Etcheverry's first comments since being hired. Interesting gentleman...

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/football/bombers/new-defensive-guru-looks-only-at-future-255124031.html

BRADENTON, Fla. -- If you were thinking getting fired from his last job after just five games had humbled Gary Etcheverry, well, think again.

The new defensive co-ordinator of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was defiant here Sunday when asked about his brief -- and winless -- stint in 2012 as head coach of the University of Ottawa Gee Gees football team.

Asked how the Ottawa experience -- in which he was abruptly fired after opening the 2012 season at 0-5 -- had changed him as a coach, Etcheverry invoked the memory of one of the world's most famous firings. "Kind of the way maybe getting fired by the company he founded changed Steve Jobs 11 years later when he went back to save Apple," Etcheverry said Sunday on Day 1 of the Bombers' first-ever spring mini-camp in Florida.

"They weren't ready for me, and I wasn't ready for them."

Well then.

It was one of just two Apple references Etcheverry invoked Sunday in what were his first public comments to the Winnipeg media since he was hired as the Bombers' new DC in February. "People always talk about a playbook. We don't have a playbook," Etcheverry said in reference to his unique -- and famously confusing -- defence.

"Well, when you used to have a VCR you had a playbook like this," Etcheverry continued, holding his hands several inches apart, "and you still couldn't set the damn clock. And nowadays if you have an Apple product, what's the playbook? What's the user manual?

"But they say we're behind the times because we don't have a playbook? S , we're so far behind the times we're ahead of the times."

Confidence

What emerged here Sunday is that the Bombers have secured for themselves a new defensive co-ordinator who, if nothing else, is certainly not lacking in confidence.

But then why would he be? Now in his 35th year in coaching, the 57-year-old Etcheverry has coached everywhere from college to Europe to the NFL to 10 years in the CFL, which included a brief stint as head coach of the Toronto Argonauts in 2002.

A Grey Cup winner in 1997 with the Argos and more recently the architect of stingy defences in Saskatchewan from 2008-10, Etcheverry is considered a master of a defence that can best be described as organized chaos, with defenders expected to play all over the field and in strangely named positions such as rover.

"I believe he's thought more about football than a lot of people and he's thought about it in a lot of different ways," says Bombers head coach Mike O'Shea, who played under Etcheverry in Toronto. "He's very thorough in his thought process on how defensive football should be played and how offensive football should be played."

The admiration is mutual. "I've told people that there's nobody that I've worked with at any point in time that I've had more respect for," Etcheverry said of O'Shea. "It's very exciting. Certainly he's elated and I am for him. Our job now is to get us to where we need to be."

So how will he do that? With fleet and finely tuned athletes, instead of the physical behemoths so commonly associated with CFL defences, Etcheverry says. "We do a lot of things that require interchangeability among our players, so we can't have a bunch of 300-pounders out there, because they can't run on this big-ass field...

"We cause confusion, there's no question about it," Etcheverry continued. "We want to be multiple, and to be multiple you gotta have interchangeable athletes... Multiple everything. Multiple alignments, multiple movements, multiple coverages, multiple, multiple, multiple...

"If we're gonna err, we're gonna err on the side of speed."

The fact he can't stay anywhere more than 2 seasons tells me that there are a lot of red flags with Etcheverry. He either loses his players, they stop playing for him or he has communications issues with them. I can't believe that he gets that restless & likes to move on so much.

Come on, folks. Football is a sport and sports are meant to entertain, and this will be entertaining. How well Etcheverry does will also give us an idea of how sharp our new coach's acumen is. Sort of two spectacles for the price of one, besides- compared to last couple of seasons, how could it possibly be worse?

The scary part is that Etch's defence is 'defend the pass, forget the run'... but since his last successful season, the CFl has really changed to feature the run a fair bit more...  just hope we have a plan for Cornish.

The fact he can't stay anywhere more than 2 seasons tells me that there are a lot of red flags with Etcheverry. He either loses his players, they stop playing for him or he has communications issues with them. I can't believe that he gets that restless & likes to move on so much.

Yup this is my concern...

The fact he can't stay anywhere more than 2 seasons tells me that there are a lot of red flags with Etcheverry. He either loses his players, they stop playing for him or he has communications issues with them. I can't believe that he gets that restless & likes to move on so much.

