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Wally Buono has a soft spot for the hard-hitting safety from the UBC Thunderbirds.

Taylor Loffler runs like a deer, hits like a mule and thinks like a coach.

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Buono, GM and head coach of B.C. Lions, glimpsed first-hand his encompassing game at last year’s Hardy Cup in Calgary, where the UBC safety wreaked havoc with the game plan of the undefeated Dinosaurs. The T-Birds’ upset victory propelled them two week later to their first Vanier Cup championship since 1997.

“He’s a very good athlete. And he’s got NFL size — 6-3, 215,” Buono said of Loffler. “Whether the NFL is looking at him … I don’t know.”

Indeed, they are now.

In the aftermath of Saturday’s NFL draft, Loffler received a phone call from the New York Giants, inviting the free agent to a three-day rookie camp which starts Thursday at their training facility in New Jersey.

Giants assistant GM Kevin Abrams, a graduate of the University of Western Ontario, is known as the most CIS-savvy executive in the NFL.