There’s a phrase often used in sporting vernacular attributed to the late, great Al Davis: “Speed kills.”
As a scouting intern for the Blue Bombers back in August of 2021 and in just my third month with the team, I was attending New York Jets training camp when the speed of Morgan State wide receiver product Manasseh Bailey caught my eye.
On his third NFL team at the time after stints with the Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Chargers, Bailey showed the ability to consistently take the top off the defence with regularity in the practice snaps I watched of him.
While speed truly does kill in any sport, it’s particularly valuable in the Canadian Football League, where the longer and wider field puts a player’s ability to win in the open field at a premium. So, when I noticed that Bailey was a smooth accelerator who could become a legitimate vertical threat in the CFL on my first day of attendance at Jets camp, I put a star next to his name as an alert that I should look into him further.
As I continued to watch Jets training camp over the following days from the sideline, I noticed that Bailey was one of the first players to show up to practice each day and one of the last to leave the field, which is a good sign that a player takes his craft seriously.
At only 5-foot-10 and 190 pounds, Bailey is a lighter receiver with a narrow frame, but he practised with a very high effort to try to overcome his physical limitations. That high level of effort and dedication to the game can help him Bailey endear himself to Blue Bombers wide receiver coach Kevin Bourgoin and the rest of the coaching staff.
At the time that I scribbled each of these notes about Bailey down in my notebook that week in Florham Park, NJ, he was on the Montreal Alouettes negotiation list, where he ultimately signed after falling out of the NFL. The Alouettes brought Bailey in as a practice roster player before Week 13 of the 2021 season, but he was only with their organization for about a month as he was let go after their loss in the Eastern Semi-final against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
Since his release in Montreal, Bailey has bounced around both the USFL and XFL, spending time with the Birmingham Stallions and DC Defenders. Once he was released by the Defenders in February of 2023, we looked into signing Bailey to add some speed to our wide receiver room.
In his first full CFL training camp in Winnipeg, the former Suitland High School star might have a leg up on some of the other rookie wide receivers due to his familiarity with the Canadian rule changes from his stint in Montreal.
When I was originally being schooled on how rule differences in the CFL impact our scouting process, I was told that the ‘Waggle’ was primarily used to either help speed up receivers who need a speed boost or make fast receivers nearly unguardable.
We’ll see if Bailey’s high-end speed is guardable or not soon with training camp in Winnipeg fast-approaching!
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Cyril Penn is a Blue Bombers U.S.-based scout, and he will be writing regularly for bluebombers.com and providing an inside look at some of the American prospects the club will be brining to camp.
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