Walters wants to stay in Winnipeg

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This article was published 15/11/2023 (716 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HAMILTON — If it were up to Kyle Walters, he’d already have a contract signed for next season.

“I don’t know who would want to leave this organization,” Walters said Wednesday in Hamilton, where the Bombers are days away from competing in a fourth consecutive Grey Cup. “We’re very successful. The fans are unbelievable. Who would want to leave the Winnipeg Blue Bombers?”

The fact Walters, the man put in the position to build what’s become one of the finest teams in Bombers and CFL history, is on an expiring contract has been a hot topic during the week leading up to the CFL championship game.

In the three seasons since snapping a nearly 30-year championship drought in 2019, the Bombers have finished first in the West Division each year, boasting a 40-10 regular-season record.

It’s not that Walters hasn’t tried to get an extension.

He sat down with Bombers president and CEO Wade Miller last December after a stunning defeat to the Toronto Argonauts in the 2022 Grey Cup. During that meeting, it became clear to him a new deal wasn’t going to be offered.

“Yeah, obviously,” Walters said. “You’ll have to talk to Wade about that one. When that discussion was had, I said, ‘Alright, well we’re not going to deal with this all year.’

Walters said he was resigned to the fact he’d have to wait until after this week to see if an offer was coming.

Miller downplayed the situation with his GM Wednesday, noting the organization does things a bit differently when it comes to contract extensions. In the case of Mike O’Shea, the highly successful head coach has signed three, three-year extensions since being hired in 2014, all of which were inked while he was on an expiring deal.

“We’re going to focus on winning the Grey Cup this week and next week, we’ll start the rest of the business and move forward for next year,” Miller said. “We’ll end up seeing where everything shakes out, there’ll be movement across this league, right? So, we’ll start that process next week, like we’ve done similar with our head coach in previous years.”

Walters indicated he would have preferred a different approach.

“Mike has always operated like that,” Walters said. “Mike would wait for it to run out, while I would never enter the last year of my contract. We would always re-up it.”

Miller said another factor why Walters doesn’t have an extension is because of the complexities of the non-football operations cap, which is set at $2.6 million and applies to all coaches and other football operations staff, including GMs, scouts and equipment and video personnel.

That’s why Walters didn’t receive an extension last December.

“It’s really simple. The fact that the non-player football cap, what it was going to be, still wasn’t decided,” Miller said. “It’s tough to understand what you’re working with when you don’t have those numbers. Those recently got decided and we’re going to get working on that after this game.”

Walters also acknowledged the non-football operations cap and how difficult it is for Miller to spread the wealth when there is only so much to spend. It’s important to note assistant general managers Ted Goveia and Danny McManus are also without contracts for the 2024 campaign.

Recent history suggests the Bombers brass has more than earned job security.

“That’s the way it works in sports. When you have success, you get paid more than your peers. When you don’t have success, you get fired,” Walters said. “That’s the fact of our job. So, it’s slightly frustrating from our end of things, where we are not allowed to capitalize on the success we’ve had.”

Asked if he was confident something could get done, Miller didn’t sound nearly as committal as he did when discussing O’Shea’s contract at the Grey Cup a year ago in Regina. Then, he was adamant a deal for O’Shea would ultimately get done.

Now, his comments suggest the process might not be as seamless.

“Never make assumptions,” Miller said. “We’re always going to take a look at everything and keep this moving in the right direction. The success that we’ve all had, it’s been impressive. But we need to keep moving forward.”

Walters said he wished he didn’t have to answer questions about his contract status, prefering to talk about the chase for a third league title under his watch or what challenges come with playing the Montreal Alouettes on Sunday (5 p.m.).

Hardly a day goes by when his friends and family don’t ask him about his status with the club.

“It’s constant. I tell them the same thing, ‘We’ll worry about it after the year,’” Walters said. “It’s harder on the families and friends and people who say, ‘This is your fourth Grey Cup in a row. Is it peculiar you don’t have a contract?’”

Walters has been with the Bombers since 2010, starting as the club’s special teams co-ordinator before taking over as GM partway through the 2013 season. He began with an interim tag but earned permanency in the post around the same time O’Shea was hired.

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The pair was hired to usher in a new era of winning after several down seasons under the previous regime. Miller, Walters and O’Shea have become the poster boys of the organization, affectionately known as the “Canadian Mafia” for their local roots.

Having lived in Ontario most of his life, Walters now considers Winnipeg home. While he doesn’t know things will end up , he’s hopeful he’ll be back at the helm. He’s proud of what the organization has achieved during his tenure and can’t imagine being anywhere else.

“We’re all extremely proud of what we’ve done since we took over,” Walters said. “I want to win on Sunday and let everything else take care of itself.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

X: @jeffkhamilton

Jeff Hamilton
Multimedia producer

Jeff Hamilton is a sports and investigative reporter. Jeff joined the Free Press newsroom in April 2015, and has been covering the local sports scene since graduating from Carleton University’s journalism program in 2012. Read more about Jeff.

Every piece of reporting Jeff produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.