If you knew nothing of the vast differences between the CFL and NFL, let this week's controversy around the trade of the CFL's reigning MVP to Toronto teach you one big thing. Win a championship in America and you can do no wrong as a general manager for three to five years. Win a Grey Cup in Canada, and you are back on the spit being slow-roasted less than four months after the coup de grace.
To say that Saskatchewan Roughriders GM Eric Tillman is feeling some heat after what can be classified as the first trade of its kind in the history of the CFL -- swapping the league MVP before his crown has even been properly fitted -- is as much an understatement as me saying I think I have an outside shot at winning my bet with offensive lineman Matt Sheridan, who vows to lose some 50-odd pounds and weigh in for camp at no more than 320 pounds in just over two months.
From the fans to the scribes to the pundits, precious few are trusting in the fact that Eric Tillman has won some three Grey Cups in his tenure in the CFL and may actually know what he is doing. But that's not to say I don't have my own reservations about the snowball that started rolling in Regina with the losses or trades of Corey Holmes, Fred Perry and Reggie Hunt -- and that became a near-avalanche with the loss of head coach Kent Austin and now the trade of MVP quarterback Kerry Joseph.
With all the speculation and theories running wild as to what precipitated this blockbuster trade, I think Allan Maki and Matthew Sekeres, with the Globe and Mail, hit it on the head when they came across the following admission: "One of the things Kent Austin told Eric Tillman before he left was essentially that if push came to shove when it came to working out a new deal for Kerry Joseph, that Marcus Crandell could be just as successful working in the same offence."
So that's it -- the old tried and true premise where the "system" is what makes or breaks an athlete's career. How, if one player leaves, another can simply be plugged into the offence or defence in his stead and extract close to the same results.
I fully understand how some coaches come to feel that their offensive or defensive schemes are bigger than any player they might have on their roster -- heck, it only took Kent Austin's system one year in Saskatchewan to win a title -- but I feel there is a fine line when it comes to overstating that autonomy.
For have we forgotten the lesson learned by former Calgary defensive co-ordinator Denny Creehan and the infallible three-four system he employed so effectively in Calgary?
Formidable
At it's height, that defence was as formidable and complicated as any, and it used to cause fits for offensive co-ordinators and strike a chord of fear in those who opposed it. In my opinion, what led to the decline of that fearsome defence in Calgary and the eventual replacement of their defensive co-ordinator was simply the perception that the system was bigger than the athletes who played in it.
During the demise of that defence in the last few years ,we all saw the disappearance of the stars that made it work in the front seven and the subsequent results from a new imbalance of more system and less player.
Crandell may have all the coaches and general managers convinced he is just as well suited, if not more so, than Joseph to run Austin's offence in Saskatchewan, and as someone who was victimized by him in the Grey Cup of 2001, who am I to argue? But in the three times we played the Roughriders last year, if you asked me about the memorable moments in our competition with that team, only two scenarios come to mind.
One, the play during the waning moments of the Labour Day Classic where Joseph ran a quarterback draw through the smallest of windows and sprinted into the end zone for the game-winning score; and two, during the Grey Cup when the Rider "offensive system" was virtually curtailed, and he moved the chains to the tune of 100-plus yards on the ground scrambling for salvation out of the pocket.
I guess we will have to wait and see whether Crandell's reportedly superior fit to the Saskatchewan Roughrider offensive scheme supersedes the athleticism and escapability that Joseph brought all on his own to their system.
After all, as any veteran can attest, there are moments in every game where the need to "overcome your coaching" takes precedence over the playbook.
Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.
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