They are a collection of fresh, new faces which instantly inject healthy doses of youth, depth and skill to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers Canadian content.
And now — following Tuesday’s Canadian Football League Draft and Global Drafts — the real evaluation begins with the rookies reporting for work on May 10th and main training camp beginning four days later.
The Blue Bombers stocked up on defence in Tuesday’s CFL Draft (https://staging-www.bluebombers.com/2023/05/02/meet-the-2023-draft-class/) using six of their eight picks on that side of the ball in defensive linemen Anthony Bennett (Round 1, 8th overall), Tanner Schmekel (Round 4, 35th overall) and Collin Kornelson (Round 5, 44th overall), two defensive backs in Jake Kelly (Round 2, 15th overall) and Bret MacDougall (Round 6, 53rd overall) and linebacker Max Charbonneau (Round 8, 71st overall). The other two picks were receiver Jeremy Murphy (Round 3, 26th overall) and running back/slotback Jonathan Rosery (Round 7, 62nd overall).
The kicking competition in camp also became more compelling with the team nabbing two punters in the Global Draft in Australian Jamieson Sheahan, who was a Second Team All-Pac-12 selection last year at the University of California and Karl Schmitz, a 36-year-old Bermuda product who is still chasing the dream after NFL shots with Denver, Tampa and Carolina.
Blue Bombes GM Kyle Walters spoke with the media Wednesday morning, just over 12 hours after putting the finishing touches on the two drafts.
Here are the major takeaways from his session:
Defence, defence, defence
The Bombers start six Canadians on offence with three interior offensive linemen in Pat Neufeld, Geoff Gray and Chris Kolankowski two receivers in Nic Demski and Drew Wolitarsksy and running back Brady Oliveira. Yet, it was the defensive side of the ball that was the focus Tuesday night – particularly finding Canadian depth for the line along with Jake Thomas and Cam Lawson and in the secondary, especially with Tyrell Ford now with the Green Bay Packers and Noah Hallett working back from an injury.
If all the picks are signed and report to camp, the Blue Bombers will have a ton of homegrown help to sift through over the coming weeks.
“There’s going to be some good competition,” said Walters. “Our main objective heading into this season was to see if we could get more competition for our back five Canadians on our roster. We were pretty thin there and we filled it out. There will be a good group of those type of bodies, your 19th, 20th, 21st (Canadians) on your roster, that are going to be playing special teams. They’ll have won their jobs. It’s not going to be handed to them this year. There will be a bunch of them competing for those types of roles on our team.”
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Bennett=more roster flexibility up front
Sometimes overlooked in Jonathan Kongbo’s two years with the Blue Bombers (2019, 2021) was the flexibility it gave the club to rotate him into the defensive front occasionally for Jackson Jeffcoat and Willie Jefferson. But with Kongbo now with the Denver Broncos and Global star Thiadric Hansen missing the second half of last season with an Achilles, that flexibility was essentially gone. The addition of Bennett with the club’s first pick, eighth overall, could bring that that back.
The bonus is Bennett’s ability to play special teams, which is always a plus.
“Anthony certainly provides that explosiveness off the edge, with the ability to play special teams – I think that’s what separated him and, particularly, with our head coach,” Walters said. “He’s going to be able to bring his energy. He’s a high-energy guy that’s going to play fast and come off the edge for us during the game and be able to help out on special teams as well.”
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A Walters’ take on each of the other defenders drafted…
-“Tanner Schmekel is a big, hard-nosed tough guy who is going to fit in.
“Back-to-back (defensive tackle selections) with Collin Kornelson who are true nose tackles who will come in and compete with each other. We’ll see how it all unfolds, but they’re both hard-nosed CanWest traditional D-tackles.
-“We were zeroing in on who we think is a free-safety type who can come in and Jake Kelly certainly was that guy. He played free safety in college. His testing numbers were off the charts; he really jumped out with how athletic he was. For a slighter guy at 180 pounds to bench 15 (reps of 225 pounds) … he’s strong, ran fast, jumped high, did everything right. His film… Richie (Hall, defensive coordinator) and JY (Jordan Younger, secondary coach) know a thing or two about DBs and it was interesting to hear them say what really caught their attention was his ability to show up at the same time as the receiver and the football, which you don’t see a lot. It’s a talent and a natural skill that is pretty tough to teach and he showed that on film.
“He plays with reckless abandon and that’s one thing, for a smaller guy, he needs to be a better form tackler. He’s certainly not scared to stick his nose in there, but he needs to be more consistent with his tackling, which he will become. He was the free safety we wanted.”
-“Brett MacDougal is another one when I circle back to that DB discussions… 6-2, 210-pound guy from Windsor who played free safety. He has a chance based on his numbers. He plays hard, he’s tough and run 4.6 at that size, so we were just attracted to the body type for him to come in on (special) teams.”
