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Ticats.ca
Justin Dunk
Khari Jones will see familiar colours when he looks at the opposition bench on July 1. Canada Day’s Ticats home opener will mark the first time that the Ticats new offensive coordinator game will call plays in a game that counts, and he’ll do so against the franchise where he enjoyed the most success in his playing career.
“I haven’t had a chance to really think about it too much because we’ve been focusing so much on their players and who they are,” Jones said after the Ticats wrapped up their third day of preparation for Winnipeg. “Fortunately, I’m far enough removed, I still love the city, I still love the people there and they were great when I was playing there, but I’m a Tiger-Cat and it’s all about winning this game, regardless of who were playing.”
Not to mention, Paul LaPolice, Jones’ offensive coordinator in Winnipeg for the 2002 and 2003 seasons, will be leading the Bombers in his second season as head coach in 2011. During their first year together in 2002, Jones became one of only four quarterbacks in CFL history to throw for over 40 touchdowns in a season.
LaPolice and Jones were on the same page nine years ago as Jones passed for 5,353 yards and 40 touchdown strikes, but they will be on opposite ends of the scoring ledger come Friday evening.
In studying the film, LaPolice has seen some familiar plays from the Ticats offence and Jones has seen a few of his offensive plays drawn up on play cards for the scout team to run against Hamilton’s starting defence in practice this week.
“It’s similar,” Jones said of the offensive playbooks. “Of course I had a lot of success with that offence so it stands to reason that I’d have some similarities to it, but it’s different enough too. I had a lot of different coordinators over the years, so I’m sure all of them can see something that they had in their offence.”
Jones has an advantage in a lack of film featuring his attack, as Winnipeg’s defence only has pre-season vanilla-filled film to study.
“Teams don’t know what I’ll do and I’m okay with that,” Jones said. “Other teams don’t have any tendencies to go by yet.”
Although, the Bombers have a new coordinator of their own for the 2011 season in Tim Burke, who takes over the defence and has installed a 3-4, yet to be seen in meaningful action.
“Right now you end up coaching ghosts almost, coaching ‘what ifs.’ You try to prepare for a number of different things and then its just about making adjustments on the fly,” Jones said. “It becomes that chess match that I used to love as a player and I’m sure I’m going to love it as a coach.”
“We have to watch and see who’s blitzing and block the right people, it’s still football, but it’s just a different type of defence that you don’t see on a regular basis,” Kevin Glenn said of the Bombers new look.
One of the Bomber players the Hamilton offence will have an eye on is Odell Willis, who recorded 11 of Winnipeg’s league leading 51 sacks in 2010.
“Odell Willis had a really good season last year, and he’s one of those guys that you make sure you know where he is on the field,” Jones said. “You can do a lot of different things that maybe you can’t do [with a four-man front], but I feel like our line is prepared.”
Even with the Bombers appetite for applying pressure last year, Kevin Glenn scorched Winnipeg’s defence in their four meetings, throwing for 1,178 yards, 10 touchdowns against only four interceptions, while rushing for 79 yard on 10 carries – almost half of his total rushing yards last season.
“In certain years, certain things just click. For whatever reason against Toronto in 2002 I threw 10 touchdowns against them in two games, it was just a weird kind of thing,” Jones, the former quarterback said. “I think he feels comfortable, he feels comfortable over all, but for whatever reason against Winnipeg he felt good and our results showed that with just having one loss against them, but it’s a new year.”
Glenn and Jones know how important it will be to win the one-on-one battles in order for the offence to continue their production against Winnipeg when the lights come on July 1.
“I love our match ups,” Glenn said.
“We feel pretty confident with the coordinator that they’re going to be a man-to-man team because that’s what he does,” Jones said. “We’ll be prepared for that and we just have to win our individual battles.”