Or, its "jump before you get pushed".

….iso…."This could be a real disaster in the making." 

 

…….Shows how little you know, I dropped that particular page from my playbook.

 

….iso.… "he just seems oblivious to everything". 

……Yeah, I saw that movie, do you really think i look like Tom Cruise?

 

….iso…."The fact he can't stay anywhere more than 2 seasons tells me that there are a lot of red flags with Etcheverry. He either loses his players, they stop playing for him or he has communications issues with them."

 

 

… I'm not going anywhere….but the gate is over there, right past those little red flags, you can leave at any time. How's that for communicating?

……iso……….An old jaded coach who seems paranoid about players leaking information about his defense.

……..Wait a minute, I have an answer for that one

Come on, folks. Football is a sport and sports are meant to entertain, and this will be entertaining. How well Etcheverry does will also give us an idea of how sharp our new coach's acumen is. Sort of two spectacles for the price of one, besides- compared to last couple of seasons, how could it possibly be worse?

Two things: Flames GM Brian Burke said pro hockey players don't get paid to have fun. They are paid to work very hard & to win.

Jim Barker said pro football players are not paid to play.  They are paid to win.

Vince Lombardi put the fear of God into his players. He was a mean SOB when the Packers didn't win & almost as bad when they won. He was a taskmaster.

Jimmy Johnson cut his starting fullback when his fumble cost the Cowboys a game.

Tom Landry was distant, shrewd, cold & calculating. Even players who played for him for a decade or more said they never got to know who the real Tom Landry was. He never let anyone get close as he felt he needed to be aloof to keep his players on their toes at all times in order to create a culture of winning. With fear thrown into the mix as well.

Wally Buono will cut a player on a whim if he thinks he can bring in someone better & cheaper. He cut the CFL's all time leading receiver in Allen Pitts after the 2000 season because he said he needed the money Pitts would  have got to pay receiver Travis Moore who was younger & cheaper than Pitts. Buono often referred to Pitts as someone he thought of as a son but when it came to money the father-son comparison ended there & Pitts was let go. Purely business on Wally's part. .

The players in the CFL may not have the multimillion dollar contracts their NFL counterparts have but they are still are professionals & are still expected to put out on Game Day in the CFL. So, my point is this is a cutthroat business. Winning is everything. Entertainment is nothing.

So, in closing, I say the hell with entertainment. I want wins & lots of them. I don't care how ugly or how pretty. Just wins. I don't want an entertaining defense. I want a shut down defense. Etcheverry better coach up his players to be more than just entertaining. If Etch fails he should be fired. 

 

Come on, folks. Football is a sport and sports are meant to entertain, and this will be entertaining. How well Etcheverry does will also give us an idea of how sharp our new coach's acumen is. Sort of two spectacles for the price of one, besides- compared to last couple of seasons, how could it possibly be worse?

Two things: Flames GM Brian Burke said pro hockey players don't get paid to have fun. They are paid to work very hard & to win.

Jim Barker said pro football players are not paid to play.  They are paid to win.

Vince Lombardi put the fear of God into his players. He was a mean SOB when the Packers didn't win & almost as bad when they won. He was a taskmaster.

Jimmy Johnson cut his starting fullback when his fumble cost the Cowboys a game.

Tom Landry was distant, shrewd, cold & calculating. Even players who played for him for a decade or more said they never got to know who the real Tom Landry was. He never let anyone get close as he felt he needed to be aloof to keep his players on their toes at all times in order to create a culture of winning. With fear thrown into the mix as well.

Wally Buono will cut a player on a whim if he thinks he can bring in someone better & cheaper. He cut the CFL's all time leading receiver in Allen Pitts after the 2000 season because he said he needed the money Pitts would  have got to pay receiver Travis Moore who was younger & cheaper than Pitts. Buono often referred to Pitts as someone he thought of as a son but when it came to money the father-son comparison ended there & Pitts was let go. Purely business on Wally's part. .

The players in the CFL may not have the multimillion dollar contracts their NFL counterparts have but they are still are professionals & are still expected to put out on Game Day in the CFL. So, my point is this is a cutthroat business. Winning is everything. Entertainment is nothing.

