Claybrooks ready to embrace Lions job
New coach replaces a legend in Buono, but personal style suggests he’ll make the team his own
The big man was confused.
He’d just woken up in Foothills Hospital in Calgary and saw his mom in his room. What’s she doing here, he thought. Hell, what am I doing here?
“How long have I been here, a couple of hours?” DeVone Claybrooks asked his mother Sally, still failing to grasp the scope of what had happened.
“No baby,” she answered. “You’ve been out for 18 hours.”
And that’s when Claybrooks, who went six-footthree and three bills in his NFL playing days, who consumed 15-hour work days like they were saltines, started to cry.
“My mom always told me before every blessing in his life there will be some bad things,” he said, just over three months after the fact. “From that (scare with diabetes) I went to winning a Grey Cup to being named a head coach. Besides, I went from having two abs to three abs so it kind of worked out.”
He also has an explanation for the tears.
“I looked down and they’d put in a catheter (we trust this needs no further explanation),” he said. “I say, ‘What’s going on down there?’ She says, ‘You’re about to die and all you’re worried about is down there. What’s wrong with you?’ ”
Strap in, folks. The Claybrooks era is going to be an interesting ride.
On Tuesday, the Lions confirmed the worst-kept secret in the CFL when they announced the former Stampeders’ defensive coordinator had been named the 26th head coach in franchise history. GM Ed Hervey interviewed multiple candidates — “Respect for the process,” he said — but Claybrooks was always No. 1 on his list.
He also marks a clean break from the Wally Buono-era and it’s believed the new coaching staff will reinforce the changing of the guard. Claybrooks was given autonomy in hiring his own staff and he says it’s about 80 per cent complete. It’s thought CFL veteran Rich Stubler will supplant Mark Washington as the Lions’ defensive coordinator and Vancouver kid Bryan Chiu is under consideration to replace Dan Dorazio as offensive line coach.
“You want to work with people you know and trust,” Claybrooks said. “I know the standard I’m going to work at and I know the standard Ed’s going to work at. You want guys who understand this is where we’re going and you don’t have to look over their shoulder.”
He paused.
“I’m not trying to be brash or cocky but you have to have a certain swagger in this game and our players are going to have it.”
Their coach certainly will. Claybrooks spent seven years on the Stampeders’ staff, first as the defensive line coach and then as defensive coordinator the last three years. Before that he had playing stints in Calgary and Montreal before spending four years in the NFL, where he played for everyone from Bill Parcells to Jon Gruden to Dennis Green. He was also considering an offer to join the Dallas Cowboys as a position coach under coordinator Rod Marinelli, his former position coach in Tampa Bay, when he took the Lions’ job.
“There are always opportunities to be a position coach but there aren’t always opportunities to be a head coach,” Claybrooks said. “You have to take advantage of them.”
Particularly when you’re three months removed from a near-death experience.
Claybrooks said the signs of his impending collapse had been there for a while. He just chose to ignore them. In early September he took a day off work, thinking he was coming down with the flu. His mother immediately recognized there was a bigger problem.
“I called the neighbour (from her home in Virginia) and said go check on him, he’s not answering the phone,” said Sally Claybrooks, who attended the Tuesday presser. “The guy held the phone up for him and (DeVone) said, “I’m OK mom. Don’t worry.’ I was like, ‘He’s not OK.’ I could feel it and I knew something was wrong. I said call 911 and take him to the hospital.”
Sally Claybrooks had DeVone when she was 17 and raised him through her own challenges as a single parent. She calls him her best friend.
“I’m blessed my mom was around to take care of me,” Claybrooks said. “She cleaned up all the sugar and sweets. I’ve eaten more fruit in the last two months than I did my first 41 years of life.”
As you may have surmised by now, the Lions new head coach is a big personality. As part of his act, he usually coaches in shorts while wearing a baseball hat at a goofy angle and if that suggests he’s not serious about his job, that’s what he wants the opposition to think.
“You can get that question out of the way early,” he said. “The hat will be the same. My thing is if you’re worried about the hat and not what’s under the hat, then I’ve got you.”
“I didn’t hire the hat,” Hervey said. “This is the CFL, where we get to be ourselves.”
Hervey, in fact, went on at length about the substance behind his new coach’s style. He talked about their working relationship and shared philosophies, how you can’t hope to have success unless the GM and head coach are unified in their purpose.
“I could tell it was not only the right fit for the organization, it was the right fit for me,” Hervey said before adding. “I believe in my heart of hearts this relationship is going to work now and it’s going to work beyond. We’re going to roll our sleeves up and make this thing happen.”
And there might be a few laughs along the way.