Little pain for CFL teams in expansion draft
Redblacks lay claim to first 24 players
What stood out a mile on the day the Ottawa Redblacks laid claim to their first 24 football players was how little pain was required of the other eight teams to give the expansion club a fighting chance.
Who really got hurt Monday? Nobody, or not very badly.
The Calgary Stampeders had three starting-calibre quarterbacks and lost one of them, Kevin Glenn. The B.C. Lions lost their third-stringer, Thomas DeMarco — or second, depending what kind of shape Buck Pierce was in on a given day.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders exposed and lost a stalwart Canadian defensive tackle, Keith Shologan, in what was probably a salary issue. And the Hamilton Tiger-Catslostheart-and-soul centre Marwan Hage, who may or may not retire.
There were a handful of lesser starters, a potential game-breaker in Ticats running back Chevon Walker, who had lost his starting job to C.J. Gable, and a generally young core of sometime first-stringers or backups or merely prospects who may need only this opportunity to progress, even excel.
And at the end of it, you had a brand-new Canadian Football League entry that does not have to go into Year One with zero chance, the way the 2002 Ottawa Renegades did. What a novel concept. If the CFL had been anywhere near this forward-
Who really got hurt Monday? Nobody, or not very badly.
thinking 11 years ago, Joe Paopao’s ill-fated Renegades might not have had to enter the league with a quarterbacking lineup of Dan Crowley, Oteman Sampson and Romaro Miller en route to a 4-14 debut season.
But those were different times, the league as a whole wasn’t as healthy as it is now, and so the stock that freshly minted Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell had to choose from Monday was, let us say, somewhat richer than his pop, former Edmonton Eskimos’ CEO Gluey Hughie, would have ever voted to make available in 2002.
“I don’t want to compare it to the last time, because I can’t remember the last time,” said Lions GM Wally Buono, who also lost two Canadian prospects in the second and third rounds, offensive lineman Matthew Albright and defensive lineman Andrew Marshall — but because he lost a quarterback, was permitted to protect an additional two non-imports.
The core of the team remained intact.
“At this point, I’m not saying I’m happy,” Buono said, “but I’m not devastated, put it that way.”
No one ever really enjoys giving away futures, let alone players who have taken time and effort to develop.
But this was barely a flesh wound for most teams, and for a demonstrably good cause: a dozen years after their predecessors got a kicking tee and a bag of used balls out of the 2002 expansion draft, the Redblacks — not the REDBLACKS, thanks anyway — have a good start on an offensive line, a defensive line, an entire offensive backfield and a couple of receivers. They have no punter or kicker, and are a little shy on linebackers and defensive backs, but these are areas more easily addressed in free agency and/or trades.
“We have the foundation for what we think can be a competitive team,” said GM Marcel Desjardins. “These are only the initial steps in building a roster of 85 guys, but it’s a solid foundation because it’s guys who have experience in this league.
“There’s still free agency coming, a lot of pieces left to be put in place.”
“It’s a diverse group, but we stuck with our philosophy of taking the best players available, and we’re fortunate to have a group of offensive linemen — they’re difficult to find,” said Campbell.
“And Keith (Shologan) is a guy anybody in this league would want: an impact player at a position you don’t find a lot of non-imports at.”
The draft itself, as a TV production, lacked any real drama, probably because the teams had been permitted to keep secret their protected lists. That decision may have spared some feelings, internally, but it completely killed days of preevent debate and anticipation of the event, which turned out to be ... well, anticlimactic.
But it may make up in substance what it lacked in style.
“From my perspective, they got two quarterbacks who give them a chance to win,” said Buono, who is the CFL’s ranking builder of good football teams, and probably knows the formula better than anyone.
“Kevin Glenn, what he did for Calgary, what he did for Winnipeg, gives them a guy who’s still got a lot of good football in him, and with Thomas, it would be a very good supporting cast — and they probably
“We have the foundation for what we think can be a competitive team.”
OTTAWA GM MARCEL DESJARDINS
have a lot of the same attributes, so when you build your offence, I’m not sure you would have to stray too far apart in the execution.”
“Kevin’s excited,” said Campbell, who was Calgary’s defensive co-ordinator, got to know Glenn well and called him “a consummate pro, a team guy. And without even prompting, he talked about all the positives there are here in Ottawa: fans, city, new stadium ...”
It was Calgary, Buono said, that “might have paid the heaviest price” in the draft, losing not only Glenn but starting safety Eric Fraser and highly regarded Canadian offensive lineman J’Michael Deane.
“Toronto, too, losing (linebacker) Jason Pottinger and (offensive lineman) Joe Eppele, these are both good football players.”
Any team that does not pay special attention to the men in the trenches, he said, is making a mistake, and that’s where Desjardins and Campbell loaded up. “You have to,” Buono said. “When you have the quarterback, and build the offensive line, I would hope that you can fill in the blanks after.”
Ottawa’s offensive line alone has four players — Hage, Eppele, Deane and Edmonton’s Alex Krausnick — who are or have been starters in the league.
The 2002 Renegades were lucky if they had that many players, period, that looked like actual starters after plucking 32 castoffs from teams that were allowed to protect two quarterbacks each.
They were dead before they started and with the Gliebermans as owners, though they did manage to find some genuine talent in their brief shelf-life — Korey Banks, Eddie Brown, Kerry Joseph, Gerald Vaughn, kicker Lawrence Tynes — when they were gone, they were barely missed.
Campbell knows he has a chance to build something better, quicker.
“It’s going to be whatever we make it, the people, the culture,” he said a while back. And that culture will be ...? “To be determined,” he said. One thing he knows, though: unlike the last time, the culture isn’t guaranteed to be steeped in defeat.