Edmonton Elks Thread

[jerrym]

Mike Reilly discusses the Eskimos' mini-camp, which he considers their best ever, below.

“I think it was a combination of things, where we had our entire team there,” Reilly, the league’s reigning Most Outstanding Player, said on the phone from his home in Seattle.
“The other mini-camps that I’d been a part of it was usually the quarterbacks are the only veterans and the rest are free-agent guys.
“For us at this camp it was basically like training camp. We showed up, we had a couple hours of install the first night and we hit the ground running on the field and the guys were going full-speed because they’d been in the system already and knew what was expected. That was part of what I felt was great about camp, was that it was really just an extension of training camp.”
The other half of the best-mini-camp-ever equation ties into the biggest questions that surround the Esks as they head into their actual training camp on May 20.
“I think the part that made me really happy about how the mini-camp played out was that our team has gone through a bit of transition,” Reilly said. “We’ve gotten a lot younger in certain areas of our team, which is necessary if you want to continue to be a championship-calibre team, but you never really know for certain how that’s going to pan out until those young guys get out there and play.” ...

“I felt like the guys that were now slotted in as starters that previously in their careers, because of their youth, were backups and don’t have a lot of experience, they came in and you wouldn’t have been able to tell that this was their first time lining up as a starter. They really played as if they were veterans and I think that bodes really well for what our team will be able to accomplish this year.” ...


“When you have a guy like Odell or Adarius, you lose more than just their on-field production when they’re no longer with your team,” Reilly said. “You lose that locker room presence, that energy. Those are guys that their particular position groups have looked to them to follow their lead and they did a great job for us, obviously. You have to make sure you can replace all of the intangibles that they brought to the team.” ...


“I think our receiving crew is the strongest that I’ve seen it since I’ve been here, in the sense of all the way across the board. Every time that we lined up against the first group, all five guys at the wide receiver position are a weapon that we can use at any point in time. There’s really no weak link and I think that’s kind of going to be our M.O. We’re going to be distributing the ball pretty evenly across the board and that’s exciting for our guys. The only way that’s possible is if they’re all comfortable and ready to go out and perform every route in our playbook and they are.”

https://www.cfl.ca/2018/04/28/oleary...-plenty-boxes/