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Last week’s Monday Morning Quarterback featured heavily Edmonton’s then-unconfirmed hiring of Brock Sunderland as general manager. At the time, I wrote the Eskimos were making a really good decision bring Sunderland into the fold, based primarily on his strong player personnel work while with Ottawa.
One thing we didn’t mention, however, is Sunderland’s familiarity with Edmonton head coach Jason Maas. It’s yet another reason why I think the Eskimos and Sunderland are a really good fit.
Reunited front
When I spoke with Sunderland on Thursday, one thing jumped out at me more when he summed up why the Edmonton opportunity is such a perfect one.
“It’s a premier organization,” Sunderland said. “It gets me back home close to Montana and it gets me with Jason Maas, who I was with in Ottawa in 2015.
“We have a great rapport and see football very much alike. It’s one of the premium organizations, not just in the CFL but in all of professional athletics, it’s close to home and it gets me with the head coach that I would have hired anyway, so [it’s] kind of three for three for me.”
Jason Maas coached under Sunderland for one season in 2015 with Ottawa (The Canadian Press)
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It was the sentiment about Mass that piqued my interest most. Remember, Sunderland and Maas only spent one season together, as the latter was Ottawa’s offensive coordinator during the 2015 season. So how could just one season together make Maas the coach Sunderland would have “hired anyway”?
“We didn’t know each other going into it,” Maas revealed. “I knew of him just from where he was as a player and everything, and Rick Campbell spoke very highly of him. When he got there, we just, in meetings we were in, see things very much alike.
“Our approach to building a team and how practices should be run and how players are held accountable and how we evaluate and on and on, so just over the course of the season, the more…situations came up, consistently he and I had the same answers.”
Of course, the year Sunderland and Maas worked together was a banner one offensively for the REDBLACKS. Henry Burris led the league with more than 5,600 passing yards, while Chris Williams, Greg Ellingson, Ernest Jackson and Brad Sinopoli all went over the millennium mark in receiving yards (no other team had more than two).
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Even with all that aerial firepower, though, Ottawa still managed a top-five season on the ground. Using a platoon system at tailback, the REDBLACKS totaled more than 1,500 yards on the ground and led the league in rushing touchdowns. Plain and simple, Ottawa boasted the CFL’s most prolific offence in 2015 with Maas as coordinator. I’d be happy to be back with him too if I were Sunderland.
I think the Esks have the right guy for the job in Sunderland, but we also have to remember he’s a first time GM. As such, there are likely going to be growing pains here and there as he gets acclimated to the gig. Having some familiarity with Maas should make the transition that much easier.
Shaking things up
We are less than a week away from the 2017 CFL Draft and, once again, the draft board is very much up in the air. This past weekend’s NFL Draft in Philadelphia, and the ensuing free agent signings that followed, have rendered this Sunday’s proceedings anyone’s guess. For a really good rundown, make sure you check out Marshall’s column from Sunday.
I don’t think anyone was stunned to see Mississippi State offensive lineman Justin Senior selected over the weekend; he ended up as a sixth round pick of the Seattle Seahawks. Senior was the top ranked player in the CFL Scouting Bureau’s final rankings earlier this month, but it’s unlikely he’ll end up being taken anywhere close to that high.
In the prior five years, for instance, the Bureau’s top-ranked prospect hasn’t gone higher than the third round for one main reason: those players are extremely unlikely to be CFL-bound in the immediacy, if ever. As such, players typically tumble down the draft board and are taken with later round picks hoping for a good value payoff down the road.
Justin Senior’s draft stock changed drastically on Sunday after being picked down south (Mississippi State Athletics)
In fact, since 2012, only one top-ranked player has played a down of CFL football. The top-ranked prospect from 2013, Boseko Lokombo, now a member of the Baltimore Ravens, spent the last three seasons with the BC Lions after being taken in the third round. Lokombo didn’t end up as an NFL selection in 2013 but the mere possibility of the Oregon linebacker signing south of the border was enough to see him tumble from a surefire first round pick to 21st overall.
Otherwise, the stories of Tyrone Crawford (undrafted), Laurent Duvernay-Tardiff (3rd round, Calgary), Christian Covington (5th round, BC), and David Onyemata (4th round, Saskatchewan) have all followed similar scripts. All four players were number one ranked prospects, were taken in the NFL Draft, fell dramatically in the Canadian Draft a few weeks later, and have yet to see a CFL snap.
This is what we’ll see happen with Senior, and similar situations will likely play out with some other highly ranked prospects, too. The Bureau’s No. 2 and 3 ranked players went undrafted but signed as priority free agents before the end of the weekend. UCLA defensive lineman Eli Ankou signed in Houston, while Manitoba offensive lineman Geoff Gray is now a member of the Green Bay Packers.
