‘Freaky’ fast, athletic with a shot at getting drafted

At 25 years and seven months old, Marc-Antoine Dequoy is older than Jared Goff, Myles Garrett, Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray — the past four No. 1 overall NFL draft picks.

Put another way, enough time has passed since Dequoy graduated high school in Montreal in 2011 for Andrew Luck to have spent his last academic year at Stanford University, been drafted No. 1 overall by the Indianapolis Colts, played seven NFL seasons and announced his retirement last August.

Yet despite his 26th birthday coming in September, despite sitting out his first four of five post-secondary football seasons from 2012-16, and despite feeling so sick at the time of his pro day last month that he thought he might be coming down with the coronavirus, the Canadian safety prospect has put himself in position to perhaps join an NFL team this coming Saturday, just before or after conclusion of the three-day, virtually conducted draft — either as a surprise late-round draft pick or, likelier, as an undrafted free agent.

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Failing that, Dequoy sits ninth in the most recent CFL Scouting Bureau’s rankings of Canadian prospects for the three-down league’s draft on April 30, and figures to be a high pick.

As someone who has been writing about the NFL from Canada since 2012, I can tell you that virtually ever year some top Canadian prospect has some crazy backstory that makes you shake your head at the obstacles the young man has had to overcome — or at the circuitous, unbeaten paths he has had to take — just to work himself into the rare position of being legitimately considered for selection in the NFL draft.

Ohio University QB Nathan Rourke of Oakville, Ont., is another this year, whom I wrote about yesterday.

This is the backstory of the man whose last name is pronounced “De-KWAH,” and who in conversation goes by just Marc, not Marc-Antoine.

Last month, he had one last chance to impress NFL talent evaluators at his University of Montreal ‘pro day’ — where a prospect takes part in acutely templated speed and athleticism drills, then does on-field work in game-type activities specific to his position.

By good fortune for Dequoy, U of M’s pro day was arranged for March 9 — just four days before most non-essential enterprises in Canada from schools, to sports, to shops would suddenly shut down (followed by all international borders) because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two of 32 NFL clubs sent a scout up to watch Dequoy in action that day: The Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles.

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Boy, did Dequoy impress.

At 6-foot-2¾ he might be a bit taller than a typical NFL safety, but the 198-pounder from the Montreal island community of Île-Bizard proved he’s more physically and athletically talented than most top safety prospects in this year’s NFL draft — even if his on-field readiness for pro-level American football (after having only played three-down, 12-man Canadian ball on 110-yard fields) could best be described as raw, at best.

Dequoy had a scorching 4.35-second time in the 40-yard dash, and a 6.65-second three-cone shuttle.

Of 49 safeties and cornerbacks who ran the 40 at the NFL scouting combine seven weeks ago (a scout’s dream of a meat market featuring the top 338 overall draft prospects), cornerback Javelin K. Guidry of Utah was the only one to run a faster 40, in 4.29 seconds.

And none of the 20 who attempted the three-cone shuttle at the combine came close to matching Dequoy’s 6.65 time; only 11 even broke the seven-second barrier.

What’s more, only four of 20 safeties who did the vertical jump leapt higher than Dequoy’s 37 inches and only six of 19 safeties in the standing broad jump leapt further than Dequoy’s 10-feet-8.

Dequoy’s speed and athleticism numbers indeed are “pretty freaky,” NFL Network’s chief draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah told Postmedia last Thursday on a conference call.

Yet more impressively, Dequoy posted them all while afflicted, on that second Monday in March, not with the coronavirus, but with what turned out to be the seasonal flu.

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

“I was really sick. I started getting ill on the Saturday,” Dequoy said this week by phone, from the Montreal apartment he shares with his girlfriend. “On the Sunday, I wasn’t feeling well; just rundown. Then the night before I didn’t sleep a lot. I was really tired that morning.

“After my pro day, I was in bed for weeks. I thought I had the coronavirus. But actually it was just the normal influenza.”

He’s fine now.

And the fluke broken right forearm (radius bone) he suffered on a routine tackle last November, early on in the Vanier Cup — the Canadian university national-championship football game in which his University of Montreal Carabins lost 27-13 to the University of Calgary Dinos — has healed.

Dequoy was a standout Canadian university football player by any measure. He was a Quebec conference (RSEQ) all-star in each of the past three years and defensive player of the year in 2018. Nationally, he was a second-team all-star in 2017 and a first-teamer this past season.

It just took Dequoy forever, in football terms, to get to that point.

His long journey probably is unlike that of any other NFL draft prospect, in this or any other year. Really, what other professional football player — other than those who had a mandated stint in the U.S. Armed Services, such as Pro Football Hall of Famer Roger Staubach — ever had so long a gap in his pre-pro past?

To best understand Dequoy’s, first know that in the Quebec educational system, students spend one less year in high school (graduating after Grade 11) and then must graduate from a minimum two-year “CEGEP” transitional school to qualify for university. CEGEP is a French acronym for Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel (translation: college of general and vocation education).

