Courtesy Edmonton Journal:

EDMONTON - One year after officially handing off the keys of the franchise to a new regime, Hugh Campbell doesn’t look upon the Edmonton Eskimos from afar and see a CFL club in free fall.

“In the games I watched, and I watched a lot of them on TV, we’re right there,” Campbell said Thursday at a news conference to officially announce the retirement of kicker Sean Fleming. “I’m optimistic. The danger is that we’ve lost a lot of games and that can’t become a habit. You’ve got to be able to win the close football games and this year, we didn’t.”

Which was a major reason the Eskimos closed out their second straight non-playoff year with a 5-12-1 record. Overall, Campbell believes that “talking globally about the team, that the right people are there.”

The former coach, architect of the Eskimos five-Grey Cup dynasty from 1978 to ‘82, and longtime GM and CEO, Campbell continues to believe the duo he left in charge — CEO Rick LeLacheur and head coach Danny Maciocia — can stop the team’s skid.

“I would have hoped we would have won more games, they would have hoped, every fan would have hoped,” Campbell said. “But, at the same time, we’re right on track.

“The Eskimos are in excellent hands (with LeLacheur), we’re going to be sound business-wise. Football-wise, Danny, I think, is a great, great prospect.

“He’s a guy that I believe can grow some more. I like to think that I grew in ability every year I was with the Eskimos, right up to two years ago.”

Saying he would be “stunned if Danny’s not back,” Campbell suggested that continuity, not more change is key for next season.

“This football club needs to just come back to training camp next year, line them up and find out as quick as they possibly can who the players are going to be and not have a long, drawn-out try-out session.

“They need to get the people that are going to play playing. Other than that, I don’t have any advice for them.”

Campbell made clear he is no fan of a drastic overhaul going forward.

“The only thing I’ve ever seen gained by that is that sometimes an executive can buy himself an extra year of his existence,” Campbell said. “But it always has a bad ending.

“All of a sudden, the fans say, ‘Oh, good, you’re getting rid of all those guys, let’s start over.’ But starting over is tough, it’s like being an expansion team with no draft. I can’t vote for that.”

On the other hand, Campbell, who presided over much of the Eskimos’ vaunted 34 straight years qualifying for the CFL playoffs, said he took pride that the Eskimos of that era “didn’t have rebuilding years, but we did have some reloading years.”

Well, the club is in the full-blown rebuild stage now.