The Canadian Press
Bill Beacon
MONTREAL–For a third-straight year, the Montreal Alouettes have changed coaches in the middle of the season.
With his team mired in a four-game losing streak, general manager Kavis Reed took over as head coach yesterday after sacking Jacques Chapdelaine as well as defensive co-ordinator/assistant head coach Noel Thorpe.
“There’s never a right time,” said Reed, who handed play-calling duties to quarterback coach Anthony Calvillo and defensive calls to defensive line coach Greg Quick.
The revamped staff gets its first test when the Ottawa Redblacks visit Percival Molson Stadium on Sunday.
The changes came with the 3-8 Alouettes sinking fast and in danger of missing the playoffs for a third year in a row.
The offence was a mess, managing no more than six points of two of its last four games, and Reed described the defence, which has been the club’s backbone in recent years, as “just OK.”
But it still was a surprise if only because the Alouettes had done the same in 2015, when former GM Jim Popp replaced Tom Higgins in mid-season, and last year, when Chapdelaine took over coaching duties from Popp.
They also had changed coaches during the 2013 campaign, with Popp stepping in for Dan Hawkins.
Few expected them to do it again.
“It’s a tough situation,” conceded quarterback Darian Durant. “You respect those guys but it’s a tough business we’re in.
“As a team, I think we have enough veterans to keep the guys going and keep the room upbeat,” he added.
“We have to move on.”
The team that had been a model of success and stability from the late 1990s to 2012, winning three Grey Cups, now looks to have gone off the rails.
Reed wouldn’t go into specifics on why he fired the two coaches, but numbers talk and the team ranks near the bottom in most statistical categories, especially on offence.
“This is to establish a foundation,” said Reed. “The Montreal Alouettes have been a proud organization and if there is a foundational crack, we cannot continue to try to build a house on it.
“That’s what I feel has happened,” he added.
“This is an opportunity for us to correct the foundation.”
Nothing has gone right for the Alouettes these days. Reed was to speak to the media on the sidelines before practice, but someone forgot the key so it was held outside the locked gate.
And the moves could not have come at a more difficult time for Calvillo, the quarterback legend who is to be inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame tonight in Hamilton.
Calvillo said his new duties mean he can’t go, although Reed said he would insist he attend.
Calvillo was offensive co-ordinator last season, but had those duties taken over by Chapdelaine.
Now he’ll get a second chance to run the offence.
“I felt very comfortable last year calling plays,” noted Calvillo. “I tried this year to pretend I was an offensive co-ordinator, in terms of game planning, creating my own call sheets, just to be able to grow and not waste this year.
“I’ve been trying mentally to keep myself involved as a play-caller.”
Reed, a former Edmonton Eskimos’ head coach, doesn’t intend to stay on the sidelines beyond this season.
“Regardless of what happens, the franchise will have a head coach and it won’t be me,” he stressed.
