DEFENSIVE JUGGERNAUT

Eskimos have been stingy

Edmonton Eskimos cornerback Patrick Watkins knew he might be in a special situation when he kept hearing the name Chris Jones “over and over and over before I even played a down” with the Toronto Argonauts in 2012.

“I was happy to find a situation like that,” said Watkins, who later followed Jones to Edmonton when his former defensive co-ordinator was hired as the Eskimos head coach in 2013.

“He’s a strategic coach, he’s very aligned with details, makes sure everything is on point,” Watkins continued. “Everything he does has a purpose. The thing that stood out the most was the aggressiveness with his defence … which fit my style of play perfectly.”

With the help of players like Watkins, Jones’s Eskimos defence has allowed only 272 points in the first 15 games this Canadian Football League season and the team has already clinched a West Division home playoff game.

Jones was asked Wednesday which defences have impressed him the most since he came to the CFL with the Montreal Alouettes in 2002.

“We had good defences in Montreal where we had veteran guys who played fast and liked being around each other,” he said. “In ’04, we were first in 21 of 25 defensive categories, but we didn’t win the Grey Cup.”

The Alouettes lost the East Division final to the Toronto Argonauts, who were another of Jones’s favourite defences in the last 14 years.

“Their ability to hold people down,” he said about the Rich Stubler-coached Toronto defence. “You could get some yards on them, but they’d score a touchdown every single week, it seemed.”

Jones also liked his Grey Cupwinning defences with the 2008 Calgary Stampeders (middle linebacker Juwan Simpson, defensive backs Dwight Anderson and Brandon Browner) and the 2012 Argos.

“That’s the measure you’re looking for,” Jones said about winning the CFL championship. “They won Grey Cups and they won because of what they did defensively over the course of 22 or 23 games.”

While Jones says, “We’ve got an awful good defence here,” he points out that the Eskimos are only “at the three-quarter mark and we’ve got a lot of work left in front of us.”

“We’ve got a bunch of really, really good kids who work hard and believe in what we do,” he said. “They’re interchangeable. They play two or three different positions.

“We’re right there with some of the best (defences), but we’ve got to go out every single week and do it.”