By Sean Millington,
CBC Sports
When is the right time to send a back-up into the game? How long do you let the incumbent hang on?
The ability to answer these types of questions correctly is the reason head coaches get paid the big bucks.
Let’s take the situation facing Coach Clemons in Toronto as one example. Coming into the season he had three players to juggle at quarterback; future Hall of Famer Damon Allen, the up and coming Michael Bishop, and an unknown quantity in Mike McMahon.
Allen was awarded the starting job coming out of camp and in my mind was given a fair shot at holding onto it. Successive impressive outings by Bishop forced Pinball’s hand and Allen loses his starting spot.
Here’s where it gets tricky. Not only does Allen lose the starting job, but he is relegated to third string. Bishop had earned his ascension to the starting line-up. I’m not so sure that McMahon had earned his promotion to back-up; however, using a forward looking perspective, I can see how that decision was reached.
Nevertheless, with Bishop injured and a new starter needed, I wasn’t sure that McMahon was ready to be the main guy. He was, after all, still a rookie in regards to his CFL experience. This is fine when you are coming off the bench in a blow-out or losing cause, but to start when there is a veteran option in Allen, that decision seemed a bit dubious to me.
In last Saturday’s game against Calgary, the wisdom of that decision was tested and found to be lacking. Coach Clemons has previously stated that McMahon was a bad practice player. Usually the corollary of that is the guy is a gamer.
Well, the Calgary game showed that not to be the case. To be fair, Pinball did say that McMahon had performed a lot better in practice in the week leading up to the game, however, if this is what results from a better week of practice, I would advise that he should return to being a bad practice player.
Now the decision to be made is, does McMahon happen to be a really good player who had a bad day at the office, was he just put in to the starting line-up too soon, or is he really that bad? When a guy completes only six of 18 passes for 58 yards, I have to say I’m leaning towards the latter.
One of McMahon’s positive attributes is supposed to be his confidence, unfortunately from what I witnessed during the game, I would have to say that particular trait is completely unfounded.
Calgary head coach Tom Higgins also faced the same decision about his quarterbacks. When the Stamps were struggling in their two previous games against Saskatchewan and Toronto, back-up Akili Smith did enter the game and showed enough to fuel cries for him to start the following week at home against Toronto.
Higgins assessed the situation accurately by giving the nod to Burris to start again, and was rewarded with a landslide victory over Toronto in which Smith didn’t see the field.
As a player you always want to be in the game, and it is the rare individual who will see themselves as not ready to go in. It is the job of the coach to be the gate keeper and make that determination accurately.
In the case of Toronto, the back-up was promoted to starter and showed he is not ready for prime-time. In Calgary, the veteran was given another chance to prove himself and validated the faith shown in him.
A lot of times the decision can go either way. We should all remember that before we get on a soapbox and preaching who should be playing in a particular game.
Sean Millington played 13 years in the CFL with the Edmonton Eskimos, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, B.C. Lions and Toronto Argonauts and has been a panellist on the CFL on CBC since 2003.
(The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily of the Canadian Football League)
