Desjardins back to Montreal

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.

Maybe he was on the Als payroll all along.....

he didnt take the high road in this article.Who really knows how his firing was handled and what actually went down with it, everyone likely sees it differently:

[url=http://www.cfl.ca/index.php?module=newser&func=display&nid=22190]http://www.cfl.ca/index.php?module=news ... &nid=22190[/url]

I'm not surprised that Desjardins would like to lay claim that if Hamilton is better next year or years later, he is the reason that they had such an improvement. His ego is no less than Popp's and they do deserve each other. Desjardins was as classless with the players as he now claims Hamilton was to him. Hamilton deserves better than Desjardins.

Him being treated the way he did is called KARMA. He did it to so many of the players he threw away like garbage. He had it coming. Perhaps the team saw the way he treated the players and felt he should get a taste of it himself.

HfxTC We always seem to disagree.

I say,

Marcel's vision was misguided.
Nobody else had ever done it.

There are agendas that have worked
to bring CFL teams to respectiveness

but the 'Chainsaw' Mike Harris approach
was never one of them and still isn't.

you don't have to be Scott Mitchell
to realize that.

I would have done the same
as he did if I was in his shoes

You said,

'Convincing successfully employed coaches
to go down the yellow or is it gold brick road

is not as easy as convincing the fans...
Convincing Taafe took time !

I say,

Charlie was making big money in the NCAA,
HfxTC, it was a better for his family

but when his contract ended in the U.S.
he jumped at the chance to coach here
because he likes CFL football so much.

You said,

'Desjardins and Taafe tried to get some
quality assistants. They were turned down.'

I say,

The quality asssistants were long gone
before Charlie Taaffe's NCAA contract expired.

I don't believe that football people shy away
from working for the Hamilton Tiger Cats.

There aren't many jobs to go around,
Coaches go wherever the jobs are available.

You say,

It can't be an easy job to get
real football people to want
to come to that organization.

I say,

Obie said the reason why he took the challenge
of trying to resurrect the Tiger Cats was that
they have fallen by the wayside so badly.

Undefeated Preseason! Again!

It'll be interesting if the Als sign Higgins as their next HC - what an interesting dynamic: Popp and Desjardins running the show with Ned Flanders clapping on the sidelines. I think Higgins is a wonderful person, but I'm not a fan of his coaching. Big gambles going on east of us.

As the losses mounted this year it was very sad to watch Marcel
staring intently from stands hoping one of his weekly recruits
would be head over heels better than any of our starters.

Near the end he still stared intently towards the field at practices.

I couldn't really read his feelings but when I closed my eyes
I envisioned him sliding the bow over the strings of a fiddle

like Nero did until his Rome completely burned.

In my vision...

Marcel's efforts sounded more like the squealings
of a pig hung up in an electric fence than music.

Go figure!

Wow..pretty good debate going on here! :thup:

Let me inject my 2 cents! :wink:

To those that say hiring a 67 year old to a 3 year contract and expecting him to work 18 hours a day...to those that say Craig Smith and Mike Mccarthy were a salary dump...to those that say that Desjardine was a totall failure ...

I say this... "Rambo" has been here a while and I think he may very well move up the totem pole!

What was his position while here?

What will he be doing from here on in?

Does he get along well with Obie?

Was his name not bantied about mid season as a possible replacement for Marcel?

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we don't have all the answers...but lots of questions and second-guessing! :roll:

Higgins isnt’ even being considered for the Montreal head coach vacancy. He even said himself that they have not called him.

Interviews in Montreal wrap up today, Chris Jones, Marcel Bellefeuille, Greg Marshall, Richie Hall, Steve Buratto are the candidates. Announcement of which one of those gets the job will come early next week.

So…forget about these “Higgins to Montreal” posts.

Maybe their waiting to see how Charlie fares in the Hammer before making their decision.

I take back what I said.....today comes word that yes indeed Higgins has been interviewed in Montreal. I'd still prefer Jones, Marshall, Hall, or Buratto. And please, not Charlie!

And yet…

[url=http://www.cfl.ca/index.php?module=newser&func=display&nid=22198]http://www.cfl.ca/index.php?module=news ... &nid=22198[/url]

EDIT: Hehe, you rang in just before I did, MJ!:slight_smile:

Beat you to it by seconds, gargoyle!

In any event, mea culpa.......may I have extra horseradish with my plate of crow, please?

No need - you can buy me a beer whenever we meet instead! :wink:

Says who? - Oh yeah, Mitchell, after the fact.

I don’t believe that for one minute - even if Mitchell believes in giving his hires (oh, yeah, I forget, DesJ wasn’t Mitchell’s hire, IMO the key point in all this) full autonomy, it doesn’t take a guy as sharp as Mitchell a whole season to figure out that the plan his GM presented him with months earlier, and implemented through dozens of moves over many months, wasn’t acceptable to the organization. If he sat back all season and watched his subordinate dismantle his team, despite it being an unacceptable plan from the outset, he shares responsibility. Oh wait, I keep forgetting, DesJ wasn’t Mitchell’s hire, why WOULDN’T he put the whole thing on DesJ. Can’t blame the guy that hired DesJ, (Mitchell’s boss), can’t blame Mitchell, he didn’t hire him - must be his fault. Almost the perfect scenario if you want your own guy. Not a problem in the end - Mitchell hired his guy, he’s got great credentials, and the natural order of things has been restored.

In any case, it’s probably better for the organization that everyone accept that DesJardins was responsible for everything from the team’s record to the weather to the price of gas. Mitchell chased the problem out of town, the rest of the organization is blameless and we can all put the past behind us and get behind the new guy.

Go The New Guy Go

But Mitchell didnt idlly "sit back all season" .He saw flaws in the system and was proactive to address at least one of them.MD on the other hand seemed content with the status quo of the merry-go-round roster.
It was Mitchell and Mitchell alone that went out and hired Rambo without MD when he realized (or was told) there was no proper data base of players or system of talent evaluation as the parade of stiffs at WR vividly illustrated.All via Marcel Desjardins.

To say both were equally culpable in the mess is incorrect.

“Maybe their waiting to see how Charlie fares in the Hammer before making their decision.”

Maybe it’s the other way around with Obie waiting to see who doesn’t get hired in Montreal.

A strong possibility; Montreal is supposed to announce their choice early next week......that should leave some good candidates out there if Obie decides to tie the can to Charlie.