JONES’ TIRELESS STUDY OF THE GAME PAYS OFF
Eskimos head coach never misses out on an opportunity to try to improve
What started out as late nights would often turn into early mornings in the spartan Montreal apartment shared by Chris Jones and Scott Milanovich, two nomadic football coaches on the rise.
They were just becoming best friends, two Alouettes assistants sharing the ambition and obsession coaches require, an aggressive Southerner and an intellectual quarterback from Pennsylvania, two men who couldn’t be more different yet so similar, learning from each other, making a promise to each other.
In the midst of one of their late night conversations, they made a proclamation of sorts: The first one to get a head coaching job was going to hire the second one.
Milanovich got the call first. He brought Jones in as defensive coordinator under murky circumstances that got the Argos fined. Neither cares to talk much about that piece of business. They won a Grey Cup together in Toronto, with Jones’ defence playing the part of hero.
And now here is Jones, the sometimes reclusive, almost always suspicious coach, in his second season as head coach of the Edmonton Eskimos, at his first Grey Cup in charge.
They used to have their yellow legal pads: Jones with his defence on paper; Milanovich with his offence.
“We’d get to talking around 9 o’clock and think we’d get to bed early and he would present a question and the next thing you know, it’s 1 or 2 in the morning. He’s a brilliant guy,” said Jones.
Milanovich calls Jones the best coach in the business.
“Nobody out-thinks him or outworks him.
“Back then, we were living about as large as poor coaches can live. We had a huge board and a tiny little television. We used to stay up and shoot holes in each other’s offence or defence. He’d poke holes in my offence and I’d try to poke holes in his defence. And we’d go on for hours. He just has this real genuine love of the game and that’s real. When you talk to Chris, you know it’s about winning, it’s not about him or you, it’s just a genuine competitiveness he has. He wants to be great at what he does all the time.”
Their relationship is so CFL. This isn’t a league as much as it’s a family.
Jones and Ottawa head coach Rick Campbell, the Grey Cup combatants, used to work together in Calgary under John Hufnagel, who Jones beat in the Western final. When Jones coached in Calgary, his quarterback was Henry Burris, who starts here for Ottawa. When he coached with the Argos, Jason Maas, the Ottawa offensive coordinator, was a player and then a coach. It makes it a little more fun, something often lacking in professional sport. It makes it a little more personal.
“Sometimes you don’t think about it until you get to the game and you’re out for the workout and you see them and you remember,” said Jones, who can often be seen jogging around the field hours before kickoff. “The work weeks are so busy. You don’t have time to think about it a lot. A John Murphy (Calgary personnel man) will come by and say hello. Somebody else will do it. That’s kind of the way it is.
“It’s fun to compete against your friends. Going against Scott Milanovich. Going against Dave Dickenson. Going against Jason Maas. It’s really friendly, really competitive ... It’s like playing one-on-one hoops with your friends.”
But it isn’t just his friends Jones connects with. While he is texting regularly with Milanovich — “every three or four days” — he seeks help from the outside as well.
He is consumed the way the great coaches are always consumed. And he wants to know more and more. He has been in contact with NFL legend Bill Parcells, whom he communicates with regularly. He has been in contact with Don Matthews, the legendary CFL coach, whom he worked for in Montreal, about how to approach the job.
He texts Parcells, who doesn’t usually communicate by next. The two were introduced by Paul Jones, the longtime Eskimos director of player personnel, and Parcells took on the role of mentor, with Jones playing the part of sponge.
The more information available, the better for Jones.
“The thing is, he’s a tireless worker,” said Milanovich. “Nobody outworks him. He loves every aspect of the game from motivation to going to the sticks of Mississippi to try and find a player. He loves that, he loves the Xs and Os.
“With Chris, what you see if what you get. It’s honesty and it’s a lot of fun. We could be very real with each other. If he thought something I did was dumb, he would tell me. And If I thought he was wrong about something, I would tell him. Sometimes, that’s how you grow the fastest, when you can get real feedback.”
Jones was born a gambler. In the West Division final, the Eskimos scored the first touchdown to go up 6-0. Jones went for the two-point conversion.
“That’s kind of my nature,” said Jones. “It comes from my days in high school football. My high school coach was very aggressive. We put the pads on every single day. Hit every single day. Just want to win.”
He learned some of that from Matthews, most recently from Parcells. Chris Jones never stops studying. The Milanovich tutorials, where they learned from each other, are long over.
By Sunday, each of them should have their own championships.