Sunderland and Maas the perfect duo
Brock Sunderland and Jason Maas were going to work together as general manager and head coach; it was just a matter of when and where.
It turned out to be Edmonton, this year. But it might have been Saskatchewan last season, as Sunderland explained on Monday during an interview in his Commonwealth Stadium office.
In November 2015, the Roughriders were looking for a GM/head coach, and Sunderland was on a very short list of serious candidates. He was assistant GM with Ottawa at the time, while Maas was the Redblacks’ offensive co-ordinator.
“The guy I would have hired in Saskatchewan is Jason Maas,” Sunderland said. “In fact, when he left Ottawa (after) the 2015 season — we were saying our goodbyes and I knew I was a finalist in Saskatchewan — I told him flat-out, I said ‘Hey, heads up, if I get this, expect a phone call.’ ”
Former Eskimos head coach Chris Jones got the Riders job, and Maas quickly replaced Jones here. And 79 days ago, Sunderland was announced as the successor in Edmonton to Ed Hervey, who was fired April 7.
“The fact that it worked out where (Maas) is here as the head coach already and I get this opportunity, I don’t know if you want to call it fate,” said Sunderland. “For me, it was ideal. That’s the word I would use.”
He would have taken the job even if he didn’t know the head coach. But it helps that Maas and Sunderland are familiar and on the same page.
“I think we have a great relationship,” said Maas. “We can talk about anything. We discuss things. We both have our opinions of things, but we respect one another.”
They have slightly different opinions on how much hair is attached to Friday’s matchup between their current and former teams. Maas, who has plenty of friends in Ottawa, is 0-3 against the Redblacks as Edmonton’s head coach, and it’s grinding his gears.
“Sometimes you want to beat your friends worse than your enemies, and I have yet to do that since I’ve been here,” Maas said. “Sometimes games do mean more, for whatever reason. We’re just humans and there are emotions attached to things.”
Sunderland is newer to this dynamic, and not as close to the action, so he’s positioning it as just another one on the schedule.
“We want to win it just for the good of the organization. We want to be 3-0. It’s kind of a sibling rivalry thing, right? You want to beat your brother or sister.
“More than that? No. I’m here now. I’m the GM of the Eskimos. My sole and entire focus is this organization and just winning games for the good of what we’re doing. It’s not personal. There’s no vendetta.
“Ottawa was amazing, personally and professionally. All I have from there are great friendships and wonderful memories. I left for a better opportunity or otherwise I’d still be there. I had other opportunities in the NFL that I turned down because I enjoyed Ottawa so much.”
But Edmonton had a head coach he knew and respected, and a starting quarterback he knew was a winner.
“You’re nothing in football without a good quarterback. I don’t care what level of play it is. I always laugh when people say the CFL is a quarterback-driven league. B.S. It’s a quarterbackdriven game. I don’t care if it’s Pop Warner, flag football, pickup football; if you don’t have a quarterback, you don’t have a chance. So the best thing we have is Mike Reilly.”
As a bonus, Edmonton is also home to Sunderland’s all-time favourite CFL player: Gizmo Williams. In fact, the two work in the same building, Williams as a personal trainer at the Commonwealth Community Recreation Centre. They haven’t crossed paths yet, but Sunderland is looking forward to it. He remembers Williams doing front flips in the end zone, and he went on to play the same positions, wideout and returner.
Sunderland, 37, has long had a soft spot in his heart for the CFL and all its characters. His father, Marv, attended a Stampeders training camp in the 1960s as a fullback and saved his practice jersey, No. 27. It was one of the first Brock remembers wearing.
In the early 1990s, Sunderland would help out at harvest time on the Inverness, Mont., wheat farm owned by his maternal grandparents.
“The luxury of the day was if you got to sit in the combine, because you had radio.”
They pulled in a signal from Lethbridge, 250 kilometres northwest, and he remembers listening to broadcasts of Eskimos and Stampeders games.
When he played school football in Great Falls, he wore the green and gold of Charles M. Russell High School Rustlers.
“I’m not saying this because I’m here, Edmonton always jumped out at me because my high school has the identical uniform, except instead of an EE, we have an R.”
The Eskimos are actually Sunderland’s third CFL stop. Six knee surgeries forced him off the field and away from the game, but his love of football and the CFL brought him back. At age 23 he quit a well-paying job in pharmaceutical sales to work for $400 a month as a scout with the Montreal Alouettes.
The goal, even then, was to become a GM; it was just a matter of when and where.
Sometimes you want to beat your friends worse than your enemies.