There is no doubt when it comes to the debate over Greg Marshall's dismissal as head coach of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, that I am biased.

In the three years he served as the Bombers defensive co-ordinator, I came to not only respect his philosophies and ideologies, but how he commanded respect from his charges and how his players would lay it on the line for him. I have always been one of his biggest cheerleaders on and off the field, and though I have not played for him since 2008, that is not about to change now.

When I'm asked to rate and gauge the first third of the season successes of the 2011 defence, I look at his defensive dozen teams of 2006 and 2007 as a starting point for comparison, and then the defences we had here under Dave Ritchie in 2001 and 2002.

We could argue until we are blue and gold in the face about the merits of his dismissal, yet unless we were in that Saskatchewan locker-room and unless we were part of that front office, no one can say definitively what the problem was with the Riders. Every comment you read that does not emanate from inside that building is speculative. Even comments that do leak out from that franchise are not necessarily representative of the situation.

We may never know the consensus factors that led to the Riders only winning one of their first eight games, but that is not the point of this column. The point of this column is that eight games is not a lot of time when it comes to determining the value of a head coach and a football team.

Through 15 years of professional football, I have been involved in two situations that began comparatively as the 2011 season did for the Roughriders. In 1998, the Washington Redskins began the season 0-7. We kept our head coach and won six of the last nine games that year. We didn't fire him in the off-season either, and won the NFC East Championship in 1999.

The second situation was the Blue Bombers season of 2010. At this point last season we were 2-6. We had already played one more game, yet had four fewer victories than we do right now. While we still have a long way to go in determining whether the 2011 season will be one of success, I imagine the consensus of minds in Bomberville are happy that our G.M., Joe Mack, did not jump the gun on our head coach's appointment after only one season or only eight games.

Not only did we only have one more win than Marshall's Riders at this point last season, but we had an even worse second half of the year than we did the first. In the first six games of 2010, we lost by an average of 11 points. In the seven games the Riders have not won this season, they have lost by an average of 111/2 points.

Last year's 4-14 finish is the worst record I have ever had as a pro, yet I suspected, as the front office did, that the players on this team had more to give and so did the coaches.

Last year was our head coach's first year at the helm of a ship in the CFL, just like it was for Greg Marshall this year. As much as the media has remarked on the exponential improvement and progression of the Bombers players from last year to this -- so far -- just as noticeable and remarkable is the progression of leadership, confidence and command by the people in their second year running this team.

I'm not saying a Marshall-led Saskatchewan team would have won the Grey Cup this year or the next. Over the last four years no team has been as dominant in the CFL -- save for the Montreal Alouettes -- as Saskatchewan and that is a heady measuring stick and daunting proposition for any CFL boss to live up to. What I am saying is that eight games isn't enough time to figure out conclusively what the potential of a team, coach or anything else is, especially since it took us more than 18 games to find our identity and situate ourselves in the position we are in now.

If the Riders brass did not have enough confidence in a man of this level of character and ability to extend him more leeway, then they should never have hired him in the first place. But that's just my two cents.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 23, 2011 $sourceSection0