The Saskatchewan Roughriders continued to bolster their roster with NFL experience on Thursday with the signing of defensive back Juju Hughes.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders continued to bolster their roster with NFL experience on Thursday with the signing of defensive back JuJu Hughes. Hughes spent parts of three seasons with the Los Angele Rams, Detroit Lions and Arizona Cardinals, where he appeared in 26 games.
Despite his experience, Riders’ analyst Luc Mullinder says that Rider Nation shouldn’t get caught up in his resume.
“I don’t weigh a lot on NFL experience. There’s been a ton of guys who have come here from the NFL and flamed out immediately. What I look at is here’s a guy that can retain a ton of information at training camp right off the bat. He’s been at the pro level, and he’s seen pro playbooks, defensive playbooks. He’s probably going to be able to retain that information more easily than, let’s say, somebody coming out of college. (He is) fundamentally sound. He might be a little bit better fundamentally than some of the guys in training camp. You can’t say he was awesome in man coverage in the NFL. It’s completely different rules, right? Just because you can press coverage in the NFL doesn’t mean you’re going to be any good if a guy’s running full speed at you on a waggle. It’s two different things.”
“When Crezdon Butler came from the NFL, I thought the same thing. Crezdon Butler was a great one-on-one tackler. And I felt like one of the traits that he brought from the NFL was that fundamental ability to be a tackler. When he first got with Saskatchewan, who knows what type of reputation he had? If you have NFL experience, great, but for me. There’s a lot of football IQ there for us to soak up. You know what I mean? It’s not necessarily about how it’s going to translate on the field.”
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