May
Valli hopes to fill Bates vacant spot
Courtesy Vancouver Province:
Wally Buono didn’t see it as gamble when he sent offensive lineman Kelly Bates to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Thursday in a trade for a 2011 conditional draft pick.
But a bet taken by one of the leading candidates to move into Bates’ vacant left guard spot could end up making the deal work.
Dean Valli took it as a challenge when the Lions coach/GM suggested during the offseason that he could benefit from a loss of weight. Twenty pounds lighter and later, the 25-year-old backup is ready to pounce on the job opening.
“The whole thing started with a bet with [right tackle] Jason Jimenez,” recalled Valli, who hopes to report for training camp June 7 at his current weight of just under 300 pounds.
“He said I couldn’t go the whole season without drinking soda or eating fast food. I do things for weird reasons sometimes. I almost did it just to show him…. The last time I had fast food was the day I made that bet.
“I like the way I feel now.”
A starting job is not automatic, with newly-signed Justin Sorensen to be given guard reps at the club’s rookie mini-camp next month before the Lions decide whether to move him to the other vacancy at left tackle.
But gone, Valli said, are the days when he occasionally asked himself whether he could make the jump from the sixth-man role he has occupied since the Lions drafted him four years ago.
Though a low-round draft pick hardly seemed like an even exchange for Bates, who was Buono’s only starter at the position the last six years, it was more than anything the club has gotten for a player aged 30 or over who has been cut or traded since the Leos’ last game (see chart).
“When everybody knows you’re trying to move a player, that becomes an issue of great difficulty,” Buono said.
The deal also underscored the size of the Lions’ winter housecleaning. Including free agents and those who left for the NFL, the trade involving the 33-year-old guard meant the Lions surpassed the $1 million mark in salaries dropped off the roster that ended the 2008 season.
Bates knew his time was up when the Bombers talked about a trade in February, as reported in The Province, which was why he had a pragmatic view when his Lions stay finally ended.
“There’s no other way but to see it was a positive; what else can I say?” said Bates.
For entirely different reasons, Valli felt the same way.
