Off-Season Update: Jeremy O’Day

On March 31, Roughriders Vice President of Football Operations and General Manager Jeremy O’Day met with the local media via video chat to discuss a number of topics.

Below is a snippet of that conversation:

Q: Where are you, how is self-isolation working for you so far?

O’Day: It’s been fine for me personally.  I basically just moved my office from the stadium into my house and brought as much of the stuff over that I needed for the time being. I set up my screens, printers and computers and set up a little office in my basement. I’ve been getting a lot of good family time with the wife and kids, which has been pretty enjoyable. We’ve spent a lot of time together as a group and had more meals at the dinner table that I’m not used to being home for, which is nice.

Q: Can we get an update from you, Jeremy, on the roster – are all of the players healthy? The staff? Are they all healthy?

O’Day: Yes, I’ve reached out and we haven’t had any of our staff or players have any health concerns at this point. Everyone is doing well from within the organization and we’ve been working with the players as much as possible. Right now, it’s been pretty positive and everyone’s healthy and well.

Q: What have you told the players thus far? Because the guys are in different regions, different states with different regulations. Have you given them any advice really at this time?

O’Day: Our biggest concern is just for the health and safety of all the players, so we reached out to them to give them some information on the virus and on some of the guidelines that they can adhere to. Just really encouraging them to try to stay as healthy as possible and encourage their families to do the same. We’re sharing the information as we get it. We’re getting the information the same way as the players would, so they’re remaining as patient as they can be in these circumstances.

I know that Solomon Elimimian is the President of the Players Association and he’s doing a great job of communicating with the players and the league office. We’re just super proud of what he’s doing and the leadership that he’s taken on, he’s really doing a great job in his short term as President of the PA.

Q: Realistically, when do you think either training camp will start or the regular season?

O’Day: Yeah, it’s a very good question, but I definitely won’t speculate on what I think or what I believe. It’s certainly something that I haven’t had discussions with anyone. I know that the league is going through contingency planning and preparing for basically every scenario that could happen. I’m not going to speculate on what I think or what I think is the right timing, because I honestly don’t know the answer to that. It’s such a fluid thing that’s happening. I’m really just hoping that we can get it under control and start to see some wins and start to see some progress in that we’re gaining some ground on the virus.

Q: What’s it like trying to scout for the draft from your phones, your TV, your computer? What’s the process like and how does it differ from last year or any other year?

O’Day: I think the biggest difference that we’re seeing is the fact that we weren’t able to complete all the combines, so we don’t have all the measurables and all the testing results that we normally would have access to. It’s been a very unique situation where agents are starting to get real creative with getting us the information.

The first thing that they wanted to do for us is to ask us what they could do to help to put their players in a position where they can get the information to us. I can tell you that we’ve gotten plenty of videos of players that are actually shooting the measurables right in their house, some outside on their deck, some in their bathrooms. They’re doing basically all the tests, the measurables that we would do at the combine.  It’s actually them being videotaped – whether it’s their parents, their friends or their girlfriends that are that are measuring them – they’re zooming in on the measurables, so you’re getting accurate, measurables. It’s pretty neat.

I’ve seen a lot of different scales in the last couple of days of guys that are stepping on the scale and recording their weight for us. It’s something we’ve had to adapt to. but really, we’re doing a lot of our work through film work and evaluation of the tape of them playing in games or players that we’re in the East/West game, any pro days that happen prior to them being shut down; we have all that information and we’re trying to compile it all the best we can. We have some testing that we’ve gotten from the East/West game from last year that we’re able to add in there as kind of the latest stuff that we have.

Really a large majority is based off the tape, which is something that we have the ability to watch a lot of film, as you can imagine. We’re spending a lot of time watching the players on tape and developing our draft board. We’re also getting our coaches involved, as we always do, but the coaches will be asked to evaluate a little more, so we can take their evaluations into consideration for the draft so that we can paint the best picture of each player possible and try to make the best decisions.

Q: Logistically, how much notice do you need from the league office that, OK, we’re going? Two weeks? Three weeks?

O’Day: We’ve got an action plan in place, obviously with training camp being delayed or postponed. We had to reach out to all the people that factored into training camp regarding housing and facilities. Fortunate enough for us, we hadn’t started to book any of the flights yet, so we don’t have any of the flights to worry about. But realistically, it’s just calling all the people.

Our Football Ops department has done a great job of talking to all the people that we work with for training camp so that we’re prepared when we’re given the go ahead. One benefit for us this year is actually we had planned to stay in Regina for training camp, so it does make it a little bit easier for us. We don’t have to transport all of our equipment and supplies up to Saskatoon. We’re just right here in Regina and it’s all set up and ready to go. We feel like we can do it very, very quickly, as is as soon as we’re given the go ahead, we’ll put our action plan in place.