Desjardins, entourage getting ready for NFL tour
Like monarch butterflies to Mexico, Canadian Football League scouts will soon start their annual migration to National Football League training camps.
They may be searching for immediate help to replace an injured starter or they may focus their attention on longer-term prospects for next season in the three-down league. Either way, they’re looking.
That includes the Ottawa Redblacks, with general manager Marcel Desjardins, assistant GM Brock Sunderland and a handful of others scheduled to visit varying numbers of the 32 NFL camps scattered around the United States beginning in late July.
“I think you are always looking because you never know what’s going to happen with your roster, whether it be guys that are free agents that may not come back. Maybe it’s injuries. Guys may not play to what they are (capable of ),” Sunderland said in the lobby of a hotel where the Redblacks stayed before Friday night’s game against the host Saskatchewan Roughriders.
“So you always want to have as much talent as you can at every position.”
Names of players classified as CFL “internationals” can be placed on a “negotiation list,” granting that club exclusive CFL negotiation rights.
However, a team at the 45-man maximum must drop someone else if it desires to add another athlete.
First one to send an email to the CFL head office wins an individual’s negotiation list rights.
“At the end of the day, we are just trying to continue to build the ‘next layer,’ for lack of a better term,” Desjardins said.
“These guys, there may be a few of them come in toward the end of this year, when we expand the (practice rosters), but the majority of these guys are really being targeted for camp next year.”
The Redblacks will pay particular attention to defensive lineman Mehdi Abdesmad, a defensive lineman from Montreal they drafted in the third round in May even after he signed a free-agent contract with the NFL’s Tennessee Titans.
He’s expected to participate in their Nashville training camp.