Elic Ayomanor draws eyeballs with speed, explosion at NFL Combine
11 CFL Invitational Combine standouts move on to national combine
Welcome to combine season!
Pressure Package newsletter 🍁🏈🎓 | This is Alex McComb’s Canadian college football newsletter. Sign up below to receive Pressure Package in your inbox.
After a month-long hiatus, Pressure Package is back for a few weeks. There won’t be a newsletter next week, but the following week, I’ll have one previewing the CFL Combine on March 21 — the first day of the event — and the week after that to recap what happened.
But let’s start with news out of last week’s NFL Combine and our favourite Stanford Cardinal wide receiver.
Heading south ✈️
Stanford WR Elic Ayomanor clocked a 4.44-second 40-yard dash at last weekend’s NFL Combine, good enough for fourth-fastest among receivers taller than six feet and over 200 pounds. Though the Medicine Hat, Alta., native should be happy with his 40 time, he struggled on acceleration, running a 1.58-second 10-yard split — the first 10 yards of the 40 — which was last among receivers. As for hops, the lone Canadian competing at the NFL Combine was a top-10 WR in both jump tests, logging a 38.5-inch vertical jump (No. 7) and a 10-foot-7 broad jump (No. 8). Ayomanor is expected to hear his name called by the end of the second round of this year’s NFL Draft, with some projections having him go as early as a late first-round pick.
(Video: @NFL/X)
(Video: @StanfordFball/X)
Indiana Hoosiers quarterback Kurtis Rourke was also at the combine but didn’t compete in any drills. The Oakville, Ont., product focused on interviews with teams while recovering from ACL surgery in January.
Follow me on social media to get more in-depth insights on Canadian CFBers:
Back north 🍁
Three of my former Western Mustangs teammates took on big roles on two U Sports teams this week. Sean Jamieson, a former Western offensive lineman, announced on LinkedIn this past weekend that he’s become the Mustangs’ new director of football operations. On Monday, news broke that Myles Manalo and Jean-Gabriel Poulin, former Western linebackers on the 2017 Vanier Cup team, were hired as coaches. Manalo will be returning to Western to be the Mustangs’ new linebackers coach and special teams coordinator. He will be one of three Western coaches who have played for the Mustangs in the last 10 years — assistant QB coach Ben Schmidt and WR coach Wes Robinson are the other two. Poulin will join fellow former Mustang Stevenson Bone’s coaching staff as the Alberta Golden Bears’ defensive coordinator. Poulin and Bone were teammates from 2014 to 2017.
Eleven of the over 70 players who competed at last Friday’s CFL Invitational Combine were good enough to get the nod for the national combine, which is taking place in Regina from March 21-23:
Maliek Cote-Azore, Laurier Golden Hawks defensive back
Félix Despins, Concordia Stingers OL
Keagan Hall, McMaster Marauders QB
Hakeem Harris, Davenport WR
Ronan Horrall, UBC Thunderbirds DB
Liam Hoskins, Windsor Lancers linebacker
Gabriel Lessard, Montreal Carabins LB
Chisanem Nsitem, Laurier DL
Opemipo Oshinubi, Alberta running back
Ethan Pyle, Guelph Gryphons OL
Jackson Tachinski, Manitoba Bisons QB
Among the 11 heading to Saskatchewan in two weeks, Cote-Azore had the best testing day, finishing in the top five in five of the six categories:
Broad jump: 10-foot-8 1/8 (No. 1)
Vertical jump: 38.5” (tied for No. 1)
40-yard dash: 4.55 seconds (No. 2)
Three-cone: 6.65 seconds (No. 2)
Short shuttle: 4.27 seconds (tied for No. 5)
Two standouts who won’t have the opportunity to compete at the CFL Combine were Toronto Varsity Blues RB Luka Stoikos and Sherbrooke Vert et Or OL Anthony Horth. Unless these two had poor showings in the on-field drills — which were not live-streamed, so I couldn’t observe — they were snubbed:
Stoikos had the best testing day when combining for strength, speed and explosiveness, ranking in the top 10 in the bench press, 40, and broad jump. His 27 reps of the 225-pound bench press was the most among skill-position players and fifth overall at the invitational. Stoikos’ 4.59-second 40 was tied for third-best, and his 10-foot-2 broad jump was seventh. The hometown RB is a dual-sport athlete, also competing on the Varsity Blues track and field team in multiple athletic events.
Unlike Stoikos, Horth made headlines for just one category, but often the “sexiest” among big-man tests: his bench. The Sherbrooke OL pumped out 41 reps — the most of the day — tying for second in CFL Combine history.
(Video: @CFL/X)
ICYMI: Read the Senior Bowl edition of the Pressure Package newsletter
Student shout-outs 📢
I got my start in multimedia storytelling and sports journalism at a student newspaper. It’s important for me to spread the love to those student journos finding new leads on campus fields across the country, just like I did a short time ago.
OUA
The Western Gazette (Western)
*My old stomping grounds!
The Cord (Laurier)
Imprint (Waterloo)
The Silhouette (McMaster)
The Varsity (Toronto)
Excalibur (York)
The Queen’s Journal (Queen’s)
The Fulcrum (Ottawa)
The Charlatan (Carleton)
Canada West
The Ubyssey (UBC)
The Gateway (Alberta)
The Gauntlet (Calgary)
The Sheaf (Saskatchewan)
The Manitoban (Manitoba)
RSEQ
Impact Campus (Laval)
*Covered Rouge et Or football in the Vanier Cup
Quartier Libre (Montreal)
Concordia
The McGill Tribune (McGill)
Le Collectif (Sherbrooke)
AUS
The Xaverian Weekly (StFX)
The Campus (Bishop’s)
The Athenaeum (Acadia)
The SMU Journal (Saint Mary’s)
More Canadian college football coverage
The media covers U Sports football at a level not seen since theScore’s former television program “University Rush” covered Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS, the former name for U Sports) football until the early 2010s.