COVID-19 COSTS EDMONTON A HEAD COACH

Team's latest tale bizarre one as Milanovich leaves for NFL before coaching one game

It's bizarre even for this sometimes bat-spit-crazy pandemic world, not to mention involving a team that has lost its name and a league that has gone one season without playing a game and might lose another one.

But the Edmonton EE losing Scott Milanovich, the highest paid head coach in the CFL, after he had cashed cheques for somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500,000 while not coaching a single football game, is bizarre beyond belief.

It was crazy the way it went down on Monday, with the news breaking that Milanovich had resigned as the head coach in Edmonton to take a job in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts.

Less than an hour later, and before the team had elected to confirm the reports, Chris Jones — the head coach who won a

Grey Cup here in 2015 and quit the club two days later — made it known via Twitter that he'd be interested in replacing Milanovich.

Jones bolted from Edmonton, taking several players with him, to become general manager, head of football operations, coach and defensive co-ordinator of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, whom he later left high and dry to join the staff of the Cleveland Browns.

The first order of business for the Edmonton franchise should be to tell Jones to take a hike.

If the EE organization does anything other than tell him that all is not forgiven, I suspect their fan base will have all but disappeared by the time the team takes the field. Although it certainly isn't looking like the border will be opened and fans allowed to fill Commonwealth Stadium to open a regular season against Saskatchewan on June 12.

The whole Scott Milanovich era has been remarkable.

It was considered a major coup in the first place that GM and vice-president of football operations Brock Sunderland had managed to hire Milanovich away from the NFL'S Jacksonville Jaguars, especially with games remaining to be played in their season.

Milanovich said this at the time of his agreeing to a fouryear contract: “I was never one who was hung up about coaching in the NFL. I loved my time in Canada. I have great friends in Canada, and as I listened to it, I thought this was going to be a good opportunity for me and my family.”

Monday morning, the guy who won the 100th Grey Cup game as head coach of the Toronto Argonauts resigned.

Sunderland said Milanovich telegraphed it to him that it could happen late last week.

“I connected the dots with Marcus Brady, that their connection goes back to Montreal and then Toronto, and that Scott helped him get the job in Indianapolis as offensive co-ordinator — it looked like the stars were beginning to align a little bit,” Sunderland said.

“Scott was transparent with me that it might be a very realistic possibility. At that time, he wasn't sure what he would do, whether he would take it or not. This morning, he called and said, yeah, he was going to take it.”

The thing is, Milanovich is going back to the NFL to take the exact same job — quarterback coach — that he left in Jacksonville.

So, what changed?

The answer is probably

COVID -19.

“It did. I think the fact that we didn't play last year was part of it and that there's no guarantee that we'll play this year, combined with the fact the NFL did play and certainly looks like they're going to again, was a huge factor,” said Sunderland. “I think if we played a full season last year, that this doesn't happen. That's my opinion.”

Sunderland would not say whether Milanovich, like the players, was asked to take a significant pay cut to make it possible for CFL action to return. But the EE general manager did tell me he holds no grudges toward this departing head coach.

“Nothing Scott did was malicious. Had he called me out of the blue and said: `Hey, I'm gone,' that would have been different.

“I will say this: Scott was a good friend before I hired him and he's still a friend to this day.”

The first thing Sunderland did Monday was to call all of Milanovich's assistant coaches.

“I called every one of them to assure them that they were going to still be here and that it's a rare scenario where the new incoming head coach has full autonomy on their staff, but that won't be the case. Every one of these coaches have worked hard for us under extremely difficult situations and never wavered. They 100 per cent deserve to be here and I called every one of them and told them that. They will be here. These people have worked way too hard to be here to be cast away because somebody had an opportunity elsewhere.”

Sunderland has been through a lot since he took this job and he keeps taking the punches and moving on.

“From the day I was hired, we've had a lot to deal with. We set a league record with injuries. We went through the Mike Reilly scenario and the resignation of a team president. It just seems like par for the course.”

I think the fact that we didn't play last year was part of it and that there's no guarantee that we'll play this year, combined with the fact the NFL did play.