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March 22, 2024

Marsh’s 3 Stars: Who were Friday’s top performers?

Cameron Bartlett/CFL.ca

WINNIPEG — The pads have been put on at the CFL Combine presented by New Era and CFL.ca’s Marshall Ferguson is back with his three stars of the day.

An offensive lineman, a wide receiver and a defensive lineman stole the show in the first day of practice on Friday as prospects went through a series of drills with coaches from all nine teams.

Here are Marsh’s 3 Stars of the first day of practice.

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» Marsh’s 3 Stars: Who dominated testing day

 

1. Daniel Okpoko | DL | San Diego State 

The six-foot-four, 274-pound defensive lineman dominated the defensive line drills and impressed Ferguson with his performance on Friday.

“Very reminiscent I would say of Francis Bemiy from last year in terms of their natural builds,” said Ferguson about Okpoko. “The ability to transition power to speed quickly, the variety of pass rush moves with some of the one on ones that they did early on in the first practice. It looks like he’s going to be very difficult to deal with, I would say throughout this entire weekend for everybody on the offensive line.”

2. Christy Nkanu | OL | Washington State

Nkanu is a six-foot-one, 309-pound lineman that plays with strength and agility and that translated to the field in the first day of padded practice in Winnipeg according to Ferguson.

“Very good movement skills, smooth,” said Ferguson about the offensive lineman. “The first day of practice is really just about showing that you belong and that you’ve been preparing over the last couple of months and he very much looks the part. Plus he has an interesting build that I think will intrigue the teams as we go through the next couple of days as a guard because he’s short with thick and long arms.”

3. Kevens Clercius | WR | Connecticut

The six-foot-two, 217-pound pass-catcher was coming off a successful day of testing and put forth another great effort in front of the scouts.

“It is a really fast receiver group. He also added the power number with his bench and then when he hit the field today, he showed why he’s got the strongest grip of anybody in the entire combine,” said Ferguson about Clercius, who hit 15 repetitions on the bench press on Thursday. “He’s got super strong hands when they were doing the gauntlet. He stuck to the line as smooth as can be. I think his fundamentals are really good. His frame is really intriguing. And in a very talented receiver group I think he will be top three by the time that we leave this combine.”

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