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

In short, Dequoy’s educational and football chronologies went as follows after he graduated high school in 2011 at age 17, and before he ascended to starter at the University of Montreal in 2017 at age 23:

2012, CEGEP 1: Andre-Laurendeau. Did not play. By choice.

Did not play. By choice. 2013, CEGEP 2: College Montmorency. Played five games.

Played five games. 2014, CEGEP 2: College Montmorency. Did not play. Broken left collarbone.

Did not play. Broken left collarbone. 2015, CEGEP 2: College Montmorency. Did not play. Learned days before the season that an age ruling barred him from even taking part in off-field team activities.

Did not play. Learned days before the season that an age ruling barred him from even taking part in off-field team activities. 2016, University of Montreal. Did not play as a freshman. Had to shake off rust and rise up a deep depth chart.

Dequoy did not take one snap in a football game in four of five years from 2012-16.

Why the “by choice” football absence in 2012 immediately following high school? He had been playing organized football since age five, either with the Football Île Bizard Vikings youth club, or at high school.

“I quit it because I didn’t have the passion anymore,” Dequoy said. “I don’t know, I just felt there was something wrong. I didn’t enjoy it anymore.

“But that year off was the best thing that ever happened to me, because it just made me realize I still have the flame and passion in me. I would go see a football game and I’d think, ‘Oh man, that could be me out there making some plays.’ And it just made me realize I want to still play football. Badly.”

When he changed CEGEP in 2013 from Andre-Laurendeau to College Montmorency, Dequoy said he just brazenly walked into the head football coach’s office and asked for a tryout.

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

“I told him just a bit about me. And he said, ‘We have a practice next Friday if you want to come.’ It was fall camp, and I’d just arrived. I remember a coach saying early on, ‘Gee, you just came in out of nowhere and you can play. That’s pretty interesting.’”

Dequoy summarizes his positional past in in football like this:

“In my youth club I played just about everywhere, but mostly safety. Free safety, pretty much. Then when I went to CEGEP I moved to corner — strongside corner. Then at university I transitioned to strong halfback.”

Dequoy says as a strongside halfback in the Carabins defence, on the longer and wider Canadian field, he played as a nickel safety, of sorts, underneath a basic cover-3. In some situations he’d have to come up and tackle like an American box safety, but mostly he’d drop into pass coverage, like a roving free safety.

After last season, Dequoy received one of two coveted annual invitations awarded to Canadian university players by a U.S. post-season college all-star bowl, the East-West Shrine Game in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Because his broken right arm was still healing in January, he wore a cast that week.

“In my mind I was playing that game,” Dequoy said. “I’d had surgery and a metal plate put in. I was really focused on going down there and showing everything I’ve got. And I knew I’d still have two months to recover (for pro day) if anything happened. My arm was stable, in my mind, eight weeks in.

“But the doctor pulled me from the game, since I’m Canadian. They couldn’t risk an injury and all the medical stuff that would have followed.”

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

But Dequoy did get in enough on-field work to achieve his primary goal, which was to entice at least a couple of NFL scouts north of the border to his pro day.

In between, Dequoy trained in Knoxville, Tenn., where he got to meet his positional football idol, Harrison Smith of the Minnesota Vikings — a 6-foot-3 safety and a Pro Bowl selection in each of the past five seasons.

“Guys like me, at this stage, think about just making it to the NFL,” Dequoy said. “Harrison said, ‘Unh-uh. It’s not that. It’s about STAYING in the league.’

“He also gave me great advice about the pro day, which when you think about it makes a lot of sense. He said when you’re doing the DB drills, you’re not timed. There’s no timer. So you don’t have to go all out, which makes you unstable and unbalanced. He said be fast, but stay composed, stay low. And make sure your cuts are crisp.”

Dequoy had been told by NFL talent evaluators at the Shrine Game to play lower on his backpedal and on his cuts. He has put that into practice, to the point he said it now feels normal.

Some NFL teams that he prefers not to disclose have reached out to Dequoy in recent weeks, as he continues to train in his tiny Montreal apartment: “The weightlifting room is the kitchen. We don’t have a lot of space.”

NFL Network’s Jeremiah said Dequoy indeed projects as a safety in the NFL, what with having had “some production there.” But the fact Dequoy is “25 years old and raw, I would think you’re talking about him (at best) as a late-round player.”

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Over the past 10 years an average of 18.8 safeties annually have been selected in the NFL Draft. Considering that DraftScout.com rates Dequoy as the No. 21 strong safety, and Dane Brugler of TheAthletic.com has him as the No. 23 overall safety, it seems likelier that Dequoy would join an NFL team next Saturday night immediately following the draft, as an undrafted free agent — or UDFA in NFL parlance.

That’d be fine by Dequoy.

“UDFA is what I’m aiming for, and I’m confident it’s going to happen. So I’m not stressing about anything right now.”

Age and grizzle surely are helping with that.

@JohnKryk