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“A Public Relations Nightmare.”….. Well, never mind.

Posted on July 11, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

This past week, Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly was called “a public relations nightmare,” by Winnipeg Sun columnist Paul Friesen.

Friesen’s exact words were: “Kelly has been a public relations nightmare — from breaking CFL rules to calling out the former GM to several clashes with the media — but (president and CEO Lyle) Bauer isn’t letting on that he’s concerned about that, either.”

Gotta love the mainstream media. Just write bollocks and see what sticks on the wall. Of course, are that many people reading, watching or listening anymore? The sellout crowd at Canad Inns Stadium on Friday would suggest that about 30,000 Winnipeggers, at least, don’t care what’s in the papers these days.

Seems, that for a public relations nightmare, Mike Kelly is the best thing that ever happened to the Winnipeg Football Club. I guess it just took a last second loss in Edmonton and a 42-30 shellacking of the defending Grey Cup champions to convince the same people who demanded change to accept it.

“It’s funny,” said Kelly this week. “People screamed for change. When I arrived, they said you have to change the quarterbacks. So I changed the quarterbacks. They said, you have to find a better defensive backfield, so we went out and improved the secondary. They said, ‘You have to make the Bombers more of a team-first operation,’ so everything we’ve done has been directed at team first.

“And yet, we hear that people still aren’t happy. I’ve known throughout my career that the only way you convince people that you’re doing the right thing is to win football games.”

Friday night, after a week of absorbing more loud media criticism, Kelly’s football team did exactly what Kelly expected them to do. They kicked the collective butt of the defending Grey Cup champion Calgary Stampeders. 42-30 (21-4 at halftime) is a statement.

But even after the game, Kelly was still hearing about the alleged “Derick Armstong affair,” and his apparent lack of public relations skills which, one assumes, only matters to people who demand that the coach kneel and genuflect at the alter of the daily newspaper.

In fact, the “Armstrong Affair” wasn’t an affair at all. The talented wide receiver quit on his team. He maintained he was right and the coach said, “you’re not.” Armstrong quit. Period.

It was pretty simple, really. In fact, for the vast majority of Bomber players, the entire incident brought on a collective shrug. Armstrong said he was “disrespected,” or something to that effect, but the fact is, in the CFL, you’re “disrespected” the day you sign your non-guaranteed contract. Some people just don’t get used to it.

Kelly — a guy I’ve known for 20-odd years and a very, very decent human being — had Armstrong removed from the roster, but still let him back into the building to get treatment on his injured knee.

“This isn’t a kick-the-guy-out-on-the-street thing,” Kelly said on Wednesday. “I hope he (Armstrong) earns a paycheque in this league for a long time. It’s just not going to be here.”

The Bombers tried to trade Armstrong, but suddenly nobody in the CFL was terribly interested in a 30-year-old wideout with a bad knee and a newly-minted reputation for refusing to play when asked. On Thursday, he was released. This week, somebody will likely pick him up as a practice-roster player until he gets healthy. 0-2 teams have to take chances.

Still, without Armstrong, the Bombers offence played well. Quarterback Stefan Lefors threw a pair of touchdown passes to Terrence Edwards (who wore Armstrong’s gloves, but didn’t ride to Armstrong’s rescue by heading into the coach’s office and demanding that Kelly put Armstrong back on the team) while Lavarus Giles rushed for a pair of majors. They were his first, but won’t likely be his last.

The defence contributed five turnovers and one touchdown. The offence used the turnovers to put 28 of its points.

“The players wanted a day off on Saturday if they won,” Kelly said on the Tom and Joe Show on 92-CITI-FM on Friday morning. “But I told them, win or lose, we’ll be back on the field for a run on Saturday morning because even if we win, it’s just one win in July and you don’t win the Grey Cup in July.”

Perhaps not. But you do win the public relations war.

For whatever that’s worth.

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Kevin Glenn off to Toronto??

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Reports out of Toronto on Friday morning suggested that the man who has led the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for five seasons, Kevin Glenn, will be Argo bound. 

The Argos claim they have an interest in the Blue Bombers quarterback who is now, officially on the trade block. Argos GM Adam Rita has always admired Glenn (Glenn was an Argo for a few minutes in May of 2004 when the Bombers acquired him in a deal with Toronto) and would like to have him in Toronto this spring to challenge Kerry Joseph for the starting job. 

 

On Thursday, Bombers head coach Mike Kelly told Tom, Joe and the Coach on 92-CITI-FM that he expects lefty Stefan LeFors and veteran Ryan Dinwiddie to battle for the Bombers’ No. 1 job at training camp in June. Kelly also said that there was no possible way a Kevin Glenn-for-Casey Printers deal would ever be made.

 

“Casey Printers is not coming to Winnipeg.” Kelly said bluntly.