Antony Auclair finished No. 7 in the final rankings and signed a priority deal, too; the Laval tight end is now property of Tampa Bay. You can expect all three to drop down the CFL board, too, mainly because of history. Virtually every Canadian priority signing in recent years has stuck south of the border.
So what does this all mean for Sunday’s draft board? Well, it makes things really interesting for us watching and puts heavy onus on scouting departments across the league. Offensive linemen are usually a hot commodity come the first round, so Idaho’s Mason Woods and Dariusz Bladek out of Bethune-Cookman could easily go early.
Has Mason Woods become a prime candidate to go first overall? (Arthur Ward/CFL.ca)
Iowa defensive lineman Faith Ekakitie is fascinating to me. He’s drawn lots of NFL interest despite going undrafted over the weekend and is, as of now, unsigned. Will the specter of Ekakitie signing south of the border detract CFL teams come Sunday? There’s obviously that potential, but if he remains unsigned, someone is likely going to bite early thanks to his solid pro day results.
Then there’s McMaster receiver Danny Vandervoort, who finished the final rankings at No. 4, and the highest of all the eligible players at skill positions. With the draft board in the blender, he could very well see a similar fate to Acadia receiver Brian Jones who went fourth overall to the Argos in 2016.
Any of the above is just conjecture, though, which makes this so fascinating. Yes, some of the most promising Canadian, draft-eligible prospects have become less attractive. However, it’s a reality of the CFL Draft and it’s part of why the annual event is one of the hardest to predict. From our standpoint, there’s nothing wrong with that.
The Money List part five
Our 2017 “Money List” is almost completely filled out as we added our defensive tackle and defensive end last week. To refresh the criteria, we’re selecting players at each position that we’d start a team to win a Grey Cup this season. In defining that, it negates factors like age and allows us to select our true “money” player in each slot.
Below is what we have thus far:
Quarterback: Bo Levi Mitchell, Calgary Stampeders
Running Back: Andrew Harris, Winnipeg Blue Bombers
Receiver: Adarius Bowman, Edmonton Eskimos
Defensive Tackle: Ted Laurent, Hamilton Tiger-Cats
Defensive End: Charleston Hughes, Calgary Stampeders
Linebacker: Solomon Elimimian, BC Lions
Defensive Back: TJ Heath, Winnipeg Blue Bombers
With just three more positions to fill out, we’ll focus in on special teams to get us right near the finish line.
Kicker – Justin Medlock, Winnipeg Blue Bombers
Justin Medlock enjoyed a strong first season wearing blue and gold in 2016 (Matt Smith/CFL.ca)
For me, this is basically automatic each and every year until Medlock gives me any reason to think differently. Medlock is the high mark for CFL kickers and his 2016 performance with the Bombers emphasized that once again.
Medlock’s first season in Winnipeg got off to a very uncharacteristic start. After signing a lucrative deal in free agency, Medlock missed four of his first 12 field goals and was at just 66.7% through the first four weeks of the 2016 season. After that, however, was a different story: in the subsequent 14 games, Medlock would hit 52 of his final 56 kicks (92.9%) and would end up leading the league with 60 field goals.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, though, because the UCLA product has been the league’s model of consistency. In every one of his five full CFL seasons, Medlock has hit at 87.0% or higher. No one else can make that same claim, which is why it’s hard to choose anyone other than Medlock as our money kicker.
Punter – Rob Maver, Calgary Stampeders
Rob Maver helped the Stamps win the field position battle throughout 2016 (Johany Jutras/CFL.ca)
When the Stamps re-upped pending free agent Maver in December, I pointed it to it as an under the radar, but very important, decision. Maver has been a relatively unheralded key contributor to Calgary’s consistent success, especially since being converted to punter exclusively for the 2012 season.
Maver kicks for solid distance and is consistently top three in terms of average yards per punt. In fact, only Swayze Waters has been as consistent a figure in the league’s top punting tier, at least when it comes to raw distance. For Maver, though, it goes beyond raw yardage.
Remember, it’s not like Maver is put in a lot of long field situations. With the CFL’s most consistent offence during his tenure at punter, Maver is asked just as often, if not more often, to kick for shorter distance with a premium placed on accuracy.
That’s why Maver’s career-low total of five singles in 2016 was so impressive. Knowing how efficient Calgary’s offence was last season, specifically, Maver was asked consistently to pin teams inside their own five with really short fields. To overshoot that only five times is testament to his accuracy and it’s why he makes this list at punter.
