Offseason snooze!
Super Bowl pick; final notes on Senior Bowl, pre-CFL Combine
Welcome to one of the more dead times of the college football offseason.
Pressure Package newsletter 🍁🏈🎓 | This is Alex McComb’s Canadian college football newsletter. Sign up below to receive Pressure Package in your inbox on Friday mornings.
Barring any significant news, Pressure Package will pause weekly newsletters until March 7 — a week after the Feb. 28 CFL Invitational Combine. With this being a dead time of the offseason, it’s the right time to hit the snooze button.
So, here are some final headlines from the last week.
Back north: U Sports offseason headlines 🍁
Laurier Golden Hawks quarterback Taylor Elgersma finished his Senior Bowl week with a strong showing in the showcase game. His 43-yard toss straight into Illinois wide receiver Pat Bryant’s breadbasket was the longest completed pass thrown at least 20 yards. The Senior Bowl’s lone Canadian had the most yards per completion (14.3) and the second-most yards per attempt (8.1) among all QBs with multiple completions.
(Video: NFL Network)
I was on Canadian Football Perspective’s show this week to talk Elgersma’s Senior Bowl and CFL Combine names and sleepers. The show will be published on YouTube and social media soon.
Follow me on social media to get more in-depth insights on Canadian CFBers:
Heading south ✈️
Unfortunately, there isn’t much news on our Canadian exports — no tariffs on those guys after 30 days, mind you — playing in the NCAA.
But we DO have one of our own playing in the Super Bowl this weekend! Philadelphia Eagles safety Sydney Brown, who hails from London, Ont., will be the only Canadian representation in the big game. Sydney’s twin brother, Chase, is the starting running back for the Cincinnati Bengals. Both played for London South Collegiate before moving to Bradenton, Florida to finish their high school football careers. Chase originally went to Western Michigan and Sydney went to Illinois, but eventually, Chase transferred to be with his brother on the Fighting Illinis. They were drafted in 2023 — Sydney in the third round and Chase in the fifth.
My Super Bowl pick: Eagles beat the Chiefs 42-41. I’m making the bet that Eagles kicker, Jake Elliott, will get his shot to be Philly’s new Rocky. Final drive of the game, the Eagles are down, 41-39, and Elliott gets to be the hero after what was a milquetoast season from the specialist. No threepeat. No refs celebrating. No red confetti. It’s February 2018 again, and the underdog finishes his bone.
ICYMI: Read last week’s 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.