Stamps director of Canadian Scouting Brendan Mahoney was recently a guest on NewsTalk 770 to talk about the Stampeders mini-camp at the IMG Academy in Florida. Here are excerpts of the interview with Mark Stephen and Jock Wilson:
Q: How was the IMG camp in Florida?
BM: It was a great camp, actually. That’s a wonderful facility. I know they put in some new buildings for their academy there and they treat us well and we really enjoy going down there. We had a great camp, got a lot of stuff accomplished and you can’t really complain being down in sunny Florida for a few days.
Q: How many players in total did you look at?
BM: We had 60 invited players at our IMG camp and then we did hold an open tryout on Saturday where we had about 70 hopefuls come. And from that camp, we invited five players to our private mini-camp, so we got to look at 60 guys and they all competed well. The coaches were pleased and I think Huff was pleased so us as a personnel department, we were very happy with what we had down there.
Q: You’ve evaluated all the players and assessed them, where does it go from here?
BM: We would meet in the evenings, sometimes late into the night discussing the players because we do have to make decisions on guys and if we’re going to move forward with one. I think you’ll hear some announcements coming up here in the next week. But there are some difficult decisions we have to make and we’re still in the process of doing that this week as guys get back in the office. So we’ll sit down again with the coaches probably tomorrow and the next day and finalize some decisions and we’ll have some announcements on the players that we’re going to go ahead and bring to training camp.
Q: What role does the NFL Draft play in this? Were some of these players you were looking at still draft eligible?
BM: Yes they were. There were some players who told us beforehand that they didn’t necessarily want to sign right away but they did want to come to our camp because they are waiting on possible NFL opportunities; either could get drafted or could get an opportunity as an undrafted free agent. And we also had some players there who have played in the NFL who wanted to wait until after the NFL Draft and would hope to get on an NFL team. So we communicate with their agents and the players and it’s great for us to be able to get down there because they see what we’re all about. Not only are we looking at them, but they have a chance to see what our organization, what our program is like. So it’s beneficial for both the player to see what we’re about and for us to get some insight on the player as well.
Q: You run the camp the way I know you do, it gives you a chance – I’m sure for some of them Canada is some far-off nowhere in their estimation – but you put people out there, you show you’re running a good program, that’s a fabulous recruiting tool.
BM: Oh it is. I think our Calgary Stampeders brand is, people know about us. And we’ve been fortunate enough to put a couple players into the NFL so guys they know about us but they have lots of time down there to meet with our position coaches and it also gives guys we’re going to move forward with a head-start into training camp so they get some base terminology from our coaches. And we show them a video about the CFL, we talk about the city of Calgary so it’s a great way for us to introduce ourselves to them.
Q: A number of years ago, there was a kid out of Cochrane by the name of Rob Cote that was invited down to your Florida camp and obviously made the team. Did you have any Canadian kids down at this camp?
BM: We did. We had Matthew Norzil join us, a receiver out of Laval. He was drafted last year in the fourth round by Toronto. So we wanted to bring him out. We had Matt up on our expanded practice roster last year so we got to look at him there. We said, “Matt, you’re a little light right now. We want you to get a little thicker, work on your route running, work on your hands.” And Matt did all those things. We were very pleased with Matt’s performance, how well he fit in with those guys and going up against some really good defensive backs he showed very well. So we’re excited we have that possibility of a free-agent Canadian receiver coming to camp.
Q: Some of the teams in the league – you’re allowed a certain amount of days with the players – they use it to get a jump-start on training camp, they’ll bring in a lot of veterans, even in some cases install an offence, but for your off-season workouts you’ve chosen to go another route. Maybe just talk about the philosophy of that, can’t say it hasn’t worked or anything, but it’s just different from other teams.
BM: It is. We’ve considered it. We’ve met and discussed whether we think that is something we need to do, bring the veterans, but I think we do have a very veteran-laden squad and these guys are true professionals. In the mornings, you see about 20 guys out running around, they’re throwing on their own, they’re doing their own thing, so I think we would rather use the time and the resources to look at other rookie players. You can go either way but I think we’ve been pretty successful winning games and won a couple championships doing it this way so we find the more players we can get eyes on and have our entire coaching staff look at all players. When we’re down there, we’ll have like Pete Costanza our receivers coach giving his opinion on the defensive backs and vice versa. We like to do it that way. I think it’s just a philosophical thing which way you want to go, if you want to bring the veterans but we trust our veterans are very professional and they’ll be ready to go once training camp begins.
Q: Last time you were on you mentioned the name Tommy Lee Lewis and apparently he impressed at this camp, although he’s one of the players that wants to wait and see with the NFL Draft?
BM: Yeah Tommy Lee is going to wait for the NFL. We’re very excited about him. He had a fantastic camp. He’s a very explosive player, he’s fast. He showed his skills as a receiver getting open in the slot, he was accustomed to the motion so he did everything great. We’d love to see him in camp but we encourage these guys with your NFL stuff we want you to exhaust all your opportunities down there so when you do come to us, you’re fully 100 per cent in to playing with us. So we’re in a wait-and-see approach with Tommy Lee. The NFL draft is in a couple weeks and we can make a move after that.
Q: Any position catch your eye there?
BM: I thought we had a very competitive group of receivers as well as defensive backs. I think Stampeders fans will be excited with a couple of running back/returner guys we’re going to bring up to have some competition at that spot. Those were the biggest positions. Linebacker, we’re pretty deep already with guys we have on the roster but I think we found one player who could do both — he could be a defensive end as well as a linebacker, so we liked his versatility there. I’d say those would be strongest positions. We still have some work to do on the defensive line but we’re waiting on a couple guys we have on our negotiation list. They’re waiting for their NFL opportunity to see where that shakes out so we’re going to do some evaluations there and hopefully bring up some great competition. We feel we have a couple guys who are coming in but I think we’re going to do some more work on our defensive line pass rusher.
Q: So the majority of guys at this camp, are they total free agents, are they guys are your neg list? Would Player X be at the Regina camp at IMG and then come to the Calgary camp?
BM: Yeah there’s a couple. Paris Cotton, he was there. He went to the Regina camp so that was really the only one we had that was a total free agent. The roster we bring down to IMG is made up of mostly our negotiation list and then rookie CFL guys we’ve signed and once we’ve evaluated them we move forward and bring them to training camp. Another good story with this thing is we do hold open tryouts all over the U.S. so we had about 18 or 19 guys we chose from those open tryouts who make it to the next step which is IMG, and then the next step after that is to get invited to training camp. So we’ll have a couple of those guys. We’ll be making those announcements soon. But it kind of shows you just a find a guy, he just shows up at one of your workouts and next thing you know he’s a member of the squad. And so we’re happy with the results. Pat DelMonaco, our offensive line coach, he was the open tryout coordinator and he did a great job of organizing that and us in the personnel department we get the word out to get players to show up and then if you have a few success stories of guys that come to an open tryout that’ll move on and then hopefully eventually be a contributor for us.
Q: Are those guys guys who have just been out of the game for a year or two and are looking to get back into it?
BM: It could be, yeah. They’re just free agents. Some of them could’ve run into injury trouble or you never know and they still want to play. So what the open tryout process does is it allows us to see where they’re at physically. We film all our open tryouts so we go back and we evaluate, all our coaches who are a part of it, and we do the evaluation and if we want to move forward we look into their history, we call the player and that’s kind of the next step is to get an invitation to come to mini-camp.