Monday Morning Sentimonies: Offensive Line

Starting today I’m going to break down each position on the Riders’ roster… beginning with the O-line. The Riders currently have 108 people on the roster and at their current pace of signings should qualify as Saskatchewan’s 3^rd largest city by mid-May. So I thought it would be good to start reminding ourselves who makes up our roster and who may be worth monitoring if/when training camp occurs.

O-line has undergone some super unexpected but welcome changes over the past few weeks. Back in January we had 4 of our 5 starters (a great spot to be) and a few promising prospects to fill the last spot. Our depth was not the greatest but the 2^nd overall pick would certainly help with that. Well an influx of local boys has suddenly made us very deep here and may have drastically changed our plans for that draft pick and O-line overall.

Projected Starters: Takoby Cofield – Brendan LaBatte – Dan Clark – Evan Johnson – Terran Vaugh

In the mix: Brett Boyko, Braden Schram, Mattland Riley

The Rest: Logan Ferland, Josiah St John, Cameron Jefferson, Sentrel Henderson, Cyrus Kouandjio, Chidi Oneke, Jesse Lawson, Andrew Lauderdale, Antonio Garcia, Rene Brassea

What I like first and foremost is the age of our starters. We had depth in 2019 but our starters (Blake, Coleman, Labatte, Clark) were old. Suddenly we have 3 projected starters under 30. Dan Clark went from being one of the “young” pups to one of the oldest at 32. (By the way, to be fair to Clark I do need to concede that despite my ongoing hatred of him, he actually did very well in 2019, fingers crossed that wasn’t just some fluke side effect of his car accident). LaBatte is the old guy at 34 but I think a full year off might do him a ton of good. He probably hasn’t been 100% in years (resting just enough to get back in the game despite mounting nagging injuries). Also a potentially shortened season certainly favours and old man like him

There’s an outside chance we could go 4 Canadian OL now that we have Boyko and Johnson but I think its more likely (and smarter) to keep with American tackles since we have 2 good ones (also given that we signed 6 import OL I have a feeling we plan of needing more than one throughout the year). I think Cofield has been under the radar good for a while now and Vaughn took some big steps forward in 2019. I had assumed that Schram and Riley would be our 6^th and 7^th OL but Boyko suddenly makes this a competition to watch (and a good problem to have).

I don’t see anyone unseating Cofield/Vaughn amongst the Americans but the sheer volume we have signed tells me we are interested in putting that theory to the test. We have brought in a ton of size… note one of them under 6’5. And some impressive resumes in there: Garcia was 3^rd round pick in 2017, Henderson has 29 NFL starts over 4 years, Kouandjio was a 3 year starter at Alabama and a 2^nd round pick in 2014. Not saying any of them will amount to anything but on paper O’Day seems to be bringing in some quality.

Prophet’s Player to Watch: Seantrel Henderson. This one is the most intriguing for me. He’s a mountain of a man at 6’7, 350 lbs, has significant starting time in the NFL and is only 29. Now the cynic in me would say that with those measurables there is likely a reason he’s not in the NFL anymore but on the off chance dude still has game I think he’s worth a look.

Wild Possibility (something that may not be likely to happen but is not outside the realm of possibility): Hear me out. In any given season, your high priced, older vets are always facing a bit of risk that someone younger and cheaper shows up in camp. At 34, LaBatte has a ton of hard miles on him. And while no one is making big coin in the Covid times, I would imagine he’s up there in terms of OL pay. The arrival of Johnson and Boyko suddenly create a scenario where we could go younger and cheaper at guard if we wanted. That would of course leave Dan Clark as the veteran leader of a very young group and that scares the hell out of me (despite him making me not hate him for once in 2019) but for the first time in a long time I don’t think LaBatte will be an unquestioned starter coming into the season.