Scott Rowed/CFL.ca
As Chris Jones explained where Zach Collaros came from, it all sounded very familiar.
“I’ve been around him since 2012. I know who he is. And all he does is win,” Jones said last week in Banff, at the GMs and presidents meetings.
“You go back to high school and you go back to college at Cincinnati. He was 41-1 in high school. He’s won two state championships in a place called Steubenville, Ohio. They couldn’t care less about Ohio State, they couldn’t care less about the Chicago Bears or whoever the closest pro team is. They care about Steubenville, Ohio. It’s all they care about.
“You’re judged as a person and as a man for the rest of your life on how good you were at Steubenville High School. He’s been handling that kind of pressure since he was a little boy. That’s one of the things that I do really like about him.”
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If you traded out Steubenville, Ohio for South Pittsburg, Tenn., you’d be talking about where Chris Jones came from and how that town’s young football players are remembered. Toward the end of a long and revealing conversation, Jones began to talk about a rule change he’d like to see this year in the CFL: Eliminating the sleeper play (having a player appear to sub out, but he hides on the field in an attempt to catch the defence sleeping).
“That’s bush league, has been for a long time,” Jones said. “My high school lost a state championship in 1985, the year after I graduated. They lost a state championship on a sleeper play. It’s just a cheap play.”
The first time I spoke with Chris Jones was in December, 2013. Word that he’d be the next coach of the Edmonton Eskimos had begun to circulate. A contact of a contact passed what they believed to be Jones’ number to me and I tried it. He answered sitting in the stands of a South Pittsburg Pirates’ playoff game, a 30-year alumni fixated on what was happening on the field while he was days away from accepting his first head coaching gig in the CFL (which I think is why our conversation was only 30 seconds or so).
When your head coach and your most important player have those kinds of similarities in their pasts, it’s a huge building block. A longtime admirer of Collaros’, Jones watched as the Tiger-Cats tumbled out of the gate, falling to 0-8 before he was benched the rest of the season in favour of Jeremiah Masoli. Collaros took three snaps after June Jones assumed coaching duties and watched from the sidelines as his team put together a 6-4 finish to its season. Benched by his team and questioned by fans, Jones was asked if he thought there was a fire lit under his freshly-acquired quarterback.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I told him that last year doesn’t matter, just like last year didn’t matter when we first got to Saskatchewan, it didn’t make a damn that (the coaching staff had) just won the Grey Cup. It didn’t help us, we won five football games. Last year we told our group that (2016) didn’t really matter. We won five ball games but you know good and damn well that we were better than that. So, that’s what I told Zach. I want him to come in, be Zach. Do what you’ve done and you’ll be fine. Don’t try to do too much. Don’t try to fit in, you’re not a fit in guy. Be Zach and everything will be fine.”
“There’s always been those two or three guys that don’t just fit the regular mold. You have to find a way and find their role and people have to know that there are certain amounts of things that are part of pro football.”
Chris Jones on the unique players he’s coached
Chris Jones will enter his 27th season as a football coach this year with the Riders (Matt Smith/CFL.ca)
This season will mark the 27th year that Jones has been coaching. All these years later he says he still loves the little things about the job. Getting in at the crack of dawn, the locker room, the team meetings, game planning and watching film. You’re a coach, but you’re so much more than that. You’re almost parental in some ways, developing your players and the coaches around you. Other times you’re a psychologist, figuring out what works best for each guy to get the most out of them.
“I love everything about coaching,” Jones said. “I never go to work.”
In those 27 years, the last 18 in the CFL, Jones has dealt with some characters and big personalities. He lists off Brandon Browner, Dwight Anderson, Marcus Ball, Khalif Mitchell and Odell Willis (“You can’t forget Odell,” he said, grinning). Managing personalities in a locker room might be the toughest job a coach has. In Saskatchewan, Jones has found his most unique challenge in Duron Carter.
“There’s always been those two or three guys that don’t just fit the regular mold,” Jones said. “You have to find a way and find their role and people have to know that there are certain amounts of things that are part of pro football.
“They’re not robots. Our players aren’t robots and part of being a great player is having some individual personality, some confidence. I think that that’s kind of what it is.”
Jones’ daily meetings with Carter through last season were well-documented. He says they’d talk for five to 10 minutes a day. What was said stays between them, but he says they were effective. When you see in Carter what Jones does, you have to invest in the player.
Duron Carter was one of the CFL’s top receivers, but made plenty of other headlines too (Matt Smith/CFL.ca)
“Certainly Duron is a unique character, a tremendous talent,” he said. “He’s either one or two the most athletic guy that I’ve ever coached. He could play anything. I mean, a six-foot-five guy that can catch a punt, run back kicks and stuff like he does. The way he runs after the catch, those aren’t common.
“Adarius Bowman is six-four, but he doesn’t run after the catch like Duron. There’s been plenty of guys that can catch a punt and run with it. Keith Stokes, and Izzy (Ezra Landry) and all these dudes, Kendial (Lawrence), but they’re five-foot-eight, not six-foot-five. He’s such a dynamic player. But,” Jones stopped and laughed. “He’s interesting. He’s interesting.”
After Carter convinced Jones to let him try to play cornerback — “Around mid-season he started bugging the sh-t of out me about playing defence,” he said — he was caught up in a firestorm of attention over a fight at practice and rumours of his imminent release. Carter started at cornerback that week and pick-sixed Bo Levi Mitchell as the Riders trashed the Stamps for one of their biggest wins of the year.
Jones was as amazed as everyone else by what he saw.
“I’m not sure he doesn’t thrive in (the noise around him),” he said of Carter. “I’m not sure it doesn’t help him focus somehow, as crazy as that sounds.
“I mean,” Jones laughed again, “he’s played some of his best football when things were going on. Even things you don’t know. That week it was very loud. There was a lot of stuff going on and…I didn’t like it. Unfortunately it happened and things transpired and he ended up playing some of his best football.”
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While Carter makes up his mind about free agency, choosing between NFL options or whether he should return to the CFL, Jones is happy for where the 26-year-old is in his career and what’s in front of him.
“I care greatly for my players. People look at me like a…I don’t know, maybe I present myself like this bad dude, you know what I’m saying? But I do care a lot about my players and I want them to succeed. I want them to be great,” he said.
“Them and coaches too. Nothing makes me feel better than when Jarious Jackson and Markus (Howell) get a chance to get promoted. One of these days someone’s going to come along and get (offensive coordinator) Steve McAdoo. Everybody looks at him and he’s kind of quiet, doesn’t really say a whole lot, but all he’s done is been around winning teams since he’s been in the league.
“It makes me feel good, the Corey Chamblins, the (Phil) Lolleys. Across the league, DeVone Claybrooks, it makes me feel good when those guys can do well and excel somewhere else. It means you’ve done your job.”
