If you think John Ojo has made his first season in the CFL look easy, he’ll thank you for the compliment and then tell you that it hasn’t been so.
“Each week I go up against some of the best players I’ve ever played against,” he says, as we dig into why the rookie corner has enjoyed such a wildly successful first season as an Edmonton Eskimo.
Five interceptions, one of them for a touchdown (Week 3, versus Ottawa). A fumble recovery and a total of 34 tackles, seven more on special teams. The writers at CFL.ca made him a mid-season CFL All-Star selection.
Natural ability as well as the right kind of teammates and coaching have made their marks during Ojo’s maiden flight in the Canadian Football League. So has the influence of someone from his hometown of Tallahassee, Fla. Some guy named Pat Watkins, the veteran corner who is in his fourth season in the CFL, second with the Eskimos.
“I can ask him anything,” says Ojo of Watkins. “We’re from the same city and I pretty much knew him since I was younger so when I got here he made that transition a lot easier.”
Growing up in Northern Florida, Ojo and Watkins didn’t hang out as contemporaries, seeing as how Ojo was about 12 years old when they met and Watkins was around 18 or 19 and spent time with Ojo’s older brother Leke. There was enough of a connection, though, that the two of them grew closer while Ojo was making his way through his career at Florida A & M and Watkins was with the Dallas Cowboys and then the Toronto Argonauts.
“I actually hung out with him the first year he was with the Argos,” says Ojo. “I still kinda remember him telling me how the CFL was and that was pretty much my first introduction to the CFL — listening to him.”
Ojo says he felt a connection, football-wise, to Watkins due to more than just the fact that they were pass defenders. With similar body types (Ojo is 6-foot-3′ and 205 pounds while Watkins is 6-foot-5 and weighs the same) and abilities, they could naturally talk about their experiences on the field. When it came time for Ojo to decide if he’d like to play pro football in Canada, his familiarity with Watkins helped him choose to come north and land in Edmonton.
“I did keep in mind the things he told me before and then I did speak with him, briefly, before I came up and he just let me know how it was. I guess it influenced my decision on coming here,” Ojo says.
Ojo’s rookie season as an Eskimo has seen him shine brightly, on a par with another first-year corner, Winnipeg’s Johnny Adams, who has one more interception than Ojo at this point in the season. That he’s been able to comfortably slide into the league’s best defensive unit is not a surprise, he says, when you consider that his teammates have made it easy for him to do so.
“If you just look across our defence, it’s a tremendous amount of guys that’s, basically, winning all over the field,” Ojo says. “Sometimes, we make a mistake as individuals but it kind of gets overshadowed because everyone’s playing so well.”
Still, Ojo has been standing out for all the right reasons in 2015, not the wrong ones. With four of his interceptions coming in his first seven games as an Eskimo, his ball hawking skills made their bold announcement early. Going without an interception in the following seven games (he picked off Calgary’s Bo Levi Mitchell last week to end that streak) might have been a sign that the league’s offensive coordinators and quarterbacks opted to stay away from his acreage for a while.
If Ojo is making mistakes out there – and all players do make mistakes out there – they are rarely anything glaring. Ojo claims the depth and intensity of the Eskimos’ defence has sharpened him to a fine edge, making him reach for lofty heights and demanding as much from himself. That’s not just in games, he says, but in practices too.
“We have a lot of fun each and every day that we come here. The competition is definitely, I believe, the highest in the CFL. We just do a great job of keeping the tempo in and out of practice.”
While he’s enjoying the successes of a terrific first year as a pro, Ojo reiterates that it hasn’t been as easy as it looks and that he had to adjust to the extra space in a Canadian secondary. Playing wide side, or field corner, you need to rethink the angles you take when lining up to defend a receiver. Beyond that, just cinch up the chin strap and go.
“Anytime there’s a field and there’s a football, it’s gonna pretty much be football,” he says.
Eskimo football under Head Coach Chris Jones is the type of football Ojo likes to play, so he has that going for him as well. Jones has a reputation for handing players in his secondary blank cheques when it comes to being, if not outright gamblers, then thrill seekers. As long as you’re getting the job done.
“He’s pretty much taken the handcuffs off of us,” Ojo agrees. “Let us kind of play the way we are. Especially me. I’m an aggressive player. For him to let me know that actually makes me play a lot more comfortable.”
Asked if Jones has been stressing that every defender, no matter where they are on the field, should sprint to the ball when it’s caught (another of the coach’s hallmarks), Ojo says he is and that it is another factor in the success of the defence.
“We just got done with practice and that’s probably the last thing he told us: ‘Get to the ball, make sure everybody’s running to the ball.’ Like I said, everybody’s gonna make a mistake but as long as we have twelve guys running to the ball, those mistakes will be overshadowed.”
John Ojo is enjoying his rookie campaign and while his individual numbers might be a big part of that, there is another reason why he looks forward to every game that comes. It’s the exhilaration of being part of a smoothly running defensive machine.
“A lot of credit goes, not just to me, but to the coaches and the guys that I play around because they really push me during practice and I think that’s what’s helped me play as well as I have.
“To know that everybody’s gonna be playing well is a great feeling,” he adds.
I’d guess his teammates feel the same way about him.
