The Canadian Football League Combine is an annual staple of the offseason, and a signpost training camps and the regular season are soon to appear on the horizon.
It is an event that is part spectacle/part pressure cooker and while it puts every player involved under a microscope — sometimes uncomfortably so — it can be life-changing for those trying to make the leap from college prospects to professionals earning a paycheque in the game.
And make no mistake, the whole affair — which begins later this week in Regina and features testing, evaluating, interviews and on-field one-on-ones — can be absolutely vital in the building of a championship contender.
So, sign up Winnipeg Blue Bombers GM Kyle Walters for every single nanosecond of it all.
“The Combine and then the CFL Draft hold a special place for me, being a Canadian guy, having gone through the Canadian draft myself, having coached at a Canadian school (Guelph),” began the Blue Bombers GM this week in a chat with bluebombers.com. “Then the way I got my foot in the door here was when I was coaching special teams way back when I was also doing the legwork for the Canadian Draft.
“It’s the part of my job I enjoy the most — looking at these Canadian kids, trying to get the best of them and hoping they do well. You take a deep breath with these guys. You give them a couple of years and see what happens.”
Bluebombers.com will be attending the combine later this week, which runs at Mosaic Stadium and AffinityPlex in Regina and provide stories daily through the weekend. And what follows is Part 1 of our CFL Combine Preview, in an attempt to answer some of the frequently asked questions about the event…
WHAT IS THE COMBINE?
The top Canadian prospects eligible for the draft, whether they are playing their college ball in U Sports or in the NCAA, have been invited to Regina to participate. That number will be close to 70 when the event opens, including a handful of international players who are eligible for the Global Draft. Worth noting: the top Canadian prospects are often not at the Combine — some are fixated on NFL opportunities while others, particularly those in the NCAA, choose to flash their skills at their school’s Pro Days with both CFL and NFL scouts in attendance.
There was a regional combine in Waterloo at the end of February, with 11 players who attended earning an invitation to this week’s national combine.
The CFL and Global Drafts are both scheduled to be held on April 29th.
At the Combine players will first report and have their height, weight, arm and wingspans measured — often referred to jokingly as the ‘Underwear Olympics’ — along with their flexibility.
On Friday players are put through a variety of tests including the 40-yard dash, a 3-cone drill measuring lateral quickness and agility, the short shuttle, vertical jump and broad jump as well as the bench press. Throughout the event teams conduct one-on-one interviews with selected prospects. To further explain what happens at a Combine interview, check out this story we did from last year.
Following all the testing, the event gets down to the on-field evaluations with four practice sessions where coaches, GMs and player personnel types study the prospects every move.
WHICH BLUE BOMBERS STAFF WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE?
- GM Kyle Walters
- Head coach Mike O’Shea
- Assistant coach Richie Hall
- Director of Football Operations Matt Gulakow
- Eric Deslauriers, one of the club’s new Senior Directors of Player Personnel
- New assistant coach Billy Jean, who will be helping coach running backs at the event and, possibly, special teams coordinator Mike Miller.
Eric Deslauriers
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE COMBINE?
Let’s have Walters explain it best here:
“It’s a critical piece of our draft board. We’ve watched all these guys on film and made our notes, and then it’s good to be able to see them in person and meet with them, too.
“I say this most years but ideally it’s the players you like on film show up and interview and test well. Then it’s, ‘All right, this is perfect.’ But you also have situations where a player looks good on film and then you see he’s maybe a little under-sized or doesn’t run as fast. Then it becomes a bit of head scratcher, and you wonder, ‘Is this just a good U Sports or university player who maybe doesn’t have the height, weight, speed to have success at the CFL?’
“Then there’s the other scenario: maybe the player looked just OK on film for whatever reason and they test off the charts and then you dig a little deeper in the interview process and find out maybe it was their third string quarterback throwing to him and that’s why his numbers were down. That’s why it’s good to go to these to get all that information.”
WHAT ARE THE RED FLAGS FROM TESTING RESULTS?
Players may opt to skip certain events at the Combine due to injury, but the testing numbers can help a prospect’s stock — or really damage it.
