Pawel Dwulit/CFL.ca
HAMILTON — New title, same Eric Tillman.
The Ticats changed general managers this off-season, promoting Tillman and moving Kent Austin into the role of VP of football operations (on top of his current role of head coach).
But while Tillman, a long-time CFL executive, moves into the GM chair for the first time since 2012, don’t expect anything to change for the Ticats’ front office.
“It’s a change in title. I got a raise which is nice,” Tillman said last weekend after the news broke during the CFL Combine in Toronto. “There are still going to be more similarities than there will be change.
“It’s still very much a group effort as it has been.”
That, a group effort, is exactly what characterizes the current Ticats brain trust, one trying to bring the City of Hamilton its first Grey Cup Championship since 1999.
Austin and Tillman teamed up once as a player/general manager combo, then again in Ottawa where Tillman gave Austin, a former quarterback, his first coaching gig as an offensive assistant. When Tillman became the GM in Saskatchewan, he then gave Austin his first head coaching gig.
In short, both feel comfortable in their relationship to the point that Austin has now built his football operations staff around Tillman, naming him the GM and promoting Drew Allemang and Shawn Burke to assistants.
“We have a long-term relationship,” said Tillman. “It’s a collaborative issue. We work together toward a collective goal.”
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It’s a relationship built on mutual trust. Austin hired Tillman in 2013 as a consultant before promoting him to director of U.S. scouting a year later. For three years Tillman helped the Ticats scout and recruit American talent that helped them play in back to back Grey Cups – impactful players that include Bryan Hall, Brandon Banks and Rico Murray, among others.
“I think it’s really important to have that – when you have trust and you understand the other person at a deeper level,” said Tillman. “I understand what Kent wants to do with the team: Where he wants it to go, the kind of personnel, the kind of people that fit in – schematically what he’s looking for.
“I think that when you have that kind of working relationship, that kind of background, everybody benefits.”
Tillman also said he’s not afraid to tell Austin when he disagrees. But in the end, it’s Austin who gets the final say on all personnel moves.
“It’s nice to have the title but it’s not a two-headed monster,” said Tillman. “Kent has the final say and should, and my role as it’s always been is to help in any and every way I can.”
While Tillman takes over the GM role and Austin both watches over and coaches, Allemang is elevated to assistant GM and director of Canadian scouting. Burke, meanwhile, becomes the assistant GM and director of football operations.
Ticats won’t draft for need
U.S. scouting remains Tillman’s specialty, but with the draft coming up and the combine in the rearview mirror, these are busy months for the recently-promoted Allemang. He and the rest of the Ticats’ front office just spent the weekend scouting the country’s top amateur football players in advance of the 2016 CFL Draft.
Now that interviews, testing and on-field drills are complete, the next couple of months will involve more interviews and lots of film.
“We’ll get back together and meet and get everyone’s opinions about what they saw here,” said Allemang. “You go through all the interviews and from that point we’ll still do more work with the kids, we’ll talk to them again and have them do some different tests for us.”
Recently-promoted Drew Allemang will continue to play a key role in amateur scouting (Pawel Dwulit/CFL.ca)
Then comes the draft board, where the team will plan for any and all scenarios including its current slated fifth overall pick.
“You really start to stack your board on how you would take the players as they come to you,” said Allemang. “We don’t control what every other team’s going to do, we’re not going to get everyone we want but we have to have an order of how we would take players when they come to us and we’ll start doing that in the next few weeks.”
What the Ticats are certain of is that their draft plan will go according to best player available, not by need. Coming off two Grey Cup appearances in three years and a play away from making it three in a row last November, the Ticats believe they’re still deep at every position – despite losing some Canadian talent in free agency.
“When you’re winning, people are going to want some of your guys,” said Tillman. “That’s the bad news.
“The good news is that we still have a very talented, deep football team,” he added. “I don’t think we have to make a decision predicated on need.
“We can see what the other people do and who’s there, and [Allemang] and his department have done a good enough job that we have the flexibility to take the best player available as opposed to drafting by need.”
– With files from Ticats.ca
