THE CANADIAN PRESS
Rheanne Marcoux
BlueBombers.com
WINNIPEG — A lot of pressure is riding on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the New Year.
The team, coaches and management expect more, and the first step is finding a way, a plan, a strategy to win. After careful consideration, Head Coach Mike O’Shea began putting his plan into action Wednesday with the dismissal of Defensive Coordinator, Gary Etcheverry.
“Obviously, tough day for our organization. It was a long process of evaluation and lots of time spent with Etch trying to think of a good solution going forward, and in the end the number of changes I was going to have to ask Etch to make, I just felt he wasn’t going to be able to truly believe in the solutions and the changes that I wanted,” opened O’Shea at this afternoon’s press conference.
Though O’Shea has yet to hire a replacement, he has a few names in mind but isn’t hurrying to make a decision just yet.
“I don’t feel like we’re in any rush, but for the players’ sake, the sooner the better obviously,” he noted. “As with the decision of parting ways with Etch, we had time to go through a very comprehensive evaluation.”
Despite the belief that the decision was made for the betterment of the team as a whole, Etcheverry’s dismissal weighed on the first-year Head Coach.
“(It was) very difficult. We spent a lot of time trying to come up with a solution. A lot of time analyzing every bit of data we could analyze. In the end, in this position, you have to order what you believe is going to benefit the entire team, above any personal dealings you might have, and that makes it tough,” said O’Shea.
But looking ahead, O’Shea knows what, and who, he needs to continue building his team.
“You start at the top, you hire a defensive coordinator, and then you go through a list of available staff members to round out the staff,” explained O’Shea, noting the new Defensive Coordinator will have a say in flushing out the remaining defensive coaching staff.
However, when it comes to the offensive coordinator position, O’Shea tipped his hat to the fact OC Marcel Bellefeuille will return to the Bombers for 2015.
“In terms of the offence, we started something with Drew Willy. To be fair to Drew, if you keep changing coordinators on a young quarterback, you can really set him back.”
“I think we’ve found a good quarterback, we have a good young stable of quarterbacks, all four of them, so obviously it’s my preference to keep going. So we’re in the midst of offering those guys (the offensive coaching staff) contracts.”
O’Shea holds firm that he has and will keep the right to reserve final word on all personnel decisions, from the coaching staff to the players on the field.
“I would think that I have full control over personnel, so I don’t think that that’s going change going forward,” he asserted. “What I do, is I let my coaches coach and I listen to them in terms of their opinions on players. But when it comes down to it, if I feel a player’s gotta play, he’s gotta play.”
Which means the future defensive coordinator will have to be someone the players believe in, respect, and play hard for; a good teacher who will hold his staff and players accountable, according to the Head Coach.
O’Shea is looking specifically for a more balanced defensive game next season, one that can shut down both the opposition’s passing and running game. This, according to O’Shea, is where the defence fell short this season.
“There’s the philosophy that the CFL is a quarterback driven pass-first league, and we’re in the West and teams run the ball. I just think we were more committed to stopping the pass, and we lacked a little balance in that regard. The sense of how teams were going to try and beat us, through the air or the history of the league that would suggest it’s a passing league, in this season, against us it wasn’t.”
But O’Shea isn’t putting the blame on anyone’s shoulders. The focus now is finding a system that will yield results, not labouring over the past.
“This is not about casting aside good men, this is about coming up with solutions,” O’Shea firmly emphasized. “It’s not about pointing fingers and blaming, it’s about finding ways to get better and coming up with good, solid solutions for our club.”