 

So that leaves Toronto, one of the two places Glenn told Kelly he’d like to play. 

 

The LeFors/Dinwiddie move will either be brilliant or the second coming of T.J. Rubley. However, to be fair, Coach Kelly is a quarterback expert and Bomber fans should probably give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

One of the many reasons Kelly was brought to Winnipeg was his ability to judge the talent of and subsequently work with, quarterbacks. He knows what he wants and like many Bomber fans, that’s not Kevin Glenn. 

 

Don’t forget, rivercitysportsblog,com will be at the Super Bowl all next week and will be blogging live daily. 

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After the latest mess in Toronto, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are getting closer to requiring a new head coach.

Posted on August 2, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

After Friday night’s game at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Doug Berry told reporters: “If you’ve got any good ideas, I’ll listen to you.”

 

No he won’t.

 

People around town have been giving Doug Berry advice for weeks and while he seems to be listening to some of it, he isn’t listening to the good stuff. 

 

Oh, sure, he listened to people who have never played a down of football in their lives and yet were thrilled that Troy Westwood was publicly humiliated. And he listened to the whining masses who wanted Kevin Glenn removed and then chirped like The Joker when Ryan Dinwiddie’s lame ducks found their intended targets against Calgary’s rotten defensive secondary a week ago.

 

But on Friday, as he asked for advice following a 19-11 loss to an equally-as-inept Toronto Argos outfit (two teams needed a single on the final play of the game to put up a total of 30 points in a CFL game), he continued to forget the most important piece of advice of all: “Give Charles Roberts the damn football.”

 

There will be some who will suggest that Roberts had “another lousy game” against the Argos and will say “he is still struggling.” But let’s put our thinking caps on and look closely at what Roberts did on Friday. 

 

Charles Roberts carried the ball 11 times for 66 yards. The National Post reported that “the Argos shut down Roberts.” Held him, they did. In fact, the Post wrote: “From the opening whistle the Argos focused their attention on stopping Winnipeg’s all-star running back, Charles Roberts. Toronto’s defence — the worst against the run in the Canadian Football League coming into the game — loaded up on bodies on the line of scrimmage and gave Roberts little room to operate.”

 

Trouble is the Argos didn’t shut down Roberts at all. Doug Berry and offensive co-ordinator Kit Cartwright shut down Roberts.

 

Charlie Roberts gained 66 yards on 11 carries. That’s 6.0 yards per carry. Roberts was averaging 3.7 yards per carry heading into the game. It was his best game of the year. At 6.0 yards per carry, two carries per set of downs is 12 yards. That averages out to an unstoppable march down the field. Had the Bombers given the ball to Roberts 30 times, he’d have rushed for about 180 yards.

 

Of course, TSN’s on-line headline was “Argonauts Defence Steps Up To Stymie Blue Bombers.” The only people stymied were the head coach, the offensive co-ordinator and the quarterback.

 

Certainly Toronto’s front seven did a good job harassing Dinwiddie (much better than Calgary’s worthless three-man rush a week earlier) and the defensive secondary, as we suspected, was significantly better than that awful group the Stamps trot out every week. But to suggest the Argos shut down Roberts is to have missed the game entirely.

 

“If you know Charlie, you know he gets stronger as the game goes on,” said his former quarterback Khari Jones, as we did Mike Richards’ radio program on the FAN 960 in Calgary together the other day. “The more you give Charlie the ball, the better he gets.”

 

Giving Charlie the ball 11 times a game is NOT enough. In fact, Roberts also caught one pass for 14 yards, so in total, he picked up 80 yards on 12 touches. 12 lousy touches? No wonder the Bombers are 1-5. 

 

Dinwiddie, meanwhile, went 16-for-28 for 224 yards with one touchdown (and 85-yarder to Romby Bryant) and two interceptions. The Bombers had a grand total of just 13 first downs. On Friday night, Kevin Glenn’s replacement made last week’s win over Calgary look Troy Kopp-esque.

 

The Bombers problem is clearly coaching. The coach humiliated his veteran kicker publicly and half of his locker room lost faith. His new kicker is now 14-for-20 (70 per cent) in field goals and is the first Bomber punter in 35 years to be dead last in the league in punting average after the first six games of the season and now the rest of the room is starting to wonder about the decision to chase Westwood out of the game.

 

What could be worse, however, is that in a panic — or in an effort to find someone else to blame — the coach dumped his veteran starting quarterback and replaced him with a guy who admitted on Tom and Joe’s Show on 92-CITI-FM this week that he had trouble reading the extra man on defence in the Canadian game.

 

Oh, oh.

 

Doug Berry was a great assistant in Montreal. He could be a great assistant in Winnipeg. His 10-7-1 trip to last year’s Grey Cup notwithstanding, he has appeared to have lost his touch as a head coach. 

