KEEPING UP WITH JONES
2-0 start for new Esks’ coach
When he worked CFL sidelines in Montreal, Calgary and Toronto as a defensive co-ordinator, Chris Jones wore his intensity on his sleeve and held little back with his players.
Two games into his tenure as the Edmonton Eskimos head coach, Jones looks like a different man. Now in his 13th season coaching in the league, this time with greater responsibilities than ever before, Jones has for the most part toned down his demeanour. There aren’t sideline theatrics, no screaming at the defence he’s still co-ordinating this season, no ongoing verbal battles with the officials.
It’s jumped out to one of his former bosses as he’s watched the Eskimos jump out to a 2-0 start this year.
“As a defensive co-ordinator you have to be different. You have to,” said Toronto Argonauts general manager Jim Barker, who won Grey Cups with Jones in Montreal in 2002, Calgary in 2008 and Toronto in 2012. Jones was wanted so much in Toronto that Barker and the Argos took a $5,000 tampering fine from the league in luring him away from Calgary in December 2011.
“There are times you have to go crazy and he did that. But I think the guy has studied and he spent time with (NFL coaching legend) Bill Parcells, and he spent time studying being a head coach and knew he had to change.
“That’s just an adjustment he had to make.”
You can plan all you want to — and Jones is known across the CFL as a meticulous planner — but when you’re a first-time head coach, the unexpected will gravitate toward you. Jones, who’s high on business and low on chit-chatting with those who ask him questions for a living, admitted that much Thursday, ahead of his team’s 28-24 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
“I think any time you have a new job there are going to be things that even as well-prepared as you might think that you have things done, or how prepared you are, there are some things that you can’t foresee,” he said.
Players love to play for him. He just makes the game fun and he’s a guy that other players just enjoy being around.
Asked if there were any specifics he wanted to share, Jones was concise. “No.” OK then. Jones has let his team do the talking for him these first two weeks. Following an efficient, uptempo training camp, his team is off to a perfect start, albeit if the journey to those wins wasn’t quite Picassos.
Barker has seen a lot of positives in Jones’ team through these wins. “I think that one of the great assets that Chris shows is a relationship with the players,” he said. “I see that on the sidelines with the players coming over to him and you can tell in their interactions that they have a great deal of respect and enjoy and have fun playing for him.
“Players love to play for him. He just makes the game fun and he’s a guy that other players just enjoy being around.”
As the Eskimos enjoy their best start in three seasons and eye up the Ottawa Redblacks, Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Calgary Stampeders before their bye week at the end of July, Barker pointed out that there’s much left for Jones to show this year. The trying times, he said, will be the most revealing.
“So often in this league, coaches get fired so easy. It’s just the nature of the league, is they fire a coach and figure they’ll get another 50 people in the stands for the next game,” Barker said.
“They just as soon fire you as anything.
“So for a coach, when things don’t go well, you sometimes start to panic and you might do things you shouldn’t do. That to me, is when you can tell what a coach is like, when he goes through a rough spell and how he handles his players and how he handles the media. Does he make changes or not make changes, for the sake of what people in the media are going to say, or fans are going to say? Those kinds of things are difficult for head coaches to do.
“I think that’s where he has a chance to shine.”