The curious case of the 2009 CFL draft

The Tiger-Cats' trade of Canadian fullback Darcy Brown to Edmonton for import defensive back Ricardo Colclough and a sixth-round pick was interesting on its own, but Drew Edwards had an even more fascinating tidbit in his story on the deal. Many of those who follow the CFL draft probably remember that Brown was taken sixth overall in 2009, and that the pick was criticized as a reach by TSN draft guru Duane Forde. What's more surprising is Edwards' comment that just one player selected after Brown that year, Calgary safety Eric Fraser (8th overall), is currently a regular starter in the CFL. That looks to be right (well, 14th-overall pick Martin Bédard's starting as a long-snapper for the Alouettes, but that's more of a special-teams role than a positional starter's role), and that's bizarre; analysis of the surrounding years shows plenty of starters chosen after the sixth-overall pick, so 2009's a significant anomaly here. What exactly happened that year to produce such a low amount of starters?

There are a few factors frequently cited in discussions of the Canadian draft, but none of them seem to completely explain 2009. Yes, players traditionally take a while to develop from picks to CFL starters, but there are plenty of guys chosen later than sixth overall the following year who have already locked down starting jobs. A few examples of players selected after sixth in 2010 who hold starting spots on this week's depth charts include B.C. receiver Shawn Gore (10th), Edmonton kicker/punter Grant Shaw (11th, but we'll see how long he keeps all aspects of his job), Calgary offensive tackle J'Michael Deane (21st), B.C. receiver Akeem Foster (25th), Hamilton defensive back Chris Rwabukamba (27th), B.C. safety Cauchy Muamba (34th) and Winnipeg kicker Justin Palardy (36th). That's not a comprehensive list, and this draft's recent enough that guys who haven't yet locked down starting spots may still earn them over time (special-teams aces Marc-Olivier Brouillette of Montreal and Corbin Sharun of Edmonton stand out as players who might make that jump). It's just quite notable that despite it only taking place just over two years ago, the 2010 draft's already produced so many more starters.

Right, well, is that due to the extra focus teams are putting on the draft, the extra resources they're devoting to it, the rising quality of CIS play and the like? Partly, sure. The amount of guys from this year's draft class alone who are already making an impact is remarkable, especially considering how many top picks went back to CIS, and that does suggest that we might be seeing a trend towards more talented players being available in the draft, the draft being deeper overall and teams making better use of their picks. However, that doesn't explain why previous years were substantially better than 2009 in terms of producing starters. Consider 2008: just a few of the many starters picked after slot #6 (which Winnipeg used on current star Saskatchewan guard Brendon LaBatte, incidentally) in that draft include Shea Emry, Samuel Giguère, Rolly Lumbala, Greg Wojt, Daryl Stephenson and Luc Brodeur-Jourdain (the very last pick in that draft, who's proven to be Mr. Anything-But-Irrelevant as the Alouettes' starting centre). There are a few less post-sixth-pick players who are still starting if you go back to 2007 or 2006, but both years still produced substantially more starters after the sixth pick than 2009, which adds to the sense that something weird happened that year.

That's not to say there aren't capable players who came out of the 2009 draft. Bédard, Ryan Hinds, Tristan Black and others have made impacts on special teams, as positional backups and even as positional starters at times, and they might earn starting spots down the road to make this anomaly less significant. Kent Ridley mentioned that injuries have played a role too, and that's fair. There are plenty of impressive special-teams players and positional backups who came out of the surrounding drafts, too, though, and there have been plenty of promising players from other drafts who had injuries derail their career, so it's not like 2009 will be level with those even if everything works out for a few of these guys. Maybe that draft was just a combination of factors; less resources in scouting than the present day making it more difficult to identify top talent, strong Canadian content taken in the previous drafts preventing some of these players from getting a chance to start, injuries taking down impressive guys, and/or a shallower talent pool than we've seen in other years. We may never know exactly what went wrong in 2009, but it still stands in stark contrast to every other recent draft.