 

Working in Berry’s favour is the fact his Bombers now play two straight games at home against Montreal and Hamilton. If Winnipeg doesn’t win both, it will be the bye-week and it will be time to make a coaching change.    

 

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According to form. Game 1: Detroit 4, Dallas 1; Pittsburgh 4, Philadelphia 2.

Posted on May 10, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

Nashville Predators head coach Barry Trotz was a guest of the Tom & Joe Show on 92-CITI-FM on Thursday morning. One of the best interviews in all of professional hockey, Trotz told Tom McGouran and The Coach that while he loved Dallas and thought the Stars had a great team, he felt Detroit had way too much firepower.

 

Like many of us, Trotz expects an extremely short series in the Western Conference final.

 

As for the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh Eastern Conference final, Trotz believes that if the Flyers bang and crash, they might have a chance against a Pittsburgh team that Trotz also says has “far too much firepower.”

 

“If Philadelphia plays the same type of intimidating game they did against Montreal, they could make the series a long one,” Trotz said. “But that Pittsburgh team has a lot of talent and toughness. When you can throw Malkin, Crosby, Hossa and Staal out there, when you have two tremendously talented offensive-type lines, and they won’t back down, you can be a pretty formidable team.

 

“Philadelphia works very hard, but Pittsburgh keeps coming at you all the time. I won’t say Philadelphia can’t win the series, it’s just going to be very difficult.”

 

After the opening games of the two series, it was pretty obvious that Trotz’s assessment was dead on.

 

On Thursday night, the Red Wings just dominated Dallas. The Wings scored three power-play goals, built a 4-0 lead and coasted (as they often do) to a 4-1 victory. Big Tomas Holmstrom, who found himself a nice comfortable spot in front of Dallas goalie Marty Turco, led the way for the Wings with a goal and an assist. It was Detroit’s seventh straight playoff victory and set up a do-or-die situation for Dallas on Saturday.

 

That’s right, do-or-die.

 

Already down 1-0, if Dallas loses on Saturday, they’ll fall behind 2-0 and no matter how well they play the rest of the way, they will NOT win four out of five against the Red Wings. 

 

Trouble is, what can Dallas possibly do to beat Detroit if Chris Osgood plays well in goal? Osgood is, after all, the only weak link on this Red Wings team, and if he shuts you down (Detroit outshot Dallas 31-21 in Game 1), it’s pretty much hopeless. Dallas isn’t big enough, Dallas isn’t fast enough, Dallas can’t match up and Dallas can’t shut down the Wings power-play. 

 

Game 1 was not only a statement by Detroit, it was a sign of things to come.

 

Over in the East, Philadelphia got a couple of quick goals by Kenora’s Mike Richards and took a 2-1 lead on the Pens, but before the second period ended, Pittsburgh was up 4-2 and in the third, Malkin and Co. just shut down the Flyers.

 

What we found out in Game 1 of this series, is that Pittsburgh is just as tough and maybe tougher than the Flyers and if the bangin’ and crashin’ doesn’t work, Philly could go down quickly.

 

We still figure the Flyers will have some jam at home, but after Malkin got drilled a couple of times and still got up to score two goals and dish out an assist, the writing was on the wall. Unlike Montreal, Pittsburgh isn’t going to back down and that will spell doom for Philadelphia.

 

We selected Pittsburgh in seven. The Pens are now 9-1 in the playoffs and we might have underestimated their toughness. 

 

* * *

 

A couple of coaches were fired this week.

 

On Wednesday, to no one’s surprise, the dysfunctional Toronto Maple Leafs fired head coach Paul Maurice, the only good thing the Leafs had going for them the last two years. That franchise is in worse shape than we thought.

 

Two days later, ex-Maple Leaf Joel Quenneville was let go by the Colorado Avalanche. Quenneville was 131-92-23 in three seasons with Colorado, coaching a team that was old and on the slide after a decade near the top of the NHL. It was probably a blessing that Quenneville was given a chance to look for work elsewhere. The Avs are going nowhere but downhill.

 

The Leafs, meanwhile, are a mess. Currently being run by an old coot named Cliff Fletcher who destroyed the club with some dreadful trades in the late 90s (and the Leafs haven’t recovered) then went on to collect a million dollar paycheque to screw up the Phoenix Coyotes, Toronto is now without a head coach, a real general manager and probably a captain. Maurice, who had one year left on his contract, compiled a 76-66-22 record in two seasons as Toronto’s coach but failed to make the playoffs in both years.

 

Maurice and Quenneville are both class acts and relatively young and will find work. Both franchises, however, are in big, big trouble. Colorado is getting older by the minute while Toronto is just bad news.

 

In fact, the next coach in either city had better not buy a house. 

  

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