Friday Morning Sentimonies: 2022 Draft Class

After spending a couple months extremely sporadically posting, I’m going the opposite direction and posting twice in the same week. Don’t worry I’m sure I’ll compensate at some point by missing a Monday post. But the season is coming quick and so its time to get serious about this… I mean as serious as a dude in a robe who uses words like sentimonies can get.

The draft went down Thursday both the real one and the Global draft. I won’t say too much about the Global one, other than to say our first round pick LB Jordan Genmark Heath played at Notre Dame and UCLA and has been invited to camp with the KC Chiefs. We might actually me making progress in terms of quality from the glorified paperweight of a Mexican OL we took in the first global draft. I will also give the Riders credit for drafting zero kickers. To be fair, we do have 2 already on the roster but we do appear to be trying. 

In terms of the actual draft, I was not enamoured with our early round strategy. Look, Sam Emilus is a great prospect. He was expected to be a top 4 pick and is one of the top WR in the draft. The issue is not with him, he is a good prospect. The issue is one of need. Our OL was awful last year and other than Mattland Riley, our depth is questionable there. Our D-line had many loses this offseason. We only really have Charbel Dabire there for Canadians. If you aren’t good in the trenches you won’t win, its that simple and we have needs there. Yet we went receiver. A position where we have Baker, McInnis, Picton and Harty. A position that at best will be the #4 target in our offense. Emilus is good but I’m not sure he was so good that we couldn’t chance missing on him.

Obviously anyone who passed on the likes or Clermont or Fantuz thinking they didn’t need a receiver would have the regrets. But here is a list of first round WRs in the last 10 years:

·        Shamawd Chambers,  Devon Bailey, Nic Demski, Brian Jones, Tevaugn Smith, Danny Vandervoot, Nate Behar, Mark Chapman, Justin McInnis, Hergy Mayala, Dejon Brissett

Given that maybe 3 of those are what I would consider impact WRs, the odds would lean towards Emilus not being the next Clermont or Fantuz.

Time will tell if O’Day knows better than me. He did rightly use his 2^nd and 3^rd round picks on OL. So that was good to see. Zach Fry can play tackle which is a plus. The book on him is great technique, lacking in strength. That’s something that can be developed easier than technique. Diego Altore Montoya (or as I will be saying ad nauseum this season: My name is Diego Montoyo, you sacked my quarterback, prepare to die) is the opposite, strong nasty, maybe not as refined technically. He can play any position on the line which is always a plus.

Rounds 4 -7 were all about potential special teamers: LB Tommy Bringi, B Tristan Fleury, DB Jayden Dalke and DB Zach Herzog. Hopefully one of them can develop into something. A few years back 5^th round pick Alex Chevrier became an excellent special teamer. Undrafted Jacob Dearborn managed to be a decent defensive player. So there’s a chance. Rounding out the draft class was Regina Ram WR Riley Boersma. He’s a longshot to make it out of camp, as any 8^th rounder would be.

So overall I think we had a good night. We didn’t pull a Chris Jones and use a pick on a guy with one college game to his name. We didn’t overreach for a player. We did build depth. I think we are still lacking quality Canadian defensive depth but it wasn’t a very deep draft defensively.