Everyone was able to pick without the tick, tick, tick …
Nobody was on the clock when members of the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ football-operations staff conducted mock drafts on Thursday and Friday in the War Room at Mosaic Stadium.
Nobody wasted any time, either, as 72 selections were made, two times over, each afternoon as part of a preparatory procedure for Tuesday night’s CFL Draft.
A lighthearted directive from Jeremy O’Day, the Roughriders’ General Manager and Vice-President of Football Operations, was certainly taken to heart.
“We don’t want to be playing the Jeopardy music when it’s your turn,” O’Day joked on Thursday as his colleagues prepared to temporarily assume the roles of other teams’ GMs and project who might be taken elsewhere.
That being said, everyone immersed themselves in the inexact science of selecting nine players per round, multiplied by eight, before repeating the process once more on that particular day.
“It’s really just an exercise to just figure out the first couple of rounds,” O’Day told Riderville.com after Thursday’s mock drafts. “You’re trying to predict who might be available at that pick — and it changes every time.
“It’s a fun exercise.”
And there is plenty of exercise, considering all the legwork that is done for nearly a year leading up to the draft.
Day 1, for the purposes of the 2023 lottery, was actually May 7 of last year. That afternoon, Assistant General Manager Kyle Carson represented the Roughriders at the East-West Bowl — a showcase for the top draft-eligible U Sports players, held at McMaster University in Hamilton.
Beyond that, there was extensive scouting of USports and NCAA football, as the top Canadians were appraised in person and on video.
From there, Carson and Jordan Greenly (Director, Football Operations) compiled and refined a lengthy list of 500 to 600 draft-eligible players.
On top of that, each prospect’s college coach was contacted in order to glean insights into the player and the person.
As Carson noted, football talent is an important consideration, but “character is 1A on the priority list.”
Other key questions pertain to the player’s work ethic, coachability, football IQ and leadership qualities.
Following the season, each Roughriders assistant coach will evaluate the draft hopefuls at his specific position.
On top of that, the entire pool of prospects will be evaluated by O’Day, Carson, Craig Dickenson (Head Coach) and Kent Maugeri (Special Teams Co-ordinator). Maugeri provides input on all the possible draftees because special-teams coaches deploy players who are listed at a variety of positions on offence and defence.
Crucially, the video/analytics staff — Nick Bowley (Manager), Nathan Schellenberg and Mike Woytowich — applies its expertise to the project.
In addition to inputting and cataloguing scrolls of data, the firm of Bowley, Schellenberg and Woytowich prepares a video file for each player.
That enables O’Day, Carson, Dickenson and the other coaches to access a player’s profile and watch him in action in a matter of seconds — although it can take infinitely longer to watch him on the field.
For the purposes of demonstration to a snoopy scribe, O’Day accessed a file for one player and clicked on one game in particular. The “key plays” dossier for that one player, from one multiple games, included 71 snaps.
“The video guys are a huge part of it, because they’re essentially developing all the clips,” O’Day said. “They prepare the draft books that we have by the end of it.
“That preparation goes into it before we even start. Then it’s a whole lot of watching film for everyone.
“Everyone spends a lot of time watching the tape and developing their grades.”
Then everyone meets and brainstorms and debates the relative merits of Player A versus Player B versus Player C, keeping in mind the team’s needs, the likelihood of a specific player being available in a certain round, and myriad other issues that are explored.
All of this is done with the knowledge that the Roughriders are only one-ninth of the equation once every team declares its hand on draft day.
“I don’t think the draft ever really goes exactly how you think it’s going to go,” O’Day noted. “It’s always different. In the first five or six picks, there’s always a guy where you go, ‘I didn’t expect that.’
“You don’t really know exactly what every team is thinking, but you can kind of see areas where they may have more of a need than others.”
Those areas are explored by Carson, who leading up to the mock drafts compiles a list of each rival team’s needs. Each mock-drafter is given that list before selecting on behalf of a particular team.
Carson’s time in the CFL dates back to 2012, when he was hired as an intern by the Calgary Stampeders. His attributes became obvious, to the extent that he held the roles of Scouting Assistant and Co-ordinator of Football Operations with Calgary. His scouting purview was subsequently expanded when he became the Stampeders’ CFL Draft Co-ordinator.
While Carson was in Calgary, the Stampeders appeared in five Grey Cup games and won two championships.
He joined the Roughriders in 2019 as the Director of Player Personnel. After working in that capacity for two years, he became an Assistant GM.
Carson and the other Assistant GM, Alabama-based Paul Jones, work collaboratively with O’Day in appraising and recruiting talent on both sides of the border.
“Kyle is instrumental,” O’Day said. “He handles the CFL Draft. He’s the guy who makes sure the coaches have everything they need and that they get the evaluations.
“He has to evaluate every single guy, which is the same thing I had to do when I was the Assistant GM.
“A big role of the assistant GM is to be heavily focused on the CFL Draft. He was a big part of it in Calgary and he’s a big part of it here.”
All of that rigour and research is a prelude to the annual CFL Combine. This year’s event was held March 22 to 26 at the Commonwealth Stadium Field House in Edmonton.
The Combine provides a wealth of measurable information, such as a player’s speed in the 40-yard dash, and his vertical leap, his prowess in the bench press.
The expansion of the Combine in 2023 allowed teams to get a more extensive look at players in competitive situations.
Additionally, the Roughriders’ brass conducted 60 interviews at the Combine.
All of this information is used to whittle down the initial list of 500 to 600 players to, say, 100 to 120 magnets that are on the Roughriders’ draft board leading up to Tuesday.
By then, O’Day will have presented his evaluations of the draftable prospects. Leading up to and during the mock-draft process, he is most interested in hearing others’ opinions.
“When they all ask questions about the draft, they’ll ask Kyle, because I’ll be honest: I won’t tell them my opinion until I want to tell them my opinion,” O’Day said.
“I already have all my grades, but I won’t put them in until the end.
“I don’t usually like to pick for our team (during the mock drafts) because I like to hear what everyone else thinks we should do.”
With O’Day’s appraisals entering the picture, the Roughriders’ draft board will be crystallized by early next week. Then it will be “go time” on Tuesday at suppertime.
“We really just trust our board, so it’s not really a crapshoot,” O’Day said.
The Roughriders’ first-round pick will be the third overall. Saskatchewan also chooses in Rounds 2 (11th overall), 3 (21st), 4 (30th), 6 (48th), 7 (57th) and 8 (66th).
“It’s a lot of fun,” O’Day said, “and it’s maybe slower than you think. It’s quieter than you might expect in the beginning, and then there’s moments when it’s more intense.
“It’s just fun, because you don’t know who’s going to get picked, right? Sometimes you have a good feel for, ‘OK, this guy is probably going to be the next pick,’ but after the second round, you really don’t have as clear of an idea.
“After we pick, and after a couple of more guys are picked in that round, I’ll go up and actually take the magnets of the next five or six guys we’re going to consider taking in with our next pick.
“At that point, the other guys can see (who is being considered) and go, ‘I think we should add this to the mix.’ That’s when we start having discussions about our next pick.”
And on it will go, through eight rounds.
Once everyone is chosen and the mock drafts are but a memory, the attention will turn to signing the drafted players — rookie camp is just a week and a half away — and to main training camp (which begins May 14 in Saskatoon).
Even before main camp begins, the 2024 Draft will be on the Roughriders’ radar.
The next East-West Bowl — to be held once again at McMaster’s Ron Joyce Stadium — is scheduled for May 13, when the draft cycle starts all over again.
