Suddenly… CFL clubs imitating formerly hapless Blue

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2011 (5487 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT shouldn’t be very surprising that there was some hand-wringing in Regina this week when it emerged that new/old Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach Ken Miller is also going to be calling the plays this Sunday in the absence of a dedicated offensive co-ordinator.

This is, after all, the same Riders franchise that lost the 2009 Grey Cup on a wee bit of sideline confusion that resulted in the infamous ’13th-man’ debacle.

And so little wonder then that Miller — who replaced both head coach Greg Marshall and offensive co-ordinator Doug Berry when they were fired Aug. 19 — found himself on the hot-seat in Saskatchewan the past week as reporters grilled him on his decision to add play-calling to his already considerable duties as the team’s head coach, not mention its vice-president of football operations.

But what was most interesting was the resulting exchange between Miller and reporters and the volumes it spoke not only about the current dire straits of the Riders, but also about just how far how the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have come since the last time the two clubs met in Regina on Labour Day Weekend.

Because the answer that was given by Miller — a man, you must remember, who coached Saskatchewan to appearances in three of the last four Grey Cups before moving to the front office last winter — was to point out that Winnipeg’s Paul LaPolice is already doing exactly what Miller is proposing in Regina.

“Paul LaPolice does, and they’re 7-1 right now, so it’s different strokes for different folks,” Miller said.

“We haven’t done it like that. When I was the head coach (previously), somebody else called the plays. But right now I think, for us, it’s the right model. It doesn’t mean that that model is going to last for 13 games. It could change after one or two or three, but right now that’s the model that we have.”

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Now, if you’d suggested at the start of this season that Ken Miller, of all people, was going to be invoking how things are done in Winnipeg in support of what he’s planning to do in Regina, you’d have been locked up.

The Bombers, after all, were coming into the season off a 4-14 train wreck last year, while Miller’s Riders were widely regarded right alongside the Montreal Alouettes as the class of the CFL.

But such has been the remarkable reversal of fortunes in the two organizations this season — the Bombers head into this Sunday’s clash in Regina at 7-1, while the Riders are 1-7 — that it’s suddenly the Bombers that have become an example of how things should be done in the CFL.

Bombers GM Joe Mack says one reason LaPolice was hired was because of his offensive acumen and so there is no hesitation in allowing him to take such an active role in the offence. “If he feels this is the most comfortable thing for him, then we fully support that.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca