TRESTMAN ALL BUSINESS AS MINI-CAMP CONVENES
‘Time is of the essence’ as former Alouettes coach kicks off bid to rebuild Argonauts
A three-hour drive across the midsection of Florida in Vero Beach, Vince Young’s unofficial CFL debut was met with the typical fanfare and fervour you’d expect when both Rider Nation and a name of that magnitude are involved.
But back on the other side of the Sunshine State, the one bumping up against the Gulf of Mexico, Marc Trestman was also making a return of his own this week, although with much less pomp and circumstance surrounding the 61-year-old head coach’s reappearance on a CFL field.
Since being hired nearly two months ago, the Toronto Argonauts head coach has been in his own little Double Blue bubble, which can only be considered a good thing.
You’ll have to excuse Trestman if he doesn’t have time for what’s going on elsewhere.
He has a last place, 5-13 team of his own to rebuild, one that has nothing to do with VY, Regina or the mini-camp going on at Historic Dodgertown in Vero Beach.
Trestman had no idea the radar was even on, let alone the fact they’re flying under it while competing for attention with the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ yearly pilgrimage south.
“I don’t know anything about it,” Trestman said prior to taking the field at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., on Wednesday, the second of three mini-camp practice days for the Argos.
“I don’t pay attention to what’s going on.”
Vince Young? University of Texas? No. 3-overall NFL pick in 2006? The biggest story of the winter, perhaps only equalled by your hiring?
That guy.
“I’ve seen Vince Young play for about five minutes one time in the fourth quarter of a bowl game,” said Trestman, who was the offensive coordinator at North Carolina State the year of Young’s 2006 Rose Bowl performance, about 23 months before he took hold of the Montreal Alouettes’ coaching reins in December of 2007.
“Other than that, I’ve never even seen him play.” How’d Young do in that game? “I don’t remember, it was so long ago,” Trestman deadpanned. “I think he won the game.” Trestman’s return didn’t draw any radio shows or a throng of media to the impressive IMG Academy backfields this week, but the understated situation is exactly the way the veteran offensive mastermind would prefer it.
Even he isn’t waxing poetic. There’s too much to do.
“I’d like to give you some real profound comments, but it was just great to be out there with the coaches and the players and coaching football,” Trestman said. “I didn’t think of it as anything deeper than that.”
Coincidentally, the last time we saw Trestman in an official threedown setting, he was walking off the field in disappointment after the 2012 East Final. The Als had just lost 27-20 at home to — of all teams and of all people — the Ricky Ray-led Argonauts.
Fast forward two NFL coaching stops and about 53 months later, Trestman is now the one steering that ship.
Ray, meanwhile, is still atop that QB depth chart as Trestman puts this April version of the 2017 Boatmen through its paces.
This time of year is about team building and getting players familiar with the systems and playbooks they’ll be expected to know from front to back when CFL training camps kick off in a month on May 28.
“Really, the focus this week is to get to know our guys and our guys to get to know us,” Trestman said. “That’s No. 1, just to begin to develop some relationships with the guys. No. 2 is to engage them in the systems of football that we have in place and to get teaching that. Offence, defence, special teams.”
The mini-camp process Trestman comes back to is pretty much the same system as the one from his Montreal tenure.
He gets three days now and then the same short, gruelling training camp in June.
“Time is of the essence in our league because we get so little time with the players,” Trestman said.
After a trying winter ended in the hiring of Trestman and GM running mate Jim Popp at a very late stage, all that matters now is that the conversation has turned to football, Argos football, for the first time in a long time.
Football is a conversation Trestman will gladly take part in.
He succinctly sums up what this mini-camp is with three words: “Just the start.” Of something special? Only time will tell.