Interview: Corey Chamblin: Rebuilding seasons "don't exist in Saskatchewan"

Former Saskatchewan Roughriders' head coach Corey Chamblin has been pretty quiet since the team fired him and general manager Brendan Taman after an 0-9 start this year, less than two years after the tandem lifted the 2013 Grey Cup. Chamblin elected to give 55-Yard Line an exclusive interview Monday about what went wrong in Saskatchewan. Here's the transcript of our conversation, edited only slightly for clarity and grammar. (Ellipses denote trailing off, not missing sentences.)

Andrew Bucholtz: First off, Corey, what are your overall thoughts on what happened in Saskatchewan this year?

Corey Chamblin: When I look at the overall thing, you know, it’s a pretty unique situation. And, you know, it’s a unique situation when not only the head coach gets let go, but I can’t remember anything in my mind where I've seen a head coach and GM get let go, especially during the middle part of the season. That’s always unique within itself. To be honest, when I look at how this season is going just in football in general, it’s amazing. You look at U.S. college football, there are coaches being let go in the middle of the season, retiring during the middle of the season. So it’s almost like that’s a wave and that’s the way things are this year. That’s my biggest thing. It was a unique situation, you know. 0-9. But you know it started way before then. But I just think it was just a really unique situation.

AB: There’s been a lot of talk about how this year’s team was sort of hamstrung by some of those decisions made in 2013, some of the salaries and some of the moves made to win the Grey Cup then. Do you buy into any of that?

CC:  You know, I will tell you this, the key phrase that we used on the inside of our championship rings was “All In,” and you know that’s a key phrase. One of the things we look at there is that we were all in in 2013. And, you know, a lot of high-profile names and different guys like that. In 2014, we had some of those guys and you know we looked at it and we had some of those guys and we started 8-2 and then Darian got hurt and we had the chance there. And when you look at it, when you have the all-in mentality, you know, after awhile, it’s not like you can go for five to eight years with that. So, you know, I think it was time to, I wanna say rebuild or restructure. And I think that’s what happened. We started slow but I think it kinda caught up to us in the sense that you know it was time to go "Hey, let’s do it all over again."

AB: Do you think there were too high expectations from the fan base for this year? Was it always going to be a rebuilding year?

CC: You know, I don’t think the fans…I think their expectations should always remain high. I think that any football team, excuse me, any sports club, you should have expectations. You know, on their side, they can have the high ones. But I think when you look internally, we have to know what direction that we’re going. There were some things…you know, we brought in Kevin [Glenn] as the backup to fix some problems that we had the year before. In that sense, a total rebuild. But we didn’t have the names and the talent that we had in '13 and some of that trickled down to '14. And that’s no disrespect to the guys that are there but you got a whole lot of new guys that are trying to learn, or teach them, and have to have them learn the game. So winning the Grey Cup was probably not in the cards this year.

AB: Was there anything that you thought went particularly wrong this year?

CC: When you’re saying particularly wrong you’re saying just early on in the course of time when I was there?

AB: Yes, exactly.

CC: Well, you know, I wouldn’t say particularly wrong. The biggest thing I felt like changed is we made some changes in the offseason. Or you make chemistry changes. And you look at any sports league when you change the chemistry or, excuse me, when you make those changes, you want to make sure the chemistry is there to help excel some things. The other thing is a lot of the changes that were made, especially from my standpoint, was, well we didn’t have those big names that we had the year before, so we wanted to get some new blood in there to mix with that new blood to see if we could do something different. Because everybody had their heads hung around '13 as if we could just do the same thing over and over. Well that’s not true. Sometimes you've got to get new opinions, you've got to get new insight, and different things like that.

AB: While you were in Saskatchewan, before this year, you got a lot of credit for how your defense played and then this year it seemed the offense really shone and the defense really struggled. Do you have any explanation for why that was?

CC: You know, I think the biggest thing is like I said, when you look at that, we went through a series of changes. You take a look at some players, you know, they had great years the year before and didn’t the next year. Sometimes there's age in that factor. Of course, we changed coordinators and different things like that and tried to mix philosophies there. That's what you try to look for, you try to look for a great mix there. It's like a game plan, Andrew; when you put a game plan together, you think it's going to work, then one or two things happen and you have to change. What's funny about that was on the field, we had a game plan we used for those first several games. We had injury after injury on the defensive side, so it didn't work, and you know, just some of the things I had planned in the offseason, some of them went the way I wanted to, some of them didn't. You have to adjust your game plan.

AB: If you got the chance to do this season over, what would you do differently?

CC: I go through it and look at it, and to be honest with you, I think some of the outcomes would be the same if I was starting a new season. If I wanted this season to be correct, I'd have to go a little bit further back than the beginning of this season. Like I said, you know, when you look at it, I think where we are this year, where we ended this year was the culmination of the successes and the all-in mentality we put in earlier. I don't think it's just we woke up this morning and this is where it is. It's kind of like the weather; at some point it's going to change. It ended up changing on us. From the standpoint of where Brendan and I were, we knew we weren't going to be a Grey Cup team. We knew we'd have our challenges. But we didn't think we'd have those types of challenges.

AB: Did you have any sense that you might get fired this year, or was it a complete surprise?

CC: I didn't have a sense I would be fired this year. We're talking all before the season?

AB: Yes.

CC: There was a change at the top with the president, and one thing I'm real big on, Andrew, is noticing change. There was change with a lot of employees in the building. One of the things that I noticed closely was that change was coming in the building. We didn't know how it would affect us, but I felt there would be change. You know, a lot of people say 'He had his mind set on coming down south.' No. I knew at some point my tenure would be up, I thought maybe not this year, maybe next year. It was a surprise when we got to 0-3 and it was as loud as it was, when there were calls about "Let's fire Corey," and I'm like "At 0-3?" We'd just won the Grey Cup, we were on a hot roll until Darian got hurt 10 games into the year (in 2014), and now, three games in, they're talking about firing me. Once it got to that point and it got that loud, I knew it would probably be on Labour Day.