So, in closing, I say the hell with entertainment. I want wins & lots of them. I don't care how ugly or how pretty. Just wins. I don't want an entertaining defense. I want a shut down defense. Etcheverry better coach up his players to be more than just entertaining. If Etch fails he should be fired. 

 

looks like you might be disappointed no matter what team you desire wins from. Teams go in cycles...no matter who the coaches and players are. The only way to achieve your goal for wins only and not entertainment,  is to keep switching to winning teams, not loyalty to one.

Watching Swaggerville in 2012 was highly entertaining, watching staggerville last year was the exact opposite. A team playing good football is entertaining, a team with a defense that gets beat regularly is not entertaining. They're taking a big gamble with Etch, I hope it pays off but if it doesn't things will not be entertaining no matter what kind of whacky **** he tries to get them to play. 

 

 

Come on, folks. Football is a sport and sports are meant to entertain, and this will be entertaining. How well Etcheverry does will also give us an idea of how sharp our new coach's acumen is. Sort of two spectacles for the price of one, besides- compared to last couple of seasons, how could it possibly be worse?

Two things: Flames GM Brian Burke said pro hockey players don't get paid to have fun. They are paid to work very hard & to win.

Jim Barker said pro football players are not paid to play.  They are paid to win.

Vince Lombardi put the fear of God into his players. He was a mean SOB when the Packers didn't win & almost as bad when they won. He was a taskmaster.

Jimmy Johnson cut his starting fullback when his fumble cost the Cowboys a game.

Tom Landry was distant, shrewd, cold & calculating. Even players who played for him for a decade or more said they never got to know who the real Tom Landry was. He never let anyone get close as he felt he needed to be aloof to keep his players on their toes at all times in order to create a culture of winning. With fear thrown into the mix as well.

Wally Buono will cut a player on a whim if he thinks he can bring in someone better & cheaper. He cut the CFL's all time leading receiver in Allen Pitts after the 2000 season because he said he needed the money Pitts would  have got to pay receiver Travis Moore who was younger & cheaper than Pitts. Buono often referred to Pitts as someone he thought of as a son but when it came to money the father-son comparison ended there & Pitts was let go. Purely business on Wally's part. .

The players in the CFL may not have the multimillion dollar contracts their NFL counterparts have but they are still are professionals & are still expected to put out on Game Day in the CFL. So, my point is this is a cutthroat business. Winning is everything. Entertainment is nothing.

So, in closing, I say the hell with entertainment. I want wins & lots of them. I don't care how ugly or how pretty. Just wins. I don't want an entertaining defense. I want a shut down defense. Etcheverry better coach up his players to be more than just entertaining. If Etch fails he should be fired. 

 

looks like you might be disappointed no matter what team you desire wins from. Teams go in cycles...no matter who the coaches and players are. The only way to achieve your goal for wins only and not entertainment,  is to keep switching to winning teams, not loyalty to one.

 

T minus 24 years & counting.

One positive is that the Bombers are massively rebuilding and Etch has the luxury of picking players that fit with his defensive scheme instead of dealing with players that are already locked in place.  I have a hunch this may not work out as bad as many might predict and I think we've already seen "his hand" in some of the recent signings and cuts.

One positive is that the Bombers are massively rebuilding and Etch has the luxury of picking players that fit with his defensive scheme instead of dealing with players that are already locked in place.  I have a hunch this may not work out as bad as many might predict and I think we've already seen "his hand" in some of the recent signings and cuts.

 

Remember the times Reinbold and Kelly hand picked certain players for his system....

 

One positive is that the Bombers are massively rebuilding and Etch has the luxury of picking players that fit with his defensive scheme instead of dealing with players that are already locked in place.  I have a hunch this may not work out as bad as many might predict and I think we've already seen "his hand" in some of the recent signings and cuts.

 

Remember the times Reinbold and Kelly hand picked certain players for his system....

 

Both players and systems were popular in the 80's

Oh cmon, every single coach in this league 'handpicks' players for their system...

Oh cmon, every single coach in this league 'handpicks' players for their system...

And it works & it doesn't.

A note of reality: coaches like Hufnagel and Kent Austin who are immediately successful are very, very rare. With that in mind, as much as we would like to see O'Shea wipe the field with every opposing team, we are probably headed for a up and down season. If we get to 9 and 9, that would be wonderful, and making the playoffs would send fans into ecstatic rapture, but the odds are against us, what with so many changes and new faces.

