Monday, November 24, 2008

Leaving the rest of the league in his Wake

B.C. Lions rush end Cameron Wake is the one CFL player likely to get interest from the other "FL" this winter. The operative phrase here? "Is the one."
The way we hear it, the list of NFL prospects might start, and end, with B.C. Lions DE Cameron Wake, who could draw interest from clubs looking to bolster their pass rush. The 6-3, 241-pound Wake, who played collegiately at Penn State, had 23 sacks this season, 12 more than any other player, and was voted the league's top defensive player for a second consecutive year. Wake, who’s entering his option year, also notched 65 tackles and forced five fumbles, a league high.

Wake, who will be 27 in January, is likely to be a 3-4 outside linebacker or pass-rush specialist in the NFL, according to the personnel man interviewed by PFW.
Start, and end? One does wonder what that says about the CFL as a developmental league.

Did anyone else feel that the Grey Cup was a lousy game?

Related:
Wake leads list of CFL stars who could land in the NFL in '09 (Mike Wilkening, Pro Football Weekly)

3 comments:

Andrew Bucholtz said...

I thought it was a pretty good game, actually. Wake is an amazing player, and I'll be very sad to see him go, but he could be something special in the NFL. There's others that could get a look, though; they just don't get as much hype.

Anonymous said...

I disagree. It was flat and uninspiring and made a crowd of 66,000 people sound like 1,400 at an Expos game in 2003. That crowd was ready to go off and there was nothing. Calgary played solidly.

Anonymous said...

Canadian and American football are different games. Less of a break between plays and smaller rosters in Canada allow players to thrive in our game who wouldn't do as well in American football. The same is true of the US game - some of the differences allow a type of player to excel down there who couldn't handle 20-second clock and fewer backups. It would be like expecting a successful field lacrosse player to thrive in box lacrosse, which doesn't happen often. The lacrosse community, however, acknowledges the difference between the two games without putting one game on a pedestal.

I thought the Grey Cup was pretty good. Both teams played solid defence. It wasn't 1989, but it was still time well spent.

I noticed this on Pierre Lebrun's ESPN blog:
"We're in Montreal for Patrick Roy's big weekend, but is it really the biggest game in town? The Grey Cup, the CFL's championship game, between the host Alouettes and visiting Calgary Stampeders, goes down here Sunday evening. (Did I hear a giggle from my American friends?)"

I know a lot of Americans, and I've never heard one of them crap on our game. It's not like they follow it closely, but when they get a chance to watch it, they love it - the backfield motion, the bigger fields, the more aggressive offences. All of the criticism of our football is Canadian in origin. I don't get it. Mind you, I got over self-loathing in about grade ten.

Maybe Pierre's lined up at the buffet table every Monday around 10:00 PM, forcing him to miss Chris Berman's CFL love during the halftime of MNF?