Esks ‘could not come to terms’ with defensive co-ordinator Benevides
GM blames departure on league’s new salary cap on football operations staff
GERRY MODDEJONGE
The Edmonton Eskimos will head into the 2019 CFL season with new coaches in all three co-ordinator positions, following Friday morning’s announcement that Mike Benevides will not be returning with the club.
The 50-year-old native of Toronto was Edmonton’s defensive co-ordinator and assistant head coach over the past three years, since Jason Maas replaced Chris Jones as head coach.
“As a result of the newly implemented football operations salary cap, we could not come to terms with Mike Benevides,” Eskimos general manager and vice-president of football operations Brock Sunderland stated in a news release, which also said the club will immediately begin the process of selecting its next defensive co-ordinator. “Mike worked as hard as anybody for this organization and the Eskimos wish him all the best in his future endeavours.”
Whether the new cap rules were entirely the reason for his departure, or more of a timely convenience to make an announcement on a decision to sever ties with a lowball offer, only time will tell.
But with the mid-season firing of special-teams co-ordinator Cory McDiarmid, along with his replacement, Dave Jackson, last month, and Maas looking to step away from the dual role of co-ordinating the offence next season, Benevides was the last co-ordinator standing.
His defence finished sixth in points and net-yards allowed as well as in turnovers forced this year. While those defensive numbers may have looked even more pedestrian when compared to a runaway offence with quarterback Mike Reilly at the helm leading the league in passing the last three years, behind the scenes — and even not-so-behind them — Benevides served another important purpose.
Aside from who will fill his job titles and take over the role of mentor to Maas, the big question now is who will be in charge of reining in the fiery-tempered head coach along the Eskimos sideline?
So far, the greatest casualties of the Maas-plosions caught on TSN cameras have been a couple of headsets and a Gatorade jug. But who knows what else may have been blown to smithereens had Benevides not been there to literally run interference between his head coach and whatever officials found themselves within shouting distance whenever the bottle popped.
On more than a few occasions in games, Benevides could be seen strategically — if not blatantly obviously — placing himself in front of Maas as a buffer, either talking him back down to Earth or reshifting the focus back to the game plan.
“We’ve got a great picture, actually. I have it on my phone’s lock screen, it’s awesome,” Benevides said, laughing at the suggestion that running such interference evolved into one of his official duties, during a one-on-one interview with Postmedia heading into their final game of the season — after they had already been eliminated from playoff contention, it should be noted.
To his credit, and perhaps Benevides’ own as well, Maas was much less animated over the last half of the 2018 season.
“The best thing about coach Maas as a human being is he’s absolutely honest and frank,” Benevides said at the time. “If he wasn’t himself, people would criticize him for not being genuine. So people are always going to say s--t about people and find the negatives, but he’s extremely genuine, he’s extremely intelligent, he finds ways to get things done.
“It’s like I said last year, nobody had won more games than coach Maas. So when you look at it, our job is to win championships, but you look at it last year, him and (Calgary Stampeders head coach Dave) Dickenson were the two coaches who had won two playoff games. So he has done a tremendous amount.
“Things happen for a reason, we learn from it, and certainly, I’m just privileged to be around him and help him in any way I can.”
Maas will have one less wingman, but Benevides said he had already begun to see a more independent side of Maas, especially after the head coach took it upon himself to shoulder the blame for penalties that plagued the Eskimos over the first part of the season before making a complete 180-degree turn.
“It takes a tremendous leader to stand up in front of the world and say, ‘This was not right, I’m making this change.’ That’s one thing,” Benevides said. “But to stick to it, and now you look at where the discipline penalties have gone and where those things have changed, you can’t ask any more of a leader than to stand up, fall on the sword and stick to it.
“And the people he’s leading follow him. The greatest coaches in all of time, you go through trials and you learn. Football is life and it’s about people, and you go through things in life and it just translates itself.”