Argonauts get their men on draft day

Mike Hogan

TSN Radio 1050, Host

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For the Toronto Argonauts it would be a strange, yet incredibly satisfying draft night.

When all was said and done, the player personnel department would be ecstatic with the mother lode the mining expedition yielded. Five of the team’s top 15 ranked prospects would all be property of the team by night’s end.

In what has become a pre-draft ritual, general manager Jim Barker sat down with TSN.ca to discuss what could and could not be included in this article. He reiterated that only players the Argos selected could be named.

He then discussed in depth what he hoped to accomplish that night.

Barker explained that the club’s number one prospect was receiver Brian Jones of Acadia.

Why?

“It was a combination of a lot of things,” Barker told TSN.ca. “His physical nature, his skill set, fit something we didn’t have in our Canadian receiving corps.”

Barker went on to rave about Jones’ blocking ability and his special teams potential, but also about his personality.

“Brian Jones is a phenomenal kid,” said the GM.

There were two other names between Jones and a name that was a surprise to see in the No. 4 position, offensive lineman J.C. Sackey from the University of Toronto.

“He’s very athletic,” said head coach Scott Milanovich of Sackey. “He’s able to roll his hips and drive block people, (but) he’s got work to do.”

The plan, according to Barker, was to hope Jones fell to the Argos at four, then take Sackey with the second-round pick.

If the club secured the services of those two players, the draft would be a success. Anything after that was gravy.

The club’s ‘war room’ was located at the team’s Downsview football operations offices. In the board room a large rectangular table was situated with a television located behind the person at the head of the table, Milanovich.

Barker would be located to his head coach’s left. Behind the GM was a giant white board, which would track the drafted players. A grid showed the round number across the top, while team logos were placed down the left side in the order in which they would draft. If a trade had been made, a team logo sticker was placed in the top corner of the square of the pick that had been dealt.

Each prospect had a magnetized profile, including a picture and some stats. They were sorted into five different groups. One was for the players the Argos loved, another for players they liked, another for players they had little interest in, while one was reserved for players they didn’t like at all, but thought other teams might draft.

The player at the top of the list was indeed Brian Jones.

The board room was quickly filling up in the moments before the draft began. Barker, Milanovich, his coaching staff and the player personnel department assembled around the table.

Joining the group was first-year Argo President and CEO Michael Copeland. A handful of other attendees, including a reporter from TSN.ca, sat at the far end of the room.

The group watched as TSN’s draft coverage began at 7pm.  A couple of minutes into the broadcast, a familiar voice could be heard on a speaker phone located in the middle of the table.

CFL Director of Football Operations Ryan Janzen was addressing the teams, informing them of the draft’s procedure. A selection would be made to the league via the conference call. The pick would then be handed to league commissioner Jeffrey Orridge, who would announce it on TSN.

At 7:06 the Saskatchewan Roughriders would make Josiah St. John, the massive offensive lineman from the University of Oklahoma, the first-overall selection.

After months of preparation, countless hours examining film, evaluating players at workouts, and interviewing players and coaches before coming up with a master list of prospects, the 2016 Draft was finally underway.

The Riders choice was good news for Barker and his staff as their target was still on the board.

Five minutes after CFL personnel knew the selection, Orridge informed TSN viewers of the newest member of Rider Nation.

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers forfeited the second pick after selecting Garrett Waggoner in last year’s Supplemental Draft. Montreal benefited by moving up a spot and quickly chose Laval offensive lineman Phillippe Gagnon. Again, no Jones selection meant the Argos were a step closer to getting their man.

The Ticats were next in line after a deal with the B.C. Lions. Hamilton opted for another offensive lineman, Brandon Revenberg, so the Argos knew for sure that the player they most coveted was Toronto bound.

At 7:17 Milanovich left the table and walked into his office so he could call the newest member of his team. He would return a couple of minutes later, still talking to Brian Jones. He finished the conversation by telling the receiver to “enjoy the night with your family.”

Four minutes after the coach left the table, Canadian Scouting Coordinator Vince Magri would make the announcement on the conference call. A round of applause followed as the Argos got their man.

Now, to get Sackey.

Just as the Argos were getting a handle on whether they thought the o-lineman may be available later in the draft, a phone call was answered by Barker. An official from the CFL offices was on the line wondering if someone had been leaking information from the conference call. A media member, who ironically also writes for the league’s website, was tweeting out the draft picks before Orridge could make the official announcement.

Barker confirmed that nobody from his office was doing that. Teams were then told by a league official they couldn’t contact a drafted player until TSN’s network broadcast had announced the pick.

Then it was back to the more pressing issue.

The GM called upon his staff to conduct a quick mock draft. Was there any way that Sackey would fall to the third round? Milanovich went to the big board and asked the assembled scouts who they thought teams would select in the next few spots.

One by one, player profile magnets were rapidly being slapped on the grid. When there was no way to say with 100-per cent certainty that his o-lineman of choice would drop, Barker squirmed in his chair before suggesting he was uncomfortable with the risk.

At 8:06 Magri made the choice. Offensive lineman D.J. Sackey from the University of Toronto was staying in the city.

Mere seconds after the selection, Milanovich roared in laughter when he received a semi-serious text message from another team’s war room. There were just two words to read out.

“F*** you.”

The message was simple, Sackey would not have lasted until the Argos third-round pick.

Barker’s sense of joy and relief was immediate and obvious.

They had already been able to draft the players they had rated first and fourth overall.

Why was Sackey so high on their list compared to some of the other pre-draft rankings?

“He’s a guy we really have a lot of excitement about,” beamed Barker. “I went back and forth with him and the other two offensive linemen (that the Argos had rated at the top of the draft). We looked at all three of them over, and over, and over, and D.J. was coming out as the better player for us over, and over, and over. Everybody was talking about him in the fourth round, in the fifth round, so you look for things to not take him, and we couldn’t find them.”

But the fishing expedition was not over and the club still had lines in the water. One by one they added more keepers.

In the third round they selected another project on the offensive line. York’s Jamal Campbell was seventh on the Argos board, but they selected him 22nd overall.

The club added two more highly rated players in the fourth round. McMaster running back Declan Cross was rated ninth on their board and selected 27th overall, while former University of Toronto receiver Llevi Noel was ranked 15th by the Argos, yet fell to the 31st draft pick.

When all was said and done they had four of their top nine rated players, and five of their top fifteen. That doesn’t mean they’ll be five of the top fifteen players in the draft.

“We grade players how they fit for us,” Barker said. “There’s players that were drafted in the first round that we had (ranked) lower than that. Just because for us were lower fits, that doesn’t mean they aren’t fits for the team that took them.”

The Argonauts have been very successful on draft day over the last three years. Jermaine Gabriel, Tyler Holmes, Daryl Waud and Anthony Coombs are all impact players already. Cam Walker, Thomas Miles and Alexandre Dupuis have all made their presence felt and are expected to contribute even more this year, while last year’s first-round selection, Sean McEwen, remains unsigned.

The team’s Canadian depth is as good as any team in the league, which gives the new selections – particularly Sackey and Campbell – time to develop.

Perhaps more than in any year in recent memory, this has the potential to be major coup or a colossal bust for the Argos. If Barker and his staff have correctly ranked the players in this draft, it could be one of the more lucrative draft day hauls in team history.