Earlier this week I wrote a story about Esks coach Chris Jones and what a first-year head coach might go through. The version that ran was a little bit shorter than what I’d originally written, so here are some leftovers from the conversations I had with Argos’ GM Jim Barker and TiCats GM/head coach Kent Austin about what their rookie seasons as head coaches were like. We’ll start with Kent Austin.
On the challenges of his first year with the Riders in 2007:
“I’m trying to think back. I was able to inherit a fairly established football team. We made some changes and the challenge is always to get the players to believe, accept and to buy into whatever it is your staff believes is the process for winning. That may or may not have some differences with the previous staff, typically it does. They have a new way of approaching things and certainly there are new faces on this staff, so that’s probably the biggest challenge. Belief is a finicky thing, right? You’ve got to have a staff that can help the players understand that they have the ability to perform and develop as football players, individually and collectively as a unit on both sides of the ball.”
On aspects of the job that he wasn’t ready for:
“There were plenty of things that I wasn’t prepared for (laughs). I made a lot of mistakes. You learn quickly and the best thing that you can do … It’s my philosophy to get great people around you and to hire coaches that are more talented than me and better than I am as a coach and to let them coach and not to micromanage or intervene in too many areas, give them if you will an entrepreneurial environment that allows them to flourish as coaches and to get their players to buy into their leadership.”
I spoke with Barker a day before his team swung the deal with the Riders to get Dwight Anderson (that didn’t come up). Here’s what he had to say about transitioning into a head coaching and a GM role.
On his history with Chris Jones and what he liked about him from Day 1:
“Well I brought him (to Toronto) from Calgary. We coached together in Montreal and won a Grey Cup back in 2002. I tried to take him but he couldn’t leave when I went to Calgary. When I went back and we hired Huff, he didn’t know who (to go with for a D.C) and asked me who I thought we should hire. Chris was always a guy, that … he’s such a hard worker. From the day he was a position coach working for Don (Matthews) he just took everything in. You could tell he was a guy who understands the game and he’s an extremely hard worker and that combination leads to you having success.”
On why Jones wanted to go to Edmonton:
“When the Edmonton job came up, it was like, ‘This was the right job.’ They just had a lot of things going for them and he’s a great fit in that situation with Ed (Hervey). They’re on the same page. Him and Paul Jones go way back. Paul Jones brought him into the league. It was just a perfect storm and the perfect job and it just shows if you wait and you’re patient, you worry about the job you have … which is one of the things I’ve always admired about Chris. He never worried about the next job. He always took care of the job he had and good things happen to people who do things that way.”
On Jones’ ability to connect with his players:
“He’s shown a calmness to him. I think that one of the great assets that Chris shows … is a relationship with the players. I see that (now) on the sidelines with the players coming over to him and you can tell in their interactions that they have a great deal of respect and enjoy and have fun playing for him. That’s something you’d hear when he was in Calgary with us and here (in Toronto) was that players love to play for him. He just makes the game fun and he’s a guy that other players just enjoy being around.”
On Jones adapting his coaching style, switching from a coordinator to a head coach:
“When you’re a coordinator you’re worried about one side of the ball and it’s OK to take your little group and in your group, just lose it on them. And when you do that as a head coach it’s different. It creates different kinds of problems for you. He’s going to work them hard, but at the end of the day the players are going to feel … it’s kind of like (Esks offensive coordinator Steve) McAdoo.
“McAdoo is one of those guys that (when he was an offensive line coach) works offensive linemen as hard as anybody and at the end of the day, you might hate him during practice, but you just love playing for him because you know he’s going to bring out the best. I think Chris does that. He’s tough on them but they love playing for him and he’ll bring out their best.
“I think he’s changed his demeanour slightly as a head coach, which he has to. And I’ve noticed that. He’s calm, but as a coordinator he wasn’t like that and shouldn’t be like that.”
On being a coordinator. The most fun you’ll ever have coaching:
“Personally, I enjoyed being a coordinator. The funnest times coaching I ever had were as coordinator because you could really focus on the Xs and Os and the schematics and that part of it.”
On his transition from a coordinator to head coach, and then from head coach to GM in 2011.
“The hardest part of becoming a head coach is you’ve got to kind of divorce yourself from (keying in on one thing) a little bit in terms of you need to be able to take your expertise to the other side of the ball and you need to spend time with that and you have to delegate more.
“As a coordinator, Chris is one of those guys that … he’s a guy who understands, ‘I’ve got to do this myself to get it done exactly how I want it,’ and as a head coach you have to get off of that bit and you have to delegate a bit more and trust your coaches.
“That was hard for me. It was hard for me to step away and probably in 2011, even after I’d been a head coach for a while, I think I was, I still had trouble divorcing myself from that part of it, enough to allow the coach that was here to do as good a job as he could do. I think the transition for me that was the toughest thing, was stepping back and allowing coaches to grow, allowing them to make mistakes and trying to you have to know when that point is you have to step in and say, ‘OK this is what I’m seeing.’”
On football ops making controversial decisions and what may come from it:
“One of the things that I admire about Scott (Milanovich, the Argos head coach since 2012) and I think Chris was a part of it, we released the league’s leading rusher one year (Cory Boyd, in 2012) because we just felt we were at a point where we weren’t playing horrible but we could be better. Those kinds of things are difficult for head coaches to do.
“We had people in our organization who couldn’t believe we were doing what we did, but (Jones) has what it takes to be able to do that. Last year we got rid of, Chris was involved with it, we basically cut our defensive captain (linebacker Brandon Isaac). There comes a point when those kind of decisions are really difficult to make because they’re going to be seen, you’re going to be put under a microscope and if they don’t work out there’s a chance … you just have to make bold moves in order to stay ahead and sometimes it’s difficult with the kind of job pressure that we have in this league.”
On Jones’ briefness with the media:
“I think as he gets more comfortable he will (talk more). It’s another hard thing where you haven’t done a lot of media and he hasn’t by choice done a lot of it.
“You have to really weigh everything you say. With a first-year, maybe even a first and second-year coach, they’re going to be much more cautious with what they say to the media and that’s understandable. You can never take it back. Once you say something it’s in print forever. You know how things can be interpreted. As soon as a word comes out in print, it’s very different from what is said and the tone in what it was meant.”
On ‘consequences’ becoming that word in Edmonton last year:
“That thing followed (Kavis Reed) the rest of his time there and I’m sure all he meant by it was, ‘We need to hold people accountable.’ Yet by saying it the way he said it, it turned into something different than that.
“When you’re a new coach the last thing you need is to have anything like that. It’s better to say nothing than something that’s going to be misconstrued by players in your locker room. They have to feel like you have their backs so there are a lot of things … the media is very difficult. (he laughs) We were 5-2 my first year here with Cleo Lemon and everyone couldn’t believe I kept Cleo Lemon and kept playing him and it was a weekly … it wasn’t a fun situation.”
