Ron. A rookie GM is going to make some mistakes. If your not willing to accept this when you hire one, then who's fault is it?
There was a disconnect between Desjardsins plan and Mitchell's plan, that's obvious but if you hire a guy and you say "I don't know anything about building a football team, build me what they have in Montreal" and then you put a guy over him who has a completely different agenda who's fault is it?
Then you say Mitchell told him they couldn't afford to write off the season. Ok so six months in to Desjardins building plan what is the alternative? What was Mitchell's plan?What football genious does he bring to the table?
Desjardins and Taafe tried to get some quality assistants. They were turned down. Obi is going to have the same problems. Convincing successfully employed coachs to go down the yellow or is it gold brick road is not as easy as convincing the fans...Convincing Taafe took time ! no kidding. It can't be an easy job to get real football people to want to come to that organization. Desjardins didn't get dumb over night and it takes two to tango so his interaction with Mitchell aren't only Desjardin's to blame. Now the way Mitchell treated Desjardins is going to have an impact on the Ticats. Letting go Smith well I've seen him enough at CIS games to agree with the move. McCarthy is a salary dump, plain and simple and if the Ticats wanted a GM with experience they had him in their own org.
The Ticats had the biggest investment of any team in scouting (one of the good decisions by Bob). Well what is the point of spending all that money if you have next to no choices at the draft table?
The import talent on that team was massively improved over the previous year.
Printers over Maas
Setta over Boreham
Moreno over Barranachea
Charlton Keith
at the draft
Bauman
Bekasiak
Rempel
and he added what 3 draft picks for the coming draft?
Then there is the injury to Lumsden. The attack was built around him, had he stayed healthy the team's record would have been better. Not playoff better but good enough to give the Ticats a home record of 5-4 enough to keep fans trusting management as they built.
So the new Wizard is O'billovitch ok. We're off to see the Wizard...tap your shoes...
I like O'billovitch but at 67 we are talking a two year hire here. 3 would be a bonus. As a player personel guy working small projects on extended time lines that is fair but as you probably know, successful GM's in this league work insane hours. You can't expect a 67 year old to put in 18 hour days for extended periods of time. It just won't work.
A better move would have been to ask O'billovitch or Matthews someone with that level of experience to come in and do an evaluation and consult for the Ticats to determine where the team was at with Desjardins to see where and why things were the way they were. Obi is already saying the ratio by position is out of wack. Ok well why is that? there probably is a reasons but we know what the solutions to this is going to be.
What the Ticat fans are going to get is a flurry of trades that will bring mid-carreer slightly above average CFL'ers in exchange for draft picks to get immediate depth.
New coach's with more CFL experience at least at the coordinator level. if Obi still has connections there because let's face it there is a huge generation gap betwwen him and the typical assistant in the CFL.
The end result will be a 7-11 or 8-10 team next season and three years from now a competitive team if the instability stops or should I say madness instead of a league dominating team two years from now.
Lack of conviction and stomach for what was good for this organisation and panic at seeing attendance drop while this is accomplished is what led to the current mess.
Fans would have come back in droves once the team was at the top of the pile. Will they stick around for a 7-11 team that won't make the post season for one or two more years? Bad gamble IMO. I wish Bob and the fans the best but I don't see anything here that points the Ticats to be a futre powerhouse in the league.