Rick Moffat
CFL.ca
Shakeup? This was barely a hiccup. Team disharmony? This was Group Hug week in Montreal.
After being blown out in a game for the first time all season, the Montreal Alouettes’ genius GM brings in only an Arena League recycle project?
Anwar Stewart calls his part-time status “BS” and all he has to do is apologize?
However, Jim Popp and Marc Trestman are used to pushing all the right buttons, and none of them say panic.
Since the franchise’s rebirth in ’96, the only time the Als have had more losses at the midway mark of a season they went to the Grey Cup (only to lose under Don Mathews in ’05). This is only the fourth time in Nouveau Alouettes history the club has had four or more defeats at the halfway point.
With a veteran group patience is a virtue. Thus Micheaux Robinson will try to follow in Jerald Brown and Billy Parker’s footsteps. The Als’ personnel department believes Arena exiles are familiar with receivers in motion and are therefore preferable to rusted out CFL castoffs or the latest NFL cuts.
In the case of the Stewart Experiment, it pretty much blew up in everyone’s face. He was out of position and had no chemical explosion. He heated up back at end in recent weeks, but Stewart was yanked from the Steeltown Meltdown. Truth is that only John Bowman and Moton Hopkins are generating big plays.
Even after failing to score an offensive touchdown, the Als are not giving up on the Trestman Guru Juice. The Als’ first half record for the three previous seasons is 19-8, with their second half record being more about the rest of the league “catching up” to Trestman’s gameplans.
One thing is for sure: they will have to give Brandon Whitaker touches before the second quarter of each and every game.
The Alouettes need no less than a dominating performance in a payback game Sunday. If they want special inspiration the weekend will be full of profound reminders.
“Team Proudfoot” and the Alouettes march September 10 for the first time since the passing of Alouette allstar and Grey Cup hero Tony Proudfoot (donate online to tackle Lou Gehrig ’s disease here.)
“He had a great thirst for information,” says Proudfoot’s mentor Rod Rust. “He ‘mind’ the game. That’s the ultimate marriage for an athlete to use your mind and your physical strength. He did that as well as anyone I’ve ever been around.”
“I rarely called a defence,” says the defensive mastermind who coached the Als in three different decades. “I was up in the press box and Gene Gaines was player-coach on the field. He made the calls or they were called by committee. I have no idea how that went. “
“They fought together so very well,” recalls Marv Levy’s d-coordinator for three years before preceding the NFL Hall of Famer back to the USA.
“Ottawa was our mortal enemy at that time. Mike Widger says ‘they can’t pick up 40-Robber’. They called it, Widger got a sack and we got them off the field.” (Als won the Eastern Final 14-4 and gave up only 7 points to the Esks in Grey Cup ’74.)
“There was more reliance on the players knowing what to do and thinking as a unit together on the field. Tony was a big part of that.
“He was insightful, he studied a lot, his preparation provided him with a platform to make many contributions.
“When I brought Tony in to coach in 2001, Stefan Reid was his equal as a football preparer. He had a tremendous thirst for information about the game and I can understand why Tony was so fond of him…he was looking in the mirror.
“All of a sudden Tony’s coaching a guy who can match him intellectually and physically. It was really fun for him to be around a guy that: when you say something it registers, he can interpret it, correlate with things he already knows. Those were things Tony did very well and he saw them in this ex-skier from the mountains of British Columbia, and Tony must have thought ‘Wow, he’s just like me.’”
Additionally, the Als will mark the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 tragedy before kicking off against Hamilton. Rust also happened to be head coach September 11, 2001.
“I think you can say it was tremendous trauma for the whole Western Hemisphere.
“It did disrupt preparation, obviously. We all understood the world’s a little different that it was.”
An 8-2 club struggled to handle the Argos 24-18 before a hushed crowd on Tuesday night. It was the Als’ last win of the year as Rust’s Als crashed and burned, whereas the future for Trestman’s 2011 team remains entirely in the air
