Steelers rookie Chase Claypool joins short but growing list of Canadians in the NFL
For the first time in a decade, the top draft picks of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Pittsburgh Steelers share something in particular in common.
Each is a citizen of the same nation.
But while the prior time it happened Maurkice Pouncey and Beau Bennett were both American, this time, the newest top-drafted Penguin and Steeler are from north of the border.
The Penguins drafting a Canadian (such as Samuel Poulin in 2019), that’s not news. After all, about 43% of NHL players are from Canada.
But football? American football? That is much more rare.
“I came in with a chip on my shoulder coming from Canada,” Chase Claypool said after the Steelers took him with the No. 49 choice in the NFL Draft last month. “Not a lot of guys give that respect right off the bat, as you can imagine.”
That’s because there are so few Canadians on NFL rosters. According to TSN, 10 of the 1,696 players (0.6%) on season-opening 53-man rosters last season were Canadian nationals.
That doesn’t count receiver N’Keal Harry, who began the season on injured reserve after he was taken with the last pick of the first round. According to The Sporting News, Harry is the only Canadian-born player drafted with a higher pick than Claypool since Philadelphia took guard Danny Watkins 23rd overall in 2011.
Claypool was joined by defensive tackle Neville Gallimore (third round, Dallas) as Canadian-born players drafted last month. Gallimore becomes the third Canadian on the Cowboys (long snapper L.P Ladouceur, defensive tackle Christian Covington).
According to the Sporting News, at least one Canadian-born player has been drafted each of the past 10 years. Sixty-three Canadians have been drafted since 1966, including four in the first round.
None, though, have been drafted by the Steelers.
WATCH: British Columbia's Chase Claypool became the highest drafted Canadian in the NFL in almost a decade this year when the Pittsburgh Steelers selected him. Lindsay Dunn spoke to him about his whirlwind journey to the NFL https://t.co/YroLTuw51y pic.twitter.com/C1BhFayuxa
— NEWS 1130 (@NEWS1130) May 1, 2020
“We (Canadians) take football pretty seriously,” Claypool said, “but obviously we don’t have the big audiences like the States or a lot of the players like the States. A lot of people I am surrounded with are pretty avid football people, so I kind of grew up with it my whole life. I grew up a CFL fan, but I always watched the NFL.”
Claypool is in an even more exclusive club in that he played at a traditional Canadian high school (Abbotsford, British Columbia). Many of the Canadians who have made the NFL were born in Canada but moved to the U.S. by the time they were in high school. Harry, for example, only lived in Canada the first few years of his life.
Even Gallimore, while he attended secondary school in Canada, matriculated at a school designed specifically to developing future major-college NFL players — Canada Prep Football Academy.
According to player bios, of the 23 players with strong ties to Canada who have been drafted since 2003, Claypool is just the 12th who was born and played his high school football there.
The 6-foot-4, 238-pound Claypool said he didn’t expect to play football at a U.S. college.
“I just threw my highlights on Facebook just because it was something I wanted to do for friends and family to see,” he said. “Not really any attention for any recruiting purposes. But the right people saw.”
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Posted by Chase Claypool on Sunday, March 8, 2015
That led to an invitation to a camp at Notre Dame, which ultimately led to a scholarship offer he accepted. Claypool would star for the Fighting Irish, particularly as a senior, when he had team-bests of 66 catches, 1,037 receiving yards and 13 touchdowns.
That drew the interest of the Steelers, who made him their first Canadian player since kicker Shaun Suisham retired in 2016, not long after he became a naturalized American citizen.
Kickers and punters (i.e., Mike Vanderjagt, Mitch Berger, Eddie Murray) are prominent among any list of the best Canadian NFL players of all-time. The prevalence of foreign-born kickers and punters, of course, can at least partially be attributed to the popularity of soccer outside the U.S.
In Canada, though, hockey is the national sport. But not for Claypool. Hockey wasn’t even his second sport he played growing up.
“I certainly had an interest in basketball, especially when I was getting better,” Claypool said. “(But) no matter how many times I picked up basketball as a hobby, I always gravitated back to football.”
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Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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