'We're always open': Riders' GM says trading first round pick not off the table

The Canadian Football League (CFL) Draft is just hours away and on Monday Saskatchewan Roughriders vice president of football operations and general manager, Jeremy O’Day gave his thoughts ahead of the big event.

“Definitely as a whole I would say it’s a strong draft class. I just think that there’s another round of good players that we’ve had in the last couple of years. I don’t know the reason for that but that’s changing a lot of NFL opportunities,” O’Day said.

He went on to explain how more Canadians are heading south of the border. It comes as four were drafted last week in the NFL Draft and more have signed undrafted free agent agreements. O’Day feels there’s probably around 15 guys who will explore NFL opportunities but said it does not change the way they approach the CFL draft.

“We do a pre-NFL and post-NFL mock draft and we kind of try and project where these players are going to go in the NFL Draft. It’s kind of neat to see how we did, and how accurate we were. I would say that there’s more guys than we thought, but it hasn’t changed too much [our strategy] because we were fairly accurate with where guys were projected to go,” O’Day said.

As of right now the Riders hold the third overall pick and said a trade for their pick was not completely off the table.

“I don’t know if there’s anything that’s evident that we’re looking to trade that spot, but we’re always open to having those discussions,” O’Day said

With two teams currently sitting with picks ahead of them, O’Day said picking third overall means being prepared to loose your first choice.

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“You have to have three guys just in case your top guys go one and two. After that you really have to kind of focus in on your top,” O’Day shared.

It will also be head coach, Corey Mace’s, first CFL draft since taking on the new role with the Riders.

“He’s really involved and probably doing more evaluations than he’s used to. It’s nice for him to look at a draft from a whole perspective instead of just the defensive side. We’ve asked our head coach to evaluate a lot of players and to give his draft scores to us because we want him to be part of the evaluation,” O’Day said.

O’Day was also quick to shut down any thoughts on specific position groups they may look to target, but did opt to chat about their current roster and where players could come in and steal a starter spot.

“I think we were pretty aggressive in free agency. We changed the roster around quite a bit. We feel pretty good with where we’re at but we haven’t played a game yet and obviously haven’t gone through training camp,” he said.

“There’s going to be some position groups that are open for competition. If you look at our offence, we’re going to have a spot or twin in the receiving corps. Whether that’s going to be an American or Canadian. Left tackle is one that’s going to be interesting to see,” O’Day added.

O’Day also said the Canadian ratio on the offensive line and at receiver are nowhere near being sorted out.

The CFL Draft will get underway at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. The first two rounds will be broadcast on TSN.