Eskimos receiver earns his flashy nickname
When Derel Walker was trying to figure out a handle for his Twitter account, a teammate suggested using his junior college nickname.
A few years later, @Dee_Sky_ Walker is just as appropriate as it was back when he first started climbing to the heavens to haul in high passes.
The Edmonton Eskimos rookie soared high over B.C. Lions cornerback Steven Clarke to make two difficult grabs during last Saturday’s game at Commonwealth Stadium. Both receptions were later included among the top five plays of the week on the Canadian Football League website, with the second one — basically a jump ball for the six-foot-two receiver — being the game-winning touchdown with 2:22 left to play.
“I just knew I had to catch the ball,” he said. “We needed those plays to put us in a good position to win. I just keyed the ball in and went up and got it.
“Those two catches, I’d probably say that’s some of the best catches I’ve had.”
Walker, who led the Eskimos with eight catches for 121 yards and a two-point convert, was honoured Tuesday as a CFL player of the week. Despite having played only seven games, with five starts, he was also nominated for player of the week in late August and was selected as one of the league’s players of the month for August.
“I just go up and get the ball whenever it’s thrown my way,” said the 24-year-old out of Hillsboro, Texas.
“I’ve being doing that since I was a young kid, my dad was throwing me the ball right in the chest. That’s how I was catching with the body when I was young.”
While he’s always had strong hands, Walker later benefited from some unique drills to develop his pass-catching ability.
His high school coaches taught the receivers to juggle and in junior college, where he had a three-inch growth spurt, his coach made them work on their hand-eye co-ordination by catching tennis balls fired out of a little JUGS machine.
“What they say to you is if it touches your hand, you’ve got to catch it,” Walker said about his coaches over the years. “I also dropped a deep one that game (Saturday). I got my hand on it, but I still consider that a drop because it touched my hand. I should have come down with it.”
After having the greatest career start of any CFL receiver in history — he made 31 receptions for 472 yards in his first three games and came within one catch of the Eskimos’ single-game record of 15 in his second outing — Walker hit a lull, with only 10 catches for 86 yards over his next three games.
Both the Calgary Stampeders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats shifted an extra defender to the short side of the field to help cover Walker and veteran slotback Adarius Bowman, who led the league in catches and receiving yards last year.
Even though he was still making key blocks when he wasn’t catching many passes, Walker was happy to get rolling again last weekend. He’s now up to 679 yards for ninth place in the league on 49 catches.
Walker, who has caught passes from three different Edmonton QBs this year, was signed out of the Florida mini-camp in April, started the season on the practice roster and was activated when Bowman hurt his hip in early August.
“I have a lot of confidence in all my guys, but Derel is certainly a guy I haven’t worked a lot with, being that it’s his first year and me being out for so long,” said Eskimos pivot Mike Reilly, who missed more than two months after injuring his knee in the season opener. “I’m still getting to know him a little bit and his play style, but I love what I see. The guy will go up and fight for the ball.
“I saw one thing earlier in the season, I don’t even remember who we were playing or who threw the ball, but there was a football thrown his way and the (defensive back) had great position on it to go up for the interception. He kind of flew in out of nowhere and punched the ball out and knocked it down. That just showed his IQ as a football player.
“Obviously, it showed in the last game that his big-play ability can win us some football games.”