CFL.ca
It was the first Canadian Football League Combine experience for four men in new roles with their respective teams: Tim Burke, hired as the 29th head coach in Bombers history last November, Kent Austin who earned both head coach and general manager titles with the Ticats this past December, Ed Hervey was put in place as the Eskimos general manager last December, and most recent, Dan Hawkins was given the head coaching reigns with the Alouettes in February.
All four men possess strong football backgrounds, having scouted for talent both north and south of the border. However, 2013 is the first time each man will make decisions with the biggest title, to date, on their CFL resumes.
“I’ve always been involved with the Canadian draft and the combine. I guess the only difference is that now I have final say,” Hervey said.
“There is more organization for me on the front end,” Austin said. “Organizing how we’re going to do our evaluations and the process of those evaluations.”
“Before as a defensive coordinator I basically watched the defensive players,” Burke said. “Now as the head coach I’m trying to see a little bit of everybody.”
“One of the benefits for me is Jim Popp has been doing this for a long time, he’s very good at it,” Hawkins said of his veteran GM. “Jim knows and he’s got a bunch of scouts that have been doing it for a long time, too. So we have a great background of knowledge there to rely on.”
Hawkins has over 20 seasons of coaching experience south on the 49th parallel, but is going through his first Canadian draft process.
“Much of life is an adventure and so is this,” the 52-year-old said. “It’s been fun just getting to touch bases with coaches and different officials within the league and check out the players.”
“The on-field stuff to me is where you can see if guys can move and play football. All of the testing stuff is good, and it’s good background information, but you want to see players get out there, run around and play some ball,” Hawkins said.
“You look at the roster of talent available and try to figure out where guys are coming from, read up on them and figure out what their background is. I talk to our scouts and see what they think about the guys as well.”
Montreal’s bench boss comes to the CFL from the NCAA ranks, like Hamilton’s Austin, who spent three years as head coach at Cornell University before returning to the CFL with the Ticats. The difference is Austin has plenty of past experience, both as a coach and player, in the three-down league to draw upon.
“We still evaluate according to the process and organize our guys to make sure that we have a full blanket of coverage of the guys that we’re most interested in,” Austin said.
“We’re looking at the best players, but we’re looking at our needs as well. We need to focus at trying to piece our puzzle together as an organization so that we have quality depth throughout and fill in the weak areas.”
Hamilton currently holds the number one overall pick in the 2013 CFL Draft and with it comes a chance to select a highly skilled player or perhaps turn one selection into more assets.
“We’ll be open to discuss anything that helps our football team,” Austin said regarding a possible trade involving the number one selection.
One of Austin’s East Division coaching rivals, Winnipeg’s Burke, has his staff well organized in his first full off-season as the Bombers head man.
“We have a list made up of how we rank guys already, and as we go through the combine that list changes, then we’ll go back and change our list and probably change it a couple more times before the draft,” he said.
After watching over 50 prospects at the combine, Burke believes there is some talent to be had in the trenches.
“I think definitely there are some guys both on the defensive line and offensive line that looked pretty good,” Burke said.
The Bombers currently hold the number overall two pick, behind the Ticats, for the league’s talent grab in May and it seems as though Burke likes that position.
“I think we’ll stay at the number two spot and I think we have a chance to get somebody special in that spot,” Burke said. “Any time you have a chance to get somebody who could be a starter for you, you don’t want to give that away. You’re hoping for a guy that can come in and help you immediately.”
Further West from Winnipeg, in his first draft process as Eskimos GM, Hervey and his team don’t currently have a first round selection, but that hasn’t altered the amount of draft preparation in Edmonton.
“In the GM role I don’t want that to change too much. I have other responsibilities, but I do understand and know that the importance of building a very successful football team comes from the non-import player and the draft,” Hervey said.
The 39-year-old spent three seasons as the Eskimos head scout, before his promotion to GM, and has developed a scouting strategy he strongly believes in.
“The way this process works, you have to be able to see the player in order to make a decision on them,” Hervey said.
“The film is the resume of the player, that’s out there for us to find out, but we want to know whether they fit into what we’re doing culturally as well. We’re trying to build a family atmosphere. It’s one step at a time, but we’re looking for those quality players to bring into our organization and we hope that we find a couple of those guys and be able to draft them come draft time.”
Edmonton, at the moment, holds the 10th overall selection and would be interested in jumping up if the possibility presented itself.
“If we can move up a little more we would, but if not we’re quite comfortable that we should be able to get at least two of the players that we want in this draft,” Hervey said.
“As a staff, Coach Reed and our executive director of personnel Paul Jones, we would love to hit a home run or two, but we understand that if you’re not in the first round you have to do a little bit more homework and research.”
All four men in the first year of their new positions will certainly be putting in countless hours of preparation in order to be ready for the Canadian Draft, all in an effort to set their teams up for a successful 2013 season.
