IT’S TIME POPP GOT THE BOOT
Als must cut all ties, Jack Todd says
In the depths of this past winter, I received a missive from one Robert Wetenhall, long-suffering owner of the Montreal Alouettes. The subject was crow. One of us, Wetenhall suggested, was going to be dining on the finest crow come the end of the CFL season — because one of us had to be very wrong about the prospects of Wetenhall’s football club. I said they would go nowhere with Popp as coach, he insisted I was wrong.
Wetenhall proposed a friendly wager: If the Alouettes had a successful season, I would be the one eating crow. If they didn’t, the crow would be on Wetenhall’s plate. My trusty sidekick Zeke Herbowsky was assigned the task of finding a farmer to shoot the crow. Wetenhall was to provide the chef and the wager was more or less forgotten — until the Alouettes hit the skids and I began to think that I might not have to decide between crowburgers and crow drumsticks after all.
I wasn’t worried, because certain truths are self-evident: Billy Joel’s It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me is one of the dumbest songs ever written.
No one really looks good in yellow. And Jim Popp can’t coach. That fact, it’s safe to say, is clear to everyone in the football universe except two people: Popp and Wetenhall. Sooner or later, Wetenhall has to remove the rose-coloured glasses and admit that it’s time for the Als to cut ties with Popp.
Every coach and every GM has a shelf life. By any standard, Popp’s 21 years has been extraordinarily long. In that time, he did a great deal to make the Alouettes a dominant organization. But that dominance ended abruptly after Marc Trestman went to the Chicago Bears in 2013 and quarterback Anthony Calvillo retired in 2014.
But in his zeal to wear as many hats as possible, Popp has discovered that none fits his head. He is no longer an effective VP, GM, director of football operations or director of player personnel and he most certainly is not a coach and never was.
The proof is in the record: 22-34 in the regular season, 23-38 including the playoffs. Any other coach with a record that ugly would have long since found himself in the broadcast booth or trimming roses in the backyard. Not Popp.
The easy solution, the one the Alouettes have chosen again and again, is to have Popp return to the front office full-time while hiring yet another head coach. But no coach worth his salt is going to want to work for a GM with a penchant for firing coaches again and again and replacing the coach with himself. There is zero job security and it’s hard to motivate a team when the players are waiting for the inevitable mid-season firing followed by Popp’s return to the sidelines.
Nor does Popp’s recent record indicate that he is still capable of acting as an effective GM. When a concussion forced Calvillo to retire, the holder of virtually every passing record in the known universe was 41 years old — an age when it was clear that Calvillo would not be able to soldier on forever.
When you think about speed, you think about skating fast and that only happens when you have crisp puck movement and players are working to get into position. Todd McLellan, Team North America head coach
But Popp had failed utterly to replace the most important player on the field. The Alouettes had a quarterback in waiting in Adrian McPherson, who had spent five seasons as Calvillo’s backup, but MacPherson was released to pursue other offers in February 2013, with Calvillo’s career nearly at an end.
The predictable revolving door that followed was temporarily resolved late last season with the stopgap presence of Kevin Glenn, who is sometimes very good and more often barely adequate. Every spring, Popp brings in a bevy of quarterbacks and every season, most of them are sent packing (including the capable Canadian Brandon Bridge, a potential ratio-changer) with barely a look.
A less obvious, but almost equally important, blunder on Popp’s part came when veteran left tackle and CFL all-star Josh Bourke was allowed to go to the division rival Toronto Argonauts. With the quarterback position shaky, Popp had to make sure his quarterback had the best possible protection, especially on his blind side.
Instead, Popp replaced Bourke with young Jacob Ruby. Ruby has the size and the quick feet, but he doesn’t have the experience. Predictably, he has struggled — and so has the offence.
The saddest part of this annual spectacle is that the Alouettes are wasting the best defence the club has put on the field at least since the Marv Levy teams of the 1970s. Week after week, the defence dominates, at least for the first three quarters. But the offence can’t hang onto the ball, the defence wears down and the Als lose the fourth quarter and the game.
“This game makes you humble,” Popp said after the latest loss. Unfortunately, nothing makes Popp humble. No matter what the club tries to do, his runaway ego gets in the way.
It matters deeply because fan support is soft at best, the ascendant Montreal Impact is eating into the Alouettes’ audience despite struggling and the CFL’s deep affection for penalty flags and replay challenges is killing the game the Als are trying to sell.
The Alouettes need to win. To do that, they are going to have to hit the reset button and start over. Not now — in all likelihood, this season is a lost cause. But when it’s over, Wetenhall needs to thank Popp for his 21 years of service, send him on his way and start the search for a new GM.
The coaching search, meanwhile, shouldn’t take more than five minutes. Everything defensive coordinator Noel Thorpe has accomplished here says he should be the next head coach. He has delivered excellence season after season under the most difficult circumstances — for that reason alone, Thorpe deserves a shot.
Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that Wetenhall would ever consider replacing Popp. Perhaps a heaping plate of crow stew, served piping hot, would be enough to convince him.