March 21, 2018

The CFL’s national combine is a job interview

Dariusz Bladek OL during the 2017 CFL combine in Regina, SK., Saturday, March 25, 2017. (Photo: Johany Jutras)

Dariusz Bladek admits that he battled the butterflies during the 2017 CFL National Combine in Regina.

But Bladek survived the testing, the one-on-ones and the interviews and, six weeks later, was selected by the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the second round (11th overall) of the CFL draft.

“For me, (the combine) was a little bit different,” the 23-year-old offensive lineman recalls. “I felt I had more to prove than others, coming off a year without any organized football.”

Bladek was born in New Jersey and moved to Florida as a teenager. After starring at Bethune-Cookman University, he declared for the 2016 NFL draft but wasn’t selected.

He had a workout with the Baltimore Ravens, but wasn’t signed as a free agent. He subsequently had a conversation with the Calgary Stampeders, who raised the idea of Bladek playing in the CFL as a national after they found out his mother was born in Montreal.

He tried to secure the necessary paperwork, but it didn’t come through in time for him to be included in the 2016 CFL draft or the supplemental draft. As a result, he didn’t play at all in 2016 — and his first foray into the Canadian game was during the 2017 national combine in Regina.

“(The combine) can be a little bit nerve-wracking, but it was exciting being back around football and football players and talking about our different experiences,” Bladek says. “Everyone has their own story. Mine was a little bit different, but no more special than any other guy who was at the combine.”

The 2018 National Combine is set for Saturday and Sunday in Winnipeg, the site of CFL Week. Players who attended the 2017 combine during the inaugural CFL Week in Regina know precisely what this year’s prospects are going through.

Then-University of Regina Rams receiver Mitchell Picton felt right at home at Regina’s Credit Union EventPlex, but that didn’t mean he was calm, cool and collected at the combine.

“Mentally, it’s stressful,” says Picton, 22. “You use a lot of the off-season to prepare for it and every day that you’re in the gym, you’re thinking about it.

“It’s something that’s weighing on your mind because it’s a big deal, it’s a big job interview and it’s something that could affect your entire career.”

Participants in the combine are put through a battery of physical tests, including the 40-yard dash, shuttle run, three-cone drill, vertical jump, broad jump and 225-pound bench press.

The hopefuls spend much of the off-season preparing for those events, but they do so on a different timeline than normal. Instead of getting ready for spring camp in April or May, the players have to be ready for late March.

They also have to be ready to be interviewed by representatives of the nine CFL teams.

Picton prepared by speaking to former Rams teammates who had gone through the process before. He also spoke to his agent, Rob Fry, who offered some insight into what teams want to hear.

“I had a lot of support and I had an inside scoop about what was going on with that,” says Picton, who met with seven teams. “It is stressful, though, because there are some big names you’ve heard about your entire life who you’re going to be meeting and who are going to be grilling you.”

Bladek remembers that he wasn’t nervous during the interviews, suggesting the teams understood after meeting him that “they weren’t getting someone who was just coming out of college and who had been partying for the past year.”

Instead, he was unnerved the most by the on-field work — in large part because he never before had faced defensive linemen who lined up a yard off the line of scrimmage.

“That was a game-changer for me,” Bladek says. “In the States, you only see one move off the ball. Once you counter that move, there’s nothing much (a D-lineman) can do. In the CFL, with that yard off the ball, when a good defensive lineman comes off the ball and can see that you’re going to be able to stop that move, they can have a second move already coming.

“That got me into trouble. After the first couple of reps, for some reason I got happy feet. I started thinking, ‘I beat him to the punch so now I have to redirect,’ and the defensive lineman hadn’t even moved. I had some scouts ask me what the hell I was doing. I told them I was trying to predict things.”

Picton, meanwhile, saw the on-field sessions as something of a relief.

“You can stop worrying about your 40 and things like that and you can actually let your play speak for itself,” he says. “It’s a high-pressure situation, so you try to treat it as you would a game. It’s still football. You’re just trying to perform and do what you do on the field.”

That said, a missed block, a dropped pass or a blown coverage can linger in a prospect’s mind as he tries to impress the scouts.

“There are a lot of people who are going to see that mistake,” says Picton, who eventually was selected by Saskatchewan in the fifth round (37th overall) of the draft. “You can’t let it get to you. You’ve got to move on and make sure you catch the next one or win your next rep.

“You’ve got to keep doing what got you to this point.”

Picton’s cousin, Rams quarterback Noah Picton, and U of R tailback Atlee Simon are to participate in the national combine. So is Regina product Brett Wade, a defensive lineman with the University of Calgary Dinos.