Courtesy Edmonton Journal:

Edmonton Eskimos head coach Richie Hall freely admits his team’s terrible defensive numbers don’t lie, but they apparently don’t add up to a problem for co-ordinator Jim Daley.

Because Hall diverted criticism away from Daley and on to the players when answering media questions Tuesday about Daley’s responsibility for those awful stats.

“I think our football team should feel the heat in regards to(the fact) we haven’t performed overall, because when you look at situations that have occurred, when you look at over the course of the season, we had opportunities to catch a football or to make a play and we didn’t make it,” said Hall. “And what happens, next play(the opponents) score. Or the next play they continue their drive. So I agree what the numbers are.They don’t lie. But they also don’t lie regarding we haven’t made enough plays.”

That’s pretty clear, if you ask me. This one is on the defensive players, not the co-ordinator. And that presents an interesting contrast.

At the time offensive co-ordinator Rick Worman was shown the door last week, the Eskimo defence was dead last in 16 of the 25 categories charted weekly by the Canadian Football League head office. The defence. Not the offence.

“I just hate it. I know we’re a better group, definitely, than what the numbers show,” said defensive back Jason Goss. “If you looked at the numbers and not at the record, you would think we were not even close to fighting for first.”

If you looked at the numbers and were told an Eskimo co-ordinator lost his job because of them, Worman might not have been your first guess. His offence actually led the league in many passing categories a week ago but wasn’t getting the job done where and when it counts most, on the scoreboard with a game up for grabs. Hall said he didn’t like the team’s production, particularly because so many offensive players were returning from last season. So Worman took the fall.

Now, there was much more to that story and part of it was Worman’s obvious philosophical differences with Hall.

As coaches, they had never worked together prior to this season and it was no secret Hall wanted Worman’s replacement Kevin Strasser for the job in the first place.

There is no such conflict of style between Hall and Daley. They are both old defensive coaches who had been on the same staff in Saskatchewan and are obviously on the same page here. That it’s more specifically the bottom of the CFL stats page is most definitely troubling for both men, but it doesn’t seem to affect anybody’s job security.

Fine. You can’t throw everybody under the bus at the same time or the damn thing won’t ever get moving forward. And the truth is, the defence had to make a ton of changes in personnel right off the hop, something Hall seems to be acknowledging with his patience. The fact they are 5-5 and still within striking distance of first place in the CFL West is no doubt a contributing factor as well.

But Daley runs a unit that still ranks dead last in the eight-team CFL in 13 categories. It has yielded more yards and more points than every other CFL squad, including the complete and utter gong show in Winnipeg. They can’t afford it but they keep taking a step forward and two back every week, even this deep in the season. In the most recent home loss to Calgary, their improvement was again overshadowed by their inconsistency, not from quarter-to-quarter or half-to-half, but from down-to-down for crying out loud.

“On second down we played very well,” said Daley. “We had 14 second-and-medium, second-and-long and got them off the field with no first down on 12 of the 14.On first down we were terrible. We had 10 plays of 20-plus yards, which we haven’t had total, I don’t think this year, on first down. So we made strides in one regard on second down. We were not good on first down. And overall, you have to say we just weren’t good enough on defence.”

That’s too common a refrain around here. The numbers have shown it for ages, the record is beginning to reflect it, and the defence knows it.

“Stats don’t lie at the end of the day,” said defensive back Bobby Keyes. “Sometimes they’re inflated and they may look better than what you really are. But when they’re bad, it’s just time to make plays.”

Or step aside and have somebody else do it, I suppose.

“You know you’ve got a job to do and if that job isn’t getting done, regardless if you’re working as hard as you can or not, if the job is not getting done, changes will be made,” said Keyes.

Lineman Kitwana Jones and DB Jonte Buhl are recent proof of Hall’s mindset and determination to get better. Trouble is, the men still here are inconsistent, susceptible to the big play, still lacking cohesiveness. And while it may not add up correctly with some fans, those problems have focused the heat not on the sidelines, as in the case of the offence, but on the field itself.

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