One of this offseason's most intruiging moves was running back Avon Cobourne leaving the Montreal Alouettes to head to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. His arrival in Hamilton spelled the end of DeAndra Cobb's time there. Cobb (pictured above trying to evade B.C.'s Stanley Franks last September) has now found a new team of his own, and interestingly enough, he's going to be trying to fill Cobourne's shoes in Montreal.

Even in an eight-team league like the CFL, it's quite rare to see two franchises swap running backs between seasons. Of course, it isn't a straight player-for-player trade; the Alouettes didn't want to meet Cobourne's salary demands, so he signed in Hamilton as a free agent, and that made Cobb expendable, leading to his release. Montreal then signed Cobb as a free agent, and given that most other teams seem to have pretty stable running back situations at the moment, it's likely they picked him up at a reasonable discount. That seems like a potentially good deal for them, as

Some comments 2010 Pro Bowl defensive end Jason Babin (pictured, right) made to The Tennessean are drawing plenty of attention both north and south of the border, and that's understandable. As Shutdown Corner's Doug Farrar wrote, Babin's comments that he was considering joining a CFL team thanks to the ongoing NFL lockout fit right in with statements made by George Atallah and other members of the NFLPA leadership on how many NFL guys may seek alternative leagues to play in this year. However, comments alone don't mean that Babin or any other prominent NFLer will be suiting up in the CFL this June, and looking at the other factors involved, it seems more likely that we're not going to see a lot of NFL players north of the border.

As I wrote last week, there are several factors likely to limit the impact of the NFL lockout on the CFL from a player personnel side (other aspects of the labour dispute, such as potentially increased American television broadcast opportunities for the CFL,

The Edmonton Eskimos' 2011 linebacking corps will look very different than the 2010 edition, thanks to the retirement of Canadian Javy Glatt and the team's decision to release import Maurice Lloyd (seen above left trying to bring down Lions' quarterback Casey Printers with teammate Andre Coleman in a July 4 game last year); they've also added former NFL linebacker Quinton Culberson, who last played with the St. Louis Rams and Carolina Panthers in 2009. Edmonton isn't going to be the only team with an overhauled group of linebackers, though; several other teams are also re-evaluating their linebackers, including Hamilton (where the Tiger-Cats brought in Renauld Williams, axing Otis Floyd in the process. The latest team that could do so, though, is one many might not have expected; the B.C. Lions.

On the surface, B.C. seems to be in pretty good shape at linebacker. The Lions tend to play a 4-2-6 alignment (defensive linemen-linebackers-defensive backs), which would be a standard nickel