Redblacks cultivating new culture
OTTAWA RENAISSANCE: Coach made roster changes, replaced offensive co-ordinator and it’s paying off early
EDMONTON — The last time Ottawa won a football game in Edmonton against the Eskimos, Rick Campbell was 12 years old.
Pete Kettela, hired to replace Rick’s dad, Hugh, after the five-ina-row Grey Cup run, was the Eskimos coach.
It was Aug. 26, 1983, and a week later, Kettela was fired after losing the Labour Day game in Calgary.
Rick was just about to celebrate his 13th birthday living in Manhattan Beach, Calif., where his dad had just moved to coach the Express in the USFL for a year before taking over as head coach in the NFL with the Houston Oilers, with Warren Moon moving south to become his quarterback again.
“I wasn’t aware of that,” laughed Rick. “That’s a long time ago.”
Thursday Campbell comes to Commonwealth Stadium to coach against the team he grew up watching, the team that gave him a chance to begin his coaching career as an assistant and later brought him back as a co-ordinator.
In his first year as a CFL head coach last year, Campbell was 2-16 with the expansion team.
Two games into this season, he’s already matched last year’s win count. And the next two games — Thursday in Edmonton and July 17 in Ottawa — are against the zerowin Eskimos minus starting QB Mike Reilly.
“We have to play hard and very well to win. But I’m not shocked,” said Campbell of the 2-0 start.
“It’s just validating our whole process. I had to become a pretty good salesman last year later in the season when we weren’t winning very many games, but were showing signs of doing some good things.”
Fans who go back to the glory days of the Ottawa Rough Riders, who won their last Grey Cup in 1976, aren’t really connected to this. There was nothing but mismanagement and embarrassments to follow with any attempts to return Ottawa to the CFL. And losses. Lots of losses. “We’re not burdened by that. We weren’t going to fight old culture and old traditions. It was going to be what we made it,” he said.
Campbell took to writing letters to the Ottawa fans. What head coach writes letters to the fans?
He ended one of them, late last season, like this:
“The wins can’t come fast enough for any of us, but they are coming. “Keep the faith. “Coach Rick.” It’s not something churned out by the PR department.
“I write them personally. Our ownership has done a really good job with the fans and the city, making it very inclusive and having them be as much as part of the process as they can be. And my writing a letter to the fans periodically all goes toward that.
“I’m a big believer in this whole Ottawa thing. That’s why I interviewed for the job in the first place. I wasn’t sure how many games we would win last year. But I actually thought we were as competitive as we could be in that we were playing a bunch of close games. We didn’t close as many out as we should have.
“Our fans hung in there for us. They sold out every game. They’ve kind of bought into the whole thing. We think we can make this as good a place to play football as anywhere in the CFL.”
The trick as a second-year expansion team is to change a lot of players, but not too many.
“We were taking players from other teams last year. We took other people’s players, kind of throwing a team together. We knew as time went on we’d keep acquiring players and keep getting better,” said Campbell.
“The good thing was that there was a core group of guys who were good football players. They were mentally strong. We’ve kept that core group of guys and added some other pieces of the puzzle.”
Campbell replaced his first-year offensive co-ordinator with former Eskimos quarterback Jason Maas, has five new receivers this season and looks to have found a talent at running back in Chevron Walker.
But nobody is going to get carried away until after these two games against Edmonton.
“We’re smart enough to know we haven’t got the whole thing figured out,” said Campbell.