Eskimos forge ahead with Maas
Third-year head coach ‘excited’ to win reprieve despite missing playoffs
With the 2018 Canadian Football League playoffs set to kick off without them, the Edmonton Eskimos are bringing back Jason Maas as their head coach for the 2019 season.
The third-year head man confirmed as much on his weekly radio spot with 630 CHED Coach’s Show host Morley Scott on Tuesday night.
“Brock (Sunderland) and I sat down and digested everything,” Maas said in reference to the Eskimos’ GM.
“For about eight hours, we just sat there and talked about everything. At the end of it, we came to the conclusion that I’m going to go forward and coach the team. I’m happy for that. I wanted to do that. I’m excited about it.”
In his three years with the Eskimos, Maas hasn’t had a losing season, going 31-23 in the regular season and 2-2 in playoffs. However, after reaching the divisional final in each of his first two seasons, this year’s 9-9 record saw them finish last in the West and eliminated from playoff contention. This in a year in which Edmonton is hosting the Grey Cup game Nov. 25.
And that hasn’t gone over well with an Eskimos fan base that was forced to endure the humiliation of sitting through a meaningless game to end the season.
“You’re kind of at the mercy of listening to what everybody else thinks,” said Maas, who was much more interested in what his players had to say, spending two days during exit meetings with each player. “I was open minded and wanting to hear from all our players.
“I wanted the feedback and I wanted to hear how the season went and how we did as a team and how the players felt, ultimately, about me and with the direction of the team.
“Anything I could improve, offence, defence, special teams, all that was included.
“It’s an interesting process. It’s something that I think when you go 9-9 and you’re searching a little bit for the reasons why and you have a little bit of inconsistency throughout the season — when we’re good, we’re good and when we’re bad, it’s a struggle kind of thing — I thought it was a good exercise.
“At the end of the day, with Brock and I, level heads prevailed. I think we both listened, learned a lot and then put our heads together for a plan to go forward, and I think we both feel very confident about the direction.”
Maas pointed to his quarterbacks coach, Jordan Maksymic, as a potential candidate to take over the duties of offensive coordinator — something the head coach undertook his first year in Edmonton, and ended up with again this year after Carson Walch took a job with the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles last off-season.
“I’ll take some time to divulge that information later but, definitely, it’s something I am leaning toward,” Maas said. “I think promoting from within is what I will do. It will be a collaborative effort, like it has been in the past. It will alleviate some of the duties that I have on the offensive side.
“I still will be heavily involved, but it will allow me to float around the room a bit more and get more involved with coaching our coaches and listening to our players.”
Offensive co-ordinator isn’t the only role that could end up changing prior to the 2019 season.
“I’m going to look at everything on our staff and figure it out,” Maas said. “But that won’t happen for quite a while.”
ONE-TWO PUNCH
The Eskimos were held off the nominee list for the 2018 Shaw CFL awards, which was announced Wednesday.
Despite having the leagueleading passer in Mike Reilly and league-leading receiver in Duke Williams, missing the playoffs was anything but outstanding. Instead, the title of most outstanding player, which went to Reilly in 2017, is now between Calgary Stampeders quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell and Hamilton Tiger-Cats pivot Jeremiah Masoli.
Williams and fellow Eskimos receiver Derel Walker were named West Division all-stars.
The pair sat No. 1 and 2 overall in receiving yards before Walker was lost for the season with a knee injury on Labour Day.
Williams, with his first all-star award, finished on top with 1,579 yards and 11 touchdown receptions, while Walker earned his third all-star honours by finishing top five in the West Division with 875 yards to go along with eight touchdown receptions, despite only playing 11 games.
QB SIGNED
While the top priority for the Eskimos this off-season is re-signing Reilly, a fresh face was added to the quarterback stable Thursday.
Jeremiah Briscoe is a two-time Walter Payton award winner out of Sam Houston State, where he completed 802 of 1,375 pass attempts for 11,849 yards, 119 touchdowns and just 35 interceptions over three seasons.
The six-foot-three, 225-pound native of Houston is only the second player to win more than one Walter Payton award as the most outstanding offensive player in the Div. 1 Football Championship Subdivision.