Ticat receiver Justin Buren retires; impending free agency for three other Canadian receivers
There’s a lot of water yet to flow under the off-season bridge, but the Hamilton Tiger-Cats could be facing a shortage of Canadian receivers.
Justin Buren, the 23-year-old rookie wide receiver out of Simon Fraser who acquitted himself well as a starter for the final six games of 2018, retired from football last week citing personal, and private, reasons.
“This had nothing to do with the Ticats’ organization, the players, the coaches, or for that matter my personal health,” Buren told The Spectator from Coquitlam, B.C.
“The organization was great to me and I appreciate it.
“I left for personal reasons. When I came back home after the season, an opportunity presented itself for permanent employment, and I took it.”
Over the past couple of years, the Tiger-Cats made a concentrated effort to build depth and skill in their homebrew receiving corps to provide roster ratio flexibility and, eventually, extra ammunition for June Jones’ air raids.
They took three wide receivers in the 2016 Canadian draft and by 2017 Mike Jones emerged as a starter and Felix Faubert-Lussier a reliable backup and periodic starter.
In September, 2017 they brought in veteran National receiver Shamawd Chambers, who was supposed to figure heavily in their 2018 plans.
Plus, three of their top six draft choices in 2018 were wide receivers: Mark Chapman at No. 1 overall, Marcus Davis from UBC at No. 31 and Buren at 37.
But Chapman didn’t sign, tried the NFL and eventually landed with the Alliance of American Football’s Salt Lake Stallions, for whom he won’t play this year
because of his own personal reasons.
The Ticats brought Davis to training camp for the experience, despite a torn ACL, before he returned to school.
Chambers tore his ACL in training camp and never played a 2018 game, the first chapter in a season-long horror story of injuries to the receiving corps that would eventually claim Jalen Saunders, Chris Williams and Brandon Banks and limit Terrence Toliver to a dozen games.
To combat that depletion, by mid-October the Tiger-Cats had recommitted to two Canadian starting receivers, a model they’d basically scratched after Chambers got hurt. This time Buren complemented Jones, who was enjoying by far the most productive of his three CFL seasons.
Although it was a Ticat season of oscillating highs and lows, one of the more positive stories was that five of their 2018 draftees got into game uniforms, two as starters.
“It took me a bit by surprise but as people started going down, I realized I was going to get my chance if I was ready,” said Buren, who had eight catches in four regular-season games, then five more in the playoffs.
But now Buren is done playing football: Forever, he says. Plus Jones, who will likely seek a big salary boost, Chambers and Faubert-Lussier all can become free agents within a week.
That leaves Davis, who hasn’t played in over a year, and Mac grad Mitch O’Connor, who had two stints on the 2018 practice roster, as the only National true receivers under 2019 contract. But recently re-signed Sean Thomas Erlington, formally a running back, has also lined up as a slot receiver and might find himself there even more often this season.
The Ticats have a solid corps of signed International receivers — Saunders, Banks, Luke Tasker, Rashad Lawrence and late-season discovery Bralon Addison — so at this point they could be ratio-planning for only one receiver among their required seven starting Nationals.
They worked it that way much of last season and can buy the room on either line, occasionally at running back or perhaps in the secondary.
It’s a decent draft year for receivers, with five ranked in the top 13 prospects, but despite 2018’s success, CFL teams usually can’t count on starting a draftee.
There’s always the possibility of resigning one or more of Chambers, Jones and Faubert-Lussier, and maybe there’s a sensible trade somewhere out there.
There are still four months to figure this out, but with Buren’s retirement there’s suddenly more to figure out.
Notes: The Ticats have re-signed defensive back Richard Leonard, who was the team’s rookie of the year in 2017. His level of play fell off last season but he still had 10 pass knockdowns ... Earlier in the week the team signed eastern all-star defensive halfback Cariel Brooks, who led the team with four interceptions and played every game at halfback in 2018, his second season in Hamilton ... Hamilton had also added running backs coach CJ Harper, their 11th coach, reaching the CFL-mandated ceiling. Harper worked with Orlondo Steinauer at Fresno State and played for Ottawa in 2014 ... New linebackers coach Robin Ross was Steinauer’s defensive co-ordinator in his final two seasons at Western Washington University