CFL draft expected to be volatile

No consensus on who ought to be first overall choice

W I N N I P E G • With a strong stable of Canadian talent already in the fold and the first and sixth picks in Sunday’s wide-open CFL draft, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have the luxury of options.

They can play it safe, they can take risks, they can grab the best players available or they can fill specific needs.

All that makes what they’ll do — and how the other eight teams in the CFL will follow — highly unpredictable.

“I don’t know if there’s been a year where there has been less consensus in terms of who goes No. 1,” TSN CFL draft analyst Duane Forde said. “But at the same time there’s some depth in this draft. It’s a little bit more wide open.

“This is one of the things that makes the CFL draft so fascinating. I think if you compared nine CFL draft boards, you’d see more variation in those nine CFL draft boards than you would see in your 32 NFL draft boards.”

There may not be consensus among the nine GMs in the league as to which player is the top available prospect, but there seems to be agreement on which player the Bombers will take first overall between the draft experts and CFL agents contacted by Postmedia on Tuesday.

Many believe the Bombers will choose to fill a need with their first pick and grab Iowa defensive tackle Faith Ekakitie, a 6-foot-3, 275-pound, 24-year-old from Brampton, Ont.

Ekakitie is ranked fifth on the CFL scouting bureau’s final list and he is said to be CFL ready. Three of the players ranked ahead of him — offensive lineman Justin Senior of Mississippi, defensive tackle Eli Ankou of UCLA and offensive lineman Geoff Gray of Manitoba — were drafted or signed free agent deals in the NFL already.

“He’s definitely demonstrated that he’s a pretty good inside player,” Forde said of Ekakitie, who played four seasons at an NCAA Division I school. “Pretty athletic kid and in terms of body type, I think he’s a little more suited to the CFL than the NFL. He’s a guy who is likely to be here sooner rather than later and fits with the Bombers ratio-wise. He’s a guy that I’d look at as a fit for the first pick.”

If they fill their need with the first pick, it will allow the Bombers to be flexible with their second pick of the first round (sixth overall) and possibly make a long-term layaway investment in a player like Gray, a local boy who signed a priority free agent contract with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers last Saturday.

It would be a bit outside the norm for the Bombers to make a risky selection like that in the first round, when there’s no guarantee Gray will ever play in the CFL, but it would be fitting in what is shaping up to be a highly unusual and unpredictable draft.

“You can reach with your second pick in that first round and see if you can get somebody who might show up later on,” CFL.ca’s draft expert Marshall Ferguson said.

“It’s kind of worth the risk. That might be a Geoff Gray-type person. I still love the idea of Geoff Gray at No. 1. He’s a hometown guy and there’s no better fit. The scary part is Geoff Gray just looks like a Green Bay Packer.”

One agent called it an “extremely weak” draft overall, while Forde tempered that by saying “It’s not necessarily a great draft.”

The Saskatchewan Roughriders have the second pick, while the B.C. Lions are third, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats fourth and the Edmonton Eskimos fifth. The Lions pick again at No. 7, followed by the Calgary Stampeders and Grey Cup champion Ottawa Redblacks.

Those teams will have good looks at offensive linemen Dariusz Bladek of Bethune-Cookman and Mason Woods of Idaho, defensive tackle Junior Luke of Montreal, receivers Danny Vandervoort of McMaster and Nate Behar of Carleton and linebackers Christophe Mulumba of Maine and Cameron Judge of UCLA.

Saskatchewan has a lot of needs to fill and is likely to take the player they’ve identified as the best on the board. Judge, a late addition to the draft class, would make some sense as Riders GM Chris Jones favours U.S. trained players.

The Lions, like the Bombers, are expected to go offensive line and defensive line, which could take Woods and Luke off the board, in the first round. The Tiger-Cats are believed to have interest in Vandervoort, ranked fourth by the CFL scouting bureau, and Bladek.

One of the big questions is where players like Senior, Ankou, Gray and Laval’s Anthony Auclair, who are ranked first, second, third and seventh but all have NFL deals, will go in this draft.

“Round 3 or Round 4 you hit a point where you think the likelihood of Justin Senior being in the CFL in two or three years is greater than the likelihood of Player X developing into a CFL player in two or three years,” Forde said. “That’s the point where you make the decision to take him.

“A guy that is a priority undrafted free agent in NFL who signs in the first 10-15 minutes after everything gets at the draft, those guys typically stick. If you get to the third, maybe the fourth round, and you are realizing you still might be able to get that guy, why not take a shot if you think he’s a top end talent who might still show up?”