CASHIERED RIDERS COACH CHAMBLIN BREAKS SILENCE
Former Calgary assistant appreciative of chance to win Cup in Saskatchewan
Erstwhile Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach Corey Chamblin was more conversational than controversial while breaking a two- month- long silence.
On Monday, the previously reticent Chamblin had an extended chat with Andrew Bucholtz of Yahoo! Sports. During the interview — which was disseminated Tuesday on the 55 Yard Line blog — Chamblin discussed myriad issues pertaining to his tenure with and termination by the CFL’s Roughriders.
“Looking back in Saskatchewan overall, I can honestly tell you there is no bad blood there,” said Chamblin, who was dismissed Aug. 31 — when general manager and vice- president of football operations Brendan Taman was also cashiered.
“Even with the way things went down, I’m truly appreciative of the organization and Brendan Taman for taking a chance on me, a young head coach.”
The gamble paid off. Chamblin, the former defensive backs coach of the Calgary Stampeders, punctuated his second season as a head coach by guiding Saskatchewan to a 45- 23 Grey Cup victory over the Hamilton Tiger- Cats — a conquest that should be the immediate focus of any appraisal of his work.
“I think we had some great success there,” Chamblin went on to say. "Being a part of all those ( Roughriders) head coaches, I think there’s 40- plus ( 41), and there’s only four of us that have a Grey Cup ring.
“Of over 100 years ( since the team’s inception), I’ve been a part of one of only four championships they had, and I’m truly appreciative of that.
“I know that even though there is that blip in the history book there, there’s still that positive history of being the last coach to win the Grey Cup in Saskatchewan.”
The Roughriders followed up by winning eight of their first 10 games in 2014, but then everything crumbled. Quarterback Darian Durant suffered a seasonending elbow injury and, without him in the starting lineup, Saskatchewan won but two of its final nine games ( playoffs included) in 2014.
Durant was sidelined once again in the 2015 regular- season opener, rupturing his left Achilles tendon near halftime, and the Roughriders subsequently staggered to an 0- 9 start. The ninth game was Chamblin’s last in Saskatchewan.
When assessing the team, Chamblin said that “we didn’t have the names and the talent that we had in ’ 13 and some of that trickled down to ’ 14. And that’s no disrespect to the guys that are there but you got a whole lot of new guys that are trying to learn, or teach them, and have to have them learn the game. So winning the Grey Cup was probably not in the cards this year.”
Compare that to what Chamblin told the media on Day 4 of training camp: “This looks like a team that has the makings of being a Grey Cup football team.” You know the rest. Bucholtz also asked Chamblin how he and Taman had planned to build for future success.
“Well, you know, we do look at that,” Chamblin said. “That’s why we had the young guys. We had the free- agent camps, and expanded some things that we did there. We brought in guys like Junior Mertile, you had younger guys coming in like Tyree Hollins. There were a lot of younger guys coming in who in the past ... when we won the Grey Cup, we didn’t play younger guys. We played big- name veterans — Dwight Anderson, Geroy Simon.
“Now you come in with Naaman Roosevelt and all these young guys playing... so when you look at it, we went younger. That was the process of saying, ‘ Hey, let’s build these young guys and give them experience.’ Whereas in ’ 12, we had a mix of heavy vets but we were still kind of young, ’ 13 was all vets, ’ 14 was decently vets, and now in ’ 15, they were a little bit younger.”
But not as young as they should have been.
Roosevelt spent the first eight games on the practice roster before finally being activated. Earlier, Chamblin had started Taj Smith, 31, and Jamel Richardson, 33, in the receiving corps while Roosevelt finally suited up in the Riders’ ninth game and caught his first of five touchdown passes this season.
There’s more. Kicker Chris Milo, 28, was dumped after Week 1 and replaced by Paul McCallum, 45. When reinforcements were required in the defensive backfield, Chamblin turned to veterans Geoff Tisdale and Alex Suber. It is doubtful that anyone could have extracted more than a handful of victories from the 2015 Roughriders, who carry a 2- 15 record into Sunday’s meaningless regular- season finale against the host Montreal Alouettes.
In time, the travails of 2015 will be overshadowed by the history- making events of two years earlier. Chamblin will be remembered as a cup- winning coach long after anyone recalls some of the perplexing moves that preceded his ouster and, yes, his protracted silence.