Fraser Caldwell
Ticats.ca
Cortez on Walker: an “explosive” rusher
With their second preseason outing against Winnipeg looming on Wednesday, the Ticats’ moved to their once daily practice schedule on Monday.
The team’s Head Coach and Director of Football Operations George Cortez addressed the media following their workout at Ron Joyce Stadium, with rookie running back Chevon Walker a chief talking point.
On the topic of his quickly emerging rusher, Cortez indicated that the young Walker was an obvious talent whose primary duty at the moment is to better learn the nuances of his position.
“He’s shown some good things and he’s a very explosive player. For the amount of time that he played with the ball in his hands, he did a nice job (last Wednesday). The thing for him right now is to completely understand and learn everything that’s involved in the running back position.
“You only know how far along you are when you play more games.”
Winnipeg trip a litmus test
With the evaluative process entering its final, crucial stages for the Ticats brass, Cortez argued that the adversity of the road will only add another testable variable for players.
Asked to comment on the decision to fly the team to Winnipeg on the morning of their preseason encounter, the coach stated, “We do that to create a little adversity.”
“First off, I’ve been involved with places where we did that for a long time, so I didn’t even really think about it. But this hasn’t been a good road team. So we’re going out on the road to see who can fight through adversity and focus on what’s going on.”
Balancing playing time for evaluation purposes
With the priority of the preseason being evaluation, Cortez indicated that he is committed to spreading playing time amongst those players remaining to him. That concern is particularly paramount with several players only recently returning to action, and lacking in the necessary reps.
Cortez acknowledged that lineup shuffling was a daily consideration, and that the unit being taken to Winnipeg would reflect the holes in playing time created by previous injuries.
“It’s an ongoing thing,” said the coach of his evaluation process. “Almost every day I sit down and look at who was doing well and who would be lining up if we were playing that day. Who would be on the reserve list? Who would be the guys that we would want on the PR? We want to develop Canadian players, we want to have as many Canadians here as we can have. I look at all of that on a daily basis and I know that the guys on personnel do too.
“But ultimately we’ve got to look at how the guys are playing, and some of these guys didn’t get to play in the last game because they were injured. Hopefully some of that will be rectified on Wednesday night. We’re taking some guys and not taking other guys because some played a lot and others didn’t play at all last week.”
