The Ottawa Redblacks acquired the rights to Canadian defensive lineman Luiji Vilain from the Toronto Argonauts on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Ottawa also picked up a 2026 fourth-round pick (No. 31 overall) in the CFL draft in the deal. Toronto acquired a 2026 pick (No. 23 overall) and a conditional 2027 third-round selection.<\/p>\n
Vilain, a 28-year-old Ottawa native, played five games over two NFL seasons with the Minnesota Vikings (2022-23) and Carolina Panthers (2023), registering four total tackles.<\/p>\n
He also spent time with the Cleveland Browns (2024) and Dallas Cowboys (2024-25).<\/p>\n
Toronto selected the six-foot-four, 250-pound Vilain in the third round (No. 25 overall) of the 2021 CFL draft. He finished his NCAA career at Wake Forest in 2021 with 34 tackles (10 for loss), a team-leading nine sacks, two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery.<\/p>\n
Vilain began at Michigan, appearing in 12 games over two seasons (2019-20) with 11 tackles (one for loss) and a forced fumble.<\/p>\n
“Any time you have the opportunity to add a player of this calibre, it\u2019s something you jump at,\u201d said Ryan Dinwiddie, Ottawa’s head coach and general manager. “Luiji is a high-level talent who fits the identity we want to build on the field.<\/p>\n
“On top of that, him being a national player who can perform at a high level adds valuable flexibility to our roster.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ottawa Redblacks acquired the rights to Canadian defensive lineman Luiji Vilain from the Toronto Argonauts on Tuesday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-619258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cfl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-football-league","11":"tag-canadianfootballleague","12":"tag-cfl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}