A tough load to try to carry
Why do Canadian tailbacks remain a rarity in the CFL?
Born
in Jamaica and trained at
the University of Nebraska, Dahrran Diedrick has the pedigree to be a record-setting Canadian athlete. At age 26, he enters the Canadian Football League this weekend with the Edmonton Eskimos, where head coach Danny Maciocia plans to ease him in by sharing the tailback load with American Ron McClendon.
Jesse Lumsden, the 2004 Hec Crighton Award winner as the most valuable Canadian university football player will also get his first CFL start this weekend — tonight versus Calgary. The “Hamilton Hottie” was posed GQ-style in yesterday’s Hamilton Spectator under the aforementioned headline, hair slicked back and muscles a’rippling. He comes in with reams more publicity than Diedrick, but is slated to make his Tiger- Cats debut strictly on special teams.
The two hope that one day they will oppose each other on a CFL field as feature backs for their respective teams. History tells us that they’ll likely meet up one day, but more like likely on a punt cover or kickoff unit.
It’s not every day that two such highly touted Canadian tailbacks arrive on the CFL scene on the same weekend. It seems like every season however that a Canadian-born running back piles up huge numbers in college, then shows up at a CFL camp only to become special teams fodder. Take Mike Bradley, the Eskimos special teamer who set school records at Waterloo, was a Hec Crighton nominee and a three-time all Canadian.
“I broke a ton of records; I had a ton of yards in university; I was consistent all through my career. And I didn’t even get drafted. Didn’t even get drafted,” he said. “I came to the combines, put up great numbers at the combines, and I had to sign as a free agent. Who knows what they’re looking for?
“I wish I could explain it. Because if I had the answer, maybe I would have tried to avoid that.”
Whatever it is, the problem might just be that, at 5-foot-9, the stocky and lightning fast Bradley isn’t tall enough to see it. But there have been plenty of bigger men over the years, and they were always deemed not fast enough. Or fast, but not quick enough. Or fast and quick, but not durable.
So they lined the Maple Leafs up on special teams as blockers, perhaps giving them the odd carry as a fullback in league that’s never shown much loyalty or nationalism when it comes to the ultimate skill positions.
“ There’s always that perception that [tailback] has to be an import position. It’s almost labelled,” said Maciocia, himself a Canadian. “For a number of years it applied itself to the receiver position. In the last 10- 12 years things have changed. Obviously, it hasn’t changed with the quarterback position.”
You’ve got to go way back to find a Canadian who really carried the mail for a CFL team: Normie Kwong for the Stampeders and Eskimos in the ’ 40s and ’50s; Ronnie Stewart in Ottawa in the ’ 50s and ’ 60s.