Coach, QB are top priorities

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/01/2010 (6068 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Joe MACK has a big job and he won’t waste any time getting to work.

Minutes after Mack was introduced as the vice-president of football operations with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, he revealed plans to be at the Senior Bowl in Alabama beginning Monday and have a head coach in position within two weeks. As well, he’ll immediately begin breaking down film on the Bombers current roster and also start pursuing a number of quarterbacks that are currently free agents.

Here’s a quick Mack attack on all things football:

“ö On the search for a new coach:

“I’d like to have a head coach yesterday but that’s not possible. I have a 14- to 30- to 60-day action plan that I’d like to get things done by. Ideally, when you look at the calendar, I’d like to have a head coach within 14 days. I don’t know if that’s doable but that’s the goal. That’s absolutely a paramount decision for me, to have a head coach. If the time frame was different we may consider a U.S. coach, but I really think that where we are now in the CFL calendar it’s really essential to have someone with CFL experience. I would hope the person would be a great asset for me as well.”

“ö On whether the new coach would be able to hire his own assistants or be forced to take on Mike Kelly’s old staff that is still under contract:

“Those are people he’s going to war with. With no disrespect to anybody here, and I intend to sit down and talk to and debrief our current staff and try to give them every avenue to have a conversation with the head coach, but I feel strongly that you have to give the head coach the opportunity to hire his own lieutenants.”

“ö On the current Bomber roster:

“They have some good young talent, particularly on defence where I think they have some team speed, some athletes. I don’t think it will be a long time before we’re really competitive again. I feel very sincere about saying that probably after a week after when I get back I’ll know the club, hopefully, about as well as anybody.”

“ö On the quarterback position:

“Michael Bishop did some good things. We’ll have to talk to Michael and see how that goes. We have some other young quarterbacks on the roster — I haven’t seen them yet so I’ll need to evaluate them. There’s a couple people on our neg list I think are kind of interesting. I have a couple of names in mind that I don’t want to mention yet. Maybe one in particular that I might try and go see as soon as within a couple of weeks. In the CFL, the three-down game and wide open field, you’re not going to win if you don’t have a strong quarterback. That’s going to be a priority for us, making sure we have quality and depth at the quarterback position.”

“ö On current director of player personnel John Murphy’s future with the team:

“I haven’t had a chance to evaluate everybody in the organization yet so I don’t think it would be fair for me to comment on any person at this point in time — in fairness to them.”

“ö On cranking up his old football contacts/network again:

“I’ve stayed in contact with a lot of people in the CFL and the NFL. I guess the analogy would be, if somebody in the past has been a good engineer of cars, they’re still going to know what it takes to make a good car. The biggest thing is understanding what a good organization looks like, what leadership looks like and what good coaching looks like.

“I feel really comfortable about hitting the ground running. If you think about it, in the NFL there are 32 teams with much bigger rosters and I was responsible for all the players in the league and upcoming college players. In an eight-team league I feel fairly confident I can get up to speed quick.”

BLUE NOTES: The Dallas Morning News is reporting the Cowboys have signed WR Titus Ryan to a tryout contract. The 25-year-old Ryan, acquired in the trade with Calgary last September that involved Romby Bryant and Arjei Franklin, appeared in 15 games with the Stamps and Bombers last year and pulled in 15 passes for 396 yards and four TDs.

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca