Riders kick off new era with Craig Dickenson named as 47th Head Coach
When Chris Jones pulled out of town for the Cleveland Browns, the Saskatchewan Roughriders were facing a problem of their own making – how do they replace a guy who filled four positions?
Last week the Riders solved one problem when Jeremy O’Day was named the new general manager and vice-president of football operations. O’Day’s first job was hiring a coach, but to no one’s surprise, Winnipeg and Ottawa refused permission to allow Day to interview offensive coordinators Paul La Police and Jamie Elizondo respectively.
The stated reason was the Riders request was too late in the football off-season cycle, even though there appears to have been until this season an unspoken agreement that teams would not stand in the way of assistant coaches who might get an opportunity for a promotion. The reality of the situation was that Winnipeg and Ottawa saw an opportunity to stick it to the Riders and they took it.
Part of this might have stemmed from the Riders poaching of former head coach Chris Jones and almost all of his staff three years ago from the Edmonton Eskimos. Ever since then, Jones has pushed the borders of what teams can do to be competitive and the CFL pushed back by bringing in a salary and quantity cap on the number of coaches and football administration personnel – although the stated reason was to provide cost certainty to teams and perhaps to pre-empt the CFL Players Association from bringing up spending on coaching and football administration during the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations.