Montreal Alouettes Free Agency Update

The Montreal Alouettes have signed three players in the last two days as free agency approaches, including a linebacker and a receiver with the last name Green. But they aren’t the biggest names on the docket.

This week, Tyrell Sutton, Eric Deslauriers and Nicolas Boulay have all signed new contracts, avoiding free agency. However, big names S.J. Green, Bear Woods, Jerald Brown and Geoff Tisdale remain unsigned.

The Alouettes have a long list of free agents, as do the Hamilton Tiger Cats and Toronto Argonauts but the longest list – by far – goes to the Saskatchewan Roughriders. And there are some significant names on it like receiver Weston Dressler and defensive end Ricky Foley.

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Hamilton also has some significant names on their potential free agent list including playoff star Brandon Banks, Delvin Breaux, Samuel Giguere, Nic Grigsby and Luke Tasker.

Here is the Alouettes full free-agent list, as released by the CFL on December 9. All players become free agents on February 10 unless signed beforehand:

BAILLARGEON, Pascal
BOULAY, Nicolas Signed 12/12
BOWLING, Bo
BROWN, Jerald
CARTER, Duron
DESLAURIERS, Eric Signed 12/11
DIEDRICK, Dahrran
GREEN, S.J.
KNOWLES, Jamahl
LAVARIAS, Aaron
PAXSON, Scott
ROY, Bryn
RUTLEY, Brandon
SUTTON, Tyrell Signed 12/09
TISDALE, Geoff
VENABLE, Winston
WOODS, Bear
ZALESKI , Jerod

The team also signed a receiver, Brandan Green from Grand Valley State University. Green, 23, was in camp with the Alouettes but failed to break camp with the team due to the depth at that position.

Montreal needs to rebuild that depth now that Carter is all but sure to at least try the NFL and Green is still a big question mark now until February and becomes and even bigger one past that.

Jim Popp and the rest of the Alouettes staff is under pressure to improve the team, but it is hard to do that when you don’t even bring back the biggest pieces from your team a year ago.

Popp has always been able to replace players who leave, and it will be very interesting to see what will happen in the next few months.

My money is on most of the key players being re-signed, but I also thought the team would bring Shea Emry back last season.