THE CANADIAN PRESS
Every off-season the CFL coaching carousel goes for a spin. A coach moves here, another there.
This year, it was a full blown, mind bender of a roller coaster.
The commissioner almost had to hit the emergency stop button to bring things back under control.
It started a week after the Grey Cup when Chris Jones got an offer he couldn’t refuse from Saskatchewan. He then left Edmonton with empty coaching offices as all but one of his championship coaching staff also moved to Riderville.
The ripple effects were more like tidal waves as Jones’ hire led to the drama to play out between Edmonton and Ottawa over Jason Maas’ return to the Eskimos, where he was a fan favourite as a quarterback.
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Maas then tried to pluck Noel Thorpe from the Alouettes, which led to even more drama.
Eventually, things calmed down.
Jaime Elizondo made the move from Toronto to fill Maas’ spot as the Eastern Division Champion’s offensive coordinator.
Toronto was making moves of its own as the Argos picked up Rich Stubler from Calgary to be the defensive coordinator.
In the meantime, Jim Popp assembled his new regime on offence while the Noel Thorpe dispute ended with the star defensive coach staying in Montreal; Wally Buono stepped back to the sideline in BC; Dave Dickenson took over John Hufnagel’s office in Calgary; and Mike O’Shea went to the broadcast booth to find his new offensive coordinator in Paul LaPolice.
A little history lesson: Winning a Grey Cup in the first year or two for head coaches hasn’t been that uncommon recently. In fact, six of the last nine Grey Cup Champion head coaches were in either their first or second year on the job (that doesn’t include Marc Trestman’s second straight championship in 2010 – his third season in Montreal).
And of course, Dave Dickenson and Jason Maas are taking over a pretty good thing in Calgary and Edmonton.
Is your head spinning yet?
What will all this mean for the upcoming 2016 season?
Uncertainty, that’s what!
Lets start where the dominoes started falling.
In Saskatchewan, Chris Jones who also has the title of vice president of football operations and general manager, has been building up the Roughriders’ roster. The tear down was drastic with all-stars like Tyron Brackenridge, Weston Dressler and John Chick told to go find work elsewhere.
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The re-build has been equally drastic as the Riders were very busy in free agency and have also been doing dozens of free agent camps down south, searching far and wide to find the next great CFL stars.
But from a coaching angle, the Jones system will be a refreshing look with an aggressive defense and an offensive system that plays to the strengths of veteran quarterback Darian Durant.
Now it’s just a matter of how quickly things can be put together to make a run.
Out West, every team has a great story on the sideline.
How will Wally Buono fare as head coach after watching from the general manager’s chair for four seasons? A lot has changed, most notably the increased options for the coach’s challenge. When Buono retired all he had to worry about were incompletions, interceptions and fumbles for the most part. It’s a whole new ball of wax now!
Buono will at the very least be a stable presence and bring back some of the nastiness the Lions were known for over his successful tenure as head coach.
Dave Dickenson has the unenviable task of taking over for John Hufnagel, much like Mike Benevides (who by the way has landed in Edmonton as defensive coordinator) had in taking over for the aforementioned Buono.
Dickenson has been groomed for this job for quite some time. He also has DeVone Claybrooks making the move up to a role he’s been groomed for as defensive coordinator.
Dickenson’s biggest challenge will be proving to the entire locker room he’s the boss. He ran a successful offence under the watchful eye of Hufnagel, but now he has to command the room like he was able to do as a quarterback during his playing days.
He gets the respect throughout the locker room early, the Stamps will remain a powerhouse.
Jason Maas meanwhile has a whole different dilemma. He and his entirely new coaching staff have to not only take command of the locker room but also do so with a bunch of players who just won the Grey Cup under different leadership.
Maas was impressive in his first year as a coordinator in Ottawa. He waited until he was ready to take that next step up the coaching food chain and did so remarkably well.
Maas took the REDBLACKS’ offence to number one in the league in 2015
He may have taken the job some would believe only a crazy person would want, with the love and admiration the players in Edmonton all had with Coach Jones — and the fact he had no coaches to work with to start.
But Maas has one of the classiest and great leaders in the league in Mike Reilly to help make the transition smooth. Oh and then there is the fact Maas had an offence with four 1,000 yard receivers last year. Let’s all see what an offensive-minded head coach does with a starting point of Adarius Bowman and Derel Walker.
Benevides was a great hire as Maas’ defensive mastermind. He needed a veteran coach with a successful background in the league. Benevides fits that requirement perfectly.
Now we wrap up the West in Winnipeg. Mike O’Shea needs to be successful this season. Everybody knows it. The defence last year being run by Richie Hall (another Saskatchewan cast-off) was actually quite good. The problem was that unit was getting no help from the offence.
Enter, Paul LaPolice.
The well-respected offensive coach has been playing television the last couple of years but in doing so has been watching film over film in his Coach’s Playbook segment of every one’s offensive and defensive system.
Just what will he come up with for Drew Willy, who has new weapons in Weston Dressler and Ryan Smith from the Roughriders (who both were just short of 1,000 yards last year)?
In the East, it’s a little less complicated.
Scott Milanovich, Rick Campbell, Kent Austin and Jim Popp are all returning as head coaches from the end of last season.
The one common thread is they all have a new coordinator in place, either by necessity or production.
Milanovich has brought in Stubler to improve his defence to complement an already steady offense. Stubler can do it, making Toronto a real threat in the East.
Austin lost Tommy Condell on the offensive side for personal reasons and nobody really is sure what that will do to impact the Tiger-Cats; offence, which is just as much Austin’s system as it is Condell’s.
Campbell needed to replace Jason Maas and Elizondo will be hard pressed to match the offensive output the REDBLACKS got. Heck, Maas may have been hard pressed to repeat what he did last season.
And, in Montreal, Popp has finally settled on Calvillo to run the offence after a whirlwind of change to the offensive coaching staff during the 2015 season.
That may be the biggest coaching storyline in the East Division, to watch how Calvillo’s offence looks and which quarterback will be the best suited to run it.
After an unprecedented year of controversial coaching moves, it’s come to that time of year coaches like best.
With mini-camps either open or recently closed and soon training camp, all they have to worry about now is the Xs and Os and which colours to wear on game day.
