Taylor Elgersma can thank his quarterback coach from QB Country, Ben Neill for helping put his name in play for a Senior Bowl invite from executive director Jim Nagy.
Longtime partners, agents Fred Weinrauch and Craig Schaeffer advised the Wilfrid Laurier student-athlete to go down to Mobile, Ala. last offseason to work with Neil on his QB skills alongside Drake Maye, Bo Nix and other high-level Americans. Neil put the bug in Nagy’s ear about Elgersma during the fall as his protégé was carving up defences in U Sports football.
“I said, ‘Ben, we only have six to eight spots and they’re reserved for the best players in U.S. college football.’ Last year, we had two top-12 picks, Michael Penix and Bo Nix, in the game. I didn’t think Taylor would be in range for us,” Nagy said.
“Taylor had been at a couple other smaller all-star games down here in the States. I had some friends that work in the NFL from other teams call me: ‘If you need a guy that can throw, we can tell, we know this guy can throw. We haven’t seen a lot of tape on him, but we know he can throw it.'”
Nagy, who scouted in the NFL for 18 years, did not watch as much film as he usually does when extending a Senior Bowl invite but he liked his tools: six-foot-five, 213 pounds and “clearly has the arm strength.” The four-time Super Bowl champion explained why it’s difficult, from his perspective, to evaluate Canadian university prospects.
“It’s really a challenge and what it comes down to is: Do they have the physical tools to compete in the NFL? In terms of the actual level of competition, I think it’s comparable to our Division III here in the United States or Division II, some of our lower levels,” Nagy said.
“I know he’s got the right physical stuff. He’s got all the size and arm length and hand size — the stuff NFL quarterbacks tend to have — and the mobility. What’s it going to look like when there’s 21 other moving parts on the field? There’s no way to know that until you get them down here.”
Since 2010, only two quarterbacks who have attended the Senior Bowl weren’t drafted or signed as an undrafted free agent by an NFL team — Blake Sims in 2015 and Brandon Silvers in 2018. That bodes well for Elgersma’s chances, although there’s a lot riding on his Senior Bowl performance.
“The most comparable one for Taylor is a guy we had in the game a couple of years ago from Shepherd University, which is a Division II school, his name is Tyson Bagent. For Taylor, we’ve never had a guy from a Canadian university. He’ll have the same challenge Tyson did and hopefully, he embraces it like Tyson did. Tyson had a good week down here,” Nagy said.
“He goes out as an undrafted rookie in Chicago and beats out a guy that they’d paid pretty good money to in free agency. He’s been the number two quarterback for the Chicago Bears the last two years. He started four games his rookie year and went 2-2 as a starter. That’s probably the closest thing to what we’ve had down here in terms of a smaller school quarterback.”
According to Nagy, NFL talent evaluators want to see improvement each day at his event. Scouts won’t expect Elgersma to be perfect during practice but what’s most important is tangible progression each day to show he can do what’s asked by NFL coaches and turn that into a positive outing in the game.
“You could look at it two ways. There’ll be guys in draft rooms saying: ‘This guy’s coming from Canadian football. It’s totally different. It’s going to take forever for him to get up to speed.’ Or there could be someone that could say: ‘We saw him in Mobile for a week and look how he adjusted down there,'” Nagy explained.
“If they see enough progress over four days, if I’m the one fighting for him, I’m saying: ‘I get he played up in Canada, but look what he did over the days down here at the Senior Bowl. Think about if we had him for our full off-season program and through training camp where he might be in September.'”
The Senior Bowl had 10 first-round picks in the 2024 NFL Draft, plus 45 players chosen in the top 100. 43 percent of the total athletes selected came from Nagy’s game rosters. Nagy believes Elgersma could be selected in the 2025 NFL Draft by performing well in Mobile.
“Absolutely. If I didn’t think he had the physical stuff to do it, we wouldn’t have invited him. How far along is he from a mental standpoint when it comes to football? How far away is he? If they spend a draft pick on him, is he going to have to spend time on a practice squad?’ Nagy explained.
“Is he a guy that, like Tyson Bagent, will be able to compete for a roster spot as a rookie? Sometimes that intrigue factor in the fact that a guy is a little raw, hasn’t come from an Alabama or an Ohio State or a Michigan, that makes teams think: ‘We’ve got a big ball of clay here that we can mould ourselves.'”
Nagy hopes Elgersma displays his upside at the Senior Bowl and earns his chance in the NFL.