-“Max Charbonneau… there were a whole lot of 210-pound special-teams guys and we have a wack of them. He’s a traditional in-the-box linebacker at 6-2, 225. He doesn’t run quite as well as the younger guys but provides a different skillset. He’s tough, he’s physical. He was wearing a knee brace (at the CFL Combine) that will probably come off… I think he’s going to be faster and more athletic when we see him in camp than when we did at the Combine. He provided just a little bit different than a lot of other guys based on his height, weight, and his toughness in the box.”
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Murphy and Rosery = Intriguing offensive additions
Here’s Walters on Murphy, the receiver taken in the third round and Rosery, the seventh-round pick out of Alberta:
-“We like Jeremy (Murphy). He’s just a playmaker. One of my notes was sometimes you watch U-Sports film, particularly receivers, and you’ve got to go game after game after game to try and put some clips together of guys making plays. Well, not with him. He’s big-time playmaker who made some crazy catches and had a very successful career. He’ll come in and compete and provide some depth at receiver.
“Those were the big three going in and it fell to us the way we planned, which was nice and then the rest of it was just adding guys we liked.”
-“Jonathan Rosery is a really interesting guy from Alberta. You watch them play Manitoba every year and he’s just out there making play after play after play. He showed up at the combine and at 5-8 and 200 pounds he ran a 4.8 which got everybody soured on him, but you talk to the kid, and you meet with the offensive coaches, and they couldn’t talk enough about Jonathan Rosery with the skills that he possesses. He lines up at tailback for a game against Sask and run for 150 and then he’s playing receiver for a game.
“He is a very versatile guy and I think our coaches are real excited to move him around. For a guy coming to training camp, he can take tailback reps, he can take slotback reps, he’s a returner… I think he’s going to get a lot of work in training camp. He’s a good football player who deserves a chance to show what he can do.”
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An Aussie punter via Cal and a 36-year-old guy from Bermuda? The kicking competition just got a whole lot more intriguing…
“There will be a healthy kicking competition. And what we’ve tried to do from a roster management standpoint, you’ve got three-way American (newly signed Marc Orozco, who punts, kicks off and handles placekicking), we’ve got a punter (Devin Anctil), we’ve got a field goal kicker (Chandler Staton), we’ve got a Canadian punter (Chris MacLean) and Marc (Liegghio) can do all three. Adding a global punter, it’s nice to be able to at the end of training camp (go) how’s the DI situation factor in? How’s our 21st Canadian? Obviously, it’s going to be who’s the strongest punter, field goal kicker, kickoff, all of that is going to be weighed in. But it’ll be nice at the end of training camp to see how the roster fits best with what nationality kicking and punting will be part of the process.”
As for Schmitz…
“Karl is an interesting one. He’s an interesting guy. A huge leg. I saw him at one of the combines and he looks like an NFL punter, kicker. He’s long. He got the bug again the last few years and has been hitting the workouts and the combine. So, we’ll see. He’s got a very strong leg and we thought it was worth a chance to throw him into that kicking mix, a guy that has a pretty big upside if he can put it together throughout training camp.
“It would be different if he was a positional player, bringing in a 36-year-old. But punters have extended lives. He got the bug again and has been kicking, working out, and doing the combine circuit. He’s at that point where he owes it to himself to say ‘Alright, I got one more shot at this. Let’s see if I can make a go of it and go from there.’ So, let’s give him a shot and see.”
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The O-line? We’re good, thanks
The Blue Bombers didn’t use a single draft pick on an offensive lineman on Tuesday, marking the second straight year the club has not drafted someone for the offensive trenches.
That speaks to the club’s depth there, and a thin draft at that position.
“Well, we were OK with our group, the guys coming back. With Pat Neufeld, Geoff Gray, Chris Kolankowski, Liam Dobson, who I think showed very well. And adding Tui Eli … that’s a piece from last year. Our plan, actually, was if you’re not going to spend a first or second rounder this year on a O-lineman, it’s going to be a bit of a developmental phase. You saw in the draft that a lot of the O-linemen are developmental guys. That’s why we signed Brandon (Sanford) and Tyler (Grisolia) before the draft. We thought, ‘OK, instead of drafting guys on draft night as our developmental, take-a-look O-linemen, we signed those guys. Brandon was here in training camp last year and was solid, deserves another chance. And Tyler, at the regional combine, I thought he was solid, tough kid. And Cole Adamson, we’ve shifted him over to offensive line … he’s working with the offensive line.”
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About the Adamson shift… it’s been mentioned twice before on bluebombers.com this spring, but here’s Walters offering a further explanation on the move…
“He looks like an O-lineman. We talked about it, heading into the draft, the way he moved. He’s a very cerebral guy. He’s an engineer, reminds me of Geoff Gray in that regard. On the D-line he was less twitchy and explosive. He was more, as I said, his body looks like an O-line, his mentality is like an O-line, and from a career longevity standpoint, it’s great to take a look at that position versus the D-tackle. He was up for it. ‘Whatever you need.’ And like most young Canadian guys, they’re willing to do whatever you need to coach.
“We’ll take a look and if it doesn’t work, he’ll go back to his natural position. But we’re going to take a good long look at how his physical abilities and mental abilities, translate more to an offensive lineman than a defensive tackle. It’s worth a shot to explore.”
