Coaches share a successful history
CFL’s best, Bombers and Tiger-Cats, face each other Friday
They’ve been teammates and coached together. On Friday night, Mike O’Shea and Orlondo Steinauer square off for the first time as rival Canadian Football League head coaches.
The league’s top two teams will meet at Tim Hortons Field when Winnipeg (4-0) visits Hamilton (4-1). O’Shea, a 48-year-old native of North Bay is in his sixth season as Blue Bombers head coach while Steinauer, a 46-year-old from Seattle, is in his first with the Tiger-Cats.
The two played together with Toronto (2001-08) — O’Shea a hard-nosed middle linebacker and Steinauer a versatile performer in the secondary. In 2000, Hamilton acquired O’Shea from the Argonauts for a package that involved Canadian running back Eric Lapointe and the rights to Steinauer. O’Shea returned to Toronto the following year.
O’Shea and Steinauer entered the coaching ranks together with the Argos — O’Shea as specialteams co-ordinator (2010-13) and Steinauer a defensive backs coach and defensive co-ordinator (2010-12).
O’Shea became Winnipeg’s head coach in 2014. Steinauer went to Hamilton as defensive co-ordinator (2013-16), then spent one season as Fresno State’s defensive co-ordinator (2017) before rejoining the Ticats (2018) as assistant head coach under head coach June Jones.
Steinauer was promoted to head coach prior to this season.
O’Shea had a decorated CFL career, being named the league’s top rookie in 1993 and outstanding Canadian six years later.
He won three Grey Cups with Toronto (1996, ’97, 2004) and retired as the only Canadian player ever to register 1,000 career tackles.
O’Shea was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2017.
Steinauer was a five-time CFL all-star as a player. He won two Grey Cups (’99 with Hamilton, ’04 with Toronto) and retired ranked second overall in all-time interception return yards (1,178).
Steinauer and O’Shea won a Grey Cup as players with Toronto in ’04, then again as Argos assistant coaches in 2012. Steinauer said he can see many of the traits O’Shea displayed as a player with the current Bombers squad.
“I’m seeing a Winnipeg team that’s taking on his identity and mindset,” Steinauer said during a conference call Tuesday. “Took some timing, but with some better talent and some different buy-in and some more experience, I think that’s the reflection of what you’re seeing in Winnipeg currently.”
However, Steinauer said what O’Shea brings to a team isn’t measured by mere statistics.
“The one thing that doesn’t show up on the game film, on a three-hour Saturday, is the commitment to his preparation in the off-season,” he said. “The time spent in the training room, not necessarily when he’s injured, but just to be the best he can be to prolong his career.
“The pain he played through, the preparation that he did, just being the consummate teammate, keeping things loose, but also demanding the best out of people; it’s one of those things that you can’t coach into somebody, in my opinion. I was around him for 12 years ... and he is just one of those special players.”
In typical modest fashion, O’Shea decided he had heard enough. “Time’s up,” he said. “I told you, he wouldn’t like it,” Steinauer quipped.
But O’Shea was quick to heap lavish praise upon his former teammate.
“Obviously playing in front of Steiny, he was the smartest guy on the field all the time,” O’Shea said. “He had an ability to relate to all the guys on the field and find a way to get them to do what we needed them to do and perform ... could just do it all.
“As a teammate, couldn’t ask for a better guy to watch film at one in the morning or six in the morning with, because you knew you were going to get something accomplished and you were going to grow as a person.”