“There are certain red flags with certain positions,” Walters said. “An example: if an O-lineman only benches six or seven (reps of 225 pounds), well, he’s probably not going to have much success. Yet, if receiver only benches three, he could still be just fine.
“There can be some alarming testing results. I’m a visual guy… after the numbers come in I put up everything on a big white board in my office and just stare at each position and compare and contrast. That’s part of the final rankings, when you look at the totality of all the numbers. You gauge all the film you’ve done, you get input from the coaches, from the scouting department, you look at the numbers and then you take a deep breath. That’s what the next month after this looks like, where you just talk and talk and finalize things that week before the draft.”
HOW DOES SKIPPING THE COMBINE IMPACT A PLAYER’S STOCK?
“That’s a challenge and that’s what we’ve been dealing with lately with all these players declining (to go to the national combine) to go to these Pro Days instead,” Walters said. “You’re missing that component of the combine with these guys.
“But we’ll have scouts at their Pro Days, so we’ll at least get to see them in person, and we’ll do film interviews with them. Generally, with those guys that are playing at the bigger schools they get the benefit of the doubt because their film is really good, and they’ve been playing against really good competition.”
Blue Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea attended last month’s regional combine in Waterloo
One of the idiosyncrasies of the CFL Draft is the top-rated eligible players not only often skip the Combine, but never play a down in the CFL because they are drafted in the NFL or sign as free agents down south. That impacts the draft boards dramatically because teams don’t want to risk a draft pick on a player they may never see.
An example this year is Stanford receiver Elic Ayomanor, who just recently participated in the NFL Combine and is projected to be a second or third-round selection down south.
“So, his agent is not going to be interested in doing a zoom call with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, let’s be honest,” said Walters. “That’s fair. A lot of those NCAA guys are focussing on their pro days and the NFL. It’s a big day for those guys and they want to focus on that and that’s completely understandable despite it being frustrating that we don’t get to see them in person.”
The NFL Draft, FYI, goes April 24-26 and with the CFL Draft falling on the Tuesday after that teams up north can alter their draft boards depending on where players are selected in the NFL or should they sign as free agents afterward. The higher the signing bonus a player earns when signing is an indicator to CFL teams as to how committed a team is at taking a look at a prospect.
“That’s part of the game when you look before our draft at where a guy was drafted in the NFL or if he was signed as a priority free agent as opposed to signing as just a free agent afterward,” Walters said. “It’s doing the due diligence in trying to figure out whether a guy is going to have a two-three-four-five-year NFL career or just a one year shot.
“That’s a speculative game and it does make our draft more challenging compared to other leagues because you’re not just ranking the players and saying something like the receiver from Stanford is No. 1. The best player in our draft might not get drafted, which is an interesting statement.”
DOES WHERE A PROSPECT PLAYED IMPACT HIS EVALUATION?
There are players from elite NCAA schools at the CFL Combine, along with Division II and III programs, as well as the elite from U Sports. And a player who plays at a program like Alabama, Georgia or Ohio State, for example, is facing different competition than a prospect from a smaller school.
Paris Shand; photo courtesy LSU Football
“That’s certainly a note,” Walters said. “There’s a defensive end from LSU (Paris Shand) and he started in the SEC, which is a big deal for a kid in the Canadian draft. You don’t see that very much in our draft, so you make a point of that.
“Yet, even at the U Sports level there are some notes you need to make. The Laurier receivers put up just unbelievable numbers (their QB, Taylor Elgersma is an NFL prospect) and then you see some other receivers who are good players but don’t have an NFL-quality quarterback throwing to them. You wonder, ‘what if this player had been at Laurier? Would his numbers be through the roof?’ And the answer is yes.
“Or, on the other hand you might have a guy who is just a solid player at an NCAA program, but you wonder if he had been at Manitoba, for example, would he have been an All-Canadian? That’s a challenging part of this. That’s why the combine is important, to see some of these players from the smaller schools compete with the U Sports guys.
“As I said earlier, there’s a lot that goes into this and it really is about gathering information for us.”
Next: CFL Combine Preview, Part II
