OUT OF THE TUNNEL: DRAFT DAY DRAWS NEAR
BY: RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF
Ten days from now Canadian football fans will have a little glimmer of normalcy with the 2020 CFL Draft.
On April 30, 73 players will be selected with the first couple of rounds being televised on TSN. The TV production of the draft won’t be much different from other years. The only real change is Commissioner Randy Ambrosie will more than likely be at home making the announcements instead of in a studio.
Behind the scenes will be wild.
Draft week is one of the first times all nine football operations will be together as a group in preparation for the upcoming season. This time around they will all be connected remotely via their video meeting program of choice or through Google chat or Slack and some even by phone.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, everything leading up to the 2020 CFL draft will be different. Without the luxury of the week-long combine, teams haven’t had the opportunity to see all the players in one place. We’ve covered this in past articles.
Two things that could be different and coincidentally are the same two things that could happen in the NFL draft later this week. Former NFL executive and current ESPN analyst, Mike Tannenbaum talked about the two possibilities on The Ringer’s NFL Show:
First, he said not to expect many draft day deals. If there are any trades announced, they were all done days before the draft (Tannenbaum calls them pre-packaged deals). Connectivity will hamper the communication between clubs as teams themselves will have a spiderweb of interconnectivity to deal with.
The other is a little more interesting. Tannenbaum feels that, “When we look back in two or three years, there will be a lot of big school back-up players taken ahead of small school players that we just didn’t have as much information on.”
In NFL terms, they will take a defensive end from Mississippi that took just a handful of impactful snaps per game over a Division-II all-conference player.
This too could be a bit of an issue for CFL teams. With the football operations salary cap in place, there isn’t as big of an infrastructure of scouts and player personnel people to dig for those small-school gems, especially south of the border.
Granted, because there are not as many Canadian players playing at all levels of the NCAA, it should be easier to collect information. So when it comes down to it, CFL teams may feel a lot more comfortable picking a player from their own backyard than taking a gamble on a FCS or lower level player.
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We will have a complete draft preview on next week’s Out of the Tunnel, but now it’s time to hop into our time machine and give you a game we would like to see replayed during these times of physical distancing and with no live sports to watch.
We go back to the heyday of CFL offence, the early 90’s. This is an era where teams regularly put up 50 points a game led by future Hall of Fame quarterbacks like Doug Flutie, Kent Austin and Matt Dunigan.
The game we pick is right in the middle of one of the best offensive months a CFL team has ever had.
On September 20, 1990, the Toronto Argonauts set a modern day CFL record for points scored in a game in a 70-18 waxing of the Calgary Stampeders.
This game almost never happened. The Toronto Blue Jays were in the middle of a pennant race with the Detroit Tigers. They played the night before and there wasn’t much time to turn the already awful Skydome turf from baseball to football.
The problem was the area the pitching mound was located. There was a noticeable bump in the turf with exposed seams. It came down to the wire and the game was just minutes away from being postponed. The Stampeders wished it was.
Matt Dunigan started the game for the Argos and led them to a 14-0 lead before tearing a hamstring and that’s when Ricky Foggie stepped in.
Foggie would finish the game with 225 yards passing and over 100 yards rushing guiding the offensive juggernaut that couldn’t be stopped that day or during the whole month of September.
Video game-like stats littered this match. Darrell Smith had four catches for 104 yards in the first quarter alone, en route to a nine catch 226 yard game and Mike ‘Pinball’ Clemons added another 298 combined yards.
The Argos had 554 yards of total offence.
“Whatever adjective you want to use, it was worse,” Stampeders head coach Wally Buono told the Calgary Herald. “I guess the only good thing we did was show up.”
This game was just a small summary of a September of dominance that saw the Argonauts win five games in 28-days, outscoring their opponents 286-140. They averaged 57 points a game that included a 68-48 victory over the B.C. Lions and a 60-39 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Yeah, this game wasn’t thrilling but it was a nice microcosm of CFL offences of the time and a type of offensive dominance that was rarely seen before or after.
It is also a reflection of the rough times the Toronto Argonaut football club has had for over 30-years.
Before heading into the Skydome and becoming a true second-class citizen in their own home, they were in the awful Exhibition Stadium. It was hard to find any modicum of newspaper coverage and other than the games on CBC there was barely a frame of TV coverage. Sound familiar? The CFL’s struggle in Toronto has been going on for years and will take an inhuman effort to dig out.
It’s going to be a fun couple of weeks of football distractions. Let’s all sit back and enjoy it.
And don’t forget to wash your damn hands!
(RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF/PHOTO: MONTREAL ALOUETTES)
