Johany Jutras, CFL.ca
MONTREAL — Once the Montreal Alouettes wrap up their final regular season game in Hamilton on November 3, that’ll be it for them this season. The Alouettes will have missed the playoffs four seasons in a row.
Just like their opponent on Saturday in the Toronto Argonauts, the Alouettes will turn the page and look to how they can get better with the remaining few games in the regular season, and how they can approach the off-season.
Kavis Reed, who stepped into the general manager role for the Alouettes in 2016, remains optimistic for the future of the franchise, however.
“The record doesn’t reflect that, but there was a lot of things that we said post-season last year that we wanted to accomplish and we’ve accomplished it,” he told MontrealAlouettes.com. “Right now, I think the franchise is headed in the right direction, really in a solid position.”
RELATED
» Buy Tickets: Alouettes at Argonauts
» CFL among leagues co-hosting international collision sports conference
» Playoff Scenarios: A close western race is now even tighter in Week 19
Kavis Reed (Left) believes he has what it takes to bring the Montreal Alouettes franchise back to glory, sighting that decisions aren’t always going to be the most popular. (MontrealAlouettes.com)
Montreal came under some criticism for the trading of running back Tyrell Sutton to the BC Lions, a player who made his commitment to winning in Montreal very well known since re-signing with the club in the off-season. However, Reed saw things from an opportunistic stance as a way to further grow and develop the roster.
“You have to make tough decisions to bring in new talent and have that new talent excel, and create new stories. It is a comfortability with names, every franchise goes through that,” Reed explained. “Some of the greatest players in sports history never finished where they started because of someone else as a general manager, as a personnel person is supposed to do is supposed to bring you fresh talent to compete, because when you have competition you have a healthy locker room.”
With Sutton as a pending free agent when the season wraps up, Montreal was well aware of who they had under contract at the position of running back. Both William Stanback and Lawrence Pittman are under two-year deals while Ryder Stone is on a three-year contract at the moment.
“We feel very strongly about William Stanback. We feel very strongly about Lawrence Pittman. We’ve shown that Ryder Stone, a Canadian, a national which we drafted this year is very competent as a running back. We had a good situation where there were four players in a position where only one could be on the field at one time,” the Als GM went on to explain. “The decision had to be made to get some value for someone who’s a pending free agent and who could possibly end up back in Montreal as a free agent. We felt very strongly about that decision and we know that the story of Will Stanback is being created.”
Given their offensive woes that the Als have been experiencing for a few years now, the Alouettes front office is insisting on trusting the process as they aim to develop their personnel, showing quite the level of confidence in returning the Alouettes back to their glory years that lasted much of the early-2000’s.
“We have to play chess,” Reed insisted. “We have to have a chess mentality when you’re in this position. You make a decision that’s going to affect today but have a long-term effect.”
One of the biggest inconsistencies for the Alouettes the past few years has been the foundation of their offence, a once prosperous unit when Anthony Calvillo was under centre, now an inexperienced and youthful group battles it out in the trenches.
“We drafted Trey Rutherford. We drafted Tyler Johnstone. We have Philippe Gagnon available to us. We have Zach Annen who we drafted last year and put in the pipeline. We drafted K.C. Bakker to put in the pipeline. Sean Jamieson has got quality reps this year and has proven his value. We’re looking at our offensive line at being 27 and all under contract and being able to grow together. That’s the chess part of it.”
A front-five that’s allowed the league’s worst 59 sacks heading into their Week 19 tilt with the Argonauts, Reed believes has the ability to develop, similar to ones that eventually brought championships to the city of Montreal.
“Those 26-year olds are going to be together for a minimum of three years and grow together. That’s historically what’s made the Montreal Alouettes successful. They had an offensive line when they returned from the Baltimore Stallions, they had an offensive line that was intact, and those guys, spearheaded by Uzooma Okeke, stayed together for a long time. That’s what we’re trying to establish here.”
As to how much development Reed and the rest of the Alouettes management will be anticipating out of the next three weeks remains unknown, but it’s a work in progress as the GM remains confident in being able to reintroduce Montreal with a particular piece of hardware in the not too distant future.
With files from MontrealAlouettes.com
