It wasn’t a reach to draft someone who can leap.
That can be safely stated following a standout season by Samuel Emilus, who was selected by the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the first round of the 2022 CFL Draft.
“We like his ability to go up for the football,” Roughriders Vice-President of Football Operations and General Manager Jeremy O’Day told reporters after choosing Emilus seventh overall on May 3, 2022.
O’Day also lauded Emilus’s toughness, running ability, size and physicality — attributes that were accentuated in 2023 when the 6-foot-1, 200-pounder caught 70 passes for 1,097 yards.
“It’s nice when you get a good evaluation of a guy and it turns out,” O’Day reflected leading up to the 2024 CFL Draft, which is to be held Tuesday night.
“A lot of it comes down to when they get an opportunity to play and whether they make the most of it.”
Opportunity knocked for Emilus in 2023 when he was an opening-day starter.
Initially, he filled a spot that had been occupied by Kian Schaffer-Baker — a fourth-rounder in 2020. When Schaffer-Baker was faced with missing the first half of the 2023 campaign following hip surgery, Emilus was elevated to a front-line role.
It was one he would not relinquish.
When Schaffer-Baker did return to the lineup, he joined Emilus as a starter.
His breakout game took place on June 16, when he caught three touchdown passes — tying a Roughriders single-game record — against the visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
The TD-catch hat trick had been accomplished 17 previous times by a Roughrider.
Until Trevor Harris found Emilus for three aerial scores, the Roughriders’ last such game was on June 29, 2012, when Weston Dressler lacerated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for 13 catches and 180 yards.
“Sam just does everything well, whether he’s making contested catches or blocking away from the ball,” O’Day said of Emilus, who was drafted out of Louisiana Tech.
“He’s also great in the locker room. He’s as quiet as a mouse, but he plays big on the field and is an excitable player. He brings up the team’s level of play and, when he makes a play, you can tell how much the guys like him.”
O’Day and Assistant GM Kyle Carson liked Emilus so much that he became one of three receivers to be selected in the first round of the 2022 Draft.
Jalen Philpot paced the pass-catching parade when he went fifth overall to the Calgary Stampeders.
Emilus became a Roughrider two picks later.
The first round concluded when the Montreal Alouettes claimed Tyson Philpot (Jalen’s brother) ninth overall.
As a rookie in 2022, Jalen Philpot caught 23 passes for 317 yards and three touchdowns. He also rushed for 102 yards on 10 carries and excelled on kickoff returns, one of which was a 77-yarder. However, his sophomore season was ruined by a hamstring injury that required surgery.
Over two seasons, Tyson Philpot has caught 86 passes for 991 yards and seven touchdowns in 31 games. The East Division’s rookie of the year in 2022, he followed up last season by catching the game-winning TD pass against Winnipeg in the 110th Grey Cup Game.
A month earlier, O’Day had received a three-year contract extension — in part because of a draft record that was labelled as “outstanding” by President-CEO Craig Reynolds.
At a post-season media conference, Reynolds cited the selection of Emilus and “late-round steals” that resulted in Schaffer-Baker and Jayden Dalke joining the Roughriders.
Dalke, a sixth-round choice (54th overall) in 2022, was the Roughriders’ starting safety last season.
“He didn’t test great (at the CFL Combine), but he’s just a really good football player,” O’Day said of the former University of Alberta Golden Bears defensive back.
“We took him late and we were really just focused on special teams at the time. He has kind of been better than we expected, because he was a 4.8 guy in the 40.”
Although Dalke finished the 40-yard dash in 4.86 seconds at the 2022 Combine, his mere participation in the event was something to applaud.
At the time of the Combine, he was still recovering from a torn MCL he had suffered in the 2021 playoffs. Dalke’s refusal to skip the Combine “spoke to his grit,” in the assessment of Carson.
The Roughriders’ thorough research also paid dividends in the case of Schaffer-Baker, who caught 95 passes for 1,544 yards and eight TDs in 28 games at the University of Guelph.
He also caught five passes for 126 yards and one score in the 2019 East-West Bowl, which was an early preview of the top draft-eligibles for 2020.
Schaffer-Baker proceeded to catch 23 passes for 373 yards and three majors in eight games during his final season with the Guelph Gryphons.
He was third on the team in catches and receiving yards, but O’Day and Carson took note of the prospect’s abundant ability and size (6-foot-4, 205 pounds).
“He didn’t run the 40 at the Regional Combine and then COVID hit, so there wasn’t a main Combine because they cancelled everything,” O’Day noted. “I think that went into Kian being picked in that (fourth) round.
“We had his testing numbers from the jumps. If you study it, your broad jump and your vertical jump are actually a strong indicator of what you run (in the 40). So you can look at it and say, ‘He probably would have run a 4.5.’
“He would have been a higher pick, so we kind of got lucky on him.”
After the COVID-influenced cancellation of the 2020 CFL season, Schaffer-Baker attended his first pro training camp and instantly turned heads in 2021.
Schaffer-Baker caught 47 passes for 563 yards in 12 games during a COVID-shortened campaign, which included Roughriders rookie-of-the-year recognition.
As a CFL sophomore, he led the Green and White in catches (68) and receiving yards (960). He also rushed 12 times for 74 yards, thereby finishing the season with 1,034 yards from scrimmage and decoration as the team’s Most Outstanding Canadian.
The next year, that honour went to another draft-day gem — the Roughriders’ first-rounder from 2022.
“I’ve got to tip my hat to the scouting department,” Emilus said, “and to J.O.”
