TEAM CEO CONFIDENT IN A STRONG FOUNDATION
Craig Reynolds’ first year as the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ president-CEO didn’t go the way he would have liked. Reynolds had to fire a head coach (Corey Chamblin) and a general manager (Brendan Taman) during a season that ended with the Roughriders going
Q A lot went on with this team last year. What are your thoughts heading into your second year on the job?
A The first year was a challenging year on the field and that translated into a challenging year off the field, so we had to make fairly significant changes. But there’s no use dwelling on the past. You’ve got to look to the future. I really like where we’re at, where we’re going and what we’re building here. We as an organization always have high expectations and that was important when we were thinking about the future and our vision. It’s around consistently being successful. We had a pretty big blip last year, so we had to make the changes to make sure we’re being consistently successful.
Q How did you react when you endured a season like that in your first year on the job?
A When you don’t have success early on, you have to take a step back and take a look at, ‘Where do we need to be and where are we at now?’ Even when you look longer term, we just haven’t had sustained success. We haven’t consistently finished first or second in our division. We’ve had pockets of success, but the slow start allowed me to look at us organizationally: ‘Where do we need to be and where are we at now?’ You realize, ‘There’s a gap there and we need to close it.’
Q To do that, you hired Chris Jones to run the football operations. What made you target him?
A First and foremost, there’s his track of record of success. He’s been in this league for 14 years and he’s never once missed the playoffs. In 12 of those 14 years, he’s been in a division final, and he’s been in the Grey Cup seven times. Fifty per cent of the time he’s coached in this league, he’s been in the Grey Cup game and he’s won four of them. When you contrast that even with the history of our franchise, we’ve won four Grey Cups — and Chris Jones in his various coaching positions has won four. Then you talk to people in the league about Chris and you get a sense as to why he’s been successful. He works harder than anybody I’ve seen in my life.
Q How did you react when he brought almost his entire staff from Edmonton?
A On the one hand, it was a little bit shocking publicly just because of the size of it; clearly that was unusual. But when you get to know him and you get to know the coaching staff and see how they work, you see they’ve got a really strong bond. Now that some time has set in and you’ve seen them operate, you realize, ‘Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.’
Q The moves this off-season included the releases of John Chick and Weston Dressler. Did people approach you away from the office to address those moves?
A As you can imagine, there was lots of discussion, lots of phone calls and lots of emails. That’s the beauty of Rider Nation. People are emotionally attached to our team and to our players. They wanted to be heard about how they felt about some of those transactions. (Chick and Dressler) were great players for the Riders and they’ll both find their way into the Plaza of Honor in the future, I have no doubt. Those are tough decisions to move on from players like that, but you’ve got to trust your head football person and the decisions he’s making.
Q As a fan, did those moves make your eyebrows shoot up?
A Absolutely. My wife has two jerseys and one has No. 7 Weston Dressler on it and one has 97 John Chick. They’re extremely popular players. In this job, you develop relationships with some of the players and I know Weston and John fairly well. You think about them as people first and the impact on them and their families. But at the end of the day, it’s pro sports and everybody knows what they sign up for. You have to deal with those decisions.
Q Then the rebuild started, with the team signing several free agents. As the head of this organization, what was your reaction to seeing all that money going out the door?
A The thing that gives me the most comfort is Chris and his team have a plan — a really good plan. They laid out their plan in terms of how they’re going to build the roster, how they’re going to manage the salary cap, how they’re going to participate in free agency and some of the roster moves — both additions and deletions — that they thought were necessary.
Q Knowing the team went 3-15 last season and seeing the magnitude of the rebuild this offseason, do you have to temper your expectations for 2016?
A Obviously, we have high expectations here. This team has every opportunity to be successful and we should be competing for first and second year in and year out. Are we going to finish first or second every year? No. It’s pro sports; things happen. But that’s our goal.