Monday Morning Sentimonies: Welcome to the Offseason

Admittedly some of my posts are random pieces of actual news loosely thrown together with some mediocre attempts at humour and a bunch of words that serve as nothing more than filler to make it look like the post actually has some substance.. and that’s when the season is in full swing. You can imagine how much worse things get in the offseason when CFL news is harder to find than a Las Vegas mistress that Tiger Woods hasn’t fooled around with.

But as I always do, I will try my hardest… well okay I’ll try… well it’s probably more accurate to say I’ll make a half-assed attempt to try

So let’s take a look at the few bits of CFL News …

Bart Andrus has been fired by the Argos. This isn’t a huge surprise given that Andrus led the Argos to the CFL basement. It is however a sign of a team in shambles. To be fair to Andrus, he walked into a team with the worst Canadian talent in the league, a scouting system based entirely around has-been NFLers and only 1 talented offensive weapon. But it’s not like Andrus made the best of a bad situation… he pretty much did the opposite and made things much much worse. He knew about as much about Canadian football as Pacman Jones but instead of surrounding himself with a coaching staff that was well versed in the nuances of the CFL (like Marc Trestman did), he went out and hired a bunch of out of work NFL Europe coaches. I can only assume that his logic was that his assistants had previously won a World Bowl so since Canada is part of the “the world” this should be a snap. He also made the genius decision to trade away his only offensive weapon Arland Bruce (who happened to go on to be an all-star and Hamilton’s MOP) as well as keeping perennial all-star Byron Parker on the bench until trading him away too (he went on to haul in 3 INTs in his short time in Edmonton). He was expected to rejuvenate the offense based on his experience as an Offensive Assistant in the NFL but that worked out about as well as Van Halen’s attempt to rejuvenate their careers with Gary Cherone as their lead singer. Andrus can now return to a life of sleeping in a coffin by day and feeding on the blood of the innocent by night (which actually sounds kinda fun).

This firing means that the Argos will enter the 2010 season with their 5^th head coach in 4 years, which is ridiculous. If they had a talented roster that was being held back by bad coaching I could see continually blaming the coach. But when your roster contains no talented QBs, an old RB as your only offensive weapon, a porous defense, and next to no Canadian talent maybe you should be blaming the GM. The team has been on a consistent decline since 2005 and I don’t see anything to indicate that will be changing anytime soon. Unless they fix things at the top, they’ll just be firing another coach after a losing 2010 season. At this rate it would probably just be easier to hire a temp instead of a real coach. They would have about the same chance of success, would come far cheaper and would be easier to part ways with next December.

Jim Daley has stepped down as Defensive Coordinator of the Eskimos for “personal reasons”. While the team wouldn’t expand further on this, I figure its one of 2 possible explanations. 1 – Jim Daley was personally offended by the lack of talent he was given to work with or 2 – he was personally unable to meet Coach Hall’s ridiculously high expectations of fielding a “mediocre defense”.

Other coaches to be moving on include Stamps Special Teams Coach Craig Dickenson and BC QB Coach Steff Kruck. While Dickenson is leaving so he can travel the world for a year, in Kruck’s case his contract is not being renewed which I can only assume means the Leos were unhappy with his performance. Given BC’s QB situation it would take someone who could instantaneously heal concussions and shoulder injuries as well as magically bestow intelligence on the moronic to be successful… so unless they manage to hire Jesus, I’m guessing they will once again be disappointed.

Brandon Browner and Markeith Knowlton will be trying out for the Minnesota Vikings. I’m a bit torn on this. As a CFL fan I am definitely in favour of anything that would lead to not having to watch Browner ever again nor listen to an announcer rave about his supposed talent. However as a Vikings fan, I’m having concerns about their scouting. I can only hope that they envision him playing special teams because if Browner has to clutch and grab CFL receivers to keep up, how bad are the NFL ones going to embarrass him?

We’ll end with CFL Ins and Outs though I have nothing particular to say about any of these…

Saskatchewan
In: OL Chris Best, DL Luc Mullinder (re-signed)

Winnipeg
In: OL Derek Armstrong (trade with Calgary)

Edmonton
In: DL Kai Ellis, OL Patrick Kabongo (re-signed)