SHEPHERD’S WAY
Canadian prospect has taken unlikely path to NFL draft
Here’s how grateful Canadian Nathan Shepherd is just to be regarded as a sure-tobe-drafted NFL prospect, let alone a consensus Day 2 pick.
The defensive tackle snailmailed handwritten notes of appreciation to GMs of all teams that brought him in for a private visit or workout prior to the NFL Draft, which goes Thursday night in Dallas with Round 1, continues Friday night with Rounds 2-3 and concludes Saturday afternoon with Rounds 4-7.
Shepherd is the only Canadian likely to be selected.
“Yeah, for the teams that brought me in, I wrote notes of thanks,” Shepherd said Tuesday in a phone interview from California before flying home to the Toronto area for the draft.
“Honestly, I was stacking up with a bunch of teams on visits. And in those notes I had to make fun about the fact that I’m Canadian, for sure. I hope they got a kick out of that.”
Shepherd’s seven-year odyssey from a scrawny linebacker at J. Clarke Richardson Collegiate in the east Toronto suburb of Ajax to one of this draft’s top interior defensive lineman as a powerful, muscle-packed 6-foot3¾, 315-pounder is about as unlikely an NFL success story as you’ll ever read.
After running out of money following a two-year stint at Simon Fraser University in suburban Vancouver, Shepherd had to leave football for two years. He worked in a plant nursery, in electrical construction and in a boxing factory as he kept packing on muscle, saving up money and patiently waiting for the chance he was sure would come to resume his college football career south of the border.
It did, in 2015 at Fort Hays State University, a Division II school in Kansas that produces few NFL players.
Shepherd turned heads last fall throughout his senior season. He earned an invitation to the Senior Bowl this past January and sparkled in two days of practices against many of the best offensive linemen in this draft.
In impressing NFL talent evaluators even more in position-specific drills on March 4 at the Scouting Combine, Shepherd cemented his newly anointed Day 2 draft projection.
Shepherd proved a popular invitee by NFL teams over the past month on the circuit of private visits and workouts. More and more, teams prefer prospects not discuss their private workouts. Big secrets!
But WalterFootball.com is one website that reliably keeps track and it lists Shepherd as having paid private visits to the Chicago Bears, Arizona Cardinals, Dallas Cowboys, Atlanta Falcons, New York Giants, Detroit Lions, Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans and Minnesota Vikings.
The Cardinals, Cowboys, Falcons and Texans also privately worked him out.
Shepherd said he grew up a big fan of the Baltimore Ravens in the Ajax/Pickering area, but he made it clear on Tuesday: “I’m a professional now. It’s whoever is hiring.”
It seems Shepherd likely will be selected sooner than later on Friday night, when Rounds 2 and 3 (containing selection Nos. 33-100) are held. He might not even last until the middle of the second round.
NFL Network’s chief draft analyst Mike Mayock is as connected with NFL talent evaluators as anyone not employed by the league. On Tuesday, Mayock released his first and only Top 100 ranking of prospects and he has Shepherd at No. 43. Other respected talent evaluators in the media similarly have Shepherd rated in that neighbourhood. Dane Brugler of NFLDraftScout.com and NBC Rotoworld’s Josh Norris both have Shepherd ranked 50th.
“He is a big dude with an NFL body,” Mayock said of Shepherd on a Friday conference call with reporters. “He’s got kind of rare movement skills. I think the 3-4 teams would look at him and say, wow, he could be a 5-technique, which is a defensive end in 3-4. But he also might have the movement skill down the road to develop into a (situational) rusher inside.
“He’s kind of a rare guy from a height, weight, speed perspective. Raw as could be. I think he’s, worst case, a second-round talent, but he might drop into the third round, just because it might take a little while to get something out of him because he’s so raw. But I’m telling you, I think the league is really intrigued by him and think he’s got a lot of upside.”
Shepherd said such accolades and high draft projections have caught him off guard.
“Imagine that, right? It’s crazy,” he said. “Because I never really was hung up on the draft — at all. I just wanted an opportunity. So wherever I went, as long as I made a team, that meant I made it. I’d have been definitely happy with just that.
“But now, with the recent
events I’m just finding out about, that I actually might go a lot higher than I thought I would, it’s all a blessing.”