The Canadian Press
Between March 1 and 2, 1900, Montreal was dumped with 55 cm of snow. Between November 9 and 10, 1996, Montreal (Dorval) endured a record 24-hour rainfall of 134 mm. February, 2015 was the single coldest February in the city in over 100 years. And of course the ice storms that have periodically shut the city down weigh heavy on Montrealers minds’ and power lines.
Depending on how deep your allegiances run, being an Alouettes fan might have had you feeling like you’ve been under an ominous combination of all of this unpredictable, unfortunate weather over the last few years.
This year, the Alouettes missed the playoffs for the third consecutive season and closed the schedule out with an 11-game losing streak. First-year GM Kavis Reed made a mid-season coaching change, firing Jacques Chapdelaine and defensive coordinator Noel Thorpe. The acquisition of quarterback Darian Durant backfired. Receiver S.J. Green was traded to Toronto before the season started and linebacker Bear Woods was released in training camp and scooped up by the Argos. Both played a key role in Toronto’s first Grey Cup win in five years. The end-of-season process of finding a coach had been, up until Tuesday night, one that had the uncomfortable tinge of a kid at the high school dance that couldn’t find a partner.
Then on Wednesday, a ray of light finally poked through the clouds.
“My simple objective,” Mike Sherman said at a podium in front of the Montreal media, his Bostonian accent casually sliding out as he spoke, “with me you’re going to find is what you see is what you get. There’s nothing behind the curtain, you know what I’m saying?”
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Sherman, who turned 63 on Tuesday, was named the 24th head coach of the Alouettes on Wednesday morning.
“What you see is what you get. It’s very simple. I have very simple objectives.”
It’s been a rough year for the Alouettes, one that it felt like grew more complicated by the week. In the final days of a year that can’t end soon enough for forward-looking Als, the idea of simplicity felt like what could be the beginning of necessary change.
The word “simple” continued to pop up throughout the 40 minutes that Sherman spent at that podium, first introducing himself to Montreal for 20 minutes, then taking questions for another 20.
Maybe more than the other major sports in North America, a football coach’s job might be the most complicated. They’re in charge of dozens of players, multiple coordinators and position coaches. The Xs and Os are endless and there’s always something either on the field or off that requires attention. But Sherman sounded like someone who can stand in the eye of that hurricane and orchestrate. Just making that sound easy is anything but.
“I think the most important thing and this doesn’t matter whether you’re running a business, raising your kids, working in the community, in the government, in the church, it’s the same thing everywhere. We have three core values as a team, it’s very simple,” he said.
Those values are integrity, with the entire team, himself included, being honest and accountable with everyone about their performance. There’s passion, giving back what the fans of Montreal give to its players. Watching tape of these three-win Alouettes, Sherman said the passion was missing. The third was to give back more than you take.
“There are Xs and Os involved, obviously. There are player decisions, that’s all part of it, but truth be told it’s managing people, motivating people, keeping everyone not eh same page and communicating on a high level,” he said. “Making sure our alignment as an organization is tight, making sure we’re all in this together, every single one of us. If we do those things and we do the process right, the reward is that we win and we win consistently. Hopefully year after year after year.”
Of course, with training camp six months away, words in December are words in December, no matter who’s delivering them. But on Wednesday, after so many dark clouds, Sherman brought something new to the mix and cast a different light on the Als’ organization. While stories circulated over the last three weeks about potential head coaches coming and going, being interviewed, having their names withdrawn or eliminated, or simply declining the opportunity, Sherman’s name stayed out of that public mix until the very last minute.
Reed said that he and the Als interviewed 15 people at varying levels of football across North America, but Sherman and his extensive pedigree were what continued to surface, no matter where they looked.
“All too often in sports vernacular we say “culture” and no one sits down to define it. We spent time defining culture. We spent time defining what it’s going to take to be successful,” Reed said.
It was a link with the Als’ past that sold the team’s higher-ups on Sherman. Spending time with Marv Levy, the coach of the 1977 Grey Cup-winning Alouettes team earlier this season, rang bells when Reed, Sherman and team owners Bob and Andrew Wetenhall met.
“It was our first opportunity to meet coach Sherman in that interview session and we had the pleasure of spending a lot of time with Marv Levy a couple of months ago when we celebrated the ’77 Grey Cup,” Andrew Wetenhall said.
“I’d talked to coach Levy explicitly about the things we should be looking for in a head coach and sure enough in comes this man and he’s talking exactly as if he’d heard the conversation that Marv Levy and I had.
“Finally I turned to him and said, ‘You know coach Levy said something like that to me.’ He said, ‘I know coach Levy quite well he was a good mentor to me.’
“I thought to myself, ‘Boy, Kavis has done a heck of a job recruiting this coach to come up to Montreal.’”
There are still a lot of blanks to be filled in on the Alouettes before anyone can begin to make predictions on whether or not they can recover from their 2017 season. The team needs to first, sort out what it’ll do with the quarterback position. Sherman needs to hire a coaching staff. Judging by his comments on Wednesday, he’ll look to coordinators with experience in the league to help him transition into coaching a different style of football than he’s been used to in the States. There will be a learning curve and undoubtedly hiccups, but they’ll be no different than the ones that Marc Trestman went through in 2008 when he joined the Alouettes from the States, and on a smaller scale, what June Jones went through in his half a season with Hamilton last year.
Wednesday was a welcome change to the atmosphere or perception that had built up over the Alouettes through the last year, though. There’s a new name in the fold and new challenges, but the ball is rolling and for the first time in a long time, it felt like the sun peaked out a little bit over the Alouettes.
