MontrealAlouettes.com
Since the start of the new millennium, the Montreal Alouettes have drafted more prospects than any other club in the CFL with 101.
We caught up with the architect behind those picks, Alouettes GM Jim Popp, in his draft day war room in North Carolina to find out how he prepares for the draft, get the low down on this year’s draft strategy, and find out what makes him tick — and pick.
How have you and your staff prepared for today’s draft?
The preparations start a year ahead of time. At this time a year ago we were already looking at players for the 2014 Draft. Obviously in the Fall, we’re going to CIS games and practices, and then in March we get into the regional and national combines, where we get a chance to evaluate the players again and interview them to see if they really fit with our club. Throughout all of that, we’re also watching game tape and video to help us narrow the field down from the 900+ eligible names to about 50 or 70 players heading into the draft.
READ: ALOUETTES HOLD EIGHT PICKS IN 2014 CFL CANADIAN DRAFT »
Finally, this past week we’ve — seven of us here in North Carolina — been holding daily meetings to evaluate and grade our prospects thoroughly one last time before heading into draft day.
Can you tell us a bit about your draft day ‘war room’ set-up?
Every year we bunker-in somewhere and try to avoid any distractions. We don’t want to be bothered with constant phone calls or by people walking in on us to see what we’re doing so we usually seclude ourselves away in a hotel somewhere far from the office — this year we’re in Charlotte, NC — watching film non-stop as we prepare our final list from around 7:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. for at least a week straight.
27 hours until the 2014 CFL Draft. The War Room in action. pic.twitter.com/aoRKwfprHc
— Jim Popp (@PoppJim) May 12, 2014
What’s your strategy heading into today’s draft? Drafting for the future or the present? Drafting for a specific position or the best athlete available?
We try to always plan for the future, foreseeing what’s probably going to happen and preparing for it years ahead of time versus reacting in the moment. Obviously you can’t predict the future all of the time — there’s guys you expect to retire and then there are guys who decide to stop playing football out of the blue while you are still developing them, so that can set you back. But guys like Flory — or Cahoon from a couple of years ago — at a certain point in their careers you begin expecting them to retire, so we start preparing for that well in advance.
Heading into the draft, we don’t draft players expecting to start them. We draft players to groom them, whether they’re on the field that year, or in three years before they’re playing consistently. That’s always been our philosophy, along with selecting the best players available. Needs can trump talent however, because sometimes a guy might not be rated as high as someone else, but you’ll drop down your draft list and pick him because you have a real need to fill, positionally. Not having the first-overall pick also affects our strategy, since we don’t know who the other teams will go with before us, making us adjust our own strategy accordingly once those picks come in.
Last year’s draft class was impressive, with a number of players immediately making an impact on the active roster coming out of college — notably linebacker Mike Edem. Is there any pressure on your part to follow-up on 2013?
People were impressed last year because of the number of guys we drafted who ended up playing for us — and excelling — in their first year. Most of the time though, you can’t really evaluate or rate a draft class until a couple of years down the road when you look back at who really came out of that draft for you. Tomorrow after the draft, I think everyone will tell you they had a good draft because at the end of the day they drafted players that they wanted. Those picks may not always work out — be it due to injury, a wrong fit, personal factors and so on — and that’s something you generally won’t know without time.
Last year we knew we had something special and happened to play a lot of the guys — so sure it was a good draft — but we’re always working hard trying to find the best players, so what happened last year doesn’t affect us heading into today.
How about last week’s NFL Draft? Does that potentially affect your draft list?
Yes, the NFL Draft will affect our draft. Duvernay-Tardif being drafted by the Chiefs will push him down the draft lists since teams know it could be awhile before they see him — or maybe never see him, even if they do draft him. [David] Foucault’s gone to a NFL mini-camp with the Panthers as an undrafted rookie though, so that could be a different story. But if teams want to make sure that they’re going to have their guy in time for the start of training camp this June, then they’re going to end up picking players without any current NFL ties. So it will affect the draft somehow, sure, but by how much and in what rounds is something that we won’t know until it gets going.