As a follower of this team for several decades, some seasons, the best we could hope for is to not be humiliated too often, to still be in the game at half-time and have the team be seen as trying hard. Therefore, let us not lose our senses of ha-ha- it will be a long season, and we are going to need all the patience and humour we can get.

A note of reality: coaches like Hufnagel and Kent Austin who are immediately successful are very, very rare. With that in mind, as much as we would like to see O'Shea wipe the field with every opposing team, we are probably headed for a up and down season. If we get to 9 and 9, that would be wonderful, and making the playoffs would send fans into ecstatic rapture, but the odds are against us, what with so many changes and new faces.

As a follower of this team for several decades, some seasons, the best we could hope for is to not be humiliated too often, to still be in the game at half-time and have the team be seen as trying hard. Therefore, let us not lose our senses of ha-ha- it will be a long season, and we are going to need all the patience and humour we can get.

 

If we are competitive that would be mighty nice....

 

If we don't field an anemic offense that also would be fantastic.

It all comes down to scouting & doing the things successful teams in the CFL do to win games & championships. Our FA camps & expanding the scouting department were all things that needed to be done by the Bombers & they did that. What we did this past off season would never have been done by Joe Mack. I have every reason to believe that we will find some hidden gems from these camps like we never had before. Hopefully enough to start building a solid team.

It all comes down to scouting & doing the things successful teams in the CFL do to win games & championships. Our FA camps & expanding the scouting department were all things that needed to be done by the Bombers & they did that. What we did this past off season would never have been done by Joe Mack. I have every reason to believe that we will find some hidden gems from these camps like we never had before. Hopefully enough to start building a solid team.

Were we really losing because the rookie americans weren't good enough though? I thought you guys all liked to point to lack of veterans and NIs as the big problem? Too much blind hatred going on. 

 

It all comes down to scouting & doing the things successful teams in the CFL do to win games & championships. Our FA camps & expanding the scouting department were all things that needed to be done by the Bombers & they did that. What we did this past off season would never have been done by Joe Mack. I have every reason to believe that we will find some hidden gems from these camps like we never had before. Hopefully enough to start building a solid team.

Were we really losing because the rookie Americans weren't good enough though? I thought you guys all liked to point to lack of veterans and NIs as the big problem? Too much blind hatred going on. 

 

We were losing because almost every facet of the team wasn't good enough- not the general manager, the coaches, the scouts, the drafting and most of the players. There's enough blame to go around, so line up.

 

It all comes down to scouting & doing the things successful teams in the CFL do to win games & championships. Our FA camps & expanding the scouting department were all things that needed to be done by the Bombers & they did that. What we did this past off season would never have been done by Joe Mack. I have every reason to believe that we will find some hidden gems from these camps like we never had before. Hopefully enough to start building a solid team.

Were we really losing because the rookie americans weren't good enough though? I thought you guys all liked to point to lack of veterans and NIs as the big problem? Too much blind hatred going on. 

 

Maybe too much blind love, eh?

 

 

It all comes down to scouting & doing the things successful teams in the CFL do to win games & championships. Our FA camps & expanding the scouting department were all things that needed to be done by the Bombers & they did that. What we did this past off season would never have been done by Joe Mack. I have every reason to believe that we will find some hidden gems from these camps like we never had before. Hopefully enough to start building a solid team.

Were we really losing because the rookie americans weren't good enough though? I thought you guys all liked to point to lack of veterans and NIs as the big problem? Too much blind hatred going on. 

 

Maybe too much blind love, eh?

 

We've been over this before, I only bring it up when you guys go on your hate tangents. I am simply providing balance to the discussion. 

There's good reason for the hate tangents. Mack never did any of these rookie camps. Every CFL team does it now. Every team spent more on scouting & doing these camps. Mack did none of that. You can call it  hate. I call it Mack being lazy, sitting on his ass & getting paid to do nothing. And the results proved it.

The Bombers had invitation camps rather than open camps under Mack.

Ken Moll worked out some guys & then invited them to a camp. And they brought down their veterans at some positions. It was nothing close to what they do now.