Brandon Zylstra lived out a childhood dream last year.
The 26-year-old receiver was one of six Minnesota natives to play with the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings.
“It was awesome,” he said about wearing the Purple and Gold uniform he grew up idolizing. “It was just a cool experience to be back in my home state in front of my friends and family. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a little kid, so it was cool to actually live that.”
Zylstra, who led all CFL receivers with 1,687 yards during his second season with the Eskimos in 2017, had four catches for 54 yards and a touchdown in the Vikings’ final pre-season game last year, but managed only one catch for 23 yards and had two targets while playing all 16 games during the regular season.
“It was an over-out basically,” he said about his regular-season catch. “I just caught it, ran for a few yards and got pushed out of bounds.”
That may seem like such a small achievement compared to his accomplishments with the Eskimos – Zylstra was also named Edmonton’s most outstanding rookie after catching 34 passes for 508 yards and three touchdowns in only six regular-season games in 2016.
“I only saw less than 20 or 30 snaps of actual offence,” he said. “It was definitely a year to learn from the two great receivers in front of me, so I was just studying their every move pretty much.”
Adam Thielen, 28, led the Vikings with 113 receptions for 1,373 yards while Stefon Diggs, 25, had 102 catches for 1,021 yards in 15 games. Only three other Minnesota receivers caught at least one pass last year.
“Hoping to build off of (his experiences as a Viking rookie) for this year,” said Zylstra. “I’m feeling way more comfortable out there, knowing how to take care of myself better. I know the playbook pretty well. It’s just trying to improve what I did last year to try to emulate what I did up in Edmonton.
“I’ve changed up my diet a little bit,” he continued. “I’ve been working on nutrition, doing a bunch of little things to make sure I’m as healthy as possible. My body feels great right now. It’s the best it’s felt in a long time. Whatever I’m doing has been working so far.”
Pointing out that “a lot of things happen during a football season,” Zylstra said he just has to show the coaches “that I can be ready to play plug and play whenever, whatever, whether a guy’s tired, a guy’s injured. I’m just trying to show my availability to the coaches, being as versatile as possible in this offence.”
Zylstra had to transition back to an 11-man game and a smaller field last season after spending two years in the CFL.
“I didn’t think that was going to affect me as much as it did,” he said about the field. “Up in Edmonton, you just had so much space to work with, so much room to go do stuff. In the NFL, everything is just condensed with people flying around. The game seemed maybe a little bit faster and just way more condensed.”
Zylstra’s main responsibilities in 2018 were playing on the four core special teams (punt, punt cover, kickoff and kickoff cover) “for pretty much most of the year.”
“I’ve always liked punt and punt return,” he said. “I know how important they are in the game. It’s something I take a lot of pride in.”
Zylstra returned punts and kickoffs a few times in Edmonton. He had 23 punt returns for 167 yards (7.26 yards per return) and five kickoff returns for 84 yards (16.8) with the Eskimos.
“I was kind of the guy towards the end of the year – you go through so many games, there’s a lot of guys injured on the depth chart – so they just threw me back there to secure the catch basically; to catch and go down and don’t get hurt,” he said.
Zylstra loved his time in Edmonton.
“I tell people about that all the time,” he said. “Other guys are asking. I always tell them the CFL is a great option. I had some of my most fun ever playing football up in Canada, meeting those guys. I’m still close to so many guys up in Canada, different teammates and stuff.
“The fan base was great, and coaches are awesome, I just love the style of play. I have a huge appreciation for Edmonton and, really, the CFL in general. … I finally got to play the type of ball I felt like I could have played after actually getting a chance from somebody and just trying to take full advantage of it.”
Zylstra, who expects to come up to Edmonton for a visit before the Vikings training camp begins in late July, still pays close attention to the CFL.
“Last year, I probably watched around 10 games, but I’m a guy who will constantly go to my CFL app and check out the scores, go see all my friends, check out their stats, see how they did, watch all the recaps,” he said. “As the years go by, your old teammates start to get spread out around the league. I’m not just following Edmonton any more. Now I’m following all these different teams. It’s actually kind of fun.
“I remember sitting by my phone during the free-agency frenzy. Those two days were just absolutely crazy. I was like, ‘Man, Edmonton is signing everybody!”