CFL players OK deal
Esks’ hopefuls must prove worth in game
Come Sunday, like it or not, Chris Jones is going to have to make some cuts.
The Edmonton Eskimos first-year head coach will go into Friday’s Canadian Football League pre-season game against the visiting B.C. Lions with 84 names on his roster. Jones’ training camp has been heavy on big bodies coming through, while cuts have been as frequent as balmy summer-like days here, few and far between.
The roster was temporarily lighter on Thursday morning, with the release of import linebacker Ryan Rau. During the team’s practice, the club announced the arrival of six-foot-five, 300-pound import defensive lineman Ra’Shon Harris.
Jones will get Friday night to try to run through as many of these bodies as he can before the league’s mandated cuts. Jones and general manager Ed Hervey will have to trim the roster down to 65 players by 11:59 p.m. Sunday, excluding non-counters (draft picks, junior territorial-protected players, draft-eligible players who were not selected and undrafted players from previous years with no CFL regular-season or playoff experience).
By 10p.m. ET June 21, teams will have to scale back to 46 active players on their roster, with a minimum of 20 nonimport players. Cuts seem to be the one part of his job that Jones dislikes (“I can’t do anything else. I can’t drive a nail. I can’t paint. This is all I do,” he said on Thursday of his love of coaching.)
“Unfortunately (cuts are) the reality of professional football, that we have to do that. That’s not a very pleasurable thing for us,” he said of what awaits him this weekend. “We’ve had a very competitive camp. I thought the kids have competed extremely well and unfortunately that day is approaching.”
For many of these players, Friday night will mean so much. After 12 days of practices, Jones and Hervey have an idea of what that first round of cuts could look like. But as Jones points out, playing in actual game situations brings a lot out of players.
“Something I’ve learned from Don (Matthews) is you put them under the lights and give them some reps and you find out who’s going to be the next Tim Strickland, who’s going to be the next Anwar Stewart, that type of thing,” Jones said. “Wait and let the games talk.”
Matt Nichols has waited almost a full year to let his game do some talking. After tearing his anterior cruciate ligament at the end of the first quarter of the Eskimos’ first pre-season game on June 14, 2013, the 27-year-old is rehabbed and rejuvenated.
“Don’t be surprised if you see everyone running down the field on a fumble recovery or something and I’m laying down on the ground about 30 yards away from the play,” Nichols joked when asked about his injury history haunting him.
Nichols has been looking to solidify the backup job behind returning starter Mike Reilly, and could use as much playing time on Friday as possible. Jones will use all of his quarterbacks on Friday, at least for “a couple of series,’’ he said.
“We know what our pecking order is right now, based on what we’ve seen so far and we want to put people in situations where we see them competitively under the lights in front of people,” Jones said of the quarterbacks. “We’ll decide where we are after the ball game.”