“You have to let the emotions die down." - Wally Buono

[WestCoastJoe]

Willes: Lions GM tries to let emotions die down

By Ed Willes, The ProvinceNovember 20, 2012

Less than 48 hours after the fact, and with grief and disappointment still hanging over the Surrey practice facility like a black cloud, Wally Buono fixed his inquisitor with an icy stare and said nothing has changed for the B.C. Lions.

Oh, he did acknowledge his team played like crap, or words to that effect, in the Western final. And he did say personnel changes would be made this off-season, as they are after every year.

But as far as blowing out those parts that looked old and fragile against the Calgary Stampeders, it’s not going to happen. Buono has been through this dance every year for 22 years and, in that time, he’s learned a lot of things.

Mostly he’s learned you can’t make franchise-changing decisions when your mind is clouded by the images of a team that just played its worst game of the season. And right now, that’s about all he sees.

“I’ve got my thoughts,” Buono said in his office. “I’m going to sit down with (head coach Mike Benevides). I’m going to sit down with all the coaches. I want to hear what they tell me. Then I’ll go away.

“You have to let the emotions die down. If you do everything based on one loss, how stupid are we?”

That, we surmise, will be determined this off-season.

“Wally’s smart,” said centre Angus Reid. “He’s been doing this a long, long time and he’s not going to get caught up in emotional decisions. This is a lot bigger than one game.”

Even if that one game feels bigger than the season that preceded it.

Tuesday, as could be expected, was a sad day in Surrey. Players shuffled around the locker room, signing jerseys and posters for each other. They embraced. They shook hands. They said goodbye, not knowing if they’ll see each other again.

Then they broke off and talked to assembled media, trying their best to answer questions that won’t be resolved for another couple of months.

Geroy Simon, predictably, came under some scrutiny. The great receiver will be 38 next season and is coming off the worst year of his Hall-of-Fame career. This has led to learned speculation about his future with the Leos.

“My focus is still to be the best receiver in the league, and I still think I can do that,” he said, before adding. “This is a business. I love the B.C. Lions. But if there’s a point where they don’t want me, you have to look at other options.”

Reid, who turns 37 next year, drew another big crowd. He said he’s leaning toward returning for his 13th season but . . .

“For me it’s not about the 18 games. It’s about the off-season of preparation. It’s about training camp. It’s about five practices a week. Anyone will tell you they can play 18 games forever. It’s how many training camps they can get through; how many off-seasons of running and lifting you can keep doing.”

Elsewhere, the reactions varied. Benevides, the rookie coach, talked about the difficulty of letting go of the loss.

“It’s been there every single minute,” he said.

But he, too, isn’t one for major reconstructive surgery on this team.

“I think it’s time to adjust,” he said. “I don’t think it’s anything more than that.”

Dante Marsh, for his part, was slightly more militant. He snorted at the suggestion the Lions were starting to show age in key areas, pointing to the league-leading defence, the 13-5 record and suggested anyone who thought the Lions were getting old could do something we can’t repeat in a family newspaper.

“I’ll take my guys over everyone in the league,” he said.

But will Buono? You don’t have to be Pop Ivy to understand the Lions have to get younger at receiver, the defensive line and the secondary and, if tackle Jovan Olafioye decamps for the NFL, the offensive line becomes a huge area of concern.

The Lions GM, you’ll be relieved to know, has considered those same things. He’s just not ready to announce his decisions two days after the season ended.

“We’re having this same conversation if we win the Grey Cup,” Buono said. “I guarantee it. You’d be asking the same questions and I’d give you the same answers.

“You have to look at it going forward. This team was built to win today. Next year we have to look at building the team to win again. If that means going a slightly different direction, so be it.”

The games, after all, end. But the business of the game goes on and on.

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/sports/Wille ... z2CsRwFXMa

[WestCoastJoe]

Decision making. With the heart? With the head? It is a life skill, lacking in most people.

IMO it is one of Wally's great strengths.

Keep the emotions out of it. Sleep on it. Get all the points of view. Make the hard decisions.

Wally has always done that.

Geroy is the big one. Wally and the coaches will have to decide if Geroy is still All Star quality at his advancing age. If he is not, do you try to keep him at a reduced salary? Geroy is a special case. Hall of Fame bound. The face of the franchise for years. But, if time has caught up to him, then it is time to move on.

