Ontario’s Shepherd wins a whole flock of admirers
Unheralded defensive lineman suddenly pegged as an option in Day 2 of NFL draft
American football talent seekers, college or pro, will find you. Wherever you ply your trade on this continent, they will find you — if you’re worth finding.
Nathan Shepherd might be the ultimate proof of that.
Born in Toronto and raised in the suburb of Ajax, Ont., Shepherd has been sniffed out by next-level talent searchers throughout his unlikely sevenyear post-secondary football odyssey.
A breakdown:
He started this decade as a ■ feisty if scrawny linebacker at J. Clarke Richardson Collegiate in Ajax.
At 205 pounds, he got beat up ■ as a too-light freshman defensive end at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., in 2011.
He spent two years out of football ■ working in a plant nursery and in electrical construction out west, and then in a boxing factory back east. He kept packing on muscle while saving up over two years to pay for his next chance to play college football.
He dominated at the NCAA ■ Division II ranks from 2015 to 2017 as a 300-pound-plus defensive tackle at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kan.
And now — stunningly, Shepherd, with his huge chiselled frame, is projected as a Day 2 NFL draft pick. At six-foot-three and 315 pounds, the 24-year-old possesses a rare combo of power, agility and speed that has excited NFL coaches, GMs and scouts at the league’s scouting combine.
“NFL body, NFL movement skills,” NFL Network’s chief draft analyst Mike Mayock said on Sunday, after Shepherd “checked more boxes,” in Mayock’s words, during on-field positional workouts and athleticism drills for defensive linemen at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
Mayock said league talent evaluators compare Shepherd to Malik Jackson, a versatile run-stuffing D -lineman who has starred on the Denver Broncos and the Jacksonville Jaguars since 2012.
“That’s the comparison I’ve gotten, and a pretty nice comparison,” Mayock said.
“The nice thing for Shepherd is he can play inside or outside. He’s big … He can play outside if you need him. I think some of the 3-4 teams are going to like him as a 5-technique, a defensive end.
“He can kick inside. He’s very raw. How high he goes depends on whether teams think he can rush the quarterback from any position.”
Mayock grades Shepherd as a Day 2 selection in the sevenround draft, meaning he would go in rounds 2 or 3, between 33rd and 100th overall.
“Coming from a small school like that, that’s pretty special,” Mayock said.
When did the NFL buzz begin last fall?
“I would say around midseason,” Shepherd said. “I started to get some more recognition. I’m pretty sure I had every team come visit me and a few showed up to games. That was kind of a good sign of good things to come.”
Shepherd wasn’t even ranked among the top 20 Canadians in December’s CFL Scouting Bureau rankings. Out of nowhere, indeed.
Ostensibly an all-star game in late January for departing senior college football players, the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., serves several other functions.
The week leading up to it amounts to an unofficial convention of pro football coaches from both north and south of the border. Hundreds of unemployed coaches use the venue to try to land another gig.
It’s also where a handful of invited lower-division players — at practices for the North and South teams — can instantly attain widespread awareness if they can cut it with the topdivision phenoms, what with most NFL coaches, scouts and executives observing over three days, either from the sidelines or in the stands.
That’s how Shepherd was able to announce his top-end NFL draft candidacy in just a few minutes on Jan. 23.
“I walked into Senior Bowl practices not even knowing his name, honestly,” Rob Rang, one of nfldraftscout.com’s two chief prospect analysts, said Saturday.
Soon into the first practice, Shepherd squared off against the University of Texas at El Paso’s beast of a guard, 304-pound Will Hernandez, who on Friday in Indianapolis ripped off the most bench-press reps (37) of any O -lineman at the combine. The result? “Shepherd was the one defensive lineman who could take Will Hernandez’s punch and still keep his space. I mean, Shepherd is a very powerful man,” Rang said.
“This is a good player who just happens to come from a really small school. And the country, if they didn’t know his name before, they should have once the Senior Bowl got going. He was just terrific.
“Shepherd was one of three small-school guys that everybody was buzzing about. You rarely see small-school guys who are this powerful. Once you start taking on the biggest, baddest offensive linemen in the country at the Senior Bowl and you’re not getting moved — you’re moving them, in many cases — it was a ‘Wow!’ kind of moment …
“You’re seeing a really good player that you didn’t know anything about just 10 minutes ago, and it’s that obvious. It’s like somebody just walked up to him and put a highlighter all over him — like, there he is. It was that clear.”
The country, if they didn’t know his name before, they should have once the Senior Bowl got going. He was just terrific.