HE KNEW THE PIVOT WAS BUILT TO COACH
Trestman tried to recruit Dickenson while his playing career was on the wane
The astute head coach that he is, Marc Trestman could tell quarterback Dave Dickenson was done. Toast. Finished. Kaput. Shot.
So he offered him a coaching job. Dickenson declined. But Trestman was right. Dickenson was washed up.
And he was right again. Dickenson was going to make a great coach.
Sunday they meet in the 105th Grey Cup game, Trestman returning from the NFL to totally transform the Toronto Argonauts into a championship contender and Dickenson back in the Grey Cup for a second straight time in his second year as head coach of the Calgary Stampeders.
“I knew Dave as a quarterback and as someone interested in a career in coaching, and I knew his brother Craig,” Trestman said, referring to the specialteams co-ordinator in Saskatchewan who won a Grey Cup while performing the same job in Edmonton in 2015.
“My recollection is that we did have a discussion and it worked out the way it did. Here he is. That says a lot for who he is. I have a lot of respect for what he’s done, how he handles his team, how he handles the media and how he handles the game,” added Trestman, the former Montreal Alouettes head coach who won back-to-back Grey Cups in 2009 and 2010.
Dickenson remembers the discussion well.
“Back when I was cut by B.C., Marc reached out to me,” Dickenson said as the two sat in personalized directors chairs separated by the Grey Cup at the coaches’ press conference on Wednesday.
“I knew I could learn a lot. But I just hadn’t at that point given up the dream of playing. So I told him I was going to keep this going. As it turned out, the career was pretty much over as a player, but then I stayed in Calgary with Huff,” he said of then head coach John Hufnagel, now his general manager.
“I’d love to sit down with Marc now and see how he handles himself as a head coach. He’s probably as proven as any guy in our league for a long, long time. Football people love talking football and I’d love to compare notes. “Not this week, though.” Trestman, at this time last year, had no thought of being back in the CFL, much less taking over the worst team in the league and guiding them to a Grey Cup berth.
“It happened so fast. Once Jim (Popp) got the GM job, I thought it was kind of interesting that he got it and I’m sitting out not coaching football. And it was a family decision as well. It was the right job at the right time. It was, ‘OK, let’s go up there. We love this league.’
“I mean, part of it is the love of the league and the type of players in the league. This is an amazing league. I say it all the time. It’s the grit and the heart of the players. I love the type of men that are playing in this league. And I love being part of it.
“I knew that by having Jim, I could coach and let him do what he does. I don’t want that job.”
Trestman was asked about the minor miracle of taking over the team so late, putting together a staff and finding a half-team of new players and getting to the Grey Cup game.
“Honestly, there was a lot of luck involved. I was able to keep Marcus Brady, who I knew, as an assistant. I was able to keep Corey (Chamblin) to come out of retirement. The stars were aligned for that. He did a really excellent job of helping me vet the defensive staff. I think coaching-wise there was a little bit of luck involved in getting the right guys at the right time. The luck was that I didn’t just get coaches who love to teach the science of football, but some really amazing men.
“And then player-wise I knew we were getting Ricky Ray at quarterback. I knew what we were getting with Ricky. I knew that I knew enough. I knew the man and the leader and the type of guy we were getting.
“And Jim came in with the addition of Armanti Edwards, S.J. Green and Bear Woods. Jim did a great job of alleviating a lot of the first-year problems that you have, trying to get the wrong people out of the locker-room as quickly as you can. We didn’t have any of that. We started with good people, guys who love the game and were hard-working.” First and foremost, he had Ray. “Ricky shows you that leaders come in all different ways,” Trestman said.
“Ricky never says anything. I mean, if we’re not in the quarterback meeting, he’s not saying anything, other than calling the plays. Ricky Ray is really the surgeon. He just does it. But the words are not there. The vocal part of him is just not there. That’s just not who I’ve found him to be.
“I know this. When I go to work every day, I can’t wait to get there because I get to work with Ricky Ray every day. And everybody in the building knows that we have hope because when we walk in the building, Ricky Ray gives us hope.
“And when you walk into the meeting room, you want a quarterback who not only loves football, but really loves football and will do whatever it takes to prepare properly. And he brings out the best in everybody because we don’t want to let him down.
“When I walk in there to a meeting, I want to make sure I’m totally prepared because I can’t let him down. If I’m not prepared, he’s going to know it and that’s going to affect him.
“And that’s the way it affects our players. They have to be prepared because they know how prepared he is. It’s just energy that feeds on itself because we don’t want to let Ricky down.”
Earlier in the conference, Dickenson said a coach is only as good as his quarterback, especially in the CFL.
Trestman picked up on that in his eloquent testimonial to the former Edmonton Eskimos quarterback that, in one of the all-time dumbest deals in CFL history, former Eskimos general manager Eric Tillman traded away.
“As Dave said, as a coach, you are defined by your quarterback. And if our quarterback wasn’t playing at a high level, we wouldn’t be here,” Trestman said. “It’s the bottom line. The defence can play great and you can have a great running game and all of that, but if the quarterback is not functioning at an efficient level, none of that stuff matters.”
Dickenson was asked about the last time he was in Ottawa for the Grey Cup with the B.C. Lions when the big question going in was whether Casey Printers or Dickenson should start at quarterback.
“I remember Wally (Buono) making the right decision. He decided to start me,” Dickenson said with a laugh. “That was a weird week, a weird, weird week. I remember the losses more than the wins and 2004 still stings. We did a lot of things wrong from strategy and players ... we had a fight on the bus the day before the game. It wasn’t the type of situation I’d want to have happen for our team this year.”