Riderville.com
CFL.ca Staff
With files from Riderville.com
REGINA — Brendan Taman says the Riders are good but need to get better.
It’s a fair assessment after the last two rollercoaster seasons in Regina, one resulting in a Grey Cup Championship, the other a first-round exit at the hands of the hated Eskimos.
The Riders’ veteran general manger addressed the media for the first time this off-season on Thursday, announcing first that Offensive Coordinator George Cortez would not have his contract renewed.
“We talk at length about staff and players and all that. I think [Head Coach Corey Chamblin] and I just felt it was time for a change,” says Taman. “We wanted to get a different look and a different approach to things.”
Cortez was put in the role at the start of the 2013 season, helping the Riders become the top rushing team in the CFL and leading them to a storybook season, culminating with a Grey Cup victory on home turf.
In 2014, though, while the Riders rode to a quick start thanks to a seven-game winning streak, they failed to overcome an injury to Darian Durant, losing seven of their last nine games while sitting at the bottom of the league in passing yards.
“George is a really good coach. He’s a good guy,” he continues. “He helped us win a Grey Cup. He did a lot of good things for us. But sometimes you just reach a point where you just want to change things up.”
Chamblin, three years into his head coaching career, has the confidence of the Riders’ front office. More changes could come to the coaching staff elsewhere though, as Taman appears to be on the fence when it comes to Defensive Coordinator Richie Hall.
Whatever, the Riders’ GM isn’t making anyone other than himself a scapegoat for the team’s 2014 shortcomings. Equally important as whoever’s calling the shots from the sideline, he says, is whoever’s lining up on the field on game day.
Taman says Chamblin wasn’t given “enough bullets in the gun” last year, as the team struggled to overcome the off-season departure of 101st Grey Cup MVP Kory Sheets and the injury to Durant.
“When you lose games and you don’t get to where you want to get to, everyone’s accountable,” says Taman. “Everything stops with me and ends with me, so I’ll be as responsible as anybody.”
The Riders faced a difficult task after their Grey Cup victory just over a year ago, losing both Sheets and Weston Dressler to the NFL and the CFL’s all-time leading receiver Geroy Simon to retirement. All three played an integral role in the team’s Grey Cup run that year, and mostly rookies such as Anthony Allen were asked to replace their production.
By the time Dressler returned mid-season, the Riders were already on a long winning streak and challenging Calgary for a division title, but an elbow injury sustained by Durant during the Banjo Bowl vs. Winnipeg put plans on hold.
The Riders went through three different quarterbacks after that, but never managed to overcome the loss of their veteran leader and biggest playmaker.
“In the last couple of years, we’ve had an injury we weren’t able to overcome,” says Taman. “Even looking to 2013 when we weren’t able to win games when Sheets went down.”
“We have to figure out why that happens, but ultimately we win and die with our quarterback a lot of the time and we weren’t able to overcome that.”
Rare is the team that can face injuries to multiple star players and still battle to win a championship. It’s a storyline in every season, one faced this year by not only the Riders, but the Argos, who lost virtually every starting receiver on their roster, and the Lions, who were without Travis Lulay, Andrew Harris and Courtney Taylor for most of the year.
Both of those teams and the Riders were Grey Cup winners in the last three years, and all watched their season end far sooner than hoped.
But a quick glance at this year’s Grey Cup Champs shows that it can indeed be done. The Calgary Stampeders have dealt with turnover each season too, and in 2014 a bevy of injured playmakers on both sides of the ball.
Their ability to overcome injuries to the starting quarterback, running back, top receiver and two key defensive linemen and still win 17 games — that’s the model for success that every CFL general manager aims to achieve.
“Any time you don’t have the depth, and you just look at Calgary – they’ve been able to put in people and keep winning games,” starts Taman, “that’s what we want to get to and we weren’t able to, whatever the reason.”
“We need to build up our depth.”
The Riders’ first priorities will be to both settle their coaching staff and lock up key pending free agents. Dressler and Ben Heenan are the two high-profile talents slated to hit the market, and Taman says he’s already had preliminary discussions with both.
Then there’s the matter of the backup quarterback position, another area that Taman plans to address. Kerry Joseph is out after retiring on Friday, while Tino Sunseri, Keith Price and Seth Doege are the other backup QBs on the roster.
“We really thought when we lost Drew to Winnipeg that Tino was going to be able to fill us a void there and we didn’t get that worked out,” says Taman. “It wasn’t good enough, and I wasn’t going to hide and pretend that it was”.
“That’s on me.”
For the year 2015, the Riders’ focus is clearly not just on fielding the best 12 men on each side of the ball possible – it’s on being prepared for the worst. That goes far beyond the first 24 guys on the field.
