Bates makes return to Eskimos
Former offensive lineman joins team as ‘jack of all trades’ quality control coach
If the trend continues for the Edmonton Eskimos, Kelly Bates is going to have a busy year.
Recently hired as offensive quality control coach with the club for which he once played offensive lineman, his new job will focus on an Eskimos offence that has led the Canadian Football League in net offence the past two years under head coach Jason Maas.
But what exactly does a quality control coach do, again?
“A little bit of everything,” Maas said. “There are reports, there are drawings, assisting the position coaches with their daily routines, getting ready for meetings, prepping film breakdowns.
“A quality control guy is a Jack of all trades, really. There’s a defined role and a defined set of things he has to accomplish on a week-to-week basis, but he’s assisting with the assistant coaches and with me as the head coach, daily jobs we have to do to accomplish our goal.”
In other words, whatever needs to get done.
But don’t let the mop-up duties fool you. Bates comes in with a boatload of football experience beyond the 10 seasons he played, which included a three-month stint with the Eskimos alongside Maas, a quarterback at the time, in 2010. The next year, he returned to play out his final season on a B.C. Lions club with which he won two Grey Cups after drafting him in the fourth round (32nd overall) in 2002.
Without missing a beat, Bates hung up his cleats to become the Lions offensive-line coach under then-head coach Mike Benevides, who is co-ordinating the Eskimos defence these days.
“It’s a great piece of the puzzle when you have a previous relationship with someone, especially when you trust them,” said Bates, who was listed at six-foot-three, 296 pounds out of the University of Saskatchewan.
While he played on the offensive side of scrimmage, Bates’s wellrounded resume includes three years as Lions draft co-ordinator, followed by three more years as head coach of the Simon Fraser University Clan.
It’s experience he’s come by honestly instead of easily, having been fired in November from the Burnaby, B.C.-based program — a David among Goliaths playing in NCAA Div. 2 — with a perfectly abysmal 0-29 record.
“It was a tremendous learning experience,” said Bates. “There are very big differences between the college game and the professional game in respect to what you focus on.”
College is all about recruiting every minute of the day, he said, while the big leagues are governed by salary structures that creates on-field parity.
“In NCAA football, you don’t have that,” said Bates. “You have rules that limit how much (scholarships) you can give. But what you don’t have are rules that limit how much money can be put into a program.
“When you’re competing with 177 different Div. 2 football teams and you’re in the bottom 10th percentile in funding, it makes your job unique and different. Just being a part of that experience, it allowed for so much growth from a personal standpoint as both a coach and as a person, and I’ll be forever grateful for it.”
As difficult as that trek was, things aren’t going to get any easier for Kelly Bates, the person, as he makes his way back to Edmonton.
The first time around, he and his wife, Nadine, were living in a downtown apartment with a sixmonth-old baby.
“Up to that point, the way I dealt with every situation, the only person it impacted was me,” Bates said. “As soon as you add another, much more important entity into the process, it really makes you reflect, re-evaluate and hopefully grow in terms of how you deal with most situations.”
Having lived and worked in B.C.’s Lower Mainland for the better part of the decade, Bates will be bidding farewell for the first time to his wife and two daughters, eight-year-old Nyah and five-year-old Annie, for the length of the football season.
“I look back, I’ve been so fortunate to be out in this area since 2010 and be around my children,” Bates said. “That’s going to be the crappy part of this job.”
But there’s no denying what’s been a lifelong calling.
“From my junior days on, I’ve wanted to coach,” Bates said. “I’m a teacher by trade. That’s my university diploma, so I’ve always wanted to do that.
“I just never pictured being able to do it at this level. I always assumed I’d finish college football and be a high-school teacher and coach. I’ve been very fortunate that football has continued me down this road.”