OUT OF THE TUNNEL: THE CFL DRAFT IS UPON US

BY: RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF

May the 4th be with you and with every potential future star that will be chosen during Tuesday’s 2021 CFL Draft. This is one of our favourite times of year in professional football!

We just finished the three-day long opus that is the NFL Draft and Tuesday marks the annual CFL National Draft (we still loathe the term national and this will be the only time we use the term — from now on Canadian will be the proper word to use for the players in this draft). If you look back over four years of Out Of The Tunnel columns, the topics we write about the most are Canadian college players and the draft.

We are a small but mighty group but for the good of the CFL there needs to be more wonderful nerdy bastards who really promote how awesome this league is and this is our time of year to shine and recruit others to our world!

Now is when players who will make an incredible impact on the field and sometimes more importantly, off the field, will debut in their future CFL city of employment. The futures of Brendon LaBatte, Kwaku Boateng, Brad Sinopoli and so many more CFL stars began with the CFL draft.

Like everything else in sports the pandemic has put a gigantic wrench into this year’s draft and with the CFL’s tinkering, has put an added damper on the 2022 CFL draft.

Without USPORTS playing football in 2020, many of the top potential CFL draftees had the opportunity to defer their entrance into the draft process by a year and because of this, the talent pool from the country’s 27 college football teams is wafer-thin. To make the 2021 draft a little more robust the CFL decided to give Canadian players who’ve finished three years (true or redshirt juniors) of NCAA football their eligibility in the 2021 draft.

This is much like how things were before 2014 when the CFL decided to restrict the draft to seniors (redshirt or otherwise) or those who declare themselves eligible for the draft (more on this in a bit).

The CFL Draft already had inherent problems even before the pandemic. It’s not a big fan-driven event. TSN doesn’t put the effort into making a big fan event and other than the CFL website and one or two others, no one has a single clue who any of these players are (our apologies to any alumni or fan of their local university team).

So this year will be super-weird and not in a good way. For the first time since 2012, the draft will be a six round affair and NCAA juniors will be eligible. Like it has been over the past few years, many of the top NCAA Canadians will not see the light of day in the CFL. Potential ratio-busters like receiver Josh Palmer out of Tennessee, running back Chuba Hubbard and a pair of defensive backs in North Carolina’s Benjamin St-Juste and Oregon’s Justin Holland were all selected in the NFL draft and when you throw in a handful of NFL free agent signees, it makes this 2021 CFL draft extra light.

Now if you throw in the NCAA junior players to sweeten the pot it might make a six-round draft somewhat palatable. But in actuality do we need six rounds or do we even really need a draft this year at all?

The extreme end of things is to not have a draft and leave the NCAA juniors alone and open everything up to free agency. There is already a giant handful of Canadians attending CFL camps this summer (we hope) from the 2020 CFL draft and the three or four players that would have been 2021 draftees could just be free agents.

This would mean a lot more negotiating needed by general managers which we would surely hear all about. Most GM’s loathe negotiating with raw rookies and the implementation of first round maximum contracts has made things much easier on CFL front offices. This was implemented because of the bulldog negotiating tactics of player agent Jonathon Hardaway (who recently passed away after suffering a heart attack), after he negotiated strong first contracts for first rounders like Josiah St. John, Shane Richards and Henoc Muamba.

CFL front offices would still be able to use all the work their scouting staffs have done over the past many months preparing for the draft but instead just focus on the three or four players they truly want in the fold for 2021.

The less extreme is to again just keep it to eligible USports players and NCAA seniors but keep it to three rounds. It meets everything in the middle. Front offices can focus on those players who will actually make it to a training camp this summer and those handful of players that are NFL draft picks or have NFL interest can be left out of the fold and if those NFL dreams come to an end, they will be a part of the dreaded 50-man negotiation list and can enact their 10-day negotiation window when ready.

Our speculation and desires for the draft are all moot so we have what we have for the next two CFL drafts.

This draft will be as much of a mystery as picking the standings of a potential 2021 season but there are a few things that will be almost sure things:

We will see the highest percentage of NCAA/NAIA players taken in a CFL Canadian Draft in the last 15 years when in 2006, 24 out of 50 players selected were from south of the border. That was also the biggest number of NCAA players taken in the past 15 years, so this too may be broken.

As for who CFL teams will be selecting on Tuesday, the sure bet is on offensive linemen. Sixteen of the last 26 first round picks have been offensive linemen and this year could see up to seven taken in the first round. This is because any Canadian player from the NCAA that isn’t an offensive lineman was either selected in the three-day NFL draft or signed free agent contract in the hours and days after the draft.

We haven’t spoken much about USPORTS football in this article because of the lack of a 2020 season providing any recent information or video on available players. What we can say is over the past decade, if you want a Canadian that is a CFL all-star, divisional all-star or potential hall of famer, pick a player from USPORTS. The majority of CFL divisional all-stars have come from USPORTS over the past five years and just for a little spice, three came from the CJFL: Andrew Harris, Zack Evans and Spencer Wilson.

We will be watching and making lists and many of those who are reading this will too. This is a taste of actual CFL headlines with players that grew up in your backyard and are now a step away from playing for your favourite team. These are all good things that should warm our football heart as we continue to endure this pandemic.

2021 CFL SCOUTING BUREAU DRAFT RANKINGS

(RODPEDERSEN.COM STAFF)