Reed has the right stuff to improve Eskimos

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2010 (5426 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When your defensive co-ordinator gets promoted to a head-coaching position after only one season with your team, there is always the bittersweet, running joke about how management needs to start hiring staff a little less qualified and capable the next time around.

While this was the first out of the six defensive co-ordinators I have had here in 10 years that got bumped to the top spot, the loss to your team is, unfortunately, anything but funny.

I remember early last year, about 10 months ago, when I first heard that Kavis Reed had been appointed our new defensive co-ordinator. In nine years in the league I had only really heard his name surface a couple of times. Once was in the black hole in Toronto when Rich Stubler became head coach and Kavis was appointed defensive co-ordinator, and the other time, like most others, was with the simple math thing with Saskatchewan in the 2009 Grey Cup, when Kavis stood up in front of the nation and took all the heat.

When I walked into his office less than a year ago, I honestly did not know what to think. He did not have a success-story pedigree trailing him from Toronto, but he obviously had character in spades jumping on that 13th-man grenade for Saskatchewan. We met, exchanged a few pleasantries, he explained some of the defensive schemes he wished to employ, and then he threw me for a loop.

He told me then that he only knew how to coach one way, and then he wrote one word on his wipe board: “love.” Needless to say I walked out of his office wondering if I was going to spend the season getting in touch with my feelings and my feminine side, but I could not have been more wrong.

What I know now, after spending a season with Kavis as my defensive co-ordinator, is what he was getting at. He loves to coach and has a passion for developing his players and mentoring their development into young men, and his players love to play for him. When players talk about the ultimate “player coach,” Kavis is right up there with the best of them.

First of all, he understands what it is like to play the game because he did. That always resonates with the players.

He is not so old or so far removed from the game that he cannot relate to his troops. He was able to communicate with the oldest guy on the team (myself) just as effectively as he was one of his 22-year-old rookies in the secondary because he got to know each of us as individuals. He did not clump together all of his recruits and address us with one stroke from the player-relations brush.

He recognized that his players on defence were as different in experience and background as we were as individuals, and treated us as such.

While Kavis befriended one and all, he demanded your respect and made it clear there was a line as a player you could not cross.

If there was ever any doubt as to his authoritative nature or ability to administer discipline, it was erased one game when I saw him in an exchange with one of his players. We had just got lit up for six and he was questioning one of the guys about his technique in cover-zero.

The response he got was that, “well, we shouldn’t have been in cover-zero!” This was when the head coach in him shone through as he reminded this player, to not “mistake his kindness for weakness,” and did it in such a tone that the player immediately wished he had not countermanded his co-ordinator.

What stands out in my mind about Kavis, is how intelligent he is and the ability he has to motivate. I have heard speeches from Marv Levy to Mike Kelly and Kavis was one of the most talented men off the cuff I have ever seen. He could stand up in front of his defence and incite us to breathe fire at his beck and call without a script, or premeditation.

It wasn’t all roses, poetry, and Vince Lombardi metaphors, of course. He probably could have taken on less and delegated more to his capable assistants, and staying up in the booth at the start of the season, instead of being on the field where his presence was felt, was something that had to be learned the hard way this year.

It’s always hard to say or foresee how a coach will do the first time he is given his own command. The players, the politics, and the coaches he surrounds himself with will have as much to do with the wins and losses as does his ability to lead.

But if his tenure in Edmonton is reflective of the qualities he embodies and the skills he has mastered, he just may be able to restore the culture of excellence the Eskimos are so used to.

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