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<\/p>\nJaiden Woodbey is a walking, talking advertisement for diligence, determination and an unwavering faith in oneself.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s that foundation \u2014 coupled with his unique skillset \u2014 which makes him a growing tour de force in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defence.<\/p>\n
That in itself makes for a heckuva story, for not long ago the 26-year-old product of Fontana, CA was playing indoor football with the Massachusetts Pirates after being one of the final cuts of the Los Angeles Rams in 2023. But the phone wasn\u2019t buzzing to life with offers, so he got to work to chase down any opportunity.<\/p>\n
Woodbey reached out to every Canadian Football League team\u2019s coaches and GMs via e-mails, texts and even popping up on LinkedIn profiles asking for a look. And so, to have that finally come to fruition with the Blue Bombers isn\u2019t just rewarding, it\u2019s priceless.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMy mom was very, very helpful for this, too,\u201d Woodbey told bluebombers.com after practice on Friday. \u201cShe reached out to CFL agents for me, they reached back to her and said, \u2018He\u2019s not on a team yet?\u2019 I ended up meeting with eight CFL agents and they all said the same thing: \u2018We thought you were on a practice squad in the NFL.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShoutout to my agent now, Tom Casagrande. I\u2019m grateful to him. He told me he\u2019d try his best to get me something and three days later he had teams lined up and, thankfully, Winnipeg was one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodbey\u2019s first year here wasn\u2019t all sunshine and rainbows, though. He spent most of the summer on the practice squad before making his CFL debut in a home win over Hamilton in September. But by season\u2019s end he was an emerging presence in Winnipeg\u2019s defence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWood\u2019s got some physical traits that say linebacker\/moving around the box player,\u201d said Blue Bombers head coach Mike O\u2019Shea. \u201cBut he\u2019s got feet and some vision and open-field tackling ability that says DB, so offences would have to account for him in a variety of different ways which is what is part of the magic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interesting sidebar story to Woodbey\u2019s rookie CFL campaign \u2014 he spent the year living with safety Cam Allen and cornerback\/returner Trey Vaval, each of them going through their own struggles to find a place in Winnipeg\u2019s lineup before taking turns making an impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are my guys. We call ourselves \u2018The Dawg Pound,’\u201d Woodbey explained. \u201cWe came here for our first year together and went through all the ups and downs. The first few weeks being on P-squad, I knew it was professional ball, but I just wanted to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen seeing my roommate (Vaval) score touchdowns, it felt like I was on the field sometimes. That was so fun and to be able to see him win those awards at the end of the year \u2014 amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
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That\u2019s a word Woodbey used a lot in our conversation \u2014 \u2018amazing\u2019 \u2014 and there is still an element of pure joy in his every moment on the field. Again, when you chase this for as long and as diligently as he did, the reward means everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing right now,\u201d Woodbey said, his face lighting up with a wide grin again. \u201cI\u2019m playing everything. Safety, backer, inside backer\u2026 everything. They trust me. It is a bit of anomaly to have a 230-pound pound player who can do a bit of everything. You think, \u2018This is a big guy\u2026 oh wait, he\u2019s running with the receiver. Oh wait, he\u2019s setting the edge. He\u2019s dropping into the zone. He\u2019s doing this and doing that.\u2019 To me, that\u2019s the true definition of a versatile player.<\/p>\n
\u201cI give credit to JY (Jordan Younger, defensive coordinator) to be able to showcase that talent. We have guys like that on this defence, guys like Michael Griffin \u2014 who is basically the same body type as me \u2014 and it allows our defence to maybe confuse offences sometimes. It can be high risk\/high reward, but if you put in the work with this defence ,you know you\u2019ll be able to do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know what\u2019s going on, now it\u2019s just a matter of learning the back end of stuff. That\u2019s the next step for my game \u2014 making sure I know what is happening with the front seven and with the back end.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just amazing to be able to play football again. My comfortability right now is through the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jaiden Woodbey is a walking, talking advertisement for diligence, determination and an unwavering faith in oneself. And it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,82],"class_list":["post-673091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673091","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=673091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}