Redblacks roll the Dyce with new special teams coach
Former Roughriders’ interim head coach finds a new home in Ottawa working on Rick Campbell’s staff
OTTAWA — Punt and kickoff team members must play fast and with discipline, Bob Dyce says. No surprise there, but then the new special-teams co-ordinator for the Ottawa Redblacks adds he doesn’t want his players thinking too much when they run around the artificial-turf surfaces of the Canadian Football League.
“Special teams is a great opportunity to just play loose and have fun,” Dyce said Friday after the Redblacks confirmed the signing of the Winnipeg native who had been Saskatchewan Roughriders special-teams co-ordinator for past three years as well as interim head coach following Corey Chamblin’s firing on Aug. 31.
‘Fun’ was in short supply for Redblacks fans and the specialteams co-ordinator for their first two seasons, Don Yanowsky, who will not return for unspecified personal reasons.
There has yet to be a kickreturn touchdown — Chris Williams’ 100-yard punt runback against the B.C. Lions in July was negated by penalty — and the 2015 Redblacks ranked seventh, eighth or ninth in the nineteam CFL in average returns for kickoffs, punts and missed field goals, net yards for kickoffs and punts, cover-team penalties and big plays for and against, which the CFL defines as 30- plusyard punt- and missed fieldgoal returns and 40-plus kickoff returns.
On the plus side, they had the second fewest penalties (23) on returns.
The Roughriders ranked higher in all those categories except net kickoff yards (league-worst 38.6 yards) and return-team penalties (fifth with 28).
Dyce said he was contacted by a number of CFL teams after it became known he wouldn’t return to the Roughriders, who hired Chris Jones as head coach and virtually his entire slate of assistants away from the Edmonton Eskimos.
“What I want my guys to do is this: Football is a game of field position, and our job on special teams is to put the offence and defence in good positions,” Dyce said via telephone from his off-season home in Winnipeg. “When we are covering, we would like to have our net yards that we gain to be as high as possible. Obviously that means limiting yards on kickoff and punt returns.
“We have guys who have return speed and we have to make sure we maximize their potential in the CFL.”
Redblacks general manager Marcel Desjardins said Dyce displayed his special- teams expertise with Saskatchewan and his leadership ability both as Roughriders interim head coach and in the 2014 competition for the offensive co-ordinator’s job that went to Jason Maas.
Maas oversaw the eye-popping transformation of a Redblacks offence that had been the league’s least productive in 2014, but in 2015 produced four 1,000-yard receivers plus passcompletion records and helped make quarterback Henry Burris the CFL’s most outstanding player. Maas, who also served as quarterbacks coach, became the successful candidate to replace Jones as Eskimos head coach. Redblacks running backs coach Jordan Maksymic will join him back in Edmonton.
Those posts are yet to be filled for 2016 on the staff of Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell.
Desjardins said the Redblacks would not be affected by a moratorium on movement of coaches between teams imposed by commissioner Jeffrey Orridge because they had received written permission from other clubs to speak with specific candidates. The only added requirement was forwarding those notices to the league.
Dyce was receivers coach for the University of Manitoba Bisons ( 1996- 2002) and the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers (2003-09) before serving as Roughriders passing-game coordinator and receivers coach (2010-11) and co-ordinator of the offence (2012) and special teams (2013-15).