New coach, GM at forefront of plan to halt fan apathy
New coach, GM at forefront of plan to halt fan apathy
The Toronto Argonauts were 4-14 last season and even that record flattered them. They were 1-14 against Not Ottawa, and two of the three wins over the Redblacks came in the season’s final weeks, as the Argos padded their record in garbage time.
The Argonauts had losses of 64-14, 32-7, 26-0 and 41-16. They lost 55-8 to the B.C. Lions, who went 5-13 on the season and then fired their coach. The Argos were fantastically, comically, bad.
And yet, of the problems facing the Argonauts, fixing the on-field product is the relatively easy part.
That work began on Friday with the appointment of Ryan Dinwiddie as the new head coach. Dinwiddie, 39, comes from the Calgary Stampeders, where he was quarterbacks coach for a reliably potent offence. He was introduced as the 45th head coach of the franchise at BMO Field in the same room where, almost a year ago to the day, Corey Chamblin was introduced as the Argos’ 44th head coach.
When Chamblin arrived, there was talk about winning on the field as the first step in rebuilding local interest in the franchise. But no one even asked about attendance on Friday. What’s the point? The team’s move out of the Rogers Centre has utterly failed to generate any interest in the CFL in its biggest market, with each successive season at BMO Field plumbing new depths of apathy. The out-of-nowhere Grey Cup win in 2017 didn’t help, nor did a pair of ownership changes, the latter of which moved them under the warm embrace of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment.
By late September, the floundering team drew fewer than 10,000 fans to a Friday night game against the Stamps and, probably not coincidentally, team president Bill Manning smashed the glass case that covers the In-case-of-emergency-call-pinball button, bringing back Michael Clemons, the former star, coach, president and generally fabulous guy to become the general manager in place of the deposed Jim Popp.
For all of their struggles to compete for customers in a crowded market, the one thing the Argonauts have not done in recent years is field anything approaching a consistent winner. Even the Grey Cup wins have been aberrations, when mediocre teams got hot for a couple of weeks at just the right time.
To the extent that a relocation out of the half-empty concrete pit to a much more pleasant open-air stadium was ever going to rekindle interest in the Argonauts, it’s fair to conclude that a woefully inept team does not help provide much of a spark.
The last remaining hope is that the franchise will string together some winning seasons and slowly — very slowly, one figures — rebuild some kind of identity.
Which is where Pinball comes in and now, his new coach. Clemons, resplendent in a white jacket and vest and dark pants, said on Friday it was not his intention to replace Chamblin when he took the GM job. And while he wouldn’t specify what exactly caused him to make the move, he made it clear he wanted to start building with a fresh slate.
He gave credit to Dinwiddie as a bright offensive mind, noting his stellar career as a quarterback at Boise State and his work with the Stampeders, the league’s model franchise. Clemons said he wanted to build with “the next one,” alluding to the success guys like Dave Dickenson and Scott Milanovich had in the CFL when they took over a team as a young offensive guru.
Clemons felt strongly enough about the need to start over that Manning was persuaded to bring in a new coaching staff, even though the team will face a higher degree of difficulty in doing so. The CFL’S non-player salary cap gives teams some flexibility to spread money owed to departed staff over future seasons, but this is now the second time in two years the Argos have canned a coach still under contract, with Chamblin having replaced Marc Trestman last December. Clemons and Dinwiddie will be working with a smaller pot of money as they try to find the right people to work with the rookie head coach.
But that only underscores how much Clemons must have felt that big changes were needed as he tries to bail water from this vessel, bucket in hand. It is, quite obviously, a gamble. Dinwiddie comes to Toronto having learned from some sharp CFL minds in Calgary, but the Lions thought the same thing when they hired Devone Claybrooks away from the Stampeders last winter. He’s the coach who trounced the Argos on the way to getting fired after a five-win season.
But a reset it is. Clemons and Manning both spoke of the desperate need for a culture change in House Argonaut.
“That’s the word that Pinball and I use every day,” Manning said.
“We need to change the culture,” Clemons said.
This is, of course, what losing teams tend to say.