AB: Do you feel the last two years would have been different if Darian Durant had stayed healthy?

CC: Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Now, this year, if Darian had been healthy, I think it would have been an average year. I can remember telling one of the players, I think Tristan Jackson, he and I had a conversation of "Average at best with what we have." If you look at last year, I think our window was '13, and then you look at '14, we were on a roll there. We were 8-2 until Darian got hurt. That would have been our chance to at least get back in the West Final and bid for that Grey Cup run. If you look at Saskatchewan, there was the 2007 Grey Cup, nothing in '08, '09 and '10 they were good, nothing in '11, playoffs in '12, and then '13. I thought '14 was going to be our second year, our second run, but due to that injury bug that went from '14 to '15, it didn't happen.

AB: If this was going to be a down year, what were the plans that you and Brendan had to build for future success?

CC: Well, you know, we do look at that. That's why we had the young guys. We had the free-agent camps, and expanded some things that we did there. We brought in guys like Junior Mertile, you had younger guys coming in like Tyree Hollins. There were a lot of younger guys coming in who in the past...when we won the Grey Cup, we didn't play younger guys. We played big-name veterans, Dwight Anderson, Geroy Simon. Now you come in with Naiman Roosevelt and all these young guys playing and now you come in with Tyree Hollins, so when you look at it, we went younger. That was the process of saying "Hey, let's build these young guys and give them experience." Whereas in '12, we had a mix of heavy vets but we were still kind of young, '13 was all vets, '14 was decently vets, and now in '15, they were a little bit younger.

AB: Is it harder to have a down season or a rebuilding year in Saskatchewan than in other cities in the CFL?

CC: They don't exist in Saskatchewan. Since 2007, those years don't exist. You had a run to where there's been a positive amount of Grey Cups, and they don't exist. But on the flip side, you look at Montreal and they're going through the same thing right now. The tide just changes. They were in those Grey Cups and the tide changes. The only thing that's stayed consistent is Calgary.

AB: What's next for you? Do you want to work in the CFL again? Are you looking at other levels of football

CC: Right now, when I look at the situation I'm in, I'm back down south and I'm open to both borders. What I mean by that, in the past, being a head coach, that's the best thing in the world. Being a head coach in a pro league and you don't need to look for a job. Now it's time for me to reevaluate where I'm at. There may be some head coaching opportunities for me to look at, coordinator opportunities, and depending on where they are down south, maybe even positional opportunities. It's actually more open than it's been. Over the last couple of years, I didn't look for a job in the U.S. because I thought "I want to build this, finish my contract." Situations happen. Right now, I'm open and I'm prepared for anything. The biggest thing is first who's going to knock on the door? And after that, maybe I'll do a little bit of hunting and see what comes up.

AB: How did coaching in the CFL compare to the other leagues you've worked in? (Chamblin previously coached in NFL Europe and played in college and the NFL.)

CC: Coaching in the CFL, if you look at the average scores right now in the NCAA and even the New York Giants versus the Saints (Sunday night's NFL game),  the Saints won 52-49, it's CFL ball now. Everybody's wanting to throw the ball now, everybody's doing the zone read. Now I have the time to look at more U.S. ball, I'm like, "Oh, that's a Canadian play." So, a lot of the stuff that I see that took place in Canada, even because, I think, of the season being earlier, that's washing into the States. It's coming down. Me being a defensive backs coach by trade, it's definitely great to have that experience, coaching with all the waggle, all the motion and all those different things. That's great experience you get coaching in the CFL. I had one NFL GM tell me when I told him I was a defensive coordinator in the CFL, he's like "That's like career suicide, being a defensive coordinator in the CFL. You can't stop anybody." And I think that's where it is right now, you look at the Pac-12 and all those schools, they're throwing the ball so much that the D-coordinators are at a disadvantage because they haven't seen as much ball-throwing as we have in the CFL.

AB: What did you learn from being a head coach? What was different about the head coaching role?

CC: When you look at it as a position coach, a defensive coordinator, there's a certain amount of aggression you can put in and that affects your group. When you get to the head coaching role and you're dealing with offensive players, they're different from defensive players, so there's a level of aggression that has to taper off. The other thing is dealing with delegation and different things like that. I always tell people, everywhere we've been, the head coach has gotten better because of some of the different work we did when we were there. I truly believe that assistants definitely make the head coach in that they have the most reach to the players; they can touch them, they can groom them, they can take them from one level to the next. I've always believed there are two types of coaches. There's the kind that lead with their eyes forward and let the guys work behind them, and then there's other guys that have to turn around and have to make sure you're able to see everything. The thing I learned there is that there's times you have to be each one of those. There's no set way to say "This is how I'm going to lead." You have to be able to move in and out of both of them.

AB: How do you feel about your time in Saskatchewan overall looking back?

CC: Looking back in Saskatchewan overall, I can honestly tell you there is no bad blood there. Even with the way things went down, I'm truly appreciative of the organization and Brendan Taman for taking a chance on me, a young head coach. I think we had some great success there. Being a part of all those [Saskatchewan] head coaches, I think there's 40-plus (yep: Chamblin was #41), and there's only four of us that have a Grey Cup ring. Of over 100 years (of franchise history), I've been a part of one of only four championships they had, and I'm truly appreciative of that. I know that even though there is that blip in the history book there, there's still that positive history of being the last coach to win the Grey Cup in Saskatchewan.