The throws were followed by a throwback for Jake Dolegala.
After Tuesday’s session at Coors Light Riders Training Camp, the 26-year-old quarterback was asked about his late grandfather’s accomplishments in professional football and his enduring influence.
Al Bemiller was an early-era standout for the Buffalo Bills during their American Football League days.
“Gramps played from ’61 to ’69,” Dolegala said at Griffiths Stadium on Tuesday.
“His stories were great and he just had a great experience. He passed that on to us grandkids, for sure.
“Football has been in my blood as far back as I can remember.”
Bemiller, who passed away on Nov. 30 at age 84, spent his entire pro football career with the Bills. He helped them win AFL titles in 1964 and 1965, earning league All-Star honours at right guard in the latter season.
In both championship years, the Bills’ No. 1 quarterback was Jack Kemp — whose son, Jimmy Kemp, was a signal-caller with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1996.
“I heard that last year, actually,” said Dolegala, who debuted with the Green and White in 2022.
In 1992, Jack Kemp was among the charter inductees into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. Bemiller joined Kemp in the shrine in 2015, when Dolegala had another opportunity to meet his grandfather’s teammates from the Bills and share another football-related bond.
“He did a really good job of taking us to training camps, just like this,” the 6-foot-7, 242-pound Dolegala recalled. “We were meeting all those guys when we were just five or six years old.”
Around that age, Dolegala began playing football. He was initially an offensive tackle — his strapping size being impossible for coaches to ignore — but soon moved to quarterback.
“I got some really good coaching back home,” he noted, “and it kind of took off from there.”
Dolegala excelled at St. Francis High School in Hamburg, N.Y., until being injured in Week 3 of the 2013 season.
“I tore the labrum in my throwing shoulder in my senior year of high school, so all the big (college) offers I had from Division 1A, they all kind of got thrown out the window,” he said.
“There was a minute where I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but I was down. I was like, ‘Am I going to play football again?’
“My mind was all over the place when that happened, so I never take a day for granted. I’m just very, very blessed to be out here.”
An earlier blessing was a stop in New Berlin, N.Y., home of Milford Academy.
In one season of prep-school football with the Milford Falcons, he threw for 2,276 yards and 20 touchdowns in 11 games.
Then he was off to Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn.
Over four years as the starter for the Central Connecticut Blue Devils, he established school all-time records for passing yards (8,129) and aerial touchdowns (48).
The NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals took notice, signing Dolegala in late April of 2019. He soon turned heads during a mini-camp.
“That boy looked good,” Bengals running back Joe Mixon told John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer on June 13, 2019. “I like him. He’s nice. He’s nice.”
Dolegala secured an NFL job — an especially impressive feat for an undrafted rookie — after throwing for 254 yards in the Bengals’ 2019 pre-season finale. He was on Cincinnati’s 53-man roster throughout the season that followed.
In 2020, Dolegala was among the Bengals’ final cuts. He subsequently spent time with the New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers and Miami Dolphins before signing with Saskatchewan on Feb. 15, 2022.
Dolegala dressed for two CFL games in 2022, making one start, and is now competing for the No. 2 quarterback job — behind Trevor Harris — with returnee Mason Fine and newcomers Shea Patterson and Levi Lewis.
From the outset of this year’s training camp, Dolegala has demonstrated the arm talent that enables him to make any throw that is required.
“There were a couple of times when he wasn’t even trying and he was just throwing it 60 or 70 yards — just flinging it,’’ receiver Jake Wieneke marvelled following Sunday’s workout at Griffiths Stadium.
“He has a cannon. I don’t even know how far he can throw, but it’s got to be 80, 90, maybe 100 yards.”
Hence the follow-up question, posed to Dolegala on Tuesday: How far can you throw a football?
The mystery will remain unsolved. To this day, he has never conducted a distance test — the football equivalent of, say, a javelin throw.
“There’s no need,” he said. “I never will.”
Why not?
“Just so you guys can write about it,” Dolegala replied, laughing. “That’s all it’s for.”
The smile lingered as he was asked to describe the perfect pass — the one that leaves his right hand precisely as designed.
“When you make the right read and make the right throw, it’s the greatest feeling, literally,” Dolegala replied.
“I know what I’m supposed to do. I got the ball out on time and it’s there the way it’s supposed to be there.
“That’s what we’re supposed to do, right? But when it happens for me like that, it’s awesome.”
A comparable description applies to the experiences he cherished as a youngster, in the fine company of his grandfather and other esteemed members of the Bills alumni.
“You’re just looking up to them, thinking, ‘Maybe I can do that one day,’ ” Dolegala reflected. “And now, here we are.
“It’s cool — a dream come true.”
