Theo Benedet may be making his professional football journey a year later than many people expected, but don’t accuse him of hiding from the competition.
The University of British Columbia offensive lineman stunned scouts when he elected to defer his draft year last season, taking himself out of the running as the potential top pick in the 2023 CFL Draft and holding off interested NFL teams. A year later, the pro football world looks to be even more his oyster and he’s ready to make the leap, but still bristles at the suggestion that he avoided testing himself against the best.
“Obviously people wondered about my decision and it didn’t really bother me too much, but that was the one thing that did,” Benedet acknowledged in an interview with 3DownNation earlier this month.
“When people took it as me not wanting the competition from a higher level, that’s completely opposite to who I am as a player. I think if you asked my coaches and teammates at UBC, they’d tell you that.”
Benedet is hardly the first Canadian player to declare his intention to return to school to finish his degree. In the modern college football world of COVID eligibility, transfer portal, and NIL money, he’s got plenty of company south of the border as well. What set his decision apart was the magnitude of his status as a prospect and the fact that he elected to stay at home in U Sports, off the beaten path for NFL scouts.
Coming off a season in which he won the J.P. Metras Trophy as Canada’s top collegiate lineman, multiple NCAA programs came sniffing around to see if the North Vancouver native might transfer for his final year of eligibility. Hawaii, Arizona State, Utah, and Buffalo were among the programs that reached out, along with a couple from the great state of Texas, but Benedet rejected them all out of hand.
“After speaking with [UBC head coach Blake Nill] and my family, it wasn’t something I was super interested in. I didn’t see the point,” he explained. “It was a risk in terms of if it didn’t go well then it would hurt my stock a lot. If I went down there and it did go well, it might help me a little bit but not enough that it would be worth leaving my teammates that were so important to me.”
“I felt that we had a chance to do something special and win a championship at UBC, which is something I really wanted.”
It wasn’t the first time that Benedet had opted for the Thunderbirds over NCAA interest. As an under-the-radar athlete coming out of Handsworth Secondary School — hardly a B.C. football powerhouse — he received a late recruiting push from a couple of U.S. programs, most notably Tulsa. Instead, he opted for the school where his mother has worked as a law professor since 2005, believing in Nill’s vision for him.
On both occasions, the choice to stay in Point Grey has paid off in spades. Over his five years with the program, the six-foot-six, 303-pound right tackle has developed into one of the best prospects to ever play the position in Canada. His surprise final season played out almost as well as he could have hoped, earning him a second straight J.P. Metras Trophy — the first time that feat has ever been achieved by an offensive lineman — and culminating with a berth in the 58th Vanier Cup.
Photo courtesy: James Paddle-Grant/Queen’s Gaels
Unfortunately, Benedet and his teammates fell just short of the championship that motivated him to return, losing 16-9 to the Montreal Carabins. Nevertheless, he still believes that the decision was the correct one.
“I don’t regret it at all,” Benedet insisted. “The game was tough but at the end of the day, we made a run and we were in a position to do it. We weren’t able to get it done in the end but I’m glad I went back.”
Of course, it helps that the extra year of university was never going to dissuade professional teams from looking in his direction. In fact, the interest in him seems to have matured like a fine cheese, drawing all the NFL mice out of the woodwork and up to Vancouver.
After he had already deferred his CFL Draft year, Benedet landed the lone U Sports invite to the prestigious East-West Shrine Bowl all-star game in 2023 — a 38-year tradition that has since been discontinued. Knowing full well that he intended to bow out of the NFL Draft unless the interest was overwhelming, he headed to Vegas to provide talent evaluators with a teaser of his skillset.
The results were impressive and he ended the game as the fifth-highest-graded offensive lineman according to Pro Football Focus. Benedet also tested off the charts in advanced movement analysis, becoming the only blocker to rate in the 75th percentile or above in all pass-set metrics. That left a serious impression on those in attendance and scouts from 13 different NFL teams made stops at UBC last year to further vet the small-school standout.
Initially, there was hope that the high level of interest would open up opportunities at an even more prestigious game, the Senior Bowl. However, new NFL rules allowing eligible underclassmen to participate in some all-star events dashed his hopes of that or a return to the Shrine. While there was no requirement for him to do so, Benedet went to Texas for the much smaller College Gridiron Showcase earlier this month for a chance to get in front of scouts once again and dominated the NCAA competition, earning interviews with dozens more NFL teams.
