Benevides Fired

[cromartie]

Unfortunate, but necessary. And I bear no ill will toward MB. He's a good guy. My hope is that he lands on his feet and relaunches his career somewhere, perhaps in the GTA.

Forward, gentlemen. Forward.

[WestCoastJoe]

New coach. I like the sound of that.

And a new coach means change of staff. With respect for the hard work of our coaches, we need new blood.

I would not be surprised if Hufnagel does move himself upstairs. IMO he would serving his own interest, not the interest of the Stampeders, by allowing Dave Dickenson to come back to the Lions.

Let me re-phrase that. Hufnagel would not, IMO, put his own interests ahead of the Stampeders, and he might decide, at his age, to keep a top guy like Dickenson. If Hufnagel lets Dickenson go, then Hufnagel feels he himself is game for a few years yet.

Dickenson has already had offers. He can be a Head Coach pretty much any year he wants.

X2

We need fresh blood. This sounds like Buono won't be putting on a second hat, which IMHO would be a disaster if he did as he'd likely just continue with everything else unchanged. We need more than just a new HC and only a newly hired outsider would make the necessary extra changes.

Yup. I made some revisions in that original post, but it still represents what I wanted to say.

Wally acted fast. As I have noted a few times, he is a survivor. He will change if he has to. It seems clear that he knew big change, significant change, was necessary.

Also, a new HC means that they choose who goes. Not Wally. That is fair. We know Wally does not want to fire long time colleagues, friends and co-workers. This way makes it just a bit more palatable.

Do these developments mean that Wally will not resume the HC position. Almost certainly. Unless he cannot find someone deemed to be the right guy. I do suspect that Wally has someone in mind already. Will that work out? It is not all up to Wally.

And if #1 is not available, make that continent-wide search. There are outstanding guys out there. For sure they would be young, and either at a lower level of football, or in the ranks of assistants.

[cromartie]

Wally acted fast. As I have noted a few times, he is a survivor. He will change if he has to. It seems clear that he knew big change, significant change, was necessary.

That's the thing. I don't share the pessimism that Wally can't evolve. There's still a challenge to this job for him, even if coaching isn't quite out of his blood.

If you think about all the years in his career he ran everything, right down to pulling out the credit card so the Stamps could pay travel to some of their games back in the 1990s, then you should get some insight as to how hard it can be to cede control to someone. Or think about how to differently organize different parts of the organization.

And yet, he did it last year with the player personnel and cap management piece and I think, to some extent, we saw better results. The drafting got better as well, did it not?

So, lesson learned here, on his part. My hunch is that he goes after an experienced guy and learns, begrudgingly, to take his hands off. And that's a tough lesson to learn. Some of us who are used to being doers at the field level don't transition to the front office/management position well. (I'm no different in my chosen field, in fact, I just gave up and went back to the field, and am much happier, frankly.) So, lesson learned. The good news is, there's talent here and bringing in a solid coaching staff to better leverage that talent can save us from a Winnipeg like dump.

[Childress]

Word is Scott Milanovich is unhappy with what is going on in Toronto. Braley could simply transfer him to his other franchise. Would Barker be the one to give permission to talk or Braley?

Possible?

[Dusty]

It looks like there will be no further moves until a new coach is in place:

Been told the new coach will decide the fate of the rest of the coaching staff. No more firings.

There is an issue of timing for the current assistant coaches who are on 1 year contracts ending in December if the HC decision is not made quickly. If there is not a decision on their status by mid December, some may start looking rather than be interviewed by the new guy sometime in the future. Timing has to be right to talk to HC candidates as well, otherwise tampering becomes an issue. So, if there is any under consideration in this weekends games, they might still have contract ties not allowing communications until (much) later.

Wally is on 1040 at 1:00pm. Maybe have better idea of the future from that chat.

[Dusty]

Word is Scott Milanovich is unhappy with what is going on in Toronto. Braley could simply transfer him to his other franchise. Would Barker be the one to give permission to talk or Braley?

Possible?

Hard to imagine that happening.... I was disappointed that Millanovich wasn't hired the last time..... if we get him, that would be great..... I suspect that Braley is pretty hands-off on issues like this so Barker would have to give permission if it was needed.

[cromartie]

Word is Scott Milanovich is unhappy with what is going on in Toronto. Braley could simply transfer him to his other franchise. Would Barker be the one to give permission to talk or Braley?

Possible?

Pretty sure a "transfer" of that nature is against league by-laws. No need to go all Cleveland Spiders on us.

Barker would have to give permission, of course.

[Hambone]

There is an issue of timing for the current assistant coaches who are on 1 year contracts ending in December if the HC decision is not made quickly. If there is not a decision on their status by mid December, some may start looking rather than be interviewed by the new guy sometime in the future. Timing has to be right to talk to HC candidates as well, otherwise tampering becomes an issue. So, if there is any under consideration in this weekends games, they might still have contract ties not allowing communications until later.

Wally is on 1040 at 1:00pm. Maybe have better idea of the future from that chat.

All the more reason for making the dismissal decision as soon as they did. Really need to have both the HC and most of his supporting coaching staff in place sooner than later, preferably before Christmas. Tampering isn't really a concern if Buono follows normal protocols. Might not be able to talk to them but can position yourself to hit the recruiting ground running by lining up permission to talk to some of these guys as soon as is reasonable after their seasons are over.

[Dusty]

Unfortunate, but necessary. And I bear no ill will toward MB. He's a good guy. My hope is that he lands on his feet and relaunches his career somewhere, perhaps in the GTA.

Forward, gentlemen. Forward.

Forward was the theme of Wally's interview. He spoke of the long time that MB and WB have been together and acknowledged that this year was a failure for both of them, not just MB. Maybe MB will look back on this and realize that he needed to get out of WB's orbit.

[Sir Purrcival]

Unfortunate, but necessary. And I bear no ill will toward MB. He's a good guy. My hope is that he lands on his feet and relaunches his career somewhere, perhaps in the GTA.

Forward, gentlemen. Forward.

x2

[Big Time]

UBC has an opening for their football head coach. Maybe he and Jacques Chapdelaine will square off against each other at the Shrum bowl next year.

[TheLionKing]

I wonder if Benevides keeps this t-shirt?

[TheLionKing]

Word is Scott Milanovich is unhappy with what is going on in Toronto. Braley could simply transfer him to his other franchise. Would Barker be the one to give permission to talk or Braley?

Possible?

Braley is a hands off owner. He lets his hired people make the decisions. In this case it would be Barker.

[TheLionKing]

UBC has an opening for their football head coach. Maybe he and Jacques Chapdelaine will square off against each other at the Shrum bowl next year.

Only problem with that scenario is that the two teams don't play in the Shrum Bowl anymore.

[David]

The better line there would have been "the problem with that scenario is that one of those teams has to win."


DH