Part of me is happy that the team is going about trying to find players, but another part of me wonders how much impact these players will have this season. Both Davis and Peguese were backups and I don't know how much the Ti-Cats can gain from picking up backup players from other teams. I know that backup players move from one team to another and can thrive, so it is a wait and see approach, but I don't hold out too much hope that these are the two guys that will transform the unit.
Finding the right players along the d-line is something the Cats have been trying to do all season. The d-line has been one of the biggest areas of concern on the team, if not the biggest, and nothing the team has done has been able to change that. I think the biggest problem with the d-line is that the team hasn't come close to adequately replacing players they've lost, either through retirement, free agency or to the NFL. In the last three years, Stevie Baggs, Justin Hickman, Garret McIntyre, Khari Long, Demonte' Bolden, Darrell Adams, Matt Kirk, Jermaine Reid, Luc Mullinder and Maurice Forbes have all left the team for one reason or another. Kirk, Reid, Mullinder and Forbes were Canadians and a lack of Canadian depth on the d-line has forced 2010 draft pick Eddie Steele into a backup role because there is no non-import depth behind him. That has necessitated changes to the ratio that otherwise wouldn't be there if there was a Canadian able to back up Steele. Hickman and McIntyre are plying their trade in the NFL, and Baggs and Bolden are now teammates in Calgary. Losing that many players in such a short amount of time has really hurt the cohesiveness of the unit, and not finding replacements has led to the problems we see today.
Hopefully one day we'll talk about Peguese and Davis the same way we wax poetic about Hickman and McIntyre.
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