Campbell fully in the ‘now’
Eskimos may very well seek him, but Calgary is his only concern
Close your eyes as Rick Campbell talks, and it’s 1977 again, and the speaker is his father — eerily so: same accent, same inflection, exactly the same timbre.
Only it’s really not anything like Hugh Campbell pondering the Edmonton Eskimos’ head coaching job 36 years ago, in a city where GM Norm Kimball had tamed a fractious board of directors into silence and a clear chain of command was established in a solid organization that was primed for success.
It’s 2013, and it’s Rick Campbell, defensive co-ordinator of the Calgary Stampeders, no doubt hearing all the same rumours everyone else is hearing: that he would be very close to the Eskimos’ first choice to replace Kavis Reed as head coach, should he choose to leave the Stamps after their season is over.
It’s Rick Campbell, consciously shutting out all talk of how the wheels are turning in the dysfunctional land up north, because the Stampeders are girding for Sunday’s West Division final at home to the Saskatchewan Roughriders — and hopefully, next week’s Grey Cup in Regina.
“I’ve actually not thought about that, have not talked to (Esks GM) Ed Hervey other than pre-game warmups when we played them,” Campbell said Friday, on a snowless McMahon Stadium field that’s not going to be that way for long with a huge dump of the white stuff only hours away.
“I’m really 100 per cent about what we’re trying to accomplish here. I’m also very happy here in Calgary. We’ve got a good situation and Coach Huf (John Hufnagel) is a great guy to work for, so that’s where I’m at right now.”
Of course, there could be no other answer. If the Eskimos had approached him, it would be tampering. If he expressed interest, it would be a shocking breach of faith with his current employers, this close to a championship. Not his style. But it’s more than that. Quite apart from the need to devote full attention to trying to contain the Saskatchewan running game on Sunday — without his two starting defensive tackles, Demonte Bolden and Micah Johnson — there is precious little to tempt a prospective applicant to drop everything for a job with the 4-14 Eskimos.
You’ll never get anything that controversial out of Rick Campbell, mind you, but read between the lines ...
“I’m interested in being a head coach,” he said Friday. “But the thing I’ve learned is that if you ever take that opportunity to be a head coach, make sure it’s the right fit for you and for that team — and not just to take a job at all costs. You want to go to some place where it has a chance of working, and where you have a chance to win. Because there’s been some pretty good coaches who’ve taken head coaching jobs and it’s kind of been under not the best of circumstances.”
The Eskimos, at the moment, are about as far away from the best of circumstances as you could find.
The only reason there hasn’t been an insurrection is that the Edmonton Oilers have been cornering the market on bad, of late.
Campbell served as an Eskimos assistant for 11 seasons, in two different stints (with one-year stops in Winnipeg and Calgary), and in that time must have heard plenty of whispered intimations that he got the job because of his Hall of Famer dad, a CFL giant who coached the Esks to five consecutive Grey Cups from 1978 to 1982. The elder Campbell retired as the Eskimos’ CEO in 2006.
“Probably it was an issue, for people on the outside. It wasn’t for me personally,” Rick said. “I always go off what my peers and the players think of me. But for people on the outside, it’s probably good that I’ve been a few places.”
For those people, he was never going to escape the shadow until he got out of Edmonton to establish his own path, to prove he was a quality coach in his own right. And he’s done that in Calgary for the past two years as Huf- nagel’s defensive co-ordinator — the 2013 Stamps led the league in sacks and were second only to Saskatchewan in fewest points allowed — on a staff that also includes former Calgary and B.C. quarterback Dave Dickenson, who is assumed to be Hufnagel’s successor-in-waiting.
So when asked if he had taken any career advice from the old man about the Edmonton rumours, Rick wasn’t anxious to engage.
“I’ve learned stuff over the years, obviously,” he said.
“But the other thing I’ve learned in football is if you have a good situation going, it’s usually a good idea to try to stick with that situation as long as you can. Because throughout your career you’re going to go through some good times and bad times, and you want to make those good times last.”
He’s in his 15th season as a CFL assistant, having worked offence, defence and special teams. So he’s paid his dues, and then some.
“I’ve been around long enough now to have an idea of situations, and whether I think they could be good or not, and right now, here in Calgary I’m happy to come to work every day.”
If the expected storm hits, Sunday might be a slightly less pleasurable day to come to work, but it beats the alternative. Job No.1, for Campbell, is to work around two relatively inexperienced defensive tackles against a team with the CFL’s second-leading rusher, Kory Sheets, and a quarterback, Darian Durant, who beat the B.C. Lions with his legs in the fourth quarter of last week’s West semifinal.
“He’s always been a great runner, but you know, with us it’s not just two big (tackles) inside ruining everything, it’s 12 guys on the same page, and we feel if we do that, we’ll win,” said linebacker Juwan Simpson. “You can’t just stop one person on that team, they’ve got weapons. We focus on Durant, they’re going to have (Weston) Dressler behind us, focus on Dressler, you got Sheets running the ball. So it’s really going to have to be a team effort.”
“It was a freak thing to lose that many players (receiver Marquay McDaniel, too) in a game that didn’t have any significance to the standings (Nov. 1 at B.C.), but you know, it’s football. It happens, and we’ve been pluggin’ and playin’ all season,” said defensive line coach DeVone Claybrooks, who’ll have to patch up the interior of the line with some combination of Freddie Bishop III, Junior Turner and Etienne Legare.
“Sure, you want your ‘A’ team in there, but we don’t really have ‘A’ guys — we’ve got guys. Whoever’s been called on to answer the bell all year has answered it.”
Right now, the bell is ringing for Rick Campbell, if he wants to hear it.
It might make for a warm, fuzzy, full-circle kind of story, at that. Son of Hugh. But a new beginning for the Eskimos? Don’t bet on it.