Dakoda Shepley, from Deadpool actor to self-taught center to competing for Seahawks job
It pays to go to school in Vancouver.
A few years ago, Dakoda Shepley was playing football, hanging out, being a college kid at the University of British Columbia. Yet another movie-production crew came onto the picturesque campus on the bluffs overlooking the Strait of Georgia and downtown Vancouver.
“They call it ‘Hollywood North,’” Shepley said. “So they’ll go and film movies and shows there, especially on my campus. They filmed quite a few things on my campus.”
The center was sitting in his UBC football locker room when a crew came through taking pictures of the room for a movie set.
“I was like ‘Hey, are you guys filming a movie?’” Shepley said. “And they were like ‘Yeah. Do you want to be in it?’”
He ended up a football-player extra in that football movie.
“And it ended up being a Hallmark movie,” he said.
“My grandma loved that I was in a Hallmark film.”
That got Shepley into the data base of actors who fit a certain profile and look. Namely: striking, 6-foot-5 man in his 20s with a beard and a personality.
“I ended up being a body double in a Netflix film,” he said. “And then from that, I got the Deadpool gig, as an extra.”
Wait, what?
The college football player from Windsor, Ontario, and UBC was cast to be an extra again in Deadpool 2, the 2018 Marvel Comics superhero film. The film came out a year after Shepley signed with the New York Jets as an undrafted rookie free agent, and the year Shepley was the fifth-overall pick in the Canadian Football League draft by the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
As he was getting prepped for his role as a Deadpool extra, the film’s casting director called him.
“He said, ‘Hey Dakoda, we like the way you look. We’re going to upgrade your role to someone kind of special in the movie. We can’t really tell you,’” Shepley said.
“When I found out it was Omega Red...there were people who were working on the movie that were like ‘You’re Omega Red? I’ve been a Marvel fan my whole life.’
“I had no idea or pay attention to any of that but, I do like the comics. But I’m not into it like them, because (Omega Red), that’s like an Easter egg character.”
Shepley’s not acting with Ryan Reynolds and Josh Brolin anymore. He’s arrived to the Seahawks to win a starting job at a position that’s not at all set for this season, one week before it begins.
How he got here
Seattle signed Shepley this past week off waivers from its division-rival San Francisco 49ers directly onto the 53-man roster. Even though he’s never played center in a game and he taught himself the position with film study and technique work all offseason in Dallas, Shepley joins the unsettled competition with Kyle Fuller and 2020 starter Ethan Pocic to be the Seahawks’ center for quarterback Russell Wilson.
“Really, really liked him at center,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said. “We were surprised he was available (on waivers), as we watched him.
“Our guys did a really good preseason evaluation on him. As it came down to (the night before final preseason cuts), he was really one of our favorite guys.
“Shoot if he didn’t show up for us. We were very fortunate to get him.”
When Wilson loudly said this offseason “I’m frustrated with getting hit too much,” his Seahawks went out and upgraded at guard. They traded with Las Vegas to get veteran Gabe Jackson. He’s been one of the NFL’s best pass-blocking guards the last half-dozen seasons.
Seattle has Duane Brown and 202 standout Brandon Shell at tackle — Brown, that is, whenever he decides it’s time to give up his hold-in over wanting a new contract. Coach Pete Carroll said this week “I’m counting on him” playing in the opener against the Colts next weekend.
Center is the one position the team has not upgraded in years. Pocic was a first-time starter there last season, after three years as a backup guard and tackle. His one-year, $3 million deal to return for 2021 suggests the Seahawks value Pocic more as a swing player who can play all three positions on the offensive line than to be their starting center again.
If Fuller had wowed Carroll, line coach Mike Solari and new offensive coordinator Shane Waldron in training camp and the three preseason games he started, they wouldn’t have signed Shepley.
And despite the fact he’s played in just one NFL game, last season with the 49ers as a backup guard, Shepley already knows it.
“I’m just here to compete and play,” he said after his second Seahawks practice. “I think any player on the team should be looking to compete to contribute to win games and win championships. That’s what I’m here to do. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Shepley was a left tackle and right guard at UBC. After the Jets released him, Saskatchewan drafted him to be a guard. He had a three-year contract in the CFL, but when the coronavirus pandemic hit North America and the world early in 2020, the league canceled its season. That got Shepley out of the last two years of his CFL contract, and eventually back into the NFL with San Francisco.
Self-taught
He was a guard last season with the 49ers, too. Then San Francisco offensive line coach Chris Foerster changed Shepley’s career, in January.
“I got told after the end of last season that I’m going to be a center in the league,” he said. “So ever since last season I’ve been teaching myself and learning how to snap, read the defense like a center should. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it and I have a handle of it.
“I feel as though I’m a plug-and-play guy because of all of the work I did this offseason, becoming a center and we’ll see how it goes. Going good so far.”
He says the toughest part of learning center has been the first, most fundamental part.
“Snapping the ball. Shotgun snap,” he said. “I can’t count how many times I’ve sailed a ball or skipped it off the ground. Really honing in on that and being able to make my calls while I’m doing it was a challenge, but I think I overcame it and showed it in the preseason.
“That’s why I’m here. I figured it out, put in the work, and it’s working out.”
That work included training with Duane “Duke” Manyweather, an offensive lineman at Humboldt State in northern California from 2004-06 who is an offensive line scouting and development consultant based in Phoenix. Manyweather took Shepley to his O-Line Masterminds offseason training program in Dallas.
“He brings out over a hundred offensive lineman: alumni of the NFL, current active players. It’s pretty cool,” Shepley said. “I got to talk with the guys like Ryan Jensen (center for the Super Bowl-champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers), retired guys like (12-year NFL veteran center and guard) Andre Gurode.
“It was really cool. Andre Gurode actually helped me out a lot on how to hold the ball, trajectory, talking about snap mechanics, was really cool getting to work with him in Dallas.”
Also cool, and different: Shepley is likely the first player in the NFL with a tattoo of Heath Ledger’s profiled face inked into his lower arm.
“From ‘A Knight’s Tale’. It’s my favorite movie ever,” Shepley said. “I mean, rags to riches, peasant to knight. It’s the coolest story ever. It was a go-to movie for me as a kid for some reason, and it means a lot to me.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2021 at 8:29 AM.
