For CFL fans who have been waiting patiently since the Grey Cup ended in November, rejoice! Canadian Football returns this week as the preseason gets underway. It has been another interesting offseason with the draft and then even moves a lot of us didn’t see coming as player movement and retirements were abundant through the first week of camp.

As the preseason begins this week, we will take a look at five storylines that will be interesting to watch play out over the entirety of the 2017 CFL season.

Can Ottawa Repeat?

It all begins with the Champs. Ottawa prevailed over Calgary in a thrilling double overtime Grey Cup final to bring the City its first pro championship since the 1976 Grey Cup. Everything seemed to go Ottawa’s way last year along with a now-retired Henry Burris having a final season for the ages. Like many other teams there has been mass turnaround but Trevor Harris should be able to keep the Redblacks in the running for a repeat as he begins his first full season as the main guy in Ottawa.

Can Vince Young help Chris Jones and crew turn things around in Riderland?

Chris Jones and the Riders failed to live up to expectations last year as the Roughriders stumbled to a 5-13 campaign. While there has been a lot of player movement since last season, the most publicized move the Riders made was the signing of former NCAA standout and NFL QB Vince Young. While Young is definitely a veteran at this point and will need time to learn the nuances of the Canadian game, but should he get into a groove with this team, the Riders could stand ready to reap the benefits and roar back up the Western Division standings.

Defining year in Hamilton

Kent Austin began his journey in Hamilton in 2013 and set the bar incredibly high as the team went all the way to the Grey Cup final in his first 2 years. Whether fairly or not, those two first seasons set a benchmark that fans hoped to see all the time as Austin brought the Tiger-Cats back into contention. To their credit, in 2015 they did narrowly lose in the Eastern final before an injury riddled 2016 team still scraped out a playoff berth. Even with Collaros at the helm, if this team wants to take another step forward into true Grey Cup contention, it starts and ends with this coming season. Fans in Hamilton have been waiting since 1999, which is an eternity in this league.

Can Winnipeg keep their momentum going?

Winnipeg nearly looked dead in the water through the first stretch of last year’s CFL season before everything seemingly fell into place at once. Following their switch to Matt Nichols at QB, the team was never the same and that was in the best of ways. The team rocketed along the rest of the season making it all the way to the playoffs where they lost a heartbreaker to the B.C. Lions, but in doing so established themselves as a team to be reckoned with. Winnipeg’s Grey Cup window is officially open and if 1999 feels like a very long time ago in Hamilton, 1990 in Winnipeg must feel like millennia ago.

Will massive player movement in the offseason affect team chemistry across the league?

After a record setting offseason in terms of available free agents and player movement, things have at least calmed down a bit on that front. There is still a surprising amount of movement going on throughout the camps across the league and it will be interesting to see how all these new faces mesh with their new team as there will be A LOT of them in new jerseys this year.

Bonus Tidbit:

Three very controversial quarterbacks in the USA, Colin Kaepernick, Robert Griffin III and Johnny Manziel all share a common CFL connection. That connection is that they are on the negotiation list of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, which is why the Riders were fined for talking to Manziel’s publicist a while back. While it’s unlikely any of these three quarterbacks come to play in Canada, their CFL journey, should it begin, will in some way go through Hamilton as the Tiger-Cats somehow built up this list of colorful quarterbacks.

What are you most excited about heading into the 2017 CFL Season? Comment Below!

Stay tuned to RealSport as we roll out our team previews prior to the start of the regular season!

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