Though he lacks the reach or traditional bulk of an NFL tackle, Benedet’s athleticism could be considered elite on either side of the border. He comes from athletic bloodlines, with a paternal uncle who played centre on Western’s 1994 Vanier Cup team and a six-foot-five father who excelled as a competitive fencer at Queen’s. Though he never quite took to the épée, the son has those same dancing feet in addition to remarkable hip mobility, a fact he credits to the work of UBC strength coach Joe McCullum.
Still, there is a part of Benedet’s startling quickness and unusually low pad level that was developed out of necessity. Mostly a defensive end and tight end in high school, he was forced to convert to tackle full-time after arriving at UBC and started every game in his first year while weighing a paltry 230 pounds.
“I wasn’t very good, it was pretty ugly out there and as a team, we weren’t the best,” he recalled of that dreadful 2-6 season. “I think in a way it helped me having to play at that weight. You learn other ways to get people blocked other than just being stronger than them.”
“I’ve understood that I can’t just lean on guys and move them, so I have to be able to create leverage in other ways.”
The ensuing COVID-cancelled season allowed Benedet to bulk up to 275 pounds and he’s added weight every year since, but the lessons from that first year have stuck with him. They’ve been hard tested as well, as UBC’s defence has routinely pumped out high-calibre prospects to challenge him daily in practice, most recently Saskatchewan Roughriders’ first-round pick Lake Korte-Moore.
He’s had plenty of support on his own side of the ball though, working closely with fellow NFL prospect Giovanni Manu — a six-foot-eight, 350-pound behemoth whom he credits with supporting him mentally and challenging him physically throughout his UBC tenure. The highly-touted pair were rewarded for returning to school in 2023 with a chance to work under legendary CFL offensive line coach Dan Dorazio, someone that Benedet believes has vastly refined his game.
“He’s one of a kind. It was so game-changing for me in terms of not even just my playing ability but my whole perspective on football,” he raved. “What he was able to teach us about the game, I learned so much conceptually about football and I have so much more of a deeper understanding of what defences are doing. The wealth of knowledge that he has, every meeting we’re learning something new.”
Courtesy: Universite de Montreal/James Hajjar
Though he was recently named the second-ranked prospect in the 2024 CFL Draft, it now seems like a foregone conclusion that Benedet will be selected much lower for incredibly positive reasons. He appears to be a virtual lock to sign an NFL contract and has a legitimate chance to become the first U Sports prospect selected in the NFL Draft since Manitoba’s David Onyemata was taken in the fourth round in 2016.
Though he has been invited to the CFL Combine in March, Benedet won’t commit to participating fully. He will spend the pre-draft process in Tennessee working with trainer Charlie Petrone, who helped prepare Canadian prospects Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, Antony Auclair, Mathieu Betts and Marc-Antoine Dequoy for NFL opportunities. That training will culminate in a pro day workout, either his own at UBC or possibly in conjunction with the University of Washington.
Though he played coy with testing expectations, Benedet believes he can run a sub-five second forty-yard dash to put himself amongst elite company for offensive linemen. He also thinks he’ll be able to improve on his numbers from the 2022 East-West Bowl — an annual all-star event for rising third-years in U Sports — where he broad jumped nine feet, five inches and vertical jumped 32. Both of those measurements would’ve landed in the top five at his position at last year’s NFL Combine.
If the two-time All-Canadian can back that up in front of scouts, NFL teams will have a hard time looking away. However, he refuses to diminish the opportunity that playing in the CFL would present if the four-down interest ever dries up.
Benedet grew up a B.C. Lions fan, first attending games at the temporary Empire Stadium, and counts linebackers Adam Bighill and Solomon Elimimian among his all-time favourite players. He still vividly remembers being snubbed for an autograph by former quarterback Casey Printers and doesn’t plan to give his childhood league the same cold shoulder.
“At the end of the day, I just want to play football,” Benedet said. “Obviously, there’s a financial incentive to coming down to the U.S. and it would be an honour to play in the NFL, but at the same time if it ends up the NFL opportunity doesn’t work out after training camp or something, I don’t want to be sitting on my couch.”
The 2024 NFL Draft will take place from April 25 to 27 in Detroit, Mich. The 2024 CFL Draft will occur shortly after, with the official date yet to be announced.
