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Change is real in B.C.
Courtesy Vancouver Province:
The story carries no more weight than locker-room folklore, but it does serve to illustrate what has unfolded for the B.C. Lions on more than one front.
The scene: The night before last year’s West Division final against the Calgary Stampeders.
A group of Stampeders had a chance meeting with some Lions players and support staff who were dining at a downtown Calgary steakhouse. It was stated in no uncertain terms by members of the home team that they would prevail the next day. Nothing unusual there. The reason the Lions would lose, as the story goes, is that the Stamps were aware what their opponents were going to do.
You won’t get anyone on the Lions to talk about what took place in their final game of the 2008 CFL season, other than their belief they were beaten only by abysmal goal-line offensive execution and a last-play desperation pass into the end zone that went uncaught.
“All I know is that they would take a pre-snap read, and they went running right to the ball,” says veteran centre Angus Reid.
But the inference that the Lions had become predictable is a precursor for ensuing events, and goes well beyond last year’s season-ending loss.
Having perfected a division final flameout for the third time in five seasons and losing four times last year to the eventual Grey Cup champions, the Lions realized things have to change.
The results will begin to emerge when the Lions convene for their 56th training camp starting Sunday. After three years at Abbotsford’s Rotary Stadium, the club will move most sessions this season one block to W.J. Mouat Secondary.
Coach Wally Buono began by cutting veterans without regard to past accolades. Gone were a two-time top Canadian (Jason Clermont), three former all-stars, (Tyrone Williams, Otis Floyd and Kelly Bates) and a future Canadian Football Hall of Famer (Charles Roberts).
By the time the offseason was over, 12 veterans who finished last year had left, owing to free agency and NFL option-year defections.
But the change has gone much deeper.
Coaches still prefer to suggest they have made nothing more than alterations to their basic schemes, but it is clear they saw more than themselves when looking in the mirror after last season was over.
“Every man on staff owned up to wanting change,” says defensive coordinator Mike Benevides. “Sometimes you protect yourself as coaches, but everybody was so critical of their evaluation of themselves. We had to take a hard look.”
Buono, who normally writes his players two letters during the offseason, said he wrote three this winter, asking a specific question of his players in one of them.
“What are you spending your energy on — talking or winning?” he said.
The collective results may not be evident until well after the Lions’ regular-season road opener July 3 against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, but they have a chance to be effective.
The offence led by Buck Pierce will have more of a quick-strike feel, Buono said, more reliant on the ability of their starting quarterback to make quicker reads and protect himself in the event of blitz against altered protection schemes.
More passing routes will take less time to develop, reducing the reliance on crossing patterns which were at times life-threatening to players like Clermont.
“We ran them less last year than in 2007,” says receivers coach Jacques Chapdelaine. “The crossers can still be successful. We can’t call them as often because people have figured out a way of defending those.”
Also certain to change is the goal-line offensive package, which not only was their undoing in Calgary but cost the Lions a road win in Montreal last year that ultimately meant the loss of a home playoff game.
“We took our best players off the field and relied on beating up guys,” one veteran says.
Defensively, Benevides said he wants to use his base package roughly seven out of 10 snaps so as to keep more agile pass defenders on the field more often.
But for any change in structure to work, the Lions will also require a change in attitude, which at times transcended, according to some veterans, to a sense of entitlement.
Coaches also have a possible solution for that as well. A master motivator, Benevides came up with an acronym he hopes will be taken as a rallying point by his players. On one of his office boards, Benevides has three large letters written amid his personnel groupings and practice plans.
The letters? S.A.W — Shut-up And Win.
“That’s the right slogan, all right,” says slotback Geroy Simon, who will be in search of his his seventh straight 1,000-yard receiving season.
“We’ve done enough talking. Until we can put three or four [championship seasons] in a row, then guys can open their mouths. [Last year] everybody had their opinion instead of letting the coaches do their job.”
The attitudinal storm clouds formed last year right at the start of training camp.
“We’d get rained out [of practice] and it was like ‘great … no matter; we’re better than everyone else anyways; this is just a waste of time. Let’s just get to the West final so we can go to the Grey Cup,’” says Reid.
“Last year was one big, gigantic kick in the ass to everyone in the organization.”
The only thing worse was having an opponent telling them they knew what was coming.
At 11-7, the Lions weren’t a bad team last year, finishing fourth overall in average offence, despite using 10 different receivers, and third on defence. But there’s clearly room for improvement.
Defensively, Benevides is stressing a reduction in what he calls hidden yards, which is yards allowed after a catch. Coaches calculated that cost the Lions 40 yards, or four first downs, per game. More live tackling will be the result at training camp this year.
But what the Lions want to achieve more than anything at camp is a different attitude.
“Last year I got caught up trying to help everyone else and I think I might have taken away from a bit of my play,” says Simon. “I have to take a different approach. I’m not being selfish and obviously I’ll do my part, but this year I’m not going to hold people’s hand.”
During his winter reformation process Buono stressed the Lions are not without direction and have a nucleus, represented by the fact he signed 16 players to contract extensions.
Buono also reiterated, however, that prior to last year he said changes would be forthcoming if his team didn’t deliver. The result: Not only will a sixth straight division final appearance be difficult, until the recruiting work of Buono and personnel director Roy Shivers can be evaluated they aren’t even automatic contenders to make the playoffs.
Change has come to Lion-land.
“We don’t have to make a new team but we needed more than a Band-Aid,” says Reid. “We’re becoming not a forgotten team, but part of the pack by the league’s standard.
“The players know how good we can be, but this is the first time in a long time we’re coming in without the country expecting us to win a Grey Cup.”
The goal starting Sunday is to have a different kind of dinner conversation in November.