“My focus is still to be the best receiver in the league, and I still think I can do that,” he said, before adding. “This is a business. I love the B.C. Lions. But if there’s a point where they don’t want me, you have to look at other options.” - Geroy Simon

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/sports/Wille ... z2CsTXVfLr

[WestCoastJoe]

B.C. Lions head coach 'feels' for organization

By Iain MacIntyre, Vancouver Sun November 20, 2012

VANCOUVER - Head coach Mike Benevides isn't tormented 24 hours a day by the B.C. Lions' failure to make the Grey Cup. When he sleeps, he doesn't even think about it unless there's a nightmare.

“Every waking moment,” Benevides told reporters Tuesday when asked if he has been thinking about Sunday's 34-29 loss to the Calgary Stampeders.

“The hardest thing for me right now to overcome is just the disappointment,” he explained. “I can't articulate it properly. . . because it's just so hard to get to this place, to win 13 games and have the bye week and have that (home playoff) game to the point where you can taste the opportunity. It's hard for me to see much good right now just because of the emotional feelings.”

Benevides, like his team, was having an outstanding season as a rookie head coach until Sunday, when the Stampeder offence outplayed the Lions' defence and Calgary forced B.C. to run a dink-and-dunk attack.

Still, the Lions led the Canadian Football League in the regular season after Wally Buono promoted Benevides to replace him as coach. Benevides said his disappointment this week is different than what he experienced as a defensive coordinator.

Then, he worried about his defensive players. This week, he feels for everyone in the organization.

“I think the weight and the burden is a little different,” he said. “We were all here in this room, the 50 people (on staff) in our building yesterday for about five minutes. The entire organization works so hard selling tickets and doing different kinds of things, and you feel a tremendous amount of weight and disappointment for them.”

Buono and Benevides will soon begin the annual review of football operations, from the coaching staff to the players, and form an off-season plan to position the Lions for another run at the Grey Cup in 2013.

Benevides said he still believes in the Lions' veteran core and doesn't think the team needs a full-scale “makeover.” But with the need to make the Lions younger, if only so the team doesn't suddenly expire a year or two from now, he faces decisions as difficult as any he had to make during the season.

“A lot is made out of age and, you're right, football is a young man's sport,” Benevides said. “But it's based on performance, really. Age is not the factor. The factor really is performance (and) the athlete's ability to stay healthy.

“None of the decisions made are easy. A lot of times, people think the tough decisions are to let a player go or make a change. A lot of the times, the tough decision is to keep a player and not make a change. That's the biggest challenge. There will be tough decisions right across the board.”

This is where Wally is a terrific role model and mentor for Benny. No panic. Don't go off the deep end. No rash decisions.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Lion ... z2CsUazxHi

[WestCoastJoe]

B.C. Lions look to 'the man upstairs'

By Iain MacIntyre, Vancouver Sun columnistNovember 20, 2012

VANCOUVER - In discussing the likelihood of player changes as teammates cleaned out their lockers Tuesday, five days before the Grey Cup, B.C. Lions' quarterback Travis Lulay mentioned “the man upstairs.”

This was nothing new as football and Christian faith have long been intertwined. But the supreme being to whom Lulay referred was not God but general manager Wally Buono, who to most Lions is nearly as powerful as He is.

From his upstairs office at the Lions' headquarters in Surrey, Buono will sit in judgment on his team, which won 13 games this season but lost when it counted in the West Division final, 34-29 against the Calgary Stampeders.

At first glance, not much is wrong with the Lions, who finished the regular season atop the CFL rankings in both offence and defence. Their one-and-done loss to the second-place Stampeders actually validated the potential greatness of the Lions, whose offence sputtered towards field goals instead of touchdowns while the defence, and especially the star-filled secondary, made as many ghastly individual mistakes in three hours as it had the previous three months. And still the game came down to an onside kick and one score.

It's a quarterback-driven league and Lulay, the CFL's best player in 2011, is returning next season for the option year on a contract that he hopes to extend in B.C. Outstanding Canadian running back Andrew Harris also is coming back and the Lions possess a bunch of excellent prospects at receiver and in the defensive front seven.

This team won the Grey Cup last year, should have won another this week in Toronto and could reclaim its title in 2013.

But everyone can see the problems coming.

