Chris O’Leary
Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON — With the Canadian Football League draft approaching, the Edmonton Eskimos plan to explore all of their options, which could include dealing both of their first-round picks.
The Eskimos own the second and sixth-overall slots in this year’s draft, which takes place May 3.
Leaving the league’s evaluation camp in Toronto, Eskimos general manager Eric Tillman said that the team would explore all of its options in the buildup to the draft.
“There are still various ways that we can approach the draft,” Tillman said. “We could draft the best players available; if there were two players that we viewed as comparable athletes, but one was in an area where we feel we are strong, we could address that.
“We could trade one pick, we could trade both picks. Every option is on the table.”
With the Saskatchewan Roughriders expected to select University of Saskatchewan offensive lineman Ben Heenan first overall, Tillman said the only thing that he didn’t see happening was trading up in the draft.
“We will anticipate that the phone is going to ring often and we will listen,” he said. “Listening doesn’t mean that you say yes, but it’s certainly a part of the process.
“I think every option is on the table, except for trading up. We could trade down, we could keep things exactly where we are, we could trade one pick or we could trade both picks.”
Tillman said he was going to keep quiet on who impressed him at the evaluation camp, where he and head coach Kavis Reed saw 59 of the top Canadian prospects available for this year’s draft.
“The less said, the better. We will not be overly forthright in the next few weeks,” he said.
As Tillman said last week before the evaluation camp began, the Eskimos’ depth of Canadian talent will help both in the draft and as the team moves toward training camp in the spring.
He also said it would help in replacing Eskimos tailback Jerome Messam: a non-import who broke the 1,000-yard rushing mark last season. Messam signed a multi-year deal with the NFL’s Miami Dolphins in mid-February.
“We can approach the draft where we don’t have an established mindset in terms of the ratio,” he said. “I think the best teams are the ones that go into training camp with ratio flexibility, where the ratio can be adapted.
“We have the ability with four Canadian defensive linemen to play with two Canadian defensive tackles. With the continued development of a couple of our offensive linemen and if we were to draft a Canadian offensive lineman, we’d have the ability to play with four Canadians and one American, as opposed to last year we played three-to-two.
“If we draft a receiver, we could play with an additional Canadian receiver next year. What we’re trying to do is build it where we go into camp with built-in flexibility.”
That flexibility, Tillman said, will allow the team to replace Messam with an American running back, if need be.
“We have the ability to make that an American position and not bat an eye because of the flexibility we have across the board,” he said.
