TWO POWERFUL OBJECTS ARE NOW SET TO COLLIDE
Maas’ offence, Jones’ defence put to the test in Eskimos-Riders tilt Thursday
They won the 100th Grey Cup game together in 2012 with the Toronto Argos, Chris Jones as the defensive co-ordinator and Jason Maas as quarterbacks coach.
“I got along really well with Chris,” Maas said. “I think Chris is a hard worker. He commands respect just for the way he works. He has a bright mind on the defensive side of the football. Listening and watching him for the two years I was with him, I had a ton of respect for Chris.”
But he never went hunting and fishing with him.
“No, Chris never had time for anything other than football,” dedicated outdoorsman Maas said with a laugh.
They’re now rivals, of course, and in many ways, opposites.
Both are head coaches. Both are co-ordinators, Jones on defence and Maas on offence. And their identities are tied to those co-ordinator roles more, it seems, than anything else.
Jones, the vice-president of football operations and general manager of the Saskatchewan Roughriders in addition to his duties as head coach, has won Grey Cups in Montreal, Calgary, Toronto and Edmonton, the first four stops he made in the CFL, first as a defensive co-ordinator, then as head coach in Edmonton.
Maas made it to the Grey Cup in his first year as an offensive co-ordinator with the Ottawa Redblacks and lost to Jones’ Edmonton team in 2015.
Maas started as a head coach/ offensive co-ordinator with the Eskimos in 2016, relinquished the co-ordinator role to Carson Walch, who departed to take the position with the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles. Maas returned to the dual role this year and thrives on it.
For Thursday’s game, the Roughriders are welcoming quarterback Zach Collaros back to the lineup from the injury list early, taking a $50,000 cap hit in doing so. Jones’ Riders have had almost no offence at all this season, as six touchdowns in six games might indicate. But Jones has had enough defence to somehow win half his games.
Meanwhile, Maas has directed the Eskimos offence to a leagueleading 436.8 yards per game as quarterback Mike Reilly leads the league with 2,063 yards passing and receivers Duke Williams (672 yards), Derel Walker (463) and Kenny Stafford (425) rank as the top receiving trio in the CFL. And the Eskimos offensive line leads the league in fewest sacks allowed with only four. On Wednesday, the CFL announced Williams as the player of the month for July. Reilly won the honour in June.
You get the idea.
This game is very much Maas against Jones. And you have to figure that probably had a heck of a lot to do with Maas closing Wednesday’s walk-through practice to reporters.
There’s heat on Jones as his team plays the second of six consecutive games against division opponents. It’s rare to hear a Mosaic Stadium crowd boo the Riders off the field, but they were doing that Saturday with the Calgary Stampeders up 24-0 after the first quarter.
Jones, as always, has a loaded defence.
“We’re well aware of Charleston Hughes, Willie Jefferson in the middle and Zach Evans,” Maas said of three key players that will make Reilly’s life difficult, especially with centre Justin Sorensen out due to an infection. “They rush three quite a bit so you have to be prepared for that.
“The hardest part of facing any defence is when they have the ability to put pressure on you with a limited amount of people. Saskatchewan has the physical people who can do that.
“Chris runs a lot of man-toman but switches to zone. And he’ll bring that pressure. So communication is a big part of playing against his defence. His defence hasn’t given up a lot of yards this year. So it’s not that easy.”
Maas versus Jones?
“I don’t look at it that way at all,” said Maas, who has a 26-16 record as an Eskimos head coach. “I think both of us view ourselves as all three phases kind of coaches. Obviously we both have our strengths, his on the defence and mine on the offence, but I’m not looking at this as trying to score 40 points on his defence. I’m just trying to win.
“I believe we have a threephase team and I believe it’ll take all three phases for us to win. Not one of the three. Not two of the three. But all three,” he said. On this occasion, I beg to differ. Jones has such a popgun offence and such nondescript special teams that if the Edmonton offence does what it’s designed to do, the Roughriders can’t win.
If Jones can’t beat Maas with his defence, it says here, if a plethora of penalties don’t come into play, he can’t beat Maas.