Bombers willing to look long-term in nurturing Reaves and Waggoner

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This article was published 17/06/2015 (3995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The easy thing would be to simply write them off with a dismissive wave of the hand. That’s how pro football works, where a quick-glance evaluation often ends with “Next.”

So if you happened to catch Jordan Reaves and Garrett Waggoner during one of their learning moments early during Winnipeg Blue Bombers training camp, the temptation might have been to cold-heartedly stroke their names from the depth chart. There’s plenty of talent out there, after all, and in a business where the next game is always the biggest game, there is seldom any big-picture planning beyond the current week on the calendar.

The Bombers, in that respect, are no different from any of their CFL rivals. Their final exhibition tilt is Friday at home, after which they’ll have to slice down their roster again and get ready for the regular-season opener eight days later.

Yet, every once in awhile — and more frequently than not, these days — these two Canadians do something that grabs attention and raises eyebrows. There is potential and upside in this duo. One is a kid from Florida who was declared a Canadian just last month and is cramming to pick up the nuances of the three-down game. The other is a former college basketball star, the son of a Bombers legend, and a 6-5 man-mountain whose last real football game — before he stepped onto the field in Toronto last week — was almost a decade ago.

“My last game before that was with the Crescentwood Grizzlies back in ’05 when I was 15,” said Reaves, whose dad, Willard, is in the club’s Hall of Fame, after practice Tuesday. “We played the Fort Garry Lions for the championship at the old stadium.

“That’s a l-o-o-o-o-n-g time between games.”

Yeah, you could say that.

At least Waggoner has been on the football field — he was parking cars as a restaurant valet for gas and food money this off-season — last playing at Dartmouth University. The Bombers surrendered a 2016 first-round draft pick to grab him in the CFL’s Supplemental Draft. All this after being declared a Canadian just last month because his father — former Ticat Hal Waggoner — was born in Burlington, Ont., in the 1950s.

“I feel like I’m adapting to the Canadian game well,” said Waggoner. “At first the field definitely felt different. The drops are different. A guy gets leverage on you and then is outside and it’s like, ‘Wow… that sideline is far.’ But it’s business as usual now. This is the football field. This is my home. I don’t even think about that anymore.

“(The pre-season game) Friday will be a job interview. Nothing lives up to live bullets. Being out here on the field and on game day… you get an education real quick being out there doing it.”

Waggoner figures to be a roster player when the season starts, backing up at linebacker where the Bombers plan to start a Canadian, and carving out a spot on special teams.

Reaves is a different story. A former CIS basketball star at Brandon University, the Bombers were intrigued by his skill set when they signed him this April.

He looked oh-so-raw at their mini-camp in Florida, but with every session at training camp is picking up more and more.

“It’s been amazing, from mini-camp in Florida until now, how much he’s improved,” said Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea. “There’s still a lot to go, obviously, for anybody who hasn’t played football for that number of years. But we’re extremely pleased with his improvement.

“If you chart-plot that graph, it’s pretty impressive. I still don’t know where that lands us at the end…

“He gets the part that he’s behind, so he takes good notes, he asks the right questions, he does the film study, he pays attention, he gets his playbook. Now, applying it on the field with the nuances of a professional receiver is what he’s gained leaps and bounds at.”

Together these two — the “new” Canadian and the project Canadian — have emerged as two of the more intriguing storylines of camp. What happens next? They’re as eager to find out as anyone.

“I had the time of my life out there last week in Toronto,” said Reaves. “I don’t think I stopped smiling the whole time. Just to play again and get the atmosphere of professional football was amazing.

“I know I’ve been called a “project” and, absolutely, that fits. I mean, I haven’t been on the field for 10 years and I missed a big stage of the football learning curve. But I feel like I’m catching up every day and I don’t feel like I’m falling too far behind.

“Day by day this project’s getting better.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @WFPEdTait