has been awesome. He does it every single day at practice too.

“And, you know, just for me to come in and do what I’m supposed to do as well and live up to my own expectations and to keep growing and keep living up to expectations on me has been awesome too.

“Regardless if we’re rookies or not, there’s a standard that we have to uphold and that we continue to push each other with. And just him and I having that same kind of mentality and work ethic, I think it drives both of us.”

And both of them will likely get plenty of field time on Friday, as will most new players who’ve got a legitimate chance to stay with the team when camp breaks on Saturday.

CATS CLAUSES:  While the 2024 Ticats were at, or near, the top of numerous CFL offensive categories, particularly in the air, head coach Scott Milanovich reiterated Tuesday what he said all winter: “I hope we don’t have to throw for as many yards. I would like to have more balance. I want us to be more efficient in the pass game, in terms of turnovers, in terms of percentage, in terms of taking ‘shots’ and things like that.” …Two new American arrivals, DB Cam Lockridge and WR Matt Landers were thrown right into action Tuesday. Landers is 6-foot-4 but looks even taller. He made an outstanding leaping end-zone catch in team vs. team drills … RB Johnny Augustine has looked very quick hitting the hole in practice and carried it into Saturday night’s exhibition game against the Argos when he carried five times for 51 yards, and on one first-half  drive against most of the Argos’ top defenders, was called upon for three consecutive rushes, including a dazzling 28-yard burst. “The reason why that big run happened was obviously because of the guys up front but also because of Tim White, (all-star receiver). He set that up with a block. If he didn’t make that block, I would have had to make somebody miss which I believe I can. But Tim set it up. I love seeing receivers block, as much as the O-line. To get to the second and third level you’re going to need those guys. And us opening up the run is going to help receivers like him.”… Special Teams coordinator Dennis McKnight and primo long-snapper Gordon Whyte have been helping LB Trevor Hoyte and WR Keaton Bruggeling learn to “hike” back to the punter and place-kicker. Starting DT Casey Sayles is also capable of long-snapping in case of an emergency.