The four imports in the secondary are in their 30s. The offensive line, dishevelled by injuries, could become a crisis if tackle Jovan Olafioye leaves for the National Football League and centre Angus Reid retires.

Talented, young slotbacks Nick Moore and Courtney Taylor need places to play, but are behind the roster roadblock of expensive veterans Geroy Simon and Arland Bruce.

Bruce, 35, is as good as gone, which makes it even more sensible to keep Simon, 37, the most productive receiver in CFL history.

Simon wants to stay. So does Reid, although the 36-year-old said he'll re-assess his feelings during the off-season. But it's not their call. It's the man upstairs.

“Just let the players tell me what we should or shouldn't do?” Buono said when informed that Simon and Reid would like to return. “That's not how any business works. When you go before your boss, he reviews. There's a review process and we're going to go through that process.

“The process has to always be about evaluating yourself and where you're at. We had a veteran team that proved in the regular season they were very good. Unfortunately, they didn't prove it when it was most critical.”

Buono didn't reveal much during an interview upstairs, but said the offensive is a priority.

Between them, Simon and Reid have played 24 seasons in Vancouver.

Limited by hamstring injuries to his least productive campaign in 11 years, Simon said he is determined to play in 2013.

“I expect to be here and I'll keep thinking that way until they tell me otherwise,” he said. “If there comes a point where they don't want me and I still want to play, obviously you've got to look at other options. (But) I'm 100 per cent committed to being a B.C. Lion next year.”

Reid, still a West Division all-star, feels committed now but cautioned he won't make a final decision about retirement until the winter.

“It's a matter of the team finding out where they want to go next year and me making sure I have enough gas to give them what they need,” Reid said. “It's not about the 18 games; it's about the entire off-season of preparation. I think everyone would tell you they can play 18 games forever. It's about how many training camps you can get through, about how many full years of practice and how many off-seasons of training, running, lifting you can keep doing.”

Even if he is back, Reid knows some other veterans won't be.

“There was a conscious decision this year to keep our team pretty much the same as the Grey Cup championship team and to hopefully repeat,” Reid said. “We didn't do it. Everyone is now one year older. I don't know who, what or where, but you know there will be more changes than there were last year.”

Olafioye, a free agent and repeat finalist for the CFL Outstanding Lineman award, said the CFL can't compete salary-wise with the NFL. But after being released in February by the St. Louis Rams when a medication issue caused him to fail his physical, the 24-year-old from Detroit said he is less inclined to try playing in the NFL without money guaranteed.

Defensive tackle Khalif Mitchell and linebacker Solomon Elimimian, two other free-agent Lions who plumbed the NFL this year, said Tuesday they haven't decided whether to try again south of the border.

“I'm going to drive home, all the way across the country,” Mitchell, who is from Virgina Beach, Va., said. “I'm just going to take my time. Make a decision with a clear head.”

The veteran imports in the B.C. secondary – cornerbacks Byron Parker, 31, and Dante Marsh, 33; halfbacks Korey Banks, 33, and Ryan Phillips, 31 – said they want to remain Lions.

But, Phillips said: “I'm pretty sure they don't want to set themselves up down the road where they have to make a whole bunch of changes at once. We always knew our days were numbered as far as being all together as a unit. That's why you've got to take advantage of the opportunity. We didn't do it. That's why we're here packing right now.”

“I'm not scared of age,” Banks insisted. “When my day comes, it comes. I signed up for this. Whenever that day is, I'm prepared for it. But I'm healthy and I will play football next year. Where that is, we'll see.”

So will Buono.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Lion ... z2CsW94tA1

[WestCoastJoe]

“I'm not scared of age,” Banks insisted. “When my day comes, it comes. I signed up for this. Whenever that day is, I'm prepared for it. But I'm healthy and I will play football next year. Where that is, we'll see.” - Korey Banks

IMO Korey had another stellar year. Did not sip at all. I am sure he will be back.

[cromartie]

“We’re having this same conversation if we win the Grey Cup,” Buono said. “I guarantee it. You’d be asking the same questions and I’d give you the same answers.

Absolutely true.

Does nothing to make the WDF loss easier to swallow, though.

[TheLionKing]

Buono got it right. Take a few weeks off to let the emotion wear off and then do an objective assessment what went wrong and what changes need to be made

[Anglophone]

I'm glad we have Buono